Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2020

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Operate small, but show a big-company image. With the advent of the Internet, the size and address of your office is irrelevant.

Hockey Stick 423

Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 423

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Here are a few thoughts about operating in uncertainty in a pandemic. The ripple and feedback effect of all of these closures will have a major impact on our economy, as each industry that gets impacted puts people out of work, and those laid off workers don’t buy products and services. Alter the product? How do you know?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

View from Seed

JUNE 7, 2016

Based on that reaction, we wanted to continue improving the product through both additional revs/design and continuing to evolve how we think about board meetings in the first place. For an entrepreneur to grow from founder to true CEO, it helps to act as if your business is already at the next stage. ” resource below.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Founder Seed Capital Institutional Investors 120

Ben's Blog

JUNE 10, 2024

But that flexibility comes with operational pain points, especially when it comes to predicting revenue. Why usage-based pricing: aligning value with customer success (02:42) Usage-based pricing has become exceptionally popular with the rise of product-led growth, but it wasn’t always a tried-and-true model.

Revenue 73

Revenue Forecast Generative AI Later Stage 73

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. I would say the norm for many early-stage companies is somewhere between 6-10 in-person meetings per year. Have topics.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board Fractional CTO CTO Hire Los Angeles 365

View from Seed

MAY 18, 2016

So it’s easy for the board room to become an unintentionally cluttered setting, which at best is cumbersome and at worst counter-productive to a startup’s success. I think having two or at most three VC board members is probably where this should cap out, even for later stage startups. Beware Board Observers.

Seed Stage 216

Seed Stage Cofounder Later Stage Government 216

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

For those that did tap VCs, 90% were either Seed or Series A stage companies. Fewer established Series B+ startups shuttered operations, though the 34 later stage shutdowns exceeded last year’s 25. bad management, lack of product market fit, costly mistakes that accelerated the said running out of money).

Valuation 103

Valuation Startup Angel Investor Dilution 103

Gust

JANUARY 4, 2012

Later stage companies have some additional concerns: What favorable impact could IP have for PR, marketing and investor relations purposes, or as an attraction to potential acquirors? It’s often possible to “ design around ” a patent to operate a business that achieves similar results in different ways.) Easier said than done!)

Intellectual Property 143

Intellectual Property IP Startup United States 143

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 15, 2015

Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution – Part I. Very few companies become super-successful without users loving their product. Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution – Part II. Lecture 4: Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing. Lecture 7: How to Build Products Users Love.

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Delaware Startup Technical Review 100

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. To measure product usage and traction over time, we use tools like Alexa , AppAnnie and Google Analytics.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 9, 2021

Far too often, people think that innovation is limited to the product, service, and technology. Over and over, he has gambled on products and product areas where no current market existed. Products like the Kindle and Amazon Web Services created entirely new markets, which Amazon now dominates or leads.

Leadership 45

Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Later Stage 45

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2016

I know it sounds obvious but just so you understand: There are more capital sources available for earlier-stage capital, the information on which they are evaluating the investment is less (it is almost certainly just team and product) and the risk of the investor getting things wrong is diminished.

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate Cap Table Valuation Software Review 150

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

As the former Head of Product at Blue Apron where I also built and led our Analytics & Data Science team (I know enough SQL to be dangerous), I have an intuitive sense for the “when” and “what” of this role. Analytics is about designing, reporting, and leveraging operating metrics to aid strategic and functional decision-making.

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Teten: How is the corporate VC model evolving: in how they interact with portfolio companies or the operating side of their organization? Corporate venture funds compete against their independent peers for the best deals by doubling down on their ‘strategic’ benefits, mainly access to the operating units of their parent companies. .

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 3, 2021

Growing a business is always challenging, but it’s often the hardest in the earliest stages of development. You’ll be operating with limited resources, limited knowledge, and quite possibly, a business model poised to change in the immediate future. Each of these pieces serves as an independent magnet for customer attention.

Early Stage 125

Early Stage PPC Retention Churn Rate 125

Up and Running

AUGUST 17, 2015

Between my experiences as a management consultant, as well as my product and marketing roles at multiple tech companies, I felt that I had enough operational experience to make that leap sooner than later. C Corp versus LLC, non-competes, liquidation preferences, preferred versus common stock, and so on).

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Cofounder Angel Investor eCommerce 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

If you’re a late stage company trying to penetrate a new market (think Warby Parker trying to expand internationally), we have people who can help with that. We’re not mainly for B2B companies or later stage companies or anything like that. We have the ability to help excellent companies throughout their life cycles.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 12, 2020

It is additionally wise to avoid movers and web van lines that have no drivers, operators, or gear. Beware of careless movers: There are times when moving organizations recklessly load things at the rear of their truck, with no consideration or worry for the products moved. Yes, they regularly do extra expenses at a much later stage.

Later Stage 119

Later Stage Stock Cost Search 119

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2013

Minimum Viable Product (MVP). For startup new product development, this is a strategy used for fast and quantitative market testing of a product or product feature, popularized first by Eric Ries for web applications. It suggests the minimum features to allow the product to be deployed and get feedback, and no more.

Entrepreneur 274

Entrepreneur Accredited Investor Silicon Valley Angel Investor 274

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2016

Your business may demonstrate healthy annual gains on paper, yet struggle to meet the day-to-day operational bills. You’re pre-selling your product or raising money to get a prototype out. We associate this type of financing with earlier-stage companies, but we’re starting to see later-stage brands putting campaigns out.

Finance 100

Finance Angel Investor Cofounder Later Stage 100

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 9, 2017

Whether early or later-stage, the growth of every company most often depends on how much capital is available to fund its growth. Even if your product or service will be solving an important problem, it often takes time and money to build and test a working prototype. Determine Operating Expenses. Keep Detailed Records.

Burn Rate 100

Burn Rate B2C Finance Later Stage 100

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 2, 2012

“Vinnie was amongst the most popular and valued mentors on the bootcamp we operated earlier this year,” says Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at JFDI.Asia. “Golden Gate Ventures’ links to later stage investors and Silicon Valley can add most value once start-ups launch products and prove market traction.

Asia 162

Asia Singapore Silicon Valley Cofounder 162

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2013

They need to challenge your way of thinking, your way of doing business, and your way of building products. Prepare a working prototype, showcase the product you actually want to build, or at least demonstrate that you are able to build it. More than half of our team has been recruited somehow through our product.

Management 120

Management Cofounder Startup Bootstrapping 120

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

They’ll tell you all about their strategy, the order of operations of who and how they pitched, the magic slides, the timing of the raise itself, etc. Anything from intense customer love despite barely even having a product, pre-sales, a deal for access to data that creates a moat that no one else has—the list goes on.

Venture Capital 152

Venture Capital Cofounder Deal Flow Later Stage 152

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2017

Later-stage companies are in operating mode. And ensures this talent will be building the right products using a strategy that reinforces your ability to deliver sustainable value. Once you compile it, pay more attention to building on your strengths and matching those with the market opportunities.

Private Equity 113

Private Equity Later Stage IPO Early Stage 113

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

Perhaps, when things settle down a bit more, those companies will even raise series A capital from traditional institutional sources to expand the product features, beef up the operations team more fully and make progress in finding initial product-market fit. Shift of value from equity holders to token holders.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

Perhaps, when things settle down a bit more, those companies will even raise series A capital from traditional institutional sources to expand the product features, beef up the operations team more fully and make progress in finding initial product-market fit. Shift of value from equity holders to token holders.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 30, 2010

We have a good sense of what later stage VCs are going to look for and can help think about how much you need to raise to get additional interest down the line. Sometimes, we even have good product feedback. Why not ask people who may have entrepreneurial, operational, sales, marketing, etc. backgrounds at startups?

Technical Review 105

Technical Review Due Diligence Venture Capital Later Stage 105

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Most VCs will say that to evaluate deals they look at the market size, the product and the quality of the team. Different investors place different weights on the three elements but as a rule earlier stage investors place more emphasis on the team and later stage investors place more emphasis on the market.

Seed Stage 60

Seed Stage Later Stage Early Stage Partner 60

NZ Entrepreneur

AUGUST 12, 2020

This includes new methods, products, expressions of ideas, trade secrets, brands and logos. As soon as you have a business or product idea and you’ve spent some time planning what this may look like in reality, start looking into intellectual property protection. What is intellectual property?

Intellectual Property 93

Intellectual Property New Zealand Startup Early Stage 93

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. Small batches mean faster feedback.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

VC Cafe

MAY 16, 2023

The market share of chatbots, and LLMs (that will later on be sold to enterprises) will be heavily influenced by user perception. ChatGPT became the fastest growing consumer product and new functionality rolled out in short succession. However, that narrative seemed to have taken a bit of a dent following Google I/O 2023 last week.

Artificial Inteligence 178

Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT Generative AI Open Source 178

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

We come in after a product has landed and found product market fit and has some escape velocity. So there’s a product side and a business side. . Later stage, public companies are right-sizing their teams, so there are many opportunities out there. But different companies fall into different stages.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2016

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Operate small, but show a big-company image. With the advent of the Internet, the size and address of your office is irrelevant.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Greg was the first person to share with me the insights of mobile conversion and why with a simpler product selection and conversion funnel they would get higher conversion on mobile than on the web. On each subsequent meeting I’d learn a little bit more. This is exactly the brand that GRP Partners wants to embody. Community builders.

Partner 360

Partner Las Vegas Los Angeles San Francisco 360

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

Your contractor wrote a great V1 of the product and it helped you get angel funding. I always try operate on the “Fixed Fee +&# arrangement. On later stage LA Tech M&A deals I’ve heard there’s none better than David Hernand of Gibson Dunn. So I ask them for a “fixed&# budget.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

We had to buy Oracle database licenses, UNIX servers, a Sun Solaris operating system, web servers, load balancers, EMC storage, disk mirrors for redundancy and had to commit to a year-long hosting agreement at places such as Exodus. When I built my first company starting in 1999 it cost $2.5 Open-Source Software & Horizontal Computing.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334