Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

He said that from what he read, the path to building and funding a company seemed to be: 1) come up with an idea, 2) form a team, 3) start testing minimal viable products, 4) raise seed funding, 5) then obtain venture capital. Why Would an Entrepreneur Join a Venture Studio? He also wasn’t sure his idea was great.

Technical Cofounder 368

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 368

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. But it will be patiently deployed, waiting for a cohort of founders who aren’t artificially clinging to 2021 valuation metrics.

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

So while the simplest way that people often evaluate stocks is by P/E ratios (price-to-earnings), one also needs to look at other metrics such as the PEG (price-to-earnings-growth). [of They raised $5 million in venture capital to fund growth. Investors value growth. What did they actually do?

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

That might work for $50-100k but less likely for $3m unless you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, known to the VC, have some metrics that work in your favor or have built something the VC believes to be truly unique. And make sure you have some metrics or some way of demonstrating why you believe this is going to be a really big market.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Founders that learn are more successful : Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Startup Genome Report. Some of their key findings : 1. better user growth.

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

If you do build the MVP and show it to them, they will ask you about your metrics. They really want metrics, not a product. The real question you should be asking is "When I've built this product and show you the following metrics, would you invest?" What The Heck Does “Traction” Really Mean To A VC?

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Ego Metrics: What Measurements Matter? The problem is that some of these metrics aren’t meaningful. In fact, some of the most visible metrics are the most misleading. This is possibly the most visible metric in social media, but many of those followers are inactive or even inhuman robots. So what metrics really matter?

Metrics 78

Metrics Social Media Widget Chicago 78

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2018

" Revenue doesn't pay your bills, GM does  —  @msuster 2/ Founders obsess with revenue as a vanity metric. But if you want to add some in the comments section on Medium and I’ll make sure to read them. Some even grow "bad" revenue just to show growth. Usually a terrible idea as runway extension.

Founder 242

Founder Dilution Software Review Later Stage 242

View from Seed

DECEMBER 4, 2019

At the time, I spent most of my time describing the metrics themselves and how VCs and their LPs evaluate performance based on these measurements. If you aren’t familiar with these metrics, I recommend reading the original post to get a sense of the numbers that I’ll be reviewing here. So, is this good or bad?

LP 256

LP IRR Distribution Portfolio 256

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Almost every private equity and venture capital investor now advertises that they have a platform to support their portfolio companies. Relationships with Venture Partners, Entrepreneurs in Residence , and other non-salaried personnel who can help your companies. Organize events in your vertical.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

David Teten

JANUARY 23, 2021

The next best move is to build your core team, e.g., recruit an Advisory Board, Venture Partners, and EIRs. For ideas, see How Executives Can Work from Home with Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds. See How Emerging Venture Capital Fund Managers Should Think About Their LP Fundraising Strategies.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review 78

Gust

OCTOBER 18, 2011

Detailed descriptions will be published over the next few weeks: The Scorecard Method: This method compares the target company to typical angel-funded startup ventures and adjusts the average valuation of recently funded companies in the region to establish a pre-money valuation of the target. The Venture Capital Method.

Valuation 174

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Southern California Post-Money Valuation 174

David Teten

MAY 20, 2016

My colleague Sebastian Soler, software engineer at ff Venture Capital, is leading the launch of a new Meetup with me. Totem is a tool that centralizes all the data about our companies’ management, metrics, investment history, co-investors and cap table tracking. I asked him to write a guest post: Hi!

Private Equity 113

Private Equity Equity Cap Table Venture Capital 113

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Others may not have the experience you want and they fill up a seat that makes retaining founder control more difficult if you ultimately raise large rounds of venture capital in the future. What happens at the A-round of venture capital? If your metric move immediate up-and-to-the-right? But it’s quite rare.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Startup Angel Investor Silicon Valley 236

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Over 13 years ago, in March of 2000, I wrote a blog post titled “ The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All. ” The key thesis was this: if an Internet company could obsess about only one metric, it should be conversion. As such, it is time to pound the table again – conversion is by far the most powerful Internet metric of all.

Metrics 93

Metrics Conversion Internet Acquisition 93

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

While 20th century metrics were revenue and profit, today it’s common for companies to get acquired for their user base. Filed under: Venture Capital. (Today’s version is Tesla – now more valuable than Ford.).

Founder 281

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 281

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. ff Venture Capital portfolio company.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Often board members themselves don’t do the work to say “what metrics would we like to see.” Any great board member should tell you, “please don’t create any performance metrics or materials that analyze the business that you’re not already creating for your own management’s use.” Sometimes they don’t even know.

Stock Options 226

Stock Options Metrics Stock Valuation 226

Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

I asked some investor friends to share, as the title suggests, one thing they wished people better understood about venture capital. A common misconception is that building a tech company automatically warrants venture capital, and vice versa. Reporting out in batches of five. public) markets.

Venture Capital 88

Venture Capital Technical Review Early Stage Warrant 88

David Teten

JANUARY 9, 2018

Similarly, firms like my alma mater ff Venture Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have executed this strategy in VC. We think there are a lot of opportunities to differentiate by using technology aggressively, e.g., Totem , an investor operating system built by some of my past colleagues at ff Venture Capital. .

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Private Equity Silicon Valley Differentiation 60

David Teten

JANUARY 9, 2018

Similarly, firms like my alma mater ff Venture Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have executed this strategy in VC. We think there are a lot of opportunities to differentiate by using technology aggressively, e.g., Totem , an investor operating system built by some of my past colleagues at ff Venture Capital. .

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Private Equity Silicon Valley Differentiation 60

Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

6/ Venture Capital In Expansion Phase. Public investors, cross-over investors, and even traditional private equity firms have taken notice, further blurring the lines of what constitutes true venture capital. the firm may have a right to raise up to $100B but may not call all of it).

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

Haystack

NOVEMBER 25, 2018

venture capital deals, a spike in mega-financings where it’s common to see not only $100M private rounds, but companies that raise two or three types of financings like this in the same calendar year! [Here is the Google Doc where we tracked these.]

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Open Source Software Review Venture Capital 127

NZ Entrepreneur

MAY 31, 2021

Jason Graham from Movac provided an early-stage venture capital fund perspective, detailing 35 investments made across 5 funds and 22 years. Marcus Henderson and Hursh Shah provided the institutional venture capital perspective, with NZGCP’s Aspire NZ Seed Fund having invested in over 160 companies over 15 years.

Portfolio 98

Portfolio New Zealand Management Technical Review 98

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

The reason is that b2b fundraising is largely driven by data and metrics, and pre-seed dollars usually don’t get you to many meaningful data points. Unlike in B2B, you don’t necessarily want to use a second-seed round to get to metrics that every investor will appreciate. Experienced founders: B2B. Experienced founders: Consumer.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

On the other side of the spectrum, the idea of finding a unicorn has attracted many investors toward the much riskier venture capital and emerging technologies. Real estate has long been considered a sound investment, and has become even more popular in recent years as historical data has shown the market’s relatively low volatility.

Private Equity 165

Private Equity Equity Technical Review Software Review 165

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 20, 2023

The Venture Capital Influence The role of venture capital (VC) has become increasingly prominent in shaping the tech startup scene. Meeting growth metrics, achieving profitability, and ensuring a substantial return on investment are now integral parts of the startup journey.

Technical Review 137

Technical Review Startup Silicon Valley Agile 137

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 6, 2013

Unless you''re a well funded, growth stage company that has lots of hands on deck--tons of instrumentation that easily dumps out pretty charts and metrics, or luxury emenities like, well, time, most entrepreneurs probably feel like they could be doing more productive things than telling their investors what they did last month.

Metrics 127

Metrics Venture Capital Technical Review Entrepreneur 127

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 8, 2012

Fortieth in a series of weekly posts by myself and Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief which answer the fifty questions you should ask before raising venture capital. With earlier stage companies investors generally don’t have the luxury of being able to rely on hard metrics and instead have to rely on gut feel – i.e. ‘direct’ evaluation.

Technical Review 123

Technical Review Product Venture Capital Valuation 123

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Case in point, below are recent examples of European emerging managers who are standing out (from an upcoming report by Dealroom ) For newish VC funds, being in “emerging manager mode” means operating differently from established venture capital firms. They often provide hands-on operational assistance beyond just capital.

Management 103

Management Technical Review Venture Capital Generative AI 103

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

At NextView Ventures we have written many pieces about venture capital — how to raise it, build your business, engage with investors, iterate your product, navigate expanding industries, etc. Finance is about reporting on historical performance and future planning through the lens of financial metrics.”

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 14, 2014

based venture capital investors, by deal stage. Most active venture capital investors of 2013 in the US by stage – pic.twitter.com/cfCFXWmpbH. Say no to SaaS vanity metrics - crowdspring.co/NzqJ53. Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week! 1fUt41V.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

In a contracted venture capital environment, where external funding is more difficult to raise, founders know that they need to make due with less, and extend the runway further. Good and great net revenue retention ( source ) Another factor to consider when it comes to achieving these metrics is the cost of acquisition, or CAC.

Retention 109

Retention Conversion Churn Rate B2C 109

Austin Startup

APRIL 4, 2017

I really enjoyed a recent post I read on First Round Review about vanity metrics, which touches on what I love about my startup vs. others with more funding, more engineers and more mentions on TechCrunch. Vanity metrics aren’t useless. Tracking clarity metrics builds great businesses.” “In Don’t focus on them internally.

Metrics 48

Metrics Silicon Valley Angel Investor Technical Review 48

David Teten

DECEMBER 16, 2015

I review a lot of board decks with a beautifully hand-crafted page with metrics for the company. Good metrics are comparable across industries; comparative ; readily understandable; and help drive decisions. Comparative means that you can compare a metric across time periods, groups of users, or competitors. So how do you do it?

Metrics 60

Metrics Analytics Balance Sheet .Net 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases. It wasn’t measured by how busy you were, it was measured by results. I couldn’t care less about those.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271