Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. But truthfully both Dana and I are more aligned with the lean startup principles and believe you only go FAT when you’ve really proved out your product / market fit. OTHER DEALS: 1.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndication 240

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

Most large companies manage three types of innovation: process innovation (making existing products incrementally better), continuous innovation (building on the strength of the company’s current business model but creating new elements) and disruptive innovation (creating products or services that did not exist before.).

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Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 334

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

billion valuation) to invest in the Metaverse and build the future of digital entertainment Epic owns Fortnite, one of the most popular multiplayer games, enabling users to interact with each other online in an immersive way to play, socialise, attend to virtual concerts. billion revenue in 2021 for Epic Games and was played by 83.3

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The most poignant of these challenges was the quest for capital partners, which was not just about securing capital but about finding collaborators who were willing to believe in the vision and commit to the long-term journey. Are there new revenue streams you can tap into? Are there inefficiencies that you can iron out?

Technical Review 126

Technical Review Due Diligence Bankruptcy Intellectual Property 126

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. Make sure your plan answers every relevant question that you could possibly imagine from your business partners, spouse, and potential investors. Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Sweat Equity CTO Hire 281

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2018

Those that do it right also have the unprecedented opportunity to join the elite ranks of 250 unicorns (relatively new companies with a current valuation of over $1 billion). These days you can create a C-corp or LLC online quickly at a low cost, to serve you well in signing partners, intellectual property, investors, and revenue.

Technical Cofounder 184

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Silicon Valley LLC 184

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2023

For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested. For investors, this is the idea stage , where you may have a great idea, but no plan, product, or customers, and probably no success record in this business domain.

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Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 313

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2021

billion gamers worldwide will help the global games market generate revenues of $189.3 billion in revenue last year. According to Ark Invest’s research , revenue from virtual worlds will compound 17% annually from roughly $180 billion today to $390 billion by 2025. Fortnite alone made $1.8 Twitch stats in 2020.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Audio Forecast Social Media 207

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. His work on VC and small communities can be found at greatercolorado.vc/blog. Of the Inc. 5000 companies, only 6.5%

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. Make sure your plan answers every relevant question that you could possibly imagine from your business partners, spouse, and potential investors. Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar.

Intellectual Property 260

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 260

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

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. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth. Use your equity for key executives and business partners. Barter services for access to required resources.

Equity 349

Equity Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity 349

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 13, 2020

If things are going great, you still may get a lower valuation or smaller round. It doesn’t matter what industry, what product, what revenue model, what stage of development. Of course you’ll have lots of functional partners who basically sell as a job responsibility. How does this harm occur? Yes and No.

Technical Cofounder 147

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Startup Matching 147

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

After all, growth equals high valuations and loads of venture capital! Instant growth = huge valuation from follow-on investors = big VC mark-up on our quarterly reports = LP interest. Our partners have invested in more than dozen companies that became worth more than a billion dollars and that has disproportionately drive returns.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2017

Every business needs to develop a revenue model even before a product. The alternatives range from giving the product away for free (revenue from ads), to pricing based on costs, to charging what the market will bear (premium pricing). Price based on product costs plus margin.

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Revenue Affiliate Advertising Retention 166

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

by John Vrionis, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. What’s critical for entrepreneurs to understand is that valuations for startups do not increase at a linear rate; they increase geometrically based on achieving the right milestones. It’s part art, part science.

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Valuation Dilution Chicago Technical Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2017

In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival. They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Provides networking with cofounders and strategic partners. Breeds success through people diversity.

Technical Cofounder 153

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Wiki Cofounder 153

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2020

For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested. For investors, this is the idea stage , where you may have a great idea, but no plan, product, or customers, and probably no success record in this business domain.

Angel Investor 370

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 370

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. Make sure your plan answers every relevant question that you could possibly imagine from your business partners, spouse, and potential investors. Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2013

It’s higher risk, but higher return, to pick the big winners early, before Angels have set unreasonable valuations and restrictive terms. Being “lifecycle investment partners” has a downside. VCs are finding that they don’t need the “large” funds of $100M to $500M to support a portfolio, if they focus on early-stage startups.

Angel Investor 231

Angel Investor Entrepreneur Early Stage Silicon Valley 231

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

They should heed the age old advice that raising slightly more money while you can is always better than trying to optimize future valuations. Should VC’s really be impacted by public market valuations when the money that they’re investing today should be for returns in 7-10 years? Short answer – yes. The deal was done in late 2007.

Burn Rate 263

Burn Rate Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Private Equity 263

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2013

Your friends and family are really the only answer until you have a significant revenue stream. Use friends, family, and angels, if possible, to get a product, revenue, and customers first before the VC connection. Investment firms specialize by business sectors, and each partner within the firm has a specialty.

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Venture Capital IPO Elevator Pitch Initial Public Offering 252

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Thus entrepreneurs were able to build prototypes and design new products without the traditional huge prototyping cost. The movement has long since spread across the country and across the globe, spawning innovative products such as the MakerBot Digitizer and all the things you can access from Thingiverse.com. Diversity breeds success.

Startup 397

Startup Cofounder Incubator California 397

VC Cafe

JANUARY 27, 2021

Their examples include Designers giving feedback and comment on digital assets or product specialists demoing products and creating audio or text highlights. So much so, there’s a “remote work tools” category at this year’s Golden Kitty Awards , annually celebrating ProductHunt’s products, makers, and community members.

Vertical 148

Vertical Video Technical Review Europe 148

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. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth. Use your equity for key executives and business partners. Barter services for access to required resources.

Hockey Stick 423

Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 423

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

How to Scale Unicorns With Partner David Zhang, TVC. Joining us for this episode is our partner David Zhang, Partner at TCV (( Technology Crossover Ventures ). I’m a partner at TCV, which we founded in 1996. We come in after a product has landed and found product market fit and has some escape velocity.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million. Revenue growth: 51% YoY (2010), 1% YoY (2009), 131% YoY (2008). Revenue growth: 51% YoY (2010), 1% YoY (2009), 131% YoY (2008).

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

View from Seed

JANUARY 27, 2021

We believe that this fund is the perfect size for us to be the best possible partners to early-stage entrepreneurs today. What hasn’t changed is that our heart lies in working with founders to find product/market fit and to begin to grow. This new fund is still small enough to work with pre-launch, pre-seed or accelerator companies.

LP 411

LP Early Stage Seed Stage Venture Capital 411

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. If you can check these boxes and convince venture capitalists that you’ve achieved product fit in a market with plenty of room for growth, you have a real shot at securing funding. You may be able to generate revenue, but VCs want exponential growth.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2012

You need to explore more common and more productive approaches for getting your startup moving forward. Just don’t quit your day job before your new company is producing revenue. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Partner with distributor or beneficiary.

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 257

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

Consumers are becoming increasingly health-conscious and seeking to understand their options for treatments and healthcare products. For example, a startup SaaS company can use a specialized app to create a good product management process and keep track of the project's progress. Thanks to Sean Stevens, Immerse Education ! #5-

Artificial Inteligence 127

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 127

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. Make sure your plan answers every relevant question that you could possibly imagine from your business partners, spouse, and potential investors. Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 222

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Who would not want to joint the unicorns (recent startups with a current valuation of over $1 billion)? Investors and partners now look only for a framework of your business essentials, within the context of your opportunity, solution, and financials. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Ah, but today’s Internet companies have real revenue! But this mania to not miss out on the next big thing is driving some investors to pay growth-equity prices for traditional market risk (as in, they’re paying up before it is clear there is product / market fit). So at GRP Partners we’re very active now.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

In fact, an entrepreneur friend of mine, who made millions on her marketing expertise, asserted recently that most inventors fail in business because they refuse to believe that any business expertise or experience is worth more than 5 percent in partner equity. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

The Equity Kicker

JUNE 4, 2014

Every company is different and there are as many exceptions as companies that follow the rules but if your company sells product (e.g. the ecommerce companies or software companies that we invest in) and you have a $1m revenue run rate and 20%+ month-on month growth you will generally be in good shape.

Revenue 146

Revenue eCommerce Affiliate Valuation 146

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2011

You need to explore more common and more productive approaches for getting your startup moving forward. Just don’t quit your day job before your new company is producing revenue. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Partner with distributor or beneficiary.

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 233

Transformify

MARCH 4, 2020

For a decade, Wirecard has been reporting stable growth year on year, launching new products, expanding to new markets and there have been no obvious red flags. Nevertheless, in the months after the allegations had been published by FT, Wirecard lost about a third of its market valuation. billion valuation. Roundtripping.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Valuation Stock Acquisition 78