VC Cafe

JANUARY 10, 2024

Not so long ago, we were all posting AI profile pictures on social media, but very quickly we’re now seeing an emergence of generative AI tools and LLM applications to assist almost every role in the organisation, across industries and verticals. The latter is true for all startups, not just in generative AI.

Generative AI 109

Generative AI Israel Artificial Inteligence Open Source 109

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

In recent years, eCommerce companies have begun to increase revenue by selling products directly via social media networks. 14- Brands will prioritize vertical video marketing Photo Credit: Austin Armstrong The number 1 trend for 2023 digital marketing will be brands making vertical video marketing a top priority.

Artificial Inteligence 127

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 127

Gust

OCTOBER 16, 2012

This summer I conducted our third annual survey of the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies recently funded by angel groups in North America. Access to our 2010 and 2011 surveys can be found at 2011 Valuation Survey of North American Angel Investor Groups. Pre-revenue life Science, biotech and medical device deals.

Angel Groups 169

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation North Dakota 169

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

With attractive valuations and immense growth potential, the Israeli tech ecosystem remains resilient—no matter the circumstances. Interesting overview of vertical AI companies by IVP ( source ) Revenue per employee. via Trung T. Phan ( source ) Generative AI video is getting scarily good Thanks for reading.

Israel 78

Israel Generative AI Open Source Security 78

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 13, 2024

ServiceTitan went public with a $9 billion valuation – is the IPO window opening? source ) Sacra estimates that Wiz hit $500M annual recurring revenue (ARR) in July 2024, up 103% YoY. Midjourney launched Patchwork , a virtual world building tool. Devin, the AI coding Agent by Cognition is now generally available.

Israel 88

Israel ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Australia 88

Gust

OCTOBER 12, 2011

During the summer of 2010, I developed a workshop, A New ACEF Valuation Workshop for Angels and Entrepreneurs. To provide some reference points, I surveyed thirteen angels groups in North American to determine their recent experience in negotiating the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies. Current Average. up slightly.

Angel Groups 125

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation St. Louis 125

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Some notable metrics are revenue growth rates, free cashflow, leverage ratios, historical financing amounts, returns on marketing spend, customer acquisition costs, lifetime value of customers, customer churn rates, and team social scores. Lighter Capital, a Revenue Based Investing VC, offers a Cost of Capital Calculator.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 6, 2012

At this stage you were expecting to be working on creating a good business valuation to attract future buyers, or at least funding college accounts for your kids. Maintenance contracts are another great way to create a brand-new revenue stream. Streamline management costs.

Startup 236

Startup Vertical Reputation Valuation 236

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

We will invest pre-revenue and even pre-product if we have discovered the right team in the right kind of market. A contemporary analog to this type of vertical integration is Comcast/NBC-U. A market trend in the VC and Angel world where valuations seem to have come a little unhinged compared to valuations in the past.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2013

At this stage you were expecting to be working on creating a good business valuation to attract future buyers, or at least funding college accounts for your kids. Maintenance contracts are another great way to create a brand-new revenue stream. Streamline management costs.

Entrepreneur 234

Entrepreneur Vertical Reputation Valuation 234

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 28, 2011

At this stage you were expecting to be working on creating a good business valuation to attract future buyers, or at least funding college accounts for your kids. Maintenance contracts are another great way to create a brand-new revenue stream. Streamline management costs.

Startup 230

Startup Vertical Reputation Valuation 230

www.pakman.com

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

At that scale, you can reach billions of dollars in revenue. But if your service attracts particular verticals of content engagement, not all content is created equal, and some is much more valuable than others. General news carries the lowest CPCs whereas specific verticals like healthcare and finance command higher CPCs.

Social Media 47

Social Media Vertical Advertising Distribution 47

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Generative AI will really become magic when it moves from 'playful' to 'useful' – we will use multiple generative AI tools at work in the future, like we use grammarly and canned responses today… AI will become more vertical, and specific per role — Eze Vidra (@ediggs) November 5, 2022.

Generative AI 195

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence API Vertical 195

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Asset valuation. The concept of asset valuation may seem counterintuitive, but it is an important idea. Most financial valuation formulas value an asset by discounting the asset using the cost of capital (interest rate) to the present day. It has never paid out dividends, and clocks around $200 billion in revenue.

Founder 148

Founder Valuation Dividend Startup 148

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Close to 80% responded that manual processes, such as tracking down support, preparing reports and pulling data from different sources, are the biggest pain points they face in the valuation process. The VC Software Stack — the Untouched Vertical. Kushim , Totem , and VisibleVC focus on serving this need among VCs.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

We’re hitting record revenue months, weeks, and margins. There are currently tons of “zombie” startups that have runway, but growth has slowed and they have valuations that they won’t be able to grow into. During his six years at AxleHire, Sokolovsky worked to push AxleHire into new verticals and sustainability partnerships.

Early Stage 146

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 146

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

They will bring you revenue, delight your clients (the right salespeople care about the ultimate value delivered?—?not not just the sale), and ultimately increase the valuation of your company and your ability to create jobs and realize your entrepreneurial dreams. Salespeople are a very unique breed of people, and I love them for it.

Software Review 48

Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Valuation is a nebulous topic amongst early stage startups, so I thought I’d really spell it out in detail. In short: Valuations for seed stage companies are fairly arbitrary and driven solely by supply and demand. Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 28, 2025

billion round at a $61 billion valuation. Mira Murati s Thinking Machine Labs said to raise $1B at $9B valuation. A moment in the Creator Economy: MrBeast is in talks to raise funding at a $5 billion valuation. Well done Erez Agmon and team Vayu on your $7M seed round to redefine billing and revenue management with AI!

Israel 78

Israel Venture Capital Valuation Vertical 78

Haystack

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

The behavior is logical: Private market valuations have felt, on the whole, dislocated from revenue multiples and public markets, so a larger acquirer has many incentives to wait to get as close to the market price for an asset before making a bid. Qualtrics focuses on experience data, SAP focuses on operational data.

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Utah IPO Venture Capital 105

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 21, 2014

I should of course note that we’re not overly scientific in our “outcome” math – what we generally do is look at comps for the vertical – SaaS, ecommerce, etc – and just talk through some scenarios among ourselves). In some cases we own 10%, in others upper teens, and in some, single digits. (I

Cofounder 127

Cofounder Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication 127

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Small but accelerating revenue growth (often in the $50K-$100K range monthly). A founder may feel like she has made amazing strides in the 18 months since a series A, only to find few investors excited about investing in their business with a meaningful valuation step up. 3-5 major partnerships or enterprise customers.

Business Model 65

Business Model Seed Stage Valuation Vertical 65

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

In the previous six months, I’d read several articles in finance blogs or newsletters about yet another company that had just been financed in their specific vertical. I recommended an exit because I knew the money flowing in to their space would also increase valuations – possibly by 2x to 5x over normal ranges.

Vertical 48

Vertical Finance Valuation Global 48

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

This summer saw two record transactions within a month, as UiPath became the first European Cloud decacorn in July and Visma, a Norwegian company, became the world’s largest ever software buyout with a $12B+ valuation. The average revenue multiple is now 17x+, close to 10 times higher than during the 2008 crisis!

Europe 71

Europe Cloud Silicon Valley Israel 71

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

This post describes how companies using the Customer Development model can increase their credibility, valuation and probability of getting a first round of funding by presenting their results in a “Lesson Learned&# venture pitch. Get back up and running.

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 270

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

– very logical expansion into verticals or complimentary products. Once investors believed this was happening, it became more reasonable to think that a new software product in a specific vertical might enjoy extremely rapid adoption and enough market share to build to $100M+ in revenue and $1B+ in enterprise value reasonably quickly.

Marketing 28

Marketing Vertical Valuation Revenue 28

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

– very logical expansion into verticals or complimentary products. Once investors believed this was happening, it became more reasonable to think that a new software product in a specific vertical might enjoy extremely rapid adoption and enough market share to build to $100M+ in revenue and $1B+ in enterprise value reasonably quickly.

Marketing 28

Marketing Vertical Valuation Revenue 28

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The fact that SaaS valuations are being more affected by the downturn than the Nasdaq can be surprising given the supposed resiliency of the SaaS model (recurring revenues) but it translates the public investors belief that SMB software spend is going to be hit very hard by this recession. Rethink vertical segmentation: Healthcare?

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Valuation Portfolio 48

Ben's Blog

APRIL 28, 2010

Looking across these nearly 50 companies, the study finds that founding CEOs consistently beat the professional CEOs on a broad range of metrics ranging from capital efficiency (amount of funding raised), time to exit, exit valuations, and return on investment. He even added retail stores.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 78

Hunter Walker

JULY 18, 2022

The ‘valuation multiples’ reset also came with an increase in slope of the curve. Your runway is impacted by the absence of projected revenue. A drop in growth rate turns into a drop in valuation multiple. Similarly, for a variety of reasons, the music stopped. The latter means that every Series A+ startup has to reforecast.

Valuation 147

Valuation Cap Table Startup Later Stage 147

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

According to VCs, there’s been a 65% decrease in up-rounds (where a company gets a bigger valuation) in the last six months and more than 60% of those polled expect a longer wait for an exit. e.g. invest $2 mil and expect a $60-$100 mil valuation for exit. A lot of the stats weren’t surprising. Add to this that 72.7% just my 2 cents.

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

VC Cafe

MAY 18, 2022

2) Valuation multiples are always a hack proxy. David Sacks offers a few benchmarks on growth rates (revenue), gross margins, CAC payback and burn. Re-evaluate your valuation. Multiples by vertical. 1) Previous "all-time" highs are completely irrelevant. It's not "cheap" because it is down 70%.

Term Sheet 190

Term Sheet Startup Valuation Ukraine 190

VC Cafe

APRIL 4, 2025

OpenAI raised $40 billion (led by SoftBank ) at a record $300 billion valuation. 10-year treasury yields slumped to the lowest in more than 5 months OpenAI revenue forecast ? (as We must #BRINGTHEMHOME In the wider tech world, Trump’s global tariff’s erased $2.2 trillion from the market this week amid uncertainty.

Stealth 97

Stealth ChatGPT Israel Bandwidth 97

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2017

(there’s a great story from Jonah in the video but you have to watch to hear it :)) But it’s undeniable that it has become a digital media powerhouse having raised around $500 million in capital with a valuation reported at $1.7 billion and revenues likely exceeding $250 million (Wikipedia lists 2015 revenue at $167 million).

Media 210

Media Los Angeles Russia Viral 210