Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2023

Google reached $1B in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. The purest form of capitalism has always meant charging a fair price and making a fair profit. Understanding competitive early mover requirements. Both have worked.

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Organization Invest Customer Custom 94

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2020

Google reached $1B in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. The purest form of capitalism has always meant charging a fair price and making a fair profit. Understanding competitive early mover requirements. Both have worked.

Organization 173

Organization Invest Customer Custom 173

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 15, 2010

If you’re an entrepreneur, all else equal you prefer convertible debt because the deal is priced at a later stage when you’re worth more. If you’re an angel investor you prefer a “priced&# rounds because you want to lock in a lower price given that you’re taking more risk up front. Don’t.

Venture Capital 210

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

The steps outlined below represent an ideal approach to raising capital from sophisticated investors. Judiciously comment on articles they post to LinkedIn, retweet their tweets, vote up one of their Quora posts and establish a Google Alert on them and their firm. Unfortunately, your fundraising efforts will be less linear.

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Venture Capital Capital Research Customer 236

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). 15 years ago we were at the peak of Internet hype with the launch of many over-capitalized businesses with a market size & opportunity was limited.

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2020

As an angel investor, I see plenty of startups focusing on building an innovative product, but I’m looking for the few who are also leading with an exponential growth strategy, to put them in the category of the next Amazon or Google. Sponsor some friendly competitive events with prizes.

Marketing 170

Marketing Startup Examples Customer 170

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

This was really a fun week at TWiVC because we decided to have an entrepreneur come and talk about raising capital rather than having a VC come on. Raised angel money from Rob Lord, Reid Hoffman, Benchmark Capital and others. Competitors: SmashWords , Google Books. Competition: Pingg, MyPunchbowl, TinyPrints , PaperlessPost.

Venture Capital 214

Venture Capital Startup Design S3 214

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

For the past 5 years or so Google, Facebook and a handful of tech industry giants have been quietly buying scores of early-stage startups for their talent. Many buying companies price these deals on the basis of $1 million per engineer on the team for an early-stage deal. Almost certainly the startup would have raised some capital.

Press 357

Press Startup Yahoo Venture Capital 357

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

This episode of This Week in Venture Capital featured Michael Montgomery, president of Montgomery & Co. You have to be selected to present and it is typically reserved for companies that have already raised early-stage capital and are well into revenue growth. Should you use investment banks to raise venture capital?

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Mission Ventures Capital Help 242

socalTECH

OCTOBER 19, 2018

The funding was led by Moonshots Capital, and also included Techstars and Luma Launch. Patrick Ip: My background is I spent the last three years at Google, working on advertiser retention for small and medium businesses. There, I learned that there is a lot of top level churn from small businesses because Google ads cost too much.

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Help IP Content Google 133

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

You have to understand whether they’re likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off. Have easy access to capital by investors who are committed to building businesses at Interent scale. Internet scale.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 9, 2013

Jackson added that the firm was proud of its product, and even uses its own software to manage their capital raised from investors. CapLinked’s new investors include Conversion Capital , Inflection Ventures,The Artesian Group, Chris Harris (software engineering manager at Google), and Lee Essener (founder of AccessDNA).

Draper 68

Draper Google Software Engineering Invest 68

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

But that doesn’t mean that people are paying rational prices as investors based on intrinsic value. Rational people can disagree and some may argue that today’s prices are rational and under-pinned by economic drivers. All of that might be true, but the 2006 price might still be over-valued. source: Capital IQ.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

I got an email recently from my friend & fellow VC, Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). I sure hope that Apple is working with Google to make this work. We talked about Facebook.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Google Web Sites 225

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2015

The price of entry can be less than $10,000, so the competition is huge and growing rapidly. Cultivate a preferred relationship with Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google to ensure the best possible placement of your offering. Position yourself to capitalize on the next frontier. Look for value points to control.

Startup 98

Startup Platform Pricing Netflix 98

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 22, 2011

I first heard the term from Chris Fralic at First Round Capital. Even if group texting can be a really useful feature set, it’s hard for that to remain an independent, financially viable business because Facebook, Google, Apple and Skype see it as an important feature of their broader businesses. Google has Google Voice.

Company 295

Company Companies Gogii Google 295

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2012

99.9999% of you won’t be contemplating raising capital at $500 million any time soon or selling for a billion. My friend Christin Herron of Intel Capital weighed in on the issue. But if you raise the money at the big price (or any price) please go in with the expectation that you are going to build a large, long-term business.

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Pricing Social Network Acquisition 316

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

We talked with Noah about how the company grew out of a business plan competition at the University of Southern California, his recent funding from the Maverick Angels, as well as how the firm hopes to stand out among a crowded list of comparison shopping sites. Noah, thanks for the interview. How did the company start?

USC 207

USC CPC Sites Startup 207

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 17, 2012

Consider the situation in which the entrepreneur wants to accept a financially life-changing offer to sell her company which is vetoed by the investor because the price does not meet its minimal investment return criteria. We are not focused on our exit, but I can guarantee you that the time, place and price will be at our discretion.”.

Entrepreneur 253

Entrepreneur Google Invest RSS 253

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. and the subsequent acquisition sprees of companies like Google, Yahoo!, What about your competition – how much do they charge? There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0

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Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

They will have a short memory and no loyalty to “lowest prices” or “easiest to use.” Capitalize on the massive trend and power of mobile. You can’t win by being “just another” company that sells on price. Do the research to find your best competitive advantage, and then highlight and live the differentiation.

Social Media 73

Social Media Customer Custom Mobile 73

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2017

From my perspective, projecting financial returns is part of the homework every business person needs to do in sizing customer opportunity, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value, before expending their own resources in a highly risky venture. Project unit-volume and price levels.

Pricing 57

Pricing Startup Entrepreneur Invest 57

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

The framework of his book has profoundly altered how I think about the technology market and affects how I thought about building my businesses and how I think about investing in venture capital. In fact, the incumbent is usually very dismissive of this new competition as our the large buyers of the incumbent’s products.

Startup 376

Startup Framework Marketing Customer 376

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata investments rights given investors the right to invest in your future fund-raising rounds and maintain their ownership % in your company as your company grows and raises more capital. Put simply – if you invested early in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. ” Some do, some don’t. Thus begins the dance.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Recently I’ve been debating with a number of young startup companies that are raising money in the next few months, “what is the right about of capital to raise at a startup?&#. Google suddenly makes your product category free). - There are trade offs.

Startup 319

Startup Venture Capital Capital Competition 319

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 4, 2015

If you don’t have a destination, don’t waste your money trying to get there, and don’t expect anyone to support you along the way Projecting financials is a natural extension of the homework every entrepreneur needs to do on customer opportunity size, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Startup Pricing Sales 102

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Marketing with long payback is precisely what requires venture capital. So when Sam Rosen came to me with the idea of disrupting storage with a product that is priced cheaper than existing incumbents and he could build a product that is a better service I was intrigued. Let me be very direct. That is how great businesses are built.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 29, 2012

Consider the situation in which the entrepreneur wants to accept a financially life-changing offer to sell her company which is vetoed by the investor because the price does not meet its minimal investment return criteria. We are not focused on our exit, but I can guarantee you that the time, place and price will be at our discretion.”.

Entrepreneur 145

Entrepreneur Google Invest RSS 145

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Understanding Venture Capital. I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money. As always it comes down to competition. Or your last boss from Google, Facebook or Yahoo! Think again.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Invest 265

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 17, 2014

Projecting the financials should be the last step of your business plan preparation, since it assumes you already know the opportunity size, customer buying habits, pricing, costs, and competition. Here are some basic “rules of thumb” that every Angel or venture capital equity investor uses, to help you anticipate their reactions.

Equity 99

Equity Venture Capital Invest Pricing 99

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. Dave McClure argued passionately that since the overwhelming majority of exits are sub $100 million we need to readjust how much capital goes in. Price creep hurts investors. Answer: Not much. It’s a shame.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 7, 2018

I’ll paraphrase her key recommendations for capitalizing on this potential, for use on yourself and members of your team: Incent people to challenge norms and accepted constraints. They just need the inspiration, time, and training to capitalize on these tools, and the new devices that arrive every day.

Training 57

Training Ideas Startup Tool 57

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Google had no clue that they were going to make so much money in sponsored search. They came to me 2 years ago with their company, GumGum , and were trying to raise an A round of capital. They had also raised money from Howard Morgan at First Round Capital who if you check out his bio you will see is legendary.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Startup Google Yammer 291

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 28, 2013

Projecting the financials should be the last step of your business plan preparation, since it assumes you already know the opportunity size, customer buying habits, pricing, costs, and competition. Here are some basic “rules of thumb” that every Angel or venture capital equity investor uses, to help you anticipate their reactions.

Startup 97

Startup Equity Entrepreneur Venture Capital 97

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2016

Google reached $1B in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $400B. The purest form of capitalism has always meant charging a fair price and making a fair profit. Understanding competitive early mover requirements. Both have worked.

Startup 58

Startup Organization Invest Customer 58

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1. They compete on features, price and execution.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347