Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2022

Wouldn’t you like to be one of the lucky people who joined Google and Facebook when these were startups, and now be a multi-millionaire or better? Plus you have to remember that these 200,000 shares could still be worth nothing in four years, depending on the “strike price” today, compared to the market price four years from now.

Startup 137

Startup Equity Pricing Marketing 137

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. Hiring more people isn’t always the right answer. Internet scale.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

The service offers both sales and deal prices, as well as normal appointment booking Anderson is the former CEO of RedBeacon, and also has served at Google. MyTime said it is launching with over 500,000 open appointments, for such services as haircuts, massages, dental exams, and acupuncture.

Services 229

Services Funding GRP Partners Legalzoom 229

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2023

If ten percent of these numbers, multiplied by your average product price, will get you the revenue you need to scale your business, you will get the love you need from angel and venture capital investors. The wealth of data available online is already much larger than the entire Library of Congress, and much more current.

Statistics 120

Statistics Research Report Newsletter 120

socalTECH

AUGUST 13, 2012

For our Insights and Opinions section today, Megan Lisa Jones , an investment banking vet, comments on the travails of Facebook, and its stock price and life as a public company. Friday, down around 40 percent from its IPO price of not many weeks ago. It shouldnt be. Still, the stock closed at $21.81

Pricing 124

Pricing Report Google Invest 124

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. Given customers & sales are the lifeblood of any organization you’d imagine everybody would respect their customers. Think of this as the Google Apps approach to business.

Customer 341

Customer Custom Venture Capital Software Review 341

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

= profitable and companies like Amazon who chose to focus on growth > profitability were not losing money on each book sale (ie they were gross margin positive). It’s funny how scarcity of capital can focus one’s mind. So if you paid $100 for a customer who converted via a Facebook ad or Google search ad (SEM) that is not your CAC.

Metrics 150

Metrics Startup SaaS Course 150

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.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Capital Research Customer 236

socalTECH

MAY 7, 2012

Fine Art America handles all of the details of fulfilling sales for images. our marketplace, you go to Fine Art America, join, and you get an online profile, much like a Facebook or Google Plus. You hit submit, and your images are instantly available for sale as prints on our website. all of that for more than a 100,000 members.

Santa Monica 258

Santa Monica Pricing Sites Sales 258

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

I pointed to several Economist articles I had read that mapped historical prices of real estate for 400 years and how on average property values grow at no more 1.5% above inflation yet in many markets in the US & Europe prices were rising at 10-25% per year. And it’s driving up prices beyond their inherent value.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2020

If ten percent of these numbers, multiplied by your average product price, will get you the revenue you need to scale your business, you will get the love you need from angel and venture capital investors. The wealth of data available online is already much larger than the entire Library of Congress, and much more current.

Marketing 157

Marketing Statistics Research Report 157

socalTECH

JUNE 9, 2010

Last week, Los Angeles-based HauteLook (www.hautelook.com), an online private sales site, scored a major round of funding--raising $31M from Insight Venture Partners. Adam Bernhard: We're a platform that does flash sales. Adam, thanks for the time. We work on behalf of brands, as a web site that has a membership base of over 2.5

Sales 224

Sales Email Startup Sample 224

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey). In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). In the US alone there are 30 billion inbound sales calls every year.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

socalTECH

MAY 30, 2019

I think, to be a great entrepreneur, you have to look at what is missing in the category that you will be playing in the industry, and figure what you can deploy with a little bit of strategy and technology to bring a better service and price. People were not just going to Google, they were looking all over the place.

Content 193

Content Social Network Coach Help 193

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

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 9, 2013

Jackson said, “We’re using the proceeds from our financing round to invest in our technology, build new features, and increase sales and support.”. Jackson added that the firm was proud of its product, and even uses its own software to manage their capital raised from investors. Over $3M Raised. million in the Series A round.

Draper 68

Draper Google Software Engineering Invest 68

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

MAY 7, 2018

We started in October of 2013, and last year, in December, we closed our Series B with Sequoia Capital with $21M. Everyone was on the phone, fighting with drivers over price and things like their availability. We love Omar, our partner at Sequoia, who is an entrepreneur himself, and sold his last company to Google for $700M.

Startup 173

Startup Pricing Marketing Entrepreneur 173

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. Forecast sales-volume expectations.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Startup Pricing Sales 102

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

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

Wouldn’t you like to be one of the lucky people who joined Google and Facebook when these were startups, and now be a multi-millionaire or better? Plus you have to remember that these 200,000 shares could still be worth nothing in four years, depending on the “strike price” today, compared to the market price four years from now.

Equity 94

Equity Startup Pricing Marketing 94

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

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 22, 2011

I first heard the term from Chris Fralic at First Round Capital. I guess that’s why people like my pal Trevor Owens felt vindicated by the sale of GroupMe as evidenced by his Tweet to me. Google has Google Voice. Feature, not a company. It has always stood out in my mind. What do I think now? Well marketed.

Company 295

Company Companies Gogii Google 295

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. Quantify overhead and growth costs.

Pricing 57

Pricing Startup Entrepreneur Invest 57

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

He eventually applied his lessons learned in these experiences when he founded Zag, a company that helps consumers buy cars over the Internet at pre-negotiated prices with nearly 4,000 dealers across the country [disclosure: my firm GRP Partners is an investor in Zag]. led by Altos Ventures and Maverick Capital, with Larry Braitman.

Zag 248

Zag Truecar Venture Capital CarsDirect 248

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!, I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 Cisco and others went out to fill out their Web 2.0

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

I think that’s the beauty of both capitalism and innovation. Would Google have become today’s juggernaut without Yahoo! What if Google had paid attention to Dodgeball – would there be no FourSquare today? Just like a sales person at the end of a quarter. If you were reading the headlines from only 2.5

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

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. First, over time Salesforce.com’s technology got better and better yet the price didn’t shoot up dramatically relative to Siebel.

Startup 376

Startup Framework Marketing Customer 376

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 10, 2014

The real estate impact of this activity can probably be traced to the 2011 arrival of Google in the Frank Gehry-designed “binoculars” building on Main Street in Santa Monica. Google chose Playa Vista to establish YouTube Space LA , its flagship center for content creation. Here, prices can climb higher. In West L.A.,

Entertainment 108

Entertainment Santa Monica Journal Belkin 108

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a Startup more inclusive than that to which Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, would sometimes like to attach to the word. Local Capital – I do believe that you’ll struggle to get a community started without some local capital.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Press San Diego 378

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2017

Cloud Capital--has managed to coax those equipment rental yards into the digital age, and how the company has tackled other challenges in focusing its business. They were putting online advertisements through Google Ads to solicit people to rent equipment, who could not figure it out on their own. Cloud Capital.

Startup 174

Startup Metrics Customer Custom 174

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

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 15, 2018

If ten percent of these numbers, multiplied by your average product price, will get you the revenue you need to scale your business, you will get the love you need from angel and venture capital investors. The wealth of data available online is already much larger than the entire Library of Congress, and much more current.

Research 87

Research Marketing Statistics Report 87

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 29, 2015

Wouldn’t you like to be one of the lucky people who joined Google and Facebook when these were startups, and now be a multi-millionaire? Plus you have to remember that these 200,000 shares could still be worth nothing in four years, depending on the “strike price” today, compared to the market price four years from now.

Startup 102

Startup Equity Pricing Marketing 102

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. I gave them advice I don’t think they were expecting from a VC, “Don’t raise venture capital for this business. This team is talented. They wanted advice.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

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

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

“I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” According to FLAG Capital there are 100 active VCs (as defined by making at least $1 million in VC per quarter for 4 consecutive quarters). The industry is dying, except for the top 2%.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374