Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

In short: Access to great deals, ability to be invited to invest in these deals, ability to see where value in a market will be created and the luck to back the right team with the right market at the right time all matter. the sale of the company for $1 billion. It sold to Amazon for > $1 billion. It was ~30 days from bankruptcy.

Funding 294

Funding Startup Writing Invest 294

Berkonomics

MAY 8, 2014

I am chairman of a company that, as I write this, is twelve years old and has not yet taken a dollar of outside investment. The company has been funded entirely by grants from the National Institute of Health, amounting to millions of non-dilutive dollars in all. Grant writing takes skill and immense amounts of time.

Company 166

Company Companies Writing Education 166

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. As an entrepreneur it can feel as intimidating as going to buy a car where the dealer knows the price of every make & model of a car and you’re guessing at how much to pay.

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” To be fair to TigerText they build a company focused on the healthcare industry and HIPAA compliance.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 31, 2020

I was chairman of a company that, for twelve years never took a dollar of outside investment. The company was funded entirely by grants from the National Institute of Health, amounting to millions of non-dilutive dollars in all. The effort to write a grant request is not trivial. How refreshing! How grants are considered.

Equity 156

Equity Writing Education Research 156

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

But what IS the right amount of burn for a company? Burn rate in case you don’t know is the amount of money a company is either spending (gross) or losing (net) per month. (it Conversely if you’re burning $600,000 per month (yes, some companies do) then you only have 5 months of cash left. Gross Burn vs. Net Burn.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

The Facebook parent-company saw its stock price get bludgeoned after a bad earnings report showcased that Apple’s ad-blocking changes are shaving billions off its books and the company’s crown jewel — the Facebook platform — has stopped growing and actually shrank this quarter.

Marketing 246

Marketing Newsletter Technical Review News 246

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. Logic tells me the following: It is hard to make money angel investing.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

They often create the biggest tensions between investors who are investing at different stages in the business. 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.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Just ask the people who poured money into once “hot&# companies like RazorGator or Friendster. And we all know that Ron Conway is considered the savviest of angel investors and yet by definition not all of his investments succeed. lots of brand names piling on) can lead to group think and price creep. Obviously.

Invest 288

Invest Angel Web 2.0 SEO 288

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on the skills I’ve developed in my career. To some extent Keith Rabois agreed with me about domain knowledge and argued that most of his investments are in the consumer Internet space as a result.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Tech.Co

DECEMBER 29, 2023

Source: hibobbie.com The company also raised an impressive $70 million in funding in June to acquire the legacy pediatric nutrition brand Nature’s One, bringing its total kitty up to $142 million and helping to secure its competitive advantage in the industry going forward. Organic milk formula product Bobbie. Gumroad homepage.

Startup 210

Startup Generative AI Newsletter Tool 210

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2020

Topics we covered: B2B Companies You haven’t seen the full extent to how the correction is going to affect you. In a bear market executives are paid to: consolidate the number of contracts and renegotiate prices. Other companies have only seen a slight decline and may be expecting demand to return to normalcy later in the year.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Writing 263

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 23, 2020

The proposal sets out four big initiatives, including zero-emissions vehicle manufacturing, assembly and adoption; zero-emissions infrastructure investments; commitments to public transit investments; workforce development; and job training. There’s $25 billion in money set aside for public transit and $12.5

Southern California 261

Southern California Los Angeles Rosemead Incubator 261

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

The sweeping infrastructure package put forward today by President Joe Biden comes with a price tag of roughly $2 trillion (and hefty tax hikes) but gives startups and the broader tech industry about $1 trillion worth of reasons to support it. ” Climate resiliency . Given the steady drumbeat of climate disasters that hit the U.S.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. You can be pissed off, but I don’t set prices. That’s stupid.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

TechCrunch LA

JULY 19, 2022

The process for retailers and brands to liquidate excess inventory hasn’t changed very much, if at all, and while some retailers were able to build operational infrastructure to service the off-price channels, it continues to be a constant pain point. She went on to write, “Dee and Josh are the exact right team to tackle it.

Product 191

Product Funding Technical Review Equity 191

Berkonomics

MARCH 5, 2020

In the creation of a young company, there are five principal risks to be addressed by the entrepreneur. Professional investors will probe these five risk areas and make the decision to invest based upon comfort with each. Why five risks? Fourth: Financial risk. . And fifth: Competitive risk. .

Outsource Development 156

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 156

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2013

.” In the article I discussed the downside of raising capital at a too high of a price and referred people to a previous article I had written encouraging founders to raise “ At the Top end of Normal ” as opposed to stratospheric prices. There is an important psychology that exists in investments. A down round.

Pricing 302

Pricing Seed Funding Invest Venture Capital 302

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

What price? Because entrepreneurs often went to lawyers at their earliest stages to get their company registration done. I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). There is one source that was always problematic for me – intros from investment bankers. What stage? I attended events.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Berkonomics

MARCH 13, 2014

Companies also need an inciting incident, because, more often than not, you often will depend upon selling your story to someone. What is the inciting incident for your company? I found myself explaining all this recently to a company team that was pitching me on its story. Every good story has an inciting incident.

Invest 237

Invest Examples Networking Writing 237

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 29, 2023

For example, both need to provide exemplary customer service, build customer loyalty, and provide real value for a competitive price. Even artisan-based services, like graphic design and writing good ad copy, have innovative processes and principles. Indeed, there are some success factors that are common to both environments.

Startup 111

Startup Training Services Writing 111

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2021

This allowed him to learn enough from all his early mistakes to hit it big ($10 million revenue) with a global beauty tools company called Tweezerman. Don't invest in anything you don't need. Write down agreements. Get in the habit of thinking like a company founder and get promises in writing. Keep it simple.

Entrepreneur 121

Entrepreneur Writing .Net Commerce 121

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on my background. I should say that I agree that naive optimism in entrepreneurs can produce higher beta (upside or flops) and that’s good from an investment standpoint if you’re looking for big returns.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

What price? Because entrepreneurs often went to lawyers at their earliest stages to get their company registration done. I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). There is one source I never liked and no early-stage VC should – investment bankers. What kind of deals should I be doing?

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

That’s a reason why some are quick to portend “a new bubble” but this post sets out to show that would be a misunderstanding of the market and in fact by historic levels this may be amongst the best times to invest in seed and early-stage funds. If you fast forward one generation of tech companies it’s a completely different story.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Capital Startup Funding 292

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2020

For example, both need to provide exemplary customer service, build customer loyalty, and provide real value for a competitive price. Even artisan-based services, like graphic design and writing good ad copy, have innovative processes and principles. Indeed, there are some success factors that are common to both environments.

Startup 174

Startup Training Services Writing 174

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2011

Yesterday I saw a Tweet from Chris Sacca fly by that prompted me to want to write a blog post helping entrepreneurs understand why they should push back against VCs asking for “super pro-rata” rights. Obviously the situation is very different in companies where the company isn’t “killing it.”

Entrepreneur 310

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Writing Invest 310

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

I wrote my version here and Scott wrote an excellent write-up of his views here. We both agree that the later-stage valuations are being driven up to a point that feels irrationally priced [he uses b-round SaaS valuations as an example and I am willing to be even more broad based]. Each of the two videos is about 10 minutes long.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital SaaS Writing Funding 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

I got a call from a VC friend of mine who said, “we’re looking at this deal but can’t write the full check. But I had just seen the company present at a recent tech event and thought highly of what they were building. I was interested in the company but I wasn’t chasing the deal. The CEO called me.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Writing 356

Berkonomics

MARCH 14, 2019

Of course, we are speaking of increased valuation of your company when we speak of “wealth.” Professional investors will probe these five risk areas and make the decision to invest based upon their comfort with each. So, let’s examine them and mitigate them. Make you wealthy someday. The carrot and the stick.

Outsource Development 120

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 120

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

AngelList 101 : As you know, AngelList is a platform where angels can invest in semi-screened tech deals. As an angel you can look for the social proof in deals “Dave Morin is investing …” to make your decision. AngelList Syndicate leads don’t take any fees on the investment, which should help with returns.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

Some objections are real and they end up becoming changes to your product, your service plan or your pricing / bundling. As a founder, when you’ve been dealing with these kinds of objections for a couple of years it becomes natural and you easily handle objections on price, product & competition without much thought.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2015

Every investor in your startup, even friends and family, normally expects a share of your company (equity), which means your return for all your effort goes down quickly. This is at least double the time required for most equity investments, and may be a delay you can’t afford in keeping up with the market and your competitors.

Pricing 100

Pricing Equity Technical Review Research 100

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

@tevye2009 , Q: “can you briefly explain why it’s best to get a small valuation when getting investment.&# I explain in the video what happened in my first company (e.g. on the entrepreneur side of the table) when I raised at too high of a price. I explain in the video what happened in my first company (e.g.

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Capital Startup Pricing 282

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

” Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note. Pre-money ($8m) + investment ($2m) = Post-money ($10m) and the investors now own 20% of your company $2m / $10m. How much am I willing to invest in your company?

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. As any historian of bubbles will tell you – there were periods of bubbles in assets as arcane as tulips , South American trading companies , dot-com bubbles & housing bubbles. Ah, but today’s Internet companies have real revenue! I believe that. and profits!

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309