Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Back when we were all trying to figure out the real value of traffic on the web, we investors – and acquiring companies – got a bit crazy with metrics used to value acquisitions and investments. And the numbers were staggering. Microsoft paid $9.00 per registered user for Hotmail. AOL paid $40.00

Metrics 207

Metrics Sites Advertising Web 207

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2020

It’s your job as a leader to be the model high performer, quantify the team view with metrics, and expand awareness to the best outside competition and new tools. You need to be constantly assessing mergers and acquisitions, as well as divestitures. Attract, train, and reward only the best leaders.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Layoffs Social Media Metrics 124

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

MakeSpace (as he named it) would help you get your excess goods into low-cost warehouses. How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs? We have well financed competitors whom despite competing with we respect deeply and when you see your competition launching in many markets it’s tempting to follow suit.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

You need to move to right location and get connected before you ask for help. Exposure instills the fear and urgency you need to deliver the right competitive solution. Being in the right location helps you to maintain pace because of access to skilled and experienced people. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana.

Startup 97

Startup Technical Review Oracle Software Review 97

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2011

We have a very sophisticated, analytics and software platform that over half the Fortune 50 are now using, to help guide how they invest in marketing and sales activities and investments. Essentially, we help them learn how to get more with less, and also how to consider new investments in things like social media, mobile marketing, or video.

Social Media 235

Social Media Demand Activity Marketing 235

socalTECH

MARCH 6, 2017

Some might be looking for some liquidity, they might want to sell their app outright, or it could be they want to cut a deal on the publishing side, and get some helping out with advertising and monetization. We are making changes to the user interface, to help limits things like attrition and other things we're trying to avoid.

Media 153

Media Mobile Startup Acquisition 153

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. Some of the products I’ve helped validate and launch include GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting and AppFolio. I have always worked on early stage products.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 18, 2014

That is, once you invest in a company, you''re a shareholder, and you help that company for the course of its life. We try to help the companies get to a place where we would, as investors, also want to invest in them. A prototype is one, but it could also be customer acquisition testing they''ve done.

Incubator 187

Incubator Southern California Startup Ideas 187

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2015

You need to move to right location and get connected before you ask for help. Exposure instills the fear and urgency you need to deliver the right competitive solution. Being in the right location helps you to maintain pace because of access to skilled and experienced people. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana.

Startup 109

Startup Technical Review Oracle Software Review 109

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2017

You need to move to right location and get connected before you ask for help. Exposure instills the fear and urgency you need to deliver the right competitive solution. Being in the right location helps you to maintain pace because of access to skilled and experienced people. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana.

Sites 59

Sites Startup Technical Review Oracle 59

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2013

You need to move to right location and get connected before you ask for help. Exposure instills the fear and urgency you need to deliver the right competitive solution. Being in the right location helps you to maintain pace because of access to skilled and experienced people. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana.

Startup 102

Startup Technical Review Oracle Entrepreneur 102

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

When they look at buying your company they often think in terms of “how long will it take until I earn back the profits to pay for my acquisition price?” If you have a market lead then raising capital and making investments now will help you as others enter the market. If you don’t, somebody else WILL!”

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2017

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Revenue and competitive position followed. Less is more. But never take your eye off today’s customer.

Competition 65

Competition Social Media Metrics Customer 65

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2022

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Revenue and competitive position followed. Less is more. But never take your eye off today’s customer. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 144

Startup Social Media Metrics Customer 144

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

It probably had more to do with the fact that they had doubled their sales annually for several years, and still managed to squeeze out a profit of $11M in their year of acquisition. If you have not done the work to derive rational numbers, or you are unwilling to commit, no investor will help you.

Customer 19

Customer Custom Acquisition Entrepreneur 19

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Yet I can’t help thinking there are many predictable failures that come from a lack of basic planning. After a year in the market, MakeSpace was growing rapidly and our biggest issue was CAC (customer acquisition costs) relative to payback period (when we get our marketing investment back) and relative to LTV (lifetime value).

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

That’s certainly one function of every board but if your board is your “brain trust” and the people you can most use as a sounding board to help you make the toughest decisions in your company and if its the one group truly privy to your most confidential information and your hardest choices then it’s a shame if you don’t get more value.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2019

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Revenue and competitive position followed. Less is more. But never take your eye off today’s customer. Marty Zwilling.

Social Media 87

Social Media Metrics Customer Custom 87

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

We were over 2x up on this round, and we also had a bunch of individual investors who wanted to put in--people who had invested in our competition a few years ago. The other thing to note is that there are lots of companies that are underfunded, and are going to be acquisition targets by the big medical oligopolies. READ MORE>>

Startup 113

Startup CTO Hire Resource Venture Capital 113

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Company grew by more than “400% each year” for past few years [assume growth metric = revenues]. Competition: Chegg (has raised $144 in debt and equity)—estimated by Steven Carpenter ( TechCrunch ) to be 10x more unique visitors than BookRenter (during peak book renting seasons) with nearly $140mm in revenues for 2010.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

We caught up with co-founder Joey Flores on the story behind the company's brush with death, and its recent acquisition by You42, which was announced last week. Joey Flores: Yeah, we spend the earlier part of 2014 exploring acquisition options, because we had a pretty hard time raising money. Joey, thanks for the time today.

Software Review 100

Software Review Startup Metrics Content 100

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 25, 2014

Noor Siddiqui – Remedy On Glass , helping doctors collaborate using Google Glass. Joergen Aaboe – Momentfeed , combining life foot traffic with reduced customer acquisition costs. Alex Taub – Social Rank , Twitter metrics and engagement tool. Mike Norman – WeFunder , bringing crowd investing to the world.

Entertainment 99

Entertainment Google Entrepreneur Course 99

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. Yes, it’s true that FOMO (fear of missing out) is driving some irrational behavior and valuations amongst uber competitive deals and well-financed VCs. They compete on features, price and execution.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347