Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2021

For reference, here is a quick summary of key elements which most investors include in their due diligence process: Key personnel review. Sales and distribution channel activity will be analyzed, as well as cost of customer acquisition, to make an independent assessment of your financial projections.

Technical Review 151

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Invest 151

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 124

Customer Custom Startup Course 124

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

“the ecommerce company gained fauxmentum by raising artificially high amounts of venture capital and spent lavishly on customer acquisition despite long payback periods and questionable LTV” __. I’m not saying don’t hire sales staff or market your products aggressively. __. faux·men·tum.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Customer Custom 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

Best is if you have a combination of ad revenue, sponsorships and some forms of non ad revenue (subscriptions, merch, music sales, etc.). And given that Facebook and Twitter currently pay you zero for content marketing and Google SEM charges you for customer acquisition – what exactly are you b g about? post-script.

SEM 150

SEM Content Platform Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

In the article it talks about Sequoia’s $19 billion sale of WhatsApp to Facebook that generated apparently $3 billion for Sequoia and its shareholders. So literally the day before the Facebook acquisition Sequoia’s fund could have been significantly less valuable on paper. Even when they are off-the-record with nobody else listening.

Venture Capital 264

Venture Capital Invest Funding Competition 264

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. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2018

A reverse merger is the acquisition of an already public company (usually a dormant shell) to avoid the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and cost, to quickly get your startup on a public exchange for fund raising through visibility and selling stock. There just aren’t enough angel investors and VCs to go around.

Summary 79

Summary Startup Entrepreneur Funding 79

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2019

With the real data from that surge, you need to take a hard look at business model realities, cost of customer acquisition, inventory costs, and other key metrics. Here is my summary of the key focus activities of that challenge for every business owner: Manage cash flow daily and plot a plan to profitability.

Metrics 86

Metrics Startup Training Customer 86

InfoChachkie

JUNE 16, 2011

What follows is a summary which paraphrases Arnie’s responses. 5) Twitter’s recent $40M acquisition of TweetDeck is an interesting development. TweetDeck is a very natural acquisition, it certainly brings talent that knows how to build Twitter applications. If you can’t show ROI, you are competing on sales and service.

Social Media 252

Social Media Platform Media Networking 252

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2015

A reverse merger is the acquisition of an already public company (usually a dormant shell) to avoid the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and cost, to quickly get your startup on a public exchange for fund raising through visibility and selling stock. There just aren’t enough Angel investors and VCs to go around.

Funding 102

Funding Summary Startup Entrepreneur 102

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

You take all the pieces—costs, revenue, cash-flow summaries, profit and loss statements—and piece them together to see the big picture. A financial model forces you to think through all of the variables that affect the potential profitability of your business from staffing and professional service requirements to sales and marketing costs.

Startup 85

Startup Acquisition Invest Framework 85

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 3, 2014

A reverse merger is the acquisition of an already public company (usually a dormant shell) to avoid the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and cost, to quickly get your startup on a public exchange for fund raising through visibility and selling stock. There just aren’t enough Angel investors and VCs to go around.

Funding 98

Funding Startup Entrepreneur Summary 98

Xconomy

JUNE 28, 2016

Whatever you call it, this document of about five pages is a summary of the terms of a deal the parties hope to close down the line. — The structure : Will the deal be an asset sale? A stock sale? You might know it as a letter of intent or a term sheet. — Payment form : Stock, cash, or a combination.

Startup 57

Startup Pricing Sales Summary 57

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. I talked about this in the TWiVC video but I didn’t do a good enough job of writing it up in the summary notes in the post. And when you finish the demo you can bring in the other important components such as competition, team, customer acquisition strategy, etc. Mobile app?

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2015

Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 101

Customer Custom Startup Course 101

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

If a consumer will pay a fixed price for a product or service then the battle over who gets the margin in any sale is between the person who merchandises a product and the person who manufactures it. companies that have to spend too heavily on customer acquisition). Summary It’s hard to build a successful product company?—?even

Product 296

Product Course Customer Custom 296

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2014

Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 98

Customer Custom Entrepreneur Startup 98

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 52

Customer Custom Startup Course 52

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2015

For reference, here is a quick summary of key elements which most investors include in their due diligence process: Key personnel review. Sales and distribution channel activity will be analyzed, as well as cost of customer acquisition, to make an independent assessment of your financial projections.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Entrepreneur 108

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs? It wasn’t just front-end processes like sales tools, marketing funnels, dynamic pricing, driver routes and so forth but we also had to build comprehensive systems to manage numerous warehouses across four different cities.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

To be clear, I define a product specification as the technical definition of your product, to be used for development and testing purposes, with a quick business summary for context. Include marketing, sales, and customer rollout plans. Summarize all of the above in an executive summary. You need both to survive.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

Nothing was more heart warming than the photo of David Karp hugging Bijan Sabet after the sale to Yahoo! This happens at acquisition time, too. In Summary. And hard for me to imagine the Fred Wilson and Albert Wenger weren’t instrumental mentors to David. After all, many people love their VCs but hate the industry. .”

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

SoCal Delicious

JANUARY 9, 2014

Too much talking, not enough listening Perhaps it’s because funding is so important to early-stage startups that they soon get good at perfecting their sales pitch. Richard Branson Whilst sales are the lifeline of any startup, the key is really understanding your customers’ problems before selling. We have two ears and one mouth.

Startup 78

Startup Design Customer Custom 78

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This is a long post, so I put an executive summary here if you want to get the point without reading all the detail. If you plan to read the post you can skip the summary if you want. Underpinning it all I wrote: sales, asset management, analytics & talent management. So I thought I would.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

The video can be watched here , but there is a most excellent summary below provided by John Excley. Quigo Lands Overture as Client, Rejects Their Acquisition Offer. Lesson Learned From Rejecting Acquisition Offers. Rejecting a bona fide acquisition offer was an incredible learning experience.

Google 302

Google Startup Advertising Acquisition 302

Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

Internet Advertising ASP) Exit: $112M IPO and acquisition Lesson: Think big. 6 startups = 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure, millions in venture capital $, hundreds of employees in cities worldwide and the building of my latest venture, the Rubicon Project - one of the fastest growing advertising companies in history. . Zondigo, Inc.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40