TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 3, 2022

Ever traveled on a cruise ship? Pre-COVID, most journeys started with a shipwide safety drill where passengers assembled, donned life vests and learned what to do in an emergency. The ocean has an average depth of 2.3 miles, yet these rehearsals were always a calm affair. You’re starting a vacation; what could possibly go wrong?

strategy 92

strategy VC economic environments ventures 92

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 4, 2020

Series Bs are up 43%, and Series Cs are up by a quarter. On the other hand, the Series A market is up about 10% from the trailing 2 year period previous high. Median round sizes have skyrocketed across all stages. Seed has more than doubled. Series As have increased by 25%. Seed rounds are down from 1400 to about 400.

collaboration 145

collaboration accelerator capital investment 145

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

It’s not uncommon for incredibly smart and talented Phd’s or CS majors from Stanford to raise $10 million on an early-stage “platform&# that if it succeeds it will be huge. They not only have gotten bigger but they have an amazing track record of funding the biggest names in the sector: Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook.

technology 290

technology advice entrepreneurs innovation 290

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 17, 2010

How can we affect what CS students are learning? Let’s set a goal that 10%, than 15%, than who knows how many of local school graduates not only wind up in the innovation community, but with the kind of skills they need to be useful. What would a startup training syllabus look like?

communities 308

communities consulting venture capital financing 308

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

Interested candidates should e-mail keyhirewire@firstround.com with "Knewton OMD" in the subject.

opportunity 231

opportunity development capital education 231

TechCrunch

AUGUST 30, 2022

Any job search platform these days will show there are thousands of customer success (CS) positions waiting to be filled. According to research by Gainsight, a customer success software platform, “companies that invest 10% or more of their revenue into the CS function have the highest net recurring revenue (NRR).”.

strategy 98

strategy technology support media 98

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 5, 2020

Meanwhile, Series Cs are flat to up. As, Bs, and Cs median round sizes remained level or grew. Round volumes in seed have been declining since summer 2018. The same is true for Series A and Series B. Median round size reverted violently to two-year lows after a significant spike in Q4 2019.

capital 119

capital investment investing founder 119

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

If you save the punch line that you’re from the industry, did CS at MIT, worked for 3 startups, whatever, then they don’t have that powerful knowledge as part of their evaluation set. Because management is so important I always tell people to make the bio slide the first in your deck.

startup 360

startup VC advice entrepreneurs 360

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Kellie Capote is chief customer officer at Gainsight , where she leads the entire post-sales organization, including customer success management, support, professional services and the CS Ops & Scale teams. Otherwise, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise. Now comes the tricky part. A DEAR solution.

health 90

health frameworks SaaS strategy 90

TechCrunch

JUNE 21, 2021

Series Cs now routinely include secondary capital for founders, and many Series Ds are above $100 million with valuations in the billions. The VC alphabet soup has been spilled, making A rounds look like Bs used to, and the Bs seem like the Cs of old. Which begs an interesting question: Is the seed round the new Series A?

VC 100

VC board capital ventures 100

Jason Malki

MARCH 21, 2022

My first role in SaaS was in CS. But once I was in CS, hiring managers?—?externally Instead, I was the guy who invested a lot in cutting my teeth in finance (including getting several licenses that I later had to give up), then switched industries, and then switched functions within my new industry. externally and internally?—?wouldn’t

financing 98

financing finance SaaS creativity 98

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

Series Cs fell from $14M to $8.5M (a 40% drop). Seed rounds stayed constant at $300k (different era!). Series A round sizes fell from $4M to $2.6M (a 35% drop) and then rebounded over the next 8 quarters. Series B rounds fell from $10M to $6M. By deal count, however, it was business as usual across the early fundraising rounds by count.

ventures 143

ventures VC investment investing 143

Tomasz Tunguz

OCTOBER 10, 2020

For Series Cs, the round count increased from 74 to 76. The earlier the stage, the greater the delta. And of course, the earlier data under-reports the total round numbers. In the seed stage, Q2 data reported 427 rounds compared to 719 in Q4. Let’s look at those on a percentage basis.

venture capital 142

venture capital capital ventures investment 142

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MARCH 7, 2019

Kathy taught me valuable lessons about leadership, especially what I call the three Cs: character, confidence and caring. The three Cs highlight the value of the fundamentals—those simple things that appear naturally when you care for people and when you understand they work for more than a paycheck. Develop Your Leadership Skills.

peer-to-peer 130

peer-to-peer leadership financing finance 130

AsiaTechDaily

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

Since its establishment in 2013, the Pangyo CS Alliance, a collective of 13 IT giants based in Pangyo, has been dedicated to addressing community-centric challenges. The logo of the Pangyo CSR Alliance (Image: AhnLab homepage) Situated at the heart of this evolution, Pangyo Techno Valley stands out with its forward-thinking initiatives.

sustainability 105

sustainability collaboration frameworks startup ecosystem 105

Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2022

Series Cs dropped from 11x to 5.3x. Re-running the multiples math for today, return projections for the typical growth round collapsed. Series Ds cratered from 5.6x by 66% - which is inline with the public market drop. The more market caps on unicorns compress, the greater the downward pressure on rainbow foals’ valuations.

SaaS 118

SaaS VC investment investing 118

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I’m looking to turn dots into lines over time. I’m inspired by the enthusiasm of the young, emerging startup ecosystem that is here.

communities 317

communities VC innovation entrepreneurs 317

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 5, 2020

Meanwhile, Series Cs are flat to up. As, Bs, and Cs median round sizes remained level or grew. Round volumes in seed have been declining since summer 2018. The same is true for Series A and Series B. Median round size reverted violently to two-year lows after a significant spike in Q4 2019.

capital 82

capital investment investing founder 82

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

Oh, they didn’t cover that in your Stanford CS course? Forget to get around to setting up that Employee Stock Option Plan and want to be able to give the early guys their options at a low strike price? Shame about that pesky FAS 157 ruling.

startup 318

startup advice entrepreneurs VC 318

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

As Series Cs can be considered the first “late” startup stage, companies looking to raise the particular tranche appear to be running into backwash from the public markets, where tech valuations have come down sharply and IPOs are moribund at best.

startup founder 86

startup founder ventures capital startup 86

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 14, 2014

Customer success (CS) within SaaS startups is a relatively new idea. Consequently, the benefits of CS aren’t widely appreciated within the ecosystem which means in many companies, customer success teams must educate management teams about the impact they can effect on an organization. This can be a long process.

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SaaS startup education leadership 40

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

Because there have been “crunches” at various stages before, the fact that Series Cs are particularly stubborn today might not ruffle your feathers. We argued that the collected information showed the existence of a Series C “crunch,” or a bottleneck in the capital ladder that startups climb.

venture capital 85

venture capital ventures capital startup 85

TechCrunch

AUGUST 8, 2023

The relevant clauses from Zoom’s T&Cs are 10.2 Yet — from an EU law perspective — all the company has offered so far in response to the T&Cs controversy is obfuscation and irrelevant excuses. through 10.4 screengrabbed below). All of which is to say that Zoom is likely feeling the heat.

enablement 98

enablement frameworks accelerator media 98

Tomasz Tunguz

JANUARY 26, 2017

And this data implies that fewer earlier stage companies raised, which means there will be fewer Series Bs in 2017 and fewer Series Cs in 2018. Despite this increasing amount of capital on investor’s balance sheet, 2016 was a slower year by round count.

capital 102

capital startup SaaS investment 102

TechCrunch

JULY 19, 2021

The city is well served by Bielefeld University, which turns out highly qualified CS graduates every year. As Bielefeld is in the heart of the German “Mittelstand”, there are huge opportunities for tech startups to help these large industries take a leap forward with technical solutions using AI, blockchain and other technologies.

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startup ecosystem founder accelerator support 100

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 15, 2017

The second is that the wave of companies born in the early 2010s that needed to raise large Cs and Ds have already done so. Series As and Cs are roughly similar. There could be two explanations for this fall. The first is investors in those rounds have pulled out of the market. I think the reality is a combination of both.

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investment investing startup real estate 81

TechCrunch

AUGUST 31, 2022

” If you’re interested in optimizing revenue through CS, read the rest for a full overview of job design methodology, because “companies should not design their customer success roles in a vacuum.” ” Crafting a XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth.

real estate 98

real estate transportation disruption venture capital 98

Y Combinator

JUNE 19, 2019

1:55 – How are their students differentiated from students educated in a traditional CS program? 00:45 – How is their intensive track different than a traditional college course load? 2:45 – Interacting with the parents of Make School students.

education 75

education advice entrepreneurs 75

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 22, 2018

Through the lens of history, they look more like Bs and Cs. And in 2013, the Series B median surpassed the 2009 Series C median. Two blocks of the ladder have flipped. We still call these rounds As and Bs. Many founders have aspired to “skip” a round of financing. Raise a large enough seed to jump straight to the Series B.

startup 80

startup financing finance investment 80

Berkonomics

JULY 31, 2014

The four Cs: Consumer, cost, communication and convenience. This is considered to be the producer-oriented model. These are still the driving focus behind most marketing courses, and deserve to be so. Then there is the four C’s, the consumer-oriented marketing model (2). This makes sense too, and surely deserves time.

education 80

education 80

AsiaTechDaily

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

We also place great importance on Customer Support (CS). Cloudike allows for UI customization, much like those companies. You can customize the logo and URL to reflect your company’s information. We believe that when using subscription-based services, customers should have full confidence in our technology and use it without hesitation.

collaboration 105

collaboration advice innovation development 105

TechCrunch

MAY 20, 2021

She talked about the hoops self-employed people have to jump through to fill out their Schedule Cs; she explained some of the finer points of different tax codes — and we were riveted,” the pair say. Sequoia’s Josephine Chen and Alfred Lin said they were impressed with Myrick from their first call with her.

data analysis 86

data analysis SaaS opportunity founder 86

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 22, 2021

In many ways, I am a stereotypical founder: I have a CS degree from Stanford, I worked as a PM at Google, I have an engineering background. That is one advantage of introducing it later: It did not define me because they knew so much else about me by that point. I have many advantages.

energy 90

energy health founder entrepreneurs 90

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

As such, the new capital will be deployed into what Shiue called “the three Cs”: conversion, which he considers “the North Star for its brands;” customer onboarding; and connections to deepen the three pillars of its tool suite of social, commerce and payment platform relationships.

media 89

media VC capital enablement 89

NZ Entrepreneur

MAY 31, 2021

Marcel spoke about five Cs that help him select the right investment opportunities: Connections: can your networks offer access to markets or relevant expertise? Capability: do you have the right skills to help the company in their current context?

venture capital 98

venture capital investment investing support 98

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 30, 2014

Because the financial impact of a great CS team is compounded monthly and can meaningfully increase the growth and decrease the cash needs of SaaS startups, it’s critical for CS leaders to get it right. The Up Sales Person carries a quota and is compensated with a sales structure, while the CS Manager is salaried.

SaaS 40

SaaS enablement innovation startup 40

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

AM: We went to a builders community we’d built the year before, and to [Stanford’s] engineering school [where I teach], and to the CS department at a number of universities and said, ‘Hey, if you’re interested in being a future founder, and you’re a great builder, then we are interested in talking to you.’

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VC networking incubation investment 96