Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2014

'A few years ago I started calling the local tech ecosystem down here #LATech. I had an agenda. We graduate more engineers in our greater region than anywhere else in the US. We have top 25 engineering schools than anywhere else, too. I never wanted to be a derivative of Silicon Valley. I have the utmost respect for the tech produced by our northern colleagues and acknowledge it is the tech capital of the world and that won’t change.

technology 318

technology VC innovation capital 318

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 10, 2014

'Greg Galant of Sawhorse coined a term yesterday that captures perfectly what I thought of my 8th SXSW. We were having a discussion about big brands taking over the scene and he called it "conference gentrification". That''s exactly what has happened down in Austin. The small startups and individual creatives were early to SXSW and created a great, authentic experience over many years--a "neighborhood" if you will--with a certain attractive vibe.

creativity 285

creativity transportation venture capital VC 285

Gust

MARCH 9, 2014

'Image via Flickr.com. It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

creativity 146

creativity media pitching entrepreneurs 146

Berkonomics

MARCH 13, 2014

'By David Steakley. If you are a screenplay writer, you are familiar with the dogma of the inciting incident. In a movie, the inciting incident is the event at the beginning of the story which causes the hero’s life to be completely transformed and irrevocably changed, and which makes the whole story unfold. Companies also need an inciting incident, because, more often than not, you often will depend upon selling your story to someone.

real estate 94

real estate investing investment pitching 94

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Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.

technology

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 12, 2014

At the time of the IPO, the median Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company generates $100M in revenue, creates $2.6M in profit and holds $85M in cash on the balance sheet. A company in this position typically raises $107M in its IPO and trades at 11x revenue, for a $1.1B market cap. The path to getting there is revealing. Below is a chart showing the median revenue ramp of the 41 publicly traded SaaS companies by year since founding.

SaaS 40

SaaS startup 40

Gust

MARCH 11, 2014

'By Tomasz Tunguz , Partner at Redpoint Ventures. Has it become harder to raise money? is a question I hear all the time. On one hand, the total dollars invested by VCs is relatively flat at just under $30B per year, according to the NVCA. On the other hand, the stories of difficulty raising series As and Bs have become a steady drumbeat. To get some sense of the patterns, I analyzed 917 companies from seed through Series B over the past 14 years, using Crunchbase data.

startup 169

startup SaaS financing finance 169

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2014

'My blog had been looking tired for a year or two. The problem is that with WordPress I just found it a bit too cumbersome to change the design on my own. I’m more of a verbal content guy. I like to get what is in my brain out into words and as you probably know I worry less about typos, grammar or – generally – visual design. I appreciate beautiful design – I just wasn’t blessed with the skill of producing it.

venture capital 294

venture capital collaboration ventures capital 294

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 9, 2014

One of the most important trends in the Internet at the moment is unbundling. Entrepreneurs are picking apart Craigslist and eBay, vertical by vertical. At the same time, other entrepreneurs have replicated the core functions and features of Facebook and LinkedIn , creating hugely valuable companies. But simply calling this trend unbundling doesn’t do the movement justice, particularly in the transactional web.

transportation 40

transportation advice support enablement 40

Gust

MARCH 8, 2014

'While it sounds tautological, the most important thing a law firm brings to the startup table is… a knowledge of the law surrounding everything having to do with founding, financing and operating a startup! But while obvious, that doesn’t make it any less important. There are an enormous number of laws that cover the world of business, and those go up almost exponentially once you start dealing with fundraising/financing.

peer-to-peer 156

peer-to-peer startup advice financing 156

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development

Gust

MARCH 12, 2014

'There is no average , because every company and situation is different. But as a general rule of thumb, the investors in each round of financing will get somewhere between 15% and 35% of the equity in the company, and the total amount raised in each round should be enough to get the company to a significant increase in value. For an overview of the amounts raised at different stages from different sources, see the answers to What is the range of capital you can expect from an Angel vs VC?

VC 133

VC financing finance investing 133

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 10, 2014

SaaS companies are the darlings of the public market. The average publicly traded SaaS company enjoys twice as strong a revenue multiple as ten years ago. SaaS companies’ time to IPO has been decreasing steadily from over 10 years since founding to under 7. Despite the decrease in time to IPO, the average dollars raised at IPO has tripled from the early nineties and grown by 50% since 2000.

SaaS 40

SaaS startup financing finance 40