This is going to be BIG.
DECEMBER 15, 2014
'A friend of mine is starting a huge new project. She told me that 2015 is going to be the craziest year she''s ever had. I suggested to her that it will certainly be the busiest, but that she didn''t have to let the crazy in. We throw around the word "crazy" but in all seriousness, mental health is something that doesn''t get much discussion in the startup world.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 14, 2014
'Accelerators have had quite a good run the past 5+ years. Not just Y Combinator and TechStars but a host of other accelerators across the country. I have been involved with a high profile one in Los Angeles – Launchpad LA – and we’ve decided to make a shift so I thought this was a good time for reflection. My good friend Adam Lilling and I started Launchpad more than 5 years ago .
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Gust
DECEMBER 7, 2014
'Image via Pixabay. I’ve always wondered who started the urban myth that the best way to start a company is to come up with a great idea, and then find some professional investors to give you a pot of money to build a company. In my experience, that’s actually the worst way to start, for reasons I will outline here, and also the least common way, according to an authoritative survey of new startups.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 4, 2014
'By Dave Berkus. There are lots of ways to measure a great leader. Here are three that should resonate with you as leader and with those who follow you. These qualities are applicable whether you are leading your company or a board, and certainly are aspiration targets for you if you are measuring yourself against the best. The first quality in a great leader is to have laser focus.
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Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 15, 2014
Are startups growing much faster than they have in the past? The chart above plots the time required for startups to raise rounds at $1B or greater valuation, over the past ten years. The blue line is a logarithmic regression demonstrating the decrease from about 7.5 years to less than 2.5 years. The answer seems to be an unequivocal yes. Let’s break this chart down by type of company: B2B and B2C.
Startup Catalyst Brief brings together the best content for the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
This is going to be BIG.
DECEMBER 11, 2014
'Today, Backupify announced that it is getting purchased by Datto. It''s a solid exit to a company that has lots of revs, is growing, and together will form a very formidable player in the data backup space--one that can definitely be a public company in the next couple of years. I''m super proud of Rob, Ben and the whole Backupify team--and this is particularly special for me because Backupify was the first investment I ever made as a VC, and the first board I ever sat on.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 16, 2014
'Whew! We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. We raised $280 million. Our last fund was $200 million but as you may already know since we raised that fund we added new partners Greg Bettinelli and Kara Nortman and Venture Partner Hamet Watt – all of whom are busy looking at new deals for the firm
Gust
DECEMBER 14, 2014
'TED Conference image via Wikipedia. When entrepreneurs come to me with that “million dollar idea,” I have to tell them that an idea alone is really worth nothing. It’s all about the execution, and investors invest in the people who can execute, or even better, have a history of successful execution. Execution is making things happen, and for startups it usually means making change happen, which is even more difficult.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 18, 2014
'There is a simple way to define the responsibilities of the chief financial officer. And it extends beyond the usual interpretation of the CFO position in many companies. If it can be counted, the CFO owns the responsibility for controlling it. The CFO should question and control the number of anything , including the number of chairs to be ordered.
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Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 10, 2014
This post is part of a continuing series evaluating the S-1s of publicly traded SaaS companies in order to better understand the core business and build a library of benchmarks that might be useful to founders. Box is a 1000+ person company providing collaboration and document sharing software. We had previously analyzed the business when the company filed their first S-1.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 7, 2014
'I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. From these meetings you can really tell the leaders that care deeply about their customers and those the look down on them. Given customers & sales are the lifeblood of any organization you’d imagine everybody would respect their customers.
This is going to be BIG.
DECEMBER 8, 2014
'If you take venture capital money. 1) You increase the chances that you may not be CEO of your own company one day--and that also might be the best thing for its long term success. 2) You are signing up to sell the company one day--to another company or to the public market, but definitely to someone. 3) You will almost certainly take more venture capital money after that. 4) You will almost certainly go cashflow negative, increasing the risk that your company will fail. 5) You now have the res
This is going to be BIG.
DECEMBER 2, 2014
'Three years ago today, I grabbed the domain name BrooklynBridgeVentures.com. It''s kind of a funny answer to "When did you start Brooklyn Bridge Ventures?". What might be a more relevant date is May 22nd, 2007. That''s the day I sat down for lunch at Coffee Shop with Henry Blodget, just six days after Silicon Alley Insider launched. Henry told me that I should start a fund--me, a 27 year old former VC analyst turned product manager with no MBA at a startup that wasn''t really headed in any part
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Gust
DECEMBER 14, 2014
'When entrepreneurs come to me with that “million dollar idea,” I have to tell them that an idea alone is really worth nothing. It’s all about the execution, and investors invest in the people who can execute, or even better, have a history of successful execution. Execution is making things happen, and for startups it usually means making change happen, Read more >.
Gust
DECEMBER 7, 2014
'Image via Pixabay. I’ve always wondered who started the urban myth that the best way to start a company is to come up with a great idea, and then find some professional investors to give you a pot of money to build a company. In my experience, that’s actually the worst way to start, for reasons I will outline here, Read more >.
Gust
DECEMBER 14, 2014
When entrepreneurs come to me with that “million dollar idea,” I have to tell them that an idea alone is really worth nothing. It’s all about the execution, and investors invest in the people who can execute, or even better, have a history of successful execution. Execution is making things happen, and for startups it usually means making change happen, Read more >.
This is going to be BIG.
DECEMBER 9, 2014
'Following up on my post from Monday that rang like "reasons not to take VC money" here are some reasons you should: 1) You really like the investor and believe they can add more value than you give up in equity. 2) You are growing, and if you don''t raise, you won''t be able to build the infrastructure required not to come apart at the seams. 3) You have the team in place or identified to build the product, you''ve done your homework by talking to customers that it is, in fact, the right produc
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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.
Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 18, 2014
Each year, I do a retrospective analysis of this blog. This year, I found something unexpected. Like many other content sites, just a handful of posts on this blog generate the majority of the traffic. I’ve plotted the distribution of traffic by post above; it’s clearly governed by a power law. The top 2% of posts generated 19% of traffic, the top 10% account for 48% and the top 20% attracted 69% ( Pareto would be vindicated ).
Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 17, 2014
Thanks to Bill Macaitis , current CMO at Slack and former CMO of Zendesk, who inspired and co-authored this post. When discussing customer success for SaaS startups, the conversation focuses mostly on retaining customers and reducing churn. These are two fantastic benefits with meaningful return-on-investment. But great customer success organizations can meaningfully impact another critical part of the customer lifecycle, customer acquisition, by catalyzing evangelists to refer new customers.
Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 9, 2014
Growth is king in today’s public markets. Most of the SaaS IPOs we’ve analyzed have traded growth for profitability and they have been rewarded handsomely for it. For the large tech companies, this trend is no different. The public market prizes growth. Some public tech companies sustain growth through internal efforts, but many use their cash reserves to acquire fast-growing startups.
Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 7, 2014
In which sectors have software companies created the most financial value? I asked myself this question over the weekend. I categorized the top 250 IT companies which spans $675B in market cap (AAPL) to $3B in market cap (ASOS) and created the chart above. B2B Software, which includes Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and SAP among others represents about 30% of the total IT market cap today.
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Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 4, 2014
When will the tech bull market end? It’s a question that I’m asked with some frequency. There are three fundamental reasons for the bull market. First, technology is changing nearly every part of the economy. Consequently, there are many huge opportunities for entrepreneurs to seize. Our internal analysis shows that only 2% of IT budgets are spent on cloud today.
Tomasz Tunguz
DECEMBER 3, 2014
2014 has been a great year for SaaS companies. By my count, 9 of them will have gone public. Meanwhile, SaaS companies in both the public and private markets continue to fetch premium valuations. To illustrate the rapid appreciation in the value of these SaaS companies, I’ve plotted the share price by round of each business. The color bars in the chart represent Series A, B… through to IPO.
Gust
DECEMBER 7, 2014
Image via Pixabay. I’ve always wondered who started the urban myth that the best way to start a company is to come up with a great idea, and then find some professional investors to give you a pot of money to build a company. In my experience, that’s actually the worst way to start, for reasons I will outline here, Read more >. The post 10 Incentives For Entrepreneurs To Bootstrap Their Startup appeared first on The Gust Blog.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 11, 2014
'While we are on the subject of great leadership, let’s list the five principal tactical skills of a great leader. These are not the strategic visionary skills, like leading companies through risky product launches, or steering the course through economic storms where leaders become oversized personalities for their superhuman efforts. These are the skills of daily operation, the ones that make or break a company – from the top.
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