My office shed is getting quite old now. Every year my wife and I are discussing how to rebuild it, "for sure this year!" But for now, I needed a dehumidifier. It's a good reminder that every sale has three stages -- and that's true for up-selling as well. Stage 1: Do I really need … Continue reading Sales — Do you know what stage you’re in?
I was using Preqin to understand office locations of firms (institutional, family offices, and corporates) that are doing direct venture capital investments and are still seeking actively for new investments (collectively called "VC firms" below). Tobias Lam from the Preqin NYC office was kind enough to pull some back-end data on office locations for firms … Continue reading VC Funds: $100 billion of dry powder in the Bay Area.
I know you have a great product. I wouldn't be talking to you otherwise. But I am not a customer. I am a potential investor. As the CEO, you have been juggling all sorts of crisis situations over the past year, and you have been at the forefront of selling, probably meeting with customers and … Continue reading Pitch Clinic: Sell Stock, not Product
[There are countless obvious lessons from Jocko's books and podcasts that apply to all people and all companies. Here are some insights that might be less obvious from the last #muster.] Some VCs talk about startups needing to be paranoid, with an obsessive attention to what is going on in the environment around them. I … Continue reading Jocko and Startups: Default Aggressive.
Enterprise CTOs or CIOs often ask me about how IT will change in the future, about the "Disruption of Technology in 3-5 years". Most CTOs and CIOs realize that that is primarily a strategic question rather than a question about a certain vendor or technology. I usually explore the specific challenges together with the executive … Continue reading The Future of IT: The Next Five Years.
After the last blog post (Startups: Don't compete on "nimble" and "cash burn.") I got a lot of questions on how to look at these public companies with negative EBITDA or negative Net Income. Here are some ideas. Dataset 1: Public Companies with Negative EBITDA Some companies have a negative EBITDA, but massive revenue growth, … Continue reading Datasets for Public Companies with Negative EBITDA or Net Income
Fifteen years ago I was sitting on a panel with senior executives of large enterprises. We were discussing how startups, with their limited resources, are competing against established, well-funded public enterprises. A Corporate R&D executive of a public company quipped: Publicly traded companies usually can't afford to lose money. Internet companies and startups can, at … Continue reading Startups: Don’t compete on “nimble” and “cash burn”.
2018 felt like CVCs were in almost every deal. So what do the numbers say? [Below graphs are based on Pitchbook data. Early tracking of data, before 2008, is not that reliable. After that, not every transaction is reported accurately. But the data is reasonably good at showing trends. I'll try and point out some problems along the way] CVCs Participate in More Deals Than Before. While the number of reported number of venture capital rounds in … Continue reading Corporate Venture Capital: 2018 In Numbers.
I often ask entrepreneurs during pitches "What's hard to make this a successful company?" I am particular about this one. I am not asking "what's difficult." Difficult is fundraising, hiring great people, finding customers, making customers pay on time, getting renewals, opening a new office, etc. "What's Hard" is something that hopefully the entrepreneurs are better … Continue reading What’s Hard and What’s Not as a VC.
Reactions to my last blog post, Cap Table Changes over Time and Founder Dilution (Excel Worksheet Included), were interesting: There were some founders and entrepreneurs who said that this was a great example how venture capital investors squeeze out founders and CEOs who actually have the idea and are actually executing (versus VCs who just … Continue reading Venture Capital Financing and Investor Dilution (Excel Worksheet Included).
