TechCrunch LA

APRIL 22, 2019

Beyond Meat , the meat replacement company whose packages of Beyond Burgers line grocery store aisles across America, has priced its initial public offering. The company is looking to raise roughly $200 million in the stock sale for its portfolio of burger, chicken and sausage replacements, selling 8.75 in 2017 alone.

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Pricing Los Angeles Venture Capital Study 236

Berkonomics

JUNE 29, 2017

If you have been following our recent insights, you’ll be up to speed knowing that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more.

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Invest Entrepreneur Sales Startup 243

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

I recently wrote about my views that startups rounds should be priced. Fred, who also wrote his views about convertible debt (significantly more succinctly than I) believes that the price of a single round should be the same for everybody. Price the round. You can do it with equity & a price. And a few others.

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Pricing Venture Capital Writing Equity 294

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 21, 2017

The investor organization is granted the seat as long as the investment remains, and the documents often name the first representative assigned by the investor group to the position. Almost always, professional investors, including angel groups and venture capitalists, also require at least one seat on the corporate board.

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Invest Sales Resource Email 243

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2009

I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. After the sales meetings I would ask the exec afterward, “how do you think it went?&# We used to do this in our sales slides.

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Venture Capital Sales Slides Startup 275

SoCal CTO

MAY 19, 2010

Can you raise $750K - $1M with no future investments planned? I’m a regular reader/listener of the Frank Peters Show that talks about Angel Investing. What’s funny about this is that the reason people put in these optimistic projections is to fit the investment criteria. See investment criteria #1 from TCA.

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Invest Angel Tech Coast Angels Pasadena Angels 205

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. If you don’t, somebody else WILL!” ” The Details.

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Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

socalTECH

AUGUST 19, 2014

Epicor Software , the developer of supply chain management software which has its roots and still has significant operations in Orange County, is off the block, after its private equity investors did not see enough interest--or high enough prices--for the business. The news on that move came in May. Apax bought Epicor back in 2011.

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Orange County Sales News Equity 153

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

My point was that Amazon continues to dominate the web services business because AWS continues to cut prices & margin in the same way a hypermarket does to control market share. And we’re growing our sales organization. Many people (including inside of YouTube) mistook this to mean that I was negative on YouTube itself.

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Invest Content Media Networking 291

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

When convertible debt first started being introduced as a “faster, cheaper way to get startups funded” they didn’t have pricing built into them. ” And some seed stage investors told me, “I prefer not to fight over price now. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.” Enter “the cap.”

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Startup Pricing Equity Venture Capital 354

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

The rest of the purchase price was concocted from a brew of zero-coupon bonds (where the face value is many times the invested amount until the reduced cost bonds mature thirty years later), and borrowing using the target company’s accounts receivable and other assets as collateral for a loan to purchase the company. What power!

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Pricing Sales Examples Tool 156

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. You can be pissed off, but I don’t set prices. That’s stupid.

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Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

On the one hand, you’re over paying for every investment and valuations aren’t rational. On the other hand, the biggest winners will turn out to be much larger than the prices people paid for them and this will happen faster than at any time in human history. That used to be called A-round investing. of the fund.

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Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2012

The median VC exit price for deals is $70 million (FLAG Capital via Bryce.VC). There is a mythology amongst some LPs (funds that invest in VCs) and some VCs that “entry price doesn’t matter – only investing in the absolute best entrepreneurs.” So entry price matters a lot.

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Startup Technology Venture Capital Santa Barbara 323

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions. My guess is that we are likely in total agreement.

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Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Berkonomics

AUGUST 10, 2023

From the moment such an investor looks seriously at your company, the investor or VC partner is thinking of the end game, the ultimate sale of the company or even of an eventual initial public offering. There is no middle ground. Resetting your priorities Taking money from these sources involves resetting priorities over time.

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Venture Capital Sales Invest Class 292

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. One of the most obvious places where you see this is in sales & marketing.

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Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on startup advice but also filed under my sales & marketing posts. You’ve invested $1 million in building the perfect application the meet a large market need. The only problem is that you can’t afford all of these expensive direct sales reps to go and sell it. Imagine this.

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Startup Sales Marketing Product 293

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. Given customers & sales are the lifeblood of any organization you’d imagine everybody would respect their customers. If they want to invest that’s great. ” I cringed.

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Customer Custom Venture Capital Software Review 341

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

When I meet other VCs I’m constantly asking how they decide which investments to make, when to pass, when to do follow-on rounds, when to sell a company vs. when to go long, etc. On sales I often talk about “ Why Buy Anything, Why Buy Now, Why Buy Me ” as a tool to think about a sales process.

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Startup Framework CTO Coach Sales 407

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

But that doesn’t mean that people are paying rational prices as investors based on intrinsic value. Rational people can disagree and some may argue that today’s prices are rational and under-pinned by economic drivers. All of that might be true, but the 2006 price might still be over-valued. That’s fine.

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Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2023

Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale). Bootstrapping: This term describes your ability to start a business with little investment and grow it using internally generated funds.

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Venture Capital Startup Class Invest 295

Berkonomics

JANUARY 26, 2017

The rest of the purchase price was concocted from a brew of zero coupon bonds (where the face value is many times the invested amount until the reduced cost bonds mature thirty years later), and borrowing using the target company’s accounts receivable and other assets as collateral for a loan to purchase the company. What power!

Pricing 120

Pricing Sales Tool Equity 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

The math works out that the investor owns 25% of the company post deal ($1 million invested / $4 million valuation) and assuming 1 million shares, each share would be valued at $3 / share ($3,000,000 pre-money / 1 million shares = $3 / share). This states how the proceeds from a sale or dissolution of the company will be distributed.

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Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Berkonomics

JUNE 15, 2017

From the moment such an investor looks seriously at your company, the investor or VC partner is thinking of the end game, the ultimate sale of the company or even of an eventual initial public offering. Taking in angel or venture money requires a setting of an entrepreneur’s expectations that may come as a shock at least at first.

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Venture Capital Sales Invest Class 243

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Please don’t also confuse this with whether a VC should invest in a CEO who’s done it before – that’s a given. Weight Class : Let’s take sales. At your stage of development do you really think a shit-hot VP Sales is going to join you to head up sales? You’re stressed.

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Startup Sales Class CIO 327

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business. In fact, I believe modern entrepreneurs need to be super sales people, in the most positive sense, to their team as well as customers. No pain usually means no sales.

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Sales Training Startup Customer 139

Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale). Strategic partner” investors: If you can find a strategic partner willing to invest in your enterprise, consider it a blessing.

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Venture Capital Class Invest Equity 266

Berkonomics

MARCH 8, 2018

You do not pay professional investors who are serving on behalf of an investment company or VC and paid by that company. The option price should be set by appraisal under IRS rule 409a, and certainly should be low enough to recognize that common stock options are not worth as much as preferred stock, given the many preferences of the latter.

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Venture Capital Equity Sales Invest 256

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion. So the people who invest in VC funds have two problems.

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Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding Rustic Canyon 311

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

Here is the warning: The execution of partnership equity allocations and of a good incentive program using equity is often mismanaged, damaging the corporate capitalization structure and even affecting the outcome of subsequent investment into the company. How about the price per share? How many options are appropriate for a grant?

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Equity Class Pricing Sales 256

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

Put simply – you need enough users in a segment who care about what you’re doing to dictate investing further in the product or in sales & marketing resources. One of the things I have observed over the years is that a hard charging sales oriented founder/CEO can often hide the defects in a product.

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Startup Customer Custom Technical Review 401

Berkonomics

JANUARY 6, 2022

First, the marginal exit event: Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event for the early investors, including the entrepreneur or the founders. Most sophisticated investors will take either a promissory note or preferred stock, both of which come before founder or management stock in a sale or liquidation.

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Venture Capital Sales Pricing Equity 156

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

He shared tons of information about how how they were using marketing to quantitatively make marketing decisions at HauteLook and acquire customers for prices that were far cheaper than similar companies. Like any firm we of course invest in the San Francisco Bay Area where 33% of my personal boards are. What does that mean?

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Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup Invest 360

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2013

The timing of the announcement of this investment couldn’t have been timed more perfectly if we tried. And before that you might enjoy this longer analysis on why I invested in DataSift in the first place , which was written 2.5 ” How can businesses not incorporate information into their marketing and sales funnels?

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Social Media Yammer Invest Organization 358

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2010

.&# This means that the investment does not have a valuation placed on it. If no financing happened then this “note&# may not be converted and thus would be senior to the equity of the company in the case of a bankruptcy or asset sale. Maybe the market views this as not worth the price you paid?

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Startup Funding Venture Capital Pricing 290

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

A financial buyer will analyze your numbers, past and forecast, to the n’th degree, and calculate the price based upon the result, after carefully comparing your numbers with those of others in the same and similar industries. The price negotiated is not at all the critical factor in the emotional sale.

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Sales Pricing IBM IBM 220