Recently many of the companies we meet claim they are not raising capital. Yet it is very clear that they are in the middle of a fundraising process, or at least testing the water. I don’t know if it is a sign of the frothy market environment when companies expect to raise the following round (at the… Continue reading The “I’m not raising a round” trick
Tag: startup
Cyber Security bubble?
The upcoming RSA security conference is going to be larger than ever since one of the hottest trends today is Cyber Security. High visibility hacks on corporate giants like Sony, Target, JPMorgan Chase and Home Depot have resulted in unprecedented amount of media coverage for the space. Needless to say, venture capital funding followed suit and… Continue reading Cyber Security bubble?
Meerkat Madness
The latest obsession in Silicon Valley is an app called Meerkat. For those of you who haven’t been reading tech news or following Twitter feed, Meerkat is an app that makes it really easy to stream live video from your phone to your Twitter followers. Although the app was released just 10 days ago, I… Continue reading Meerkat Madness
Is the Internet of Things the next big thing?
I just returned from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The main thing I noticed this year was that what used to be the largest mobility conference in the world has somewhat transformed into an Internet of Things (IoT) show. It seems like all the vendors are trying to position themselves as IoT players: starting… Continue reading Is the Internet of Things the next big thing?
Winning the away game
It is a well-known fact that sports teams benefit from a home court advantage. In fact, NBA teams consistently win about 60 percent of games that are played in their home arenas. The same phenomena is true for international startups which need to compete in the US, outside their comfort zone. This is always the… Continue reading Winning the away game
Why valuations don’t reflect real value
In the previous post we discussed how the public market values SaaS companies and which metrics you should measure. Today I want to discuss what happens behind the scenes when investors determine the value of an early stage startup. The truth is that determining the value of a startup is much more art than science. The reason is that as investors we… Continue reading Why valuations don’t reflect real value
Grow or die
Now that we’ve talked about why SaaS is a beautiful business model, I’d like to give some guidance and tips to help do it right. Of course there is no “one size fits all” answer to how to do SaaS, but there are many things which are common across companies and many things we see that… Continue reading Grow or die
So you want to kick SaaS?
SaaS is one of the most beautiful business models out there. At BVP, we have been extremely bullish on it and have probably one of the largest portfolios of SaaS companies out there. The benefit of this model also hasn’t escaped public investors which can be seen by the BVP cloud index, which tracks 38 public Cloud Computing Companies. The average company… Continue reading So you want to kick SaaS?
You don’t need a banker to build a financial model
One of the “must have” slides in a B2B startup deck is the financial projections model. There is one untold universal truth about these models- they are always wrong (the second thing in common for this part of the presentation is that the CEO always starts it with “we have taken a conservative approach…”) Now, if everyone knows that the model is wrong-… Continue reading You don’t need a banker to build a financial model
Venturing Startup Nation 