It’s been said many times that accepting an investment from a VC is like getting married to them.  In general that’s a reference to the fact that you’ll be “courting” each other, getting hitched, and then spending a lot of time together.  All of this is true, but, unlike VC’s and investments, few love-struck couples think [...]

I’ve had to attach the PDF for this post here   ARPU — couldn’t get Word tables to paste into WordPress. /d

Another day another topic, or so it seems.  This time Gross Margin and SaaS. If you’re selling a product with a one-time price, revenue is easy to determine – it’s basically the sales price. The Gross Margin (a financial metric that is very meaningful in real products – like washing machines or routers) is defined [...]

There have been a few questions floating around recently regarding pricing, and much of the information available on the web is either way too academic or downright stupid, so I thought it was time to answer them all at once.  I’ve never come across a methodology for pricing, rigorous or otherwise, so this is a [...]

I’ve been deep into looking at convertible loans and option pools, and their impact on cap tables, dilutions and valuations.  The difference between an investment round and a round with converting convertibles or anti-diluting option pools, is the equivalence of the difference between Newton’s predicts of planetary orbit and Einstein’s.  Its FAR too complicated and anal [...]

It seems like there’s some difficulty getting started on a “pitch” so here’s a suggestion. Rather than suggest another “template”, think about your pitch as “telling your story”.  Every business is unique – at least in some aspect – so there’s no “one-size-fits-all” template that is the best vehicle for telling your story.  However, the [...]

Market Analysis This area of business planning is always a quagmire of terms and definitions, but it’s not difficult if you step through it slowly and deliberately. Ultimately a market is the interception of a product with a number of buyers – and exchange of value. And ultimately a market is just the prioritization of [...]

I’m toying with the idea of putting on two “Sales Survival” seminars.  Part 1 Sales and Part 2 Sales Management. The objective would be to give some basic structure to the selling processing (sales script, process, objectives, closing)  and managing those that sell (sales cycle, pipeline management, forecasting).  It will also need to be generic in [...]

This has come up on three different occasions in the past two weeks, so a brief overview …. You can raise money for your business from getting an investment (equity) or taking a loan (debt).  Each is fairly clear. With an investment, you sell equity in your business and the investor gets his/her return when the shares [...]

1381 The tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance. 1648 The first witch is hanged in Boston. 1775 The birth of the US Army. 1777 The Stars and Stripes is adopted as the US flag. 1789 The mutiny on the Bounty survivors arrive on Timor. 1807 Napoleon defeats the Russian army. [...]