Exit Strategy, Hiring, Leadership, PodcastsPhil Fernandez is a Silicon Valley veteran, with more than 35 years of experience building and leading breakout technology companies. Phil co-founded Marketo in 2006 and led the company as…
Continue Reading
Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AMuch better the first time than the second. The first time we sold, I had far exceeded any expectations I had as a founder. First, I barely believed I could…
Continue Reading
I was just with a founder who owns 40% of his startup. He just turned down an offer for $500,000,000 to sell his startup to a public company. He is…
Continue Reading
Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AAt least for me, it felt great for about a day. Big bottles of champagne, recognition “we did it”, etc. IPO’ing truly is one of the most iconic Silicon Valley…
Continue Reading
It seems like a pretty good deal for Recruit Holdings, and market correct. If Glassdoor was at about ~$100m ARR growing 30% a year (suggested by press, but I have…
Continue Reading
Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AYou’ll know. First, and more importantly, bear in mind good acquisition offers are rare. Most start-ups never get a decent one. So the idea you can wake up one day…
Continue Reading
Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AAlways hire a banker if you can. Yes, it will seem expensive, especially on a smaller deal. And yes, they almost never will bring a great second offer in with…
Continue Reading
Exactly what you’d expect — the round size, price, or both are cut. It is a bummer. But — it has happened to some very good companies. Like Google: An…
Continue Reading
It’s hard to know. Being CEO is a very, very hard job. It’s constant 24×7 and you never get a break. A chance to sell late stage and make tens…
Continue Reading
Customer Success, Exit Strategy, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Scale, VideosIn this session, Marc Bodnick, former Business and Community Leader at Quora, sits down with longtime friend Tom Chavez, Co-Founder and CEO of Krux, to get the inside story of…
Continue Reading
Blog Posts, Exit, Exit Strategy, FundraisingA few times a week, I am sent a deck or exec summary that includes an “Exit Strategy”. The slide sometimes references a nice acquisition by an adjacent company, or…
Continue Reading
Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, PodcastsWelcome to Episode 151! Jyoti Bansal is the former Founder & CEO of AppDynamics, backed by the likes of Lightspeed, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins, just to name a few, before…
Continue Reading
Having been through the acquisition process 4x — twice as a founder, twice as a start-up exec, here’s my list of when and if to sell. Don’t take it literally. …
Continue Reading
BusinessInsider had a great story this week on Datto’s $1b reported exit to Vista Private Equity (more on the new role of PE in SaaS here). So much of it…
Continue Reading
Early, Exit Strategy, Fundraising, Leadership, Q&AI think this is a bit misunderstood. A cap is a price, well at least it’s sort of a price. And the market sets the price. It is what it…
Continue Reading