From $100k to $1 Million: How to Minimize Ownership Dilution

If you have managed to get past $100k in revenue, that tells me that you have some sense of who your customers are, why they are buying what you have to offer, and how to sell to this customer base. This may also be a time when you are starting to consider your first funding

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 7)

SM: I often tell entrepreneurs to bootstrap the early stage, and if they do raise money it should result in a better valuation. They have a validated business. Did you find that to be the case during your valuation negotiations? CC: We are a great example of bootstrapping paying off. In Q3 2004 we raised

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 6)

SM: How did you find your initial customers? CC: We used things like cold calls, Silicon Valley networking, and friends of friends. When you’re starting from nothing, you do whatever it takes. I was talking to anyone who would listen. I networked heavily, got friends to send me ideas, and went to alumni databases.

How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 5)

SM: What does the financial structure of a business spun out of Stanford look like? Do they take an equity position? CC: I get that question a lot, and I can’t comment directly because each case is unique. The thing to remember about Stanford is that they license more than startups. They license a lot

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 4)

SM: Your previous work experience gave you an actual user’s point of view. You are solving a problem you faced earlier in your life. CC: Exactly. Even within the world of information visualization, there many different schools of thought, and I learned about many of those in my first job.

How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 3)

SM: Essentially, you are doing drag-and-drop query-building using graphics. Internally, that query is being translated into some sort of SQL which is processed and transferred back into graphics for the user. Is that a correct assessment? CC: Yes that’s right. The language from which we are retrieving data could be anything. You can expose any

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 2)

SM: How long did it take you to build and flip BeeLine, and what did you do after that? CC: It took about 18 months. Even to this day I’ll look over at a stoplight and see one of our maps, which is very satisfying. A month after we sold BeeLine we had a party

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 1)

Christian Chabot is CEO and co-founder of Tableau Software. Prior to Tableau he was an associate partner at Softbank Venture Capital, where he specialized in enterprise applications. Before Softbank, Christian was CEO and co-founder of BeeLine Software, which was acquired by Vicinity Corporation. Christian started his career as a data analyst at Cornerstone Research, an

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