The Million Dollar Club: Introduction

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course.

I had two conversations last week, each of which reinforces a simple phenomenon that I have constantly emphasized over the last five years in my writings.

On Wednesday, I had lunch with Brian Jacobs, General Partner at Emergence Capital. We were discussing our respective startup portfolios, and Brian mentioned that his firm’s preferred stage for investment is when a company has about a million dollars in revenues. Presumably, at that point, the experimentation with product, business model, pricing model, customer acquisition strategy, cost of conversion, and other key issues have settled down. That means, a cash infusion of, say, $7 million will result in a somewhat predictable set of outcomes. Most importantly, the fresh cash would accelerate customer acquisition, and hence revenues.

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Series A Crunch: How 1M/1M Can Help

If you have the stomach for it, the metal to carry on, the energy to bootstrap to a point where either you CAN get funded, or generate enough revenues and become profitable, we can help.

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Series A Crunch: Bootstrapping Works

Just because you have been rejected by VCs doesn’t mean you cannot build a great business.

Marc Benioff was rejected by pretty much ALL the VCs he approached. Didn’t stop him from building Salesforce.com into a multi billion dollar enterprise with global impact.

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Series A Crunch: Forget Freemium

What is your business model? Do you have one, or is it TBD?

Is it Freemium?

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Series A Crunch: Obsession With Exit

Do you know the difference between a business model and an exit strategy?

Are you building a business that has a real, viable business model?

Or are you trying to do an Instagram?

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Series A Crunch: Tyranny of the TAM

What is TAM? Perhaps, the biggest factor in whether a VC funds you or not. TAM = Total Available Market.

Note: Top Down TAM doesn’t matter. You need to present a Bottom-Up TAM Analysis.

And to get funded, that TAM needs to be very large. Billion. Two billion. Ten billion.

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Series A Crunch: Revenue vs. Equity

Do you understand the impact of infusing cash into your business? You do, right?

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Series A Crunch: Customers vs. Investors

What have you been doing for the last six months? Chasing customers? Chasing Investors?

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