The Equity Kicker

Why VCs don’t value companies by discounting cash flows

Last week as part of our 50 Questions series I wrote about how VCs value businesses by working back from expected exit values, using various industry rules of thumb and responding to market dynamics (hotness of deal and market). In the comments Senith asked why we don’t use discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis which [...]

Technology augmented human capability

Last week Robert Scoble took a tour of SRI International a research lab which looks at how technology can be used to augment our human capabilities. I think this is going to be a big trend over the next ten years or so, although it has yet to really get started. SRI has spun [...]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-03-06

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-02-27 http://goo.gl/fb/PL4Su # Google may be getting its mojo back http://goo.gl/fb/8PF9D # Marketing, startups and the importance of achieving a lot with a little (for startups) http://goo.gl/fb/hPmYd # How does a VC value a business? http://goo.gl/fb/uTrcF # I'm on a panel on April 9 discussing Kurzweil's Transcendent Man which [...]

How does a VC value a business?

Thirteenth in a series of weekly posts by myself and Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief which answer the fifty questions you should ask before raising venture capital. We expect the series to run for a year after which we will collate the posts into a book. You can find the rationale behind the series here, [...]

Marketing, startups and the importance of achieving a lot with a little (for startups)

Over the weekend I was talking with an early stage VC about how much traction he likes to see in a company before he invests (answer: enough to have some confidence that the product works, the go to market works and there is some demand). Subsequently I was thinking through how companies would get [...]