Capital efficiency on the way to IPO

It makes sense to me that many IPO candidates are B2B companies. The picks-and-shovels companies versus the gold-miners. But what stood out to me in this article is this nugget:

"While its true that it has become easier to start a company on very little money, the average amount raised by companies in CB Insights' report is $84.7 million."

As I pointed out in my "Bootstrap or VC?" post, we raised around $24 million and had around $12 million left in the bank when we went public. You can build a better culture if you are capital efficient, and also have a bigger economic ripple effect. I'll write more on that some other time, but for now I'm proud we were able to scale 75% more efficiently, on average, on our own path to IPO.

A very bad trend for Microsoft

This just cannot be good for Microsoft. I don't see how this turns around. Windows 8 and the Surface are just not getting the traction expected to maintain their monopoly. For entrepreneurs, though, this creates a lot of opportunity. It also does for Apple, Amazon, and Google, of course.

One of my favorite books is The Innovator's Dilemma and here it is in action again. I consider this a must read for entrepreneurs. It will give you the confidence to go from a perspective of "that's already been done before" to "that's already been done before and can be disrupted because of the dependency on the old order" (Who Moved My Cheese?).

Here is the full article.

Bootstrap or VC?

I'll explain why I named my blog Lucky7 on a later post and why I started blogging in this new phase of my life, as an entrepreneur now dedicated to helping other entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. For now, I woke up around 4:30am today thinking about the roots of Bazaarvoice, what I want to teach entrepreneurs, and the debates I used to have with a group that I am indebted to - Bootstrap Austin, started by Bijoy Goswami. The original Bootstrap Austin was truly special and Bijoy did an amazing job bringing together some terrific entrepreneurs. It was there that I met Eric Simone (one of the first investors in Bazaarvoice) as well as Josh Baer (one of the first investors in Bazaarvoice through his team building our first solution and getting paid primarily in equity versus cash).