sutton020

[Update 03/23/16: I've created an improved version of the template - check it out! ] A few people who read my recent post about financial planning  asked if I could provide an example for a good financial plan, so I'd like to post one here. The plan is very similar to the one that I created in the very early days at Zendesk and re-used a few times in the meantime, but I had to make a few adjustments to make it more generic. It's a simple plan for an early-stage SaaS startup with a low-touch sales model – a company which markets a SaaS solution via its website, offers a 30 day free trial, gets most of its trial users organically and through online marketing and converts them into paying customer with very little human interaction. Therefore the key drivers of my imaginary startup are organic growth rate, marketing budget and customer acquisition costs, conversion rate, ARPU and churn rate. If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is la...

I just created a slide about the development of Point Nine Capital for a little company presentation and thought it might be useful if I posted it here as well to give everyone some information on where we're at and how we got there: In 2008, Lukasz Gadowski – who almost everyone in the German Web startup scene knows because he built or helped build some of Europe's biggest Internet success stories, e.g. Spreadshirt , studiVZ and brands4friends – and Kolja Hebenstreit teamed up with Pawel Chudzinski and Steffen Hoellinger to create Team Europe Ventures (TEV). TEV had two purposes: Building companies and investing in other Internet startups. Since then, TEV has founded a number of highly successful Internet companies – DeliveryHero , DigitaleSeiten , ChicChickClub , madvertise and SponsorPay , to name just a few. In 2009 TEV raised a ~ €6M fund, which was managed by Pawel and invested in 24 companies. 16 out of these 24 companies were co-investments with myself, some led...

We're looking for an intern – a great opportunity for a young, super-smart over-performer to get an inside view of an early-stage VC in Berlin. :-) I'm reposting our job ad here: * * * * * We offer a three month paid internship, starting middle of April or beginning of May at our office in Berlin. What you do: Support evaluating the dealflow; give us your opinion on >100 business ideas and plans per month; find the one we should invest in. Do networking; meet people and founders. Screen new markets; find hidden champions; be faster than the rest. Dig deep into topics; help with research; find answers for questions we have not asked yet.  Help us run operations more efficiently. What we offer: Insights how a venture capital firm works. Steep learning curve; small team; much responsibility if you can earn it. Access to our network: our portfolio companies as well as Team Europe (Company Building), iPotentials (HR), Gruenderszene & Venture Village (media). Berlin, the upco...

In the last few years I've seen a lot of financial plans, and since we started Point Nine in the middle of last year that volume has been skyrocketing. I've seen everything from just a few numbers in an email to extremely sophisticated Excel spreadsheets with dozens of tabs and tens of thousands of cells, and I thought I'd offer some advice on what I think a good financial plan looks like. To begin with, among the worst financial plans are those that you get if you take a template from a business plan competition or a bank in Germany and don't customize it to your particular business. These templates are usually very detailed on the costs side, listing everything from magazine subscriptions to stationary and postage, but the revenue projection is just one line – a pure estimate that is coming out of nowhere. Parkinson's Law of Triviality comes to mind! The best financial plans of early-stage Internet startups in my opinion: are relatively simple – just one Excel...