Disqus - Latest Comments for shafqat

Re: Some Thoughts On Founder Liquidity

shafqat — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 09:18:18 -0000

Can you elaborate on point 9? Are these particular funds/investors that are set up to invest in secondary? Isn't the counterpoint to this simplicity -- as part of a funding round, the diligence is already done so there is no additional focus needed. If there is a separate fund that needs to be brought in to do the secondary part, that means pitching to, convincing, and then doing diligence with yet another party.

Agree with all the rest. How to time employee stock sales for early employees is a tricky subject. Is is based on tenure?

Re: Here Comes the Content Marketing Shakeout

shafqat — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 22:59:58 -0000

Great comment. A couple comments:

-We're past the "12-15M" range you quoted with small penetration (way < 30%) so far into F1000. Just shows the revenue potential there and the upside available. We will certainly be IPO ready by the time we capture 30%.

-Agree with your point about needing true technology differentiation. Search and curation is certainly one approach (that's where we started -- as a search API company!). But there is a lot of interesting technology opportunities in terms of targeting, ROI/measurement, personalization and the intersection of content marketing and marketing automation (think next gen lead nurturing/scoring deeply integrated with content). I think editorial calendaring and workflows are table stakes, and all the company banking on those types of features will be left behind.

Re: Three tips for making nostalgia work in your content

shafqat — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:34:56 -0000

This is amazing! I love the Disqus implementation.

Re: Zite incident shows why publishers need to enable automatic, controlled content distribution

shafqat — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:33:31 -0000

Great post, and completely agree with your argument. Disclaimer: the following is about my own company, but very relevant. We've spent the last two years building the syndication API you speak of - an open API, multi-source, powered by smart NLP technology and providing content providers with the reporting, tracking and auditing they need. We even take care of the billing. At this point we're serving millions of articles from hundreds of content providers.

Re: SkyGrid Unleashes Social Messaging And Aggregation Platform For Brands, Groups And Celebrities

shafqat — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:55:18 -0000

Isn't this like Ning? Or am I missing something...

Re: Confirmed: Orange acquires 49% of DailyMotion for €59 million, rest to follow

shafqat — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:32:55 -0000

Depending on the stage, different VCs came in at different valuations, so certainly the early stage investors got a better return. Even if an earlier stage VC (in this case Atlas - well done Fred!) followed through and invested pro-rata in subsequent rounds, dollar cost averaging probably means the early stage guys did well.

This is all speculation and I'm not well versed in venture financing, so please correct if I am missing something.

Re: The Top 20 VC Power Bloggers Of 2010

shafqat — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:57:16 -0000

What about Fred Destin's blog? He probably doesn't post frequently enough, but its a great read.

Re: M&A Case Studies: WhatCounts Sale Process

shafqat — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:01:10 -0000

Without disclosing financial details, can you say how you guys converged on a price? What was that process like?

Assume the price is X, how does did you guys go about figuring out your internal valuation (was there a middle case and a dream scenario?). And then how did the other side do the same? If those numbers are far apart (I guess at the LOI stage), is there a lot of time spent going back and forth?

Fred - feel free to answer this from a more generic perspective from your experience...

Re: Too Big To Fail

shafqat — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 09:48:33 -0000

Great post and love the sports analogies.

I think at the core, it really comes down to one thing: scarcity breeds innovation, and there is a natural impact on innovation once you lose that scarcity of resources. Resources can be anything: too much money, or unlimited access to so-called experts or any other variable that the funding makes available in abundance.

Examples of scarcity producing super sized results is scattered throughout history. This was especially evident in the 80s when limited computing power on chips led to real tech breakthroughs. You can even go back to the 60s when the US put a man on the moon using a computer with 2K of RAM! And the modern day example is Steve Jobs, where innovation is often about about removing features and streamlining down to the bare minimums.

Re: Twilio Raises $12 Million For Powerful Telephony API

shafqat — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:33:18 -0000

Leena - any idea if founders took any money off the table in this round?

Re: Tech World Welcomes Digg Refugees With Open Arms

shafqat — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:13:48 -0000

NewsCred is looking for information retrieval engineers - SOLR/Lucene/Java etc. If there are any at Digg or recently left Digg, please get in touch - jobs@newscred. We'll respond within an hour!

Re: Who's really funding media innovation in Europe? Answer: No one | TheMediaBriefing

shafqat — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:54:21 -0000

I'm not sure I agree with your thesis that investors aren't backing young, media companies. We raised money twice for our media venture (NewsCred). The first round was an angel round with US and European investors, and our recent series A was from top VCs in the US. There was plenty of interest, and no concerns expressed due to the sector. In fact, given such structural change in the media industry, VCs were keen to capitalize on the opportunities for disruption.

However, I do agree that fundraising in Europe is generally more difficult, as is most other aspects of startup life. Alas, we've finally given in and are relocating to NYC.

Edit: just read your comment below, and yes, pure content businesses will also find it tougher to find funding. But there are tremendous opportunities for media startups outside of pure content.

Re: Sarah Tavel / Adventurista: eCommerce RULE #2: Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) is your new pulse

shafqat — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:49:31 -0000

Great post. I would also recommend that entrepreneur's check out David Skok's blog - he has a lot of amazing resources on metrics if you're interested in the enterprise sales angle: http://www.forentrepreneurs...

Re: VCs and option pools: Now you’re swimming in the deep end

shafqat — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:26:47 -0000

For any entrepreneur confused about this or wanting to negotiate, you ABSOLUTELY MUST READ the post called Option Pool Shuffle by Nivi/Naval at VentureHacks. It saved our asses and will save yours too. Just google it.

Re: http://bsiscovick.tumblr.com/post/1036653440

shafqat — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:07:56 -0000

That's exactly how we played it initially with the two founders. In our case, our first (and most important hire) was our 'Lead Engineer', who also ninja-style programming abilities. Eventually, we made him part of the core 'founding' team. I think that's often overlooked - sometimes your first hire is so critical and his/her value to the business so profound that original founders should be prepared to make room for one more - in terms of equity and motivation/accountability. That's how we went from two to three 'founders', and it's been the best decision we've made in the company so far.

Longing for the day I have a jack-of-all-trades ops/biz/hr person to share bandwidth. Fred Wilson had a great post about what a CEO does: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/201...

Re: Commission Plans

shafqat — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:15:57 -0000

Great discussion, but I'd like to know where startups can find great salespeople who understand the "startup mentality" and don't expect huge base salaries?

Most of the salespeople we've interviewed recently with good track records expect 150-200K base, plus commission. Seriously? If that's what the market has decided a great sales guy needs to be paid, I feel like a lot of startups will be priced out. Is there a middle ground where great salespeople work for 80-120K, get aggressive commissions and enjoy the startup spirit? Where are they all hiding?

(I'm specifically talking about enterprise/software sales here, not ad sales)

Re: The Good Investor

shafqat — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:38:48 -0000

Fantastic post - we recently raised our seed round, and the smartest investor we spoke to told me: "regardless of who you go with, don't get too caught up in the financials of the round. think of it like a marriage - if you fall in love, you're not going to auction for your wife." That's exactly the philosophy we used, and we ended up with a great syndicate.

While we had better terms from a few other investors, we decided to focus on value-add (i.e. points 2-5) rather than price. For us, value-add meant putting together a team of investors based on what each brings to the table - specific domain expertise, location, technology focus, personality, recruiting network etc. While it takes work, I like the idea of deliberately putting together a team of investors just like putting together a great founding team (or team of employees): everyone should bring complementary skills to the table, and you should always strive to surround yourself with people smarter than you!

Re: Lead Investors, Dipshit Companies, and Funding Every Entrepreneur

shafqat — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:08:01 -0000

I also don't buy into the idea that not having a lead investor is supposedly good for entrepreneurs. In our most recent round, we had a 'first tenant', who is an incredible, well-respected lead investor. Once we had him in the lead, it made filling our round extremely quick and painless. More importantly, it made the term sheet negotiations, dealing with lawyers, setting a time frame for the round and other such logistical items so simple. I couldn't imagine doing the same thing without a lead, trying to herd a long list of investors (and their lawyers!).

With financing (and everything else in a startup), I think the goal should always be to reduce complexity and increase speed. Having a lead investor helps do that.

Re: Angel vs VC?

shafqat — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:30:54 -0000

Chris - I'm going to blog more thoroughly about this, but just want to chime in here. We rook a small amount of money from a large VC last year who is not able to follow on. It was 'option' money, but they did provide occasional help during the year. I just went to SF to raise a large follow on round and was quite apprehensive about the signaling issue (especially from reading your posts).

As it turns out, it was a complete non-issue. Of the 25 investors I met/called that week, I believe only one was concerned. No one else had a problem with it - in fact, it helped tremendously on a few occasions for references, social proof, connections etc (we even met some new potential investors in the office of our 'option VC'!).

So while the signaling issue is definately a concern in theory, from our experience it is theory only. In practice, it had NO negative repercussions - in fact, it helped tremendously and got us multiple term sheets in less than a week of doing the rounds with investors.

So to all other entrepreneurs I would say - it might be worth to keep the signaling issue in the back of your mind, but don't kill yourself thinking about this and especially don't turn down great VCs in those early stage rounds if you don't have options. I would go as far to say it can actually help. Your mileage may vary etc.

Re: Stop shitting on Wall Street

shafqat — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:30:09 -0000

Great post. Let me chime in with my thoughts as an entrepreneur who worked 7 years on Wall Street. Note that I was doing tech within a large Wall St institution, not banking (although the shitting you speak of is usually aimed at ALL roles within Wall Street, so I hope this is relevant).

I don't think I would be in a position to build a successful business without those years in Wall Street. Simple as that. Of course, your mileage may vary, but for me, the things I learned in my corporate job were incredibly valuable and I use those skills daily. From understanding finance, to managing projects and resource planning, to managing and inspiring teams. Some of it may sound boring, but as a startup grows from two guys in a garage to a real business, you need to to evolve. Putting in place some discipline or process does not need to slow you down. In fact, it can help you get further, faster.

Bottom line - I owe a tremendous amount to my experience on Wall Street. At the same time, I'm glad I'm out and couldn't imagine doing anything else but startups and building businesses!

Hope to meet you soon Ben ;-)

Re: Terms, Term Sheets, and Terminal Value

shafqat — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:05:38 -0000

We just raised our round last week, and two pieces of advice that I followed helped tremendously:

-Finding a great VC is like getting married (with no divorce option), so don't bicker on the smaller terms or even try to squeeze every penny out of the valuation. When you're in love, you don't auction for your wife. Treat this the same way.

-Negotiation of terms is part of relationship building.

I kept both of these points in mind, and ended up with the best investor out of the lot that we met.

Finally, the tips in Nivi's option pool shuffle post actually works!

Re: Raising Money During The Summer Slowdown

shafqat — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:13:48 -0000

Just to add some real data from an entrepreneur's perspective: I am wrapping a weeklong fundraising trip to SF today. I was able to meet or take calls with 25+ investors. So Fred is right - the notion that everyone is away or VCs shut up shop is just a myth (one that I also feared prior to my trip). I did not have a problem reaching a single investor/firm, and if there were ever vacations in the schedule, often another partner would step up to speed things up. Contrary to popular belief, it seems like investors actually do care about entrepreneurs ;-)

Re: Read This Dow Jones Reply To A Licensing Request—And Weep | paidContent

shafqat — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:29:32 -0000

@Steven - not sure if you read the full article, but:

-It wasn't a form letter. We had a client that was specifically interested in licensing PE News content and we were ready to PAY for it.

-We were NOT asking for permission to aggregate their content and display it on any portal or aggregator. It was a specific request for a private client site.

-The point was not that they said no to the licensing request. They are absolutely within their rights to do that (although it's contrary to the strategy mentioned by their execs). The point is to highlight their protectionist response saying "no links, no mentions, no excerpts" etc. Since then they have backtracked somewhat to a more sensible position.

-FYI, our company strategy, thankfully, does not depend on licensing Dow Jones content. We license content from countless other sources without any issues, and we also broker deals on our clients' behalf. We're in the business of helping publisher's with their content strategy and often it involves licensing content, which we try to help with. Simple as that.

Re: This Week in VC Episode 6 with @Jason Calacanis: Best One Yet

shafqat — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:13:55 -0000

Thanks for talking about Criteo (that's the one I wanted to hear about). I wonder why there aren't more of these retargeting companies popping up. There doesn't seem to be a huge technology barrier (persistent cookies) and if these guys are really minting money, I would have expected to see lots of competitors/clones. Thoughts?

Re: From Hopes and Dreams to The Real Thing

shafqat — Wed, 12 May 2010 09:03:06 -0000

Great post, and equally inspiring comment from Elie.

This resonates with me on so many levels. We started my current company in 2007. A year in, we realized we were seduced by the Web 2.0 bubble and our consumer facing startup wasn't going to grow into a profitable business. We pivoted the company completely and transformed into a B2B company and raised a seed round in late 2008. That was tough, especially giving up the original dream. But what kept us going was that our new B2B model still inspired us and gave us a larger purpose (i.e. we were able to regroup around a strong, refocused vision).

2009 was supposed to be year that we built the product, grew our team and killed it with sales. We did well in the first two, but B2B ales were hard. Really fuckin hard, and the stress of missing targets and the pressure of having investors was getting to all of us. But we kept chugging along, doing whatever it took to survive. Fast forward to 2010, and we are now cashflow positive, close to product-market-fit, expanding and finally emerging from those dark days.

If and when we make it, I will always look back fondly at 2009 and the early part of this year. We could have given up so many times. We should be out of business. But somehow we fought, and despite the stress/depression/gloom, I will probably look back and see these as the best days of my life.

Sorry for the long post, but as they say: entrepreneurship is a beautiful struggle.