Rules Of Thumbs

A good rule of thumb for an appropriate start-up burn rate is about $100,000 per month.  For example, a web-based startup should be able to operate for one year if they raise a $1 million dollar angel round.  This will equate to approximately 3 founders at the time of the equity raise, to hiring 7 people for a total of 10 people at the end of 1 year.  The cash will be burned on the salaries and operating expenses of the startup and should provide enough runway to eliminate some of the initial market and technical risks so that the startup can raise a venture round at a favorable valuation.

Most large corporations require approximately 9 months to identify an acquisition target.  Once a corporation has defined its strategy and identified a target area for acquisition, it typically takes about 9 months to identify the players in the space, conduct preliminary due diligence, gain necessary internal approvals, and negotiate an LOI (letter of intent).  Once the LOI has been signed by both parties, it will usually take 1-2 months to complete due diligence and negotiations so that a Definitive Agreement can be executed.  Including this time, a corporation may take as long as a 1 year to complete an acquisition.

In general, if you don’t go to a top tier business school, it is not worth quitting your job to go.  You should instead go to an executive MBA program to get your degree or do an online program for your business degree. 

A product or service needs to have an Average Selling Price (ASP) of at least $200,000 to justify a direct sales force.  Anything less than $200k needs to be sold via partners, channels, or inside sales.   This should be helpful in developing business models for start-up companies, particularly in the enterprise software space.

On average, corporations overestimate their revenue forecasts by 37%.  This is according to a study by Mankins & Steele, Harvard Business Review (HBR), August 2005. 

For a myriad of complex legal reasons, Limited Partners require General Partners to contribute their own capital into their venture capital fund.  While this amount can vary, the vast majority of the time GPs need to contribute 1% of the committed capital with LPs contributing the remaining 99%.   Thus the 99/1 rule. 

The depth of an venture capitalist or private equity investor’s “J curve” is typically 3 years.   In good times (such as 1999) it can be as short as 1 year.   In bad times (such as 2002) it can be as long as 5 years…or infinite. A “J curve” is the graphical representation of the value of a portfolio of illiquid investments over time.  For example, in the first years of a venture capital firm’s new fund, they are deploying capital at cost and collecting management fees.  Therefore, until they have a reason to write up the value of their investments (follow-on funding at higher valuations) or a liquidity event, the value of their fund is lower than the capital contributed.   So, the depth or length of the “j curve” is the length of time that a funds value is less than the capital contributed.

As a general rule, firms will only raise an inside investmetn round if they cannot raise an outside round.  An inside round means that the entreprenuer only raises capital from the investors in the previous round.  This situation raises a serious conflict of interest around the valuation of the round since there is not any objective 3rd party to set the new valuation. 

Fund of Funds typically receive a 1% management fee and 5% carry (or carried interest).   Since funds of funds are much more scalable than a direct investment fund, they can charge a lower management fee and carry and make up the difference by quickly deploying the committed capital and raising another fund.  This allows them to quickly amass a large amount of capital under management and thus earn significant management fees.

The General Partnership (GP) of a venture capital fund typically receive to types of fees for their investment services:

• A 20% carried interest.  This means they receive 20% of all of the capital gains on the funds they invest.  Typically they must repay all of the contributed capital or they may be forced to pay this carried interest back to the Limited Partners (LP), this is known as a “claw-back”
• A 2.5% management fee.  This fee is charged on all COMMITTED capital, regardless of whether or not it has been invested yet.