Too much capital may seem like a problem every company would like to have, but there can be drawbacks associated with a high level of capital. If your company only has a few hundred thousand in the bank, odds are that your company and leadership will be intensely focused on revenue. But if you raise […]
Category Archives: Tips and Thoughts
For educational companies aiming for the best possible valuation, it is critical to demonstrate a sustainable income stream that is scalable, defensible and predictable. In fact, we see about a 30 to 50% premium on the valuation of companies that can sell in this way. How does a company show a scalable, defensible and predictable […]
17
May
May
Arc is often asked our recommendations for best utilizing a limited marketing budget. When you have a limited sales and marketing budget (in the $4k range), it is critical to make sure you thoroughly understand your company’s goals and how to direct that money to meet your goals. With that said, here are a few […]
12
Mar
Mar
BY: P.H. MULLEN, JR. Last week, I moderated an amazing edtech panel at the 2016 Venture Summit West at the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto. Here’s what I said: We’re not in a bubble; we’re in a long-term business shift. It’s a usage shift. It’s a benefit shift. These adjustments are lasting and profound. Like […]
With the last quarter of 2015 already here, it’s time to turn thoughts toward 2016 and how to best control your sales process. Going into the new year, you need to ensure you have a solid pipeline of qualified leads. If you’re selling a product or service for more than $5000, it’s very likely that […]
Typically, you can have a fair amount of success in charging, (to simplify things), $1 a year for 5 years if you know they have $5 from the beginning. With stimulus funding, however, that $5 will not last. Though an initial thought might be to ask for the $5 upfront and hope you can get […]
This week, I talked to five CEOs. I met another dozen at the GSV Investor Day. Everyone is juggling 10,001 summertime Must-Dos. It looks like chaos. But it’s not. domain name test These priorities are the same for everyone, and somewhere on that priority whiteboard is “Marketing.” Based on company lifecycle, it’s either at the […]
Over the last 24 months, it was hard to find an aspiring entrepreneur who did not start their pitch with “free to teacher” model. Unfortunately, it is also hard to find a company for which this model actually worked. We can point to hundreds of casualties: entrepreneurs who used their scarce resources to build free […]
When you are assessing the overall health of your company, the sales pipeline is a critical place to start. When Arc looks at a sales pipeline, we measure two things. We look at each deal and where it is in relationship to the ability to close the deal – not the probability of closing, but […]
In 2015, there is little argument about the merits of having a diverse board of directors – including the fact that companies with at least one woman on their board had better returns than companies with none, as this Bloomberg editorial points out. Yet the percentage of women on boards continues to lag significantly, with […]