2. Dave McClureâ¨
Founding Partner, 500 Startups
00âs & 10âs:
⢠VC: Founders Fund, Facebook fbFund, 500 Startups
⢠Angel: Mashery, Mint.com, SlideShare, Twilio, Wildfire, SendGrid
⢠Marketing: PayPal, Simply Hired, Mint.com, OâReilly
80âs & 90âs:
⢠Entrepreneur: Aslan Computing (acqâd by Servinet/Panurgy)
⢠Developer: Windows / SQL DB consultant (Intel, MSFT)
⢠Engineer: Johns Hopkinsâ88, BS Eng / Applied Math
3. ⢠What is 500?
â $250M global seed fund + startup accelerator
â 130 people / 25 languages / 20 countries
â 1700+ Companies / 3500+ Founders / 250+ Mentors
â Investment, Accelerator, Distro, Marketing, Events, Education
â Community + Content + Conferences
⢠1700+ Coâs / 60+ Countries
â Twilio (NYSE: TWLO)
â Credit Karma
â Grab (aka GrabTaxi)
â Wildfire (acq GOOG, $350M)
â MakerBot (acq SSYS, $400M)
â Viki (acq Rakuten, $200M)
â Behance (acq Adobe, $150M)
â Simple (acq BBVA, $117M)
â Sunrise (acq MSFT, $100M)
â Udemy
â Ipsy
â TalkDesk
â Intercom
500 Startupsâ¨
Global Seed Fund & Startup Accelerator
4. 500 Strategy: Lots of Little Bets*
1) make lots of little
bets on early-stage
startups when theyâre
just getting started
3) wait 5-10 years for returns:
-10-20% small exits @1-5X ($5-25M+)
-5-10% larger exits @5-20X ($25-250M+)
-1-2% unicorns @20-50X+ ($250M-1B+)
*See Peter Sims book: âLittle Betsâ
2) over the next five years,
double-down on top 20-30%
~500 coâs @ $100K 1st checks
100+ coâs @ $200-500K
2nd/3rd checks
(hope for a few big exits @
$100M-$1B+)
(assume high failure rate ~50-80%)
5. Old Startups vs. New Startupsâ¨
LEAN Startup: Simpler, Faster, Cheaper, Smarter
1996
âBig, Fat Startupâ
⢠Sun Servers
⢠Oracle DB
⢠Exodus Hosting
⢠12-24mo dev cycle
⢠6-18mo sales cycle
⢠<100M people online
⢠$1-2M seed round
⢠$3-5M Series A
⢠Sand Hill Road crawl
2016
âLean, Little Startupâ
⢠AWS, Google, PayPal, FB, TW
⢠Cloud + Open Source SW
⢠Lean Startup / Startup Wknd
⢠3-90d dev cycle
⢠SaaS / online sales
⢠>3B people online
⢠<$100K incub + <$1M seed
⢠$1-3M Series A
⢠Angel List global visibility
7. The Lean Investor
Make lots of little bets:
⢠Start with many small âexperimentsâ
⢠Filter out failures + small wins
⢠Double-down on stuff that looks like itâs working
⢠Incubation: $0-100K (âBuild & Validate Productâ)
⢠Seed: $100K-$1M (âTest & Grow Marketing Channelsââ)
⢠Venture: $1M-$10M (âMaximize Growth & Revenueâ)
22. The âSeries B Snipeâ
(aka Stealing Baby Unicorns)
Seed Series A
Series B/
C
Late Stage /
Unicorn
Driver Team Product Customers Business
Cost 1X 10X 100X 1000X
Risk
Very
High
High Medium Low
Size /
Ppl
1-10 10-50 50-200 500-1000