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Milk Money for Meebo.com

Here’s something that I highly recommend y’all read:

“milk money…” - parts I, II, & III


It’s an amazingly detailed and honest account of the fund-raising process from someone who raised the money just over a month ago - in December 2005!

One thing that’s not mentioned in the story is the amount raised from Sequoia. I know it’s $3.5 million- straight from the horse’s mouth.

So let’s do the numbers.

$3.5M in Series ‘A’ means anywhere between 20% to 40 % stake was given away, based on how much leverage each party had.

Note that regardless of leverage, any experienced VC will typically want to own *not more than* 40% and *not less than* 20%, “post-money”. [VCs taking more than 40% drastically reduces the founders’ feeling of ownership and thus, their incentive to succeed. Taking less than 20% would mean the VCs will spend very little time or effort on this company- instead choosing to focus on the other companies in their portfolio where they have a greater “interest”.]

... continued in "Startup Valuation: Meebo.com"
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