rocket ship talk deck
TRANSCRIPT
GOAL OF PRESENTATION
Be able to identify a rocket ship in either the business to consumer space or the business to business space
Knowing the best time to join a rocket ship The advantages and disadvantages of joining
a rocket ship depending on the stage of company
The key roles in B2B or B2C companies Resources to help identify rocket ship
companies and opportunities
WHAT IS A ROCKET SHIP?
A rocket ship is a company that is seeing hockey stick growth year over year in revenue, users, clients or mind share
Rocket ships are not exclusively tech startups they can be any company that is growing really fast
My following examples will be Slack, Snapchat, Uber and Meridian Health Plan
SLACK
• Founded by Stewart Butterfield • Founding Year: 2009 (Slack incubated and launched
March 2013)• Story: Started as a video game company but then
pivoted to a team based communication platform because they were going to run out of money before they could create the game • Location: San Francisco• Total Funding: 540M• Valuation: 3.8B• Industry: Enterprise Software
SNAP INC (SNAPCHAT)
• Founded by Evan Spiegel & Bobby Murphy• Founding Year: July 2011• Location: Venice, CA• Total Funding: 3.4B • Market Cap: 32B• Industry: Consumer Software
UBER
• Founded by Travis Kalanick & Garrett Camp• Founding Year: March 2009• Location: San Francisco • Total Funding: 8.8B• Valuation: 62.5B• Industry: Public Transportation
MERIDIAN HEALTH PLAN
• Founded by David Cotton • Founding Year: 1997• Location: Detroit, MI• Total Funding: N/A• Valuation: N/A• Industry: Healthcare
EARLY STAGE (SEED/SERIES A)
• Early Stage(Seed/Series A):• Positives: Lots of room to touch a lot of different functions,
you can see the work you are doing come to life and impact the company at its most vulnerable stage of growth social capital gain of being part of the founding team • Negatives: Low Salary, so for those who are carrying
heavy debt loads (outside of student loans) that need to be attended to this stage of company may not work for your life, Still possible for the company to fail as they are still trying to reach key milestones for follow on funding
MID-STAGE (SERIES B/SERIES C)
• Mid Stage (Series B/Series C)• Positives: This is the growth stage of startups
so you will have lots of room to tackle new opportunities, fast track to leadership, social capital gain for joining the company pre acquisition or pre IPO• Negatives: Options are worth less due to
more capital being infused and shares being bought
LATE STAGE (SERIES D+)
• Late Stage(Series D+)• Positives: Market Salary, Stable so you do not
have to worry about the company failing, Name Recognition • Negatives : Not a lot of chance to touch a lot
of functions since processes have been put in place and the company is prepping for acquisition or IPO
SEATS IN THE SHIP: B2C COMPANY
• Product • Engineering • Design • User Acquisition/Growth• Marketing
RESOURCES TO SPOT A ROCKETSHIP
• Crunchbase- Use for recent funding rounds and valuations and team information • Mattermark- Use to learn about macro trends
driving the tech industry • Glassdoor- Salary Information • Angelist- Hiring Platform for startup jobs• The Muse- Hiring Platform for startup jobs• Techcrunch- Tech news site • Techmeme- Tech news site