A pre-IPO listing of unicorn firms that additionally generate a number of income(!) – theinformationsuperhighway

(Editor's note: Would you like to receive this weekly review of the news that startups can use by email? Just subscribe here.)

My colleague Alex Wilhelm examined the companies that both received impressive reviews and generated recurring annual sales of around $ 100 million. These are the types of companies every savvy tech investor in the public market wants to take a closer look at, especially the type of investor who knows how to handle modern online subscription metrics. That is, the startup-oriented types who read this newsletter….

The following is not investment advice, but this week Alex added Seismic. Thought spot. Noom. risks and Movable ink to the club based on their funding history, growth metrics and their own interviews with the teams. "Maybe we're really just putting together an IPO watchlist, a group of companies that are likely to (or should) go public in the next 18 months, ”he mused on the way.

He then compiled a list of the dozen existing companies that he has covered in the past few months, forming "The $ 100M ARR Club". Read the whole thing on Extra Crunch and get ready for more coverage as the hundreds of unicorns produced in this era continue to wage public struggle.

You have more options than ever if you want to increase a starting lap today. But you need to know how to attract the right investors at the right time.

In recent years, investors have found more ways to support companies that are still finding a market-driven solution or are still figuring out how to grow. But today there are about six levels of seeds – and every investor who issues these types of checks has their own preferences within the levels. Some just have a big idea, others want to see the beginning of long-term traction.

So! Our resident former VC, Danny Crichton, has compiled the latest tips he hears from founders and early stage investors for extra crunch on the following phases of young companies:

0. Team – Deck: This can be called the "Hello World" level of a startup trip. There is at least one person who wants to build a company form, but the entire team, the product, the market and the goal are not specified at all.

1. Team + Deck: In this phase there is a guide for the startup and the founders have identified a working hypothesis for a product or at least a market that they want to address. Since there is no product, there is obviously no product market adjustment (PMF).

2. On the way to adapting to the product market: There is a real product, there are users, maybe even a bit of sales, but everything is ambiguous and the team is still experimenting and actively testing ideas around the product.

3. Product market adjustment, pre-scaling: The startup has identified and developed a product that shows clear signs of a product market adjustment, which can occur in the form of high NPS values, strong word-of-mouth marketing and excited feedback from users or other data that says that users of the product love it.

4. Towards scalable growth: There is a product that people love, but now the company has to prove that it knows how to spend money to buy growth. This means setting up marketing channels, handling growth marketing within the product itself (onboarding, sharing tools, etc.) and, if necessary, building a sales team. Many of these features have not been fully tested from the start.

5. Proven early growth: growth channels have real and positive data that are comparable to other startups.

This list focuses on financing venture-oriented companies – it will explore the booming world of alternative financing in the coming weeks. In this context, don't miss Alex Wilhelm's theinformationsuperhighway coverage this week of rising risk indebtedness.

With our Robotics + AI sessions in 2020 on the horizon at the beginning of March, we address some of the most dynamic real-world applications through our regular investor surveys.

With the worldwide shortage of housing, materials and labor as well as the introduction of new technologies in retail, construction robotics has become an important subcategory of investments. Arman Tabatabai, our internal research analyst, identified 16 of the investors most willing to issue checks to startups in this area this year and received nearly 6000 words with detailed answers to what they were looking for. Click through to learn more.

• Rohit Sharma, True Ventures
• Matt Murphy, Menlo Ventures
• Grace Ge, Menlo Ventures
• Travis Connors, construction company
• Saman Farid, Baidu Ventures
• Aaron Jacobson, New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
• Shaun Abrahamson, Urban Us
• Atin Batra, twenty-seven ventures
• Ben Bayat, NextGen Venture Partner
• Andrew Ackerman, Dreamit Ventures
• Duncan Turner, SOSV & HAX
• Zach Aarons, MetaProp VC
• Niki Pezeshki, Felicis Ventures
• Avidan Ross, Root Ventures
• Kia Nejatian, Plug & Play
• Miles Tabibian, Plug & Play

Anna Escher speaks of new popular ways to start a business and identifies a remarkable number of couples who have jointly founded successful startups at theinformationsuperhighway.

"We talked about work all the time," explains Lidia Yan from the logistics startup NEXT Trucking. "Not only in the office, but also at home." The solution she and her husband Elton Chung developed is a simple rule enforced by an iPhone alarm: all work-related calls have to be interrupted every day after 8 p.m. after the alarm. They use the time for shared side effects such as exploring local restaurants.

Previous successes by founding couples like Eventbrite and VMware have helped break the ice for investors. For example, NEXT raised nearly $ 100 million from top investors.

However, the couples with whom Escher spoke were aware of the risks (from chronic disharmony to divorce) and the compromises (from fewer trips to later starting a family).

In the course of the week

theinformationsuperhighway:

Mike Volpi on the art of board membership

Bloat portfolio: what happens to thousands of startups that don't go anywhere fast?

The FTC votes to review marketing rules and penalties for influencers

Find out about China's technological influence in America

Peru's startup scene is ready for more

Extra crunch:

Understand Airbnb's new, persistent lack of profit

4 factors to consider before entering international markets

How to promote a podcast in 2020

Meet 5 cyber security unicorns that could go public in 2020

This cooperative wants to put money back in the hands of the patients

Alex and Danny got together with Elliot Robinson, a growth-oriented partner at Bessemer. Key topics this week included rounds of funding from Headspace and Nova Credit, Battery’s new capital vehicles, why some companies need more capital for the same number of checks, and more.