<story><title>Why We Said “No” to a $40M Round</title><url>https://blog.parse.ly/post/6282/why-we-said-no-vc-money/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>andrewstuart</author><text>Just a UX comment .... often one of the key values of a blog is to draw people to your website to find out about your product&amp;#x2F;service.&lt;p&gt;For me, the typical flow is to go to blog and click on the logo at the top.&lt;p&gt;For the optimum marketing outcome, the top logo links to your main website.&lt;p&gt;In this case, the top logo links back to the blog.  This site possibly lost the marketing opportunity because now I have to go to the trouble of clicking in the URL and changing it to www from blog.  Might not sound like much but I think some people are willing to spend a few seconds having a look at something if it is incredibly easy to do so, but can&amp;#x27;t be bothered to make it happen if it requires anything more than a click.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why We Said “No” to a $40M Round</title><url>https://blog.parse.ly/post/6282/why-we-said-no-vc-money/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bkanber</author><text>Modern guidelines for valuing a tech company in an M&amp;amp;A:&lt;p&gt;- The technology asset is worth $3-5M, no matter what it is.&lt;p&gt;- Higher AWS bill = better product.&lt;p&gt;- EBITDA is not important, you can ignore that.&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the QoQ revenue growth for the last 8 quarters? Doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if margins are going down. Only revenue growth matters.&lt;p&gt;- More employees = better company. Obviously.&lt;p&gt;- Valuation should be directly proportional to venture capital raised.&lt;p&gt;- You have a remote engineering team in the US? Why not go offshore or nearshore?&lt;p&gt;- Make sure it&amp;#x27;s an asset deal, not a stock deal, so that you can write it off but the founders get double-taxed.&lt;p&gt;- Design earnouts such that they are unachievable.</text></comment>