Two years ago one of the most successful software investors in the country told me he’d never sell a SaaS business that was growing 20% per year, especially if it looked like it would grow that way indefinitely. Last month, another extremely successful investor said he just wants to invest in great companies that grow 20% per year, and doesn’t like the current mentality of growth at all costs. Clearly, there’s something more experienced investors see that isn’t appreciated enough: the power of compounding.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:

$10 million revenue start

• Year 1 – $12 million
• Year 2 – $14.4 million
• Year 3 – $17.3 million
• Year 4 – $20.7 million
• Year 5 – $24.9 million
• Year 6 – $29.9 million
• Year 7 – $35.8 million
• Year 8 – $43 million
• Year 9 – $51.6 million
• Year 10 – $61.9 million

$100 million revenue start

• Year 1 – $120 million
• Year 2 – $144 million
• Year 3 – $173 million
• Year 4 – $207 million
• Year 5 – $249 million
• Year 6 – $299 million
• Year 7 – $358 million
• Year 8 – $430 million
• Year 9 – $516 million
• Year 10 – $619 million

Growing revenue 20% per year for 10 years results in a 5x overall growth — the compounding effect is impressive, especially in the later years. When looking at these examples, it’s clear that growing much faster in the early years is necessary to get to a larger base by the time the 20% annual growth years set in.

Now, thinking in terms of SaaS, there’s a secret weapon that can make this compounding revenue phenomenon even more attainable: positive net dollar retention. Net dollar retention is the revenue renewal amount plus upsell/cross sell minus churned revenue. Put another way, ensure that existing customers buy more product than the amount non-renewing customers stop spending so that that the business grows forever, without signing a new customer. If you can grow new customer revenue 10% per year organically, and 10% per year with net dollar retention, that’s 20% growth. Now, do that for 10 years and you’ve quintupled the business.

Compounding is hard to appreciate for most people, especially many years out in the future. Build a business that grows fast to some level of scale, and work on the underlying fundamentals to compound revenue 20% per year indefinitely.

Last week’s post Revenue Financing + Traditional Equity as the Future of Startup Funding struck a nerve and resulted in a number of comments and questions. Generally, the big idea is that most regions have sub-standard angel communities because the angels don’t make money on their investments. Without regular, positive returns, angels drop out and the community is constantly treading water. The idea for a revenue financing component is to recycle money back into the community sooner — ideally in less than five years as opposed to today’s 7-10+ years — so that angels have a good experience and stay active.

Revenue financing plus traditional equity prompted a number of questions. The big question: how might it work? Here’s a hypothetical example:

• Angels invest $500,000 into a seed round at a $3.5M pre-money valuation ($4M post-money valuation after the new investment is included)
• When the startup hits $4M in trailing twelve months revenue (the initial seed valuation becomes the revenue target), ideally within five years (that’s what the entrepreneur’s projections said!), the startup pays the original seed investors back, plus 20%, over the next 18 months (paid monthly as a percentage of revenue)
• The 1.2x returned to the seed investors becomes similar to negative participating preferred equity whereby that amount is deducted from the investor proceeds at time of exit

Now, 99% of all tech startups never achieve $1M in sales in a calendar year, so most startups, even with six figures of angel investment, will never hit the revenue threshold to trigger payments back to the seed angels. Yet, if some small percentage of angel-backed startups do hit it — say 3% — then more money will flow back to the community faster.

Changing an entrenched format, like typical startup funding terms, is a tall order. When startup communities with limited angel investors come together to improve the recycling of capital, revenue financing should be a consideration.

Today’s standard startup funding model whereby entrepreneurs pitch angels, VCs, and family offices for money in exchange for preferred equity is mostly a challenged, broken process. Outside of the money regions that focus on grand slams, and startups generally with revenue traction and significant growth rates, investing in startups is a great way to lose money.

The majority of angel investors I know have lost money investing in startups.

Perhaps they aren’t good investors. Perhaps it’s the entrepreneurs’ problems. Regardless, this isn’t specific to our region. It’s the same in all regions outside the money centers.

Stories of investors writing a check for $25k into Uber and turning it into $100M permeate the media, yet are so rare it’s laughable. Only, it fuels the stories and desire for more people to become investors.

One potential angel investor described it to me as wanting to spend 1% of his net worth on angel investing so that he could generate a new income stream and be less reliant on his day job. Unfortunately, the chance of that happening is slim to none.

There’s a perpetual cycle of regions trying to improve their local startup investing community. New angels come online and write some checks. They lose their money, and because of the poor outcome, will never do it again. Rinse and repeat each economic cycle.

Well, what’s the solution?

The funding model needs to change.

Over the last few years a new form of startup funding has emerged, but still represents a tiny part of the market: revenue financing. Revenue financing is code for a loan that’s paid back via a percentage of revenue. If the startup does better than expected, it’s a super high interest loan. If the startup does as expected it’s a high interest loan. If the startup does worse than expected, it’s a high interest loan paid back over a longer period of time.

Of course, a high interest loan requires the startup to pay back the debt, which takes cash away from growing the business. And, in the angel world, making 15% per year on the investment takes away the excitement and dream of making a 100x return.

The future of startup funding outside the money regions should be a mixture of light revenue financing and traditional equity.

Light revenue financing, such that the investor gets 1.2x their money back in five years, keeps startup money flowing in the community.

Traditional equity, such that there’s the potential for huge upside, keeps the imagination dreaming.

We’re near the peak of this cycle, and too much money is chasing too few high quality deals, making it a great time to be an entrepreneur. Only, this too will change — it always does.

When we come out of the next trough, and it’s time to re-evaluate the startup funding model, a combination of returning capital to the community on a consistent basis and equity upside will result in a more sustainable and successful eco-system.

A structural change in startup funding is needed. Light revenue financing plus traditional equity will improve the startup world.

Whenever I talk to a startup person outside our region (investor, journalist, etc.) they like to ask about the current funding climate in our region. Money is always a popular topic, especially when the economy is hot and startups are en vogue (bonus: public SaaS valuations are at an all-time high). Only, the funding climate outside the money regions (CA, NYC, etc.) hasn’t appreciably changed in the last 2-3 years.

More money is sloshing around on the sidelines waiting to be put to work. Limited partners have huge commitments in funds and venture investors are trying to put the money to work. Yet, this is primarily for growth/later stage investments when the metrics are solid and it’s clear the startup is going to win, simply a question of how much. For these growth/later stage investments, investors will travel. Distance is a pain but not that big a deal. If you can write a $50M check and underwrite a 3-5x return in 3-5 years, it’s a pretty easy ‘yes’, especially if there’s a direct flight (the money people still hate layovers).

Early stage investments — primarily post-seed and Series A — are still quite limited. The number of investors that focus on this stage (say, $750k – $3M in revenue) hasn’t appreciably changed, thus the number of startups that raise rounds in this stage hasn’t change (without more investors, the quantity of these types of fundings won’t increase). Investors at this stage often write checks that are larger than angels can put together, so it isn’t possible to bypass this funding source with more non-institutional money.

Seed/angel rounds are still the most challenging area. Idea stage startup are plentiful, but highly risk-loving capital is not. Local investors are still primarily wealthy people who didn’t make money in technology, and thus their appetite for startup investing is relatively low. To grow the angel community, we need to have more large startup exits. Today, there’s a strong cohort of local growth stage startups valued in the hundreds of millions and a few in the billions. Once this wave of startups, typically 5-10 years old, reaches exit maturity, expect the local angel community to ramp up and hit a new high.

While the funding climate hasn’t changed recently, the overall tenor of the startup community is humming along nicely. Look for the funding climate in the idea/seed stage to grow nicely in the next 3-5 years once we have a wave of big startup exits.

Earlier this week I was on a panel at the excellent 36|86 Entrepreneurs Festival in Tennessee talking about bootstrapping vs venture capital. Reflecting on the panel discussion, and other conversations at the event, it’s clear that raising venture capital is still viewed as too much of a default path for tech entrepreneurs. In reality 99% of entrepreneurs, tech or otherwise, shouldn’t raise venture capital.

Here are some of the common reasons raising venture capital isn’t right for most entrepreneurs:

• It limits exit opportunities
• It puts a timeline on the business
• It requires a 5x greater exit for the founder to make the same money
• Most markets aren’t winner take all

Beyond the common reasons, the reality is that most entrepreneurs can’t raise venture capital because they don’t have enough traction (revenue!), growth (much be growing super fast), unit economics (strong gross margins and profit possibility), and market opportunity (must be a huge market). Too many entrepreneurs spend time trying to raise institutional money when that time is better spent building the core business.

The solution: find a trusted advisor or mentor in the community to help think through financing options. Most of the time venture capital isn’t the right path, and isn’t even an option due to the business characteristics.

Entrepreneurs would do well to better understand venture capital and know that most of the time it doesn’t make sense.

Last week I was talking to an entrepreneur that was dead set on raising venture capital. Naturally, I wanted to understand more and asked a number of questions. Turns out, this entrepreneur just thought it was the next step to being successful. Venture capital shouldn’t be viewed as just another step in the startup journey — raising venture capital is a serious decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Here are several implications of raising venture capital:

• Growth – Startups are growth-oriented organizations. Raising venture capital takes the emphasis on growth and raises it to max — everything is focused on growth. If growth stalls, more money needs to be raised or the company needs to be merged with someone else that is growing faster. Grow, grow, grow.
• Timeline – As soon as you raise institutional capital (as different from angel capital, family office capital, etc.) the business is now on a timeline to sell in as little as 3-5 years and as long as 7-10 years. No matter how you feel, the business has to be sold (or go public) in an effort to generate returns for the limited partners (the people and institutions that provide capital to the venture capitalists).
• Partnership – Selling a piece of equity is signing up for a long-term partnership with the investor. The relationship should be viewed as a partnership and not merely as an investment. Only raise money from investors you want to work with indefinitely.

Raising venture capital puts the startup on a path to grow at all costs, and has serious implications. Most startups fail and most startups that raise venture capital don’t make any money for the founders. Entrepreneurs should deeply study the pros and cons of this type of capital and know that most of the time it doesn’t make sense. Yet, when everyone is aligned and the startup does well, it’s a beautiful thing.