socalTECH

AUGUST 11, 2011

Towards the end of last month, Culver City-based ThinkNear (www.thinknear.com) announced a seed round of funding for its location-based mobile advertising service, with notable inclusion of such firms as IA Ventures, Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and others. Our only customers are merchants. How are you doing things differently?

Startup 177

Startup Mobile Culver City Los Angeles 177

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

After a year in the market, MakeSpace was growing rapidly and our biggest issue was CAC (customer acquisition costs) relative to payback period (when we get our marketing investment back) and relative to LTV (lifetime value). But that’s harder to build in 2016 than it was in say 2005. Our centralization is their achilles heel.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 17, 2010

At VT KnowledgeWorks we screen prospective clients for their Market opportunity, for the Magic that they offer to their prospective customers, and for the Moxie displayed by the start-up team. Paul Graham built the mold at Y Combinator , which he founded back in 2005. They are funded and staffed by groups of accomplished entrepreneurs.

Incubator 80

Incubator Mentor Capital Startup 80

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. It included one firm who I asked not to call Salesforce.com as a reference (they were our largest pilot customer) and in their kindness they called Marc Benioff (the CEO) and asked his opinion. Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. Tempus Fugit.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2009

If you are a premium customer, we charge for the calls. The premium customer can buy that premium service in denominations of $25, $50, $100, or $200 dollars. How is the company funded? John Nahm: We started in January of 2007, and self-funded for a year. Any funding we do receive will be used for expansion initiatives.

Startup 100

Startup Southern California Yahoo Organization 100

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. – you’re very well positioned as a fund. Many good companies will not get funded. Get funded now, if you can.&#. And well they should be.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

socalTECH

JANUARY 15, 2009

We also allow the users to have a custom URL, for example, resumebucket.com/joshstomel. I had early success working in-house with Matt Coffin at LowerMyBills in 2005, and then I was brought on by Yahoo to build out the Yahoo Publisher Network Team. We've used the profits from NeoHire for funding. What's the idea behind the site?

Startup 140

Startup Yahoo Sites Oversee.net 140

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies. I now observes the fund raising process as a profession. This is the fund raising perspective from both sides of the table. Fund raising (as is much of life) is a sale – pure and simple. Executive Summary.

Develop 366

Develop Development Funding Venture Capital 366

socalTECH

MARCH 29, 2010

funding round. What's the story behind the funding? The two funds that led the round were Founder Collective, out of Boston, and a group called IA Venture Partners, which is led by Roger Ehrenberg, who used to run the Deutsche Bank hedge fund. Last week, Ventura-based The Trade Desk (www.thetradedesk.com) announced a $2.5M

Advertising 157

Advertising Startup Media Marketing 157

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

in funding from Venrock, Avalon, and Masthead. The second customer is the social networking sites. Historically, it was something that started to develop before our launch with operators back in 2005, and it now serves as a laboratory for development of our product. Intercasting is backed by $17.5M So it's been a year.

Social Network 113

Social Network Anthem Mobile Java 113

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2009

One of the big, open source successes in both Southern California and the software world was Gluecode Software , which was based in Los Angeles and acquired by IBM in 2005. All of those three vary by customer, but we're seeing that we're headed towards a mix of service offerings and a mix of licenses between commercial and open source.

IBM 100

IBM IBM Mission Ventures Venture Capital 100

socalTECH

AUGUST 20, 2009

Last Week, Calabasas-based Masher Media announced it had received a round of angel funding from the Tech Coast Angels to fund its development of MyMiniPeeps (www.myminipeeps.com), a virtual world for children. In 2005/2006, I really saw that the trend was shifting from television to the Internet.

Media 150

Media Tech Coast Angels Social Network Content 150

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The proof nowadays is certainly in winning customers--whether that is a consumer or in the enterprise. Mark Suster: First of all, the good news, is GRP has a $200 million fund, which we've only done three investments on. We are not looking to fund people in 2009, who are learning a new market, on our nickel.

Tech Coast Angels 100

Tech Coast Angels Ideas Entrepreneur Invest 100

SoCal Delicious

MARCH 1, 2010

The city has, however, quietly been home to some of the most successful online companies to date, including CitySearch (sold to Ticketmaster for $260 million in 1998), Overture (acquired by Yahoo for $2 billion in 2003), eHarmony and LowerMyBills (bought by Experian for $330 million in 2005). My fund was an early investor in Overture.

Los Angeles 50

Los Angeles Company Companies Angel 50

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

The first of question is about qualifying your potential customers aka leads. Assume competition and assume within the buying organization you have enemies. One thing I observed was that many customers wanted an “on premise” version of our software and were willing to pay extra money for it. Why Buy Anything ?

Sales 150

Sales SaaS Startup Venture Capital 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

There are obvious reasons the industry has had less-than-desirable returns, including: massive over-funding of the sector, huge increases in inexperienced venture capitalists that took a decade to peter out, and the massive correction in the value of the public stock markets that closed many exit opportunities for half a decade.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

He listed all of the product releases that were up coming, the customers that were in the pipeline and where he saw his competition moving. Chris Devore & Andy Sack have created Founder’s Coop with the goal of funding, incubating & launching more early-stage ventures in Seattle. Imagine Apple without Steve Jobs.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317