Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

” Here’s how all the drama started for me. A rounds back then seemed to be anywhere from $2-3 million (LA or NYC) or up to $5 million in Silicon Valley. $5 So VCs started writing some smaller A-rounds. If you want a great primer on how the VC and startup funding scene changed here’s a great primer.

Seed Funding 399

Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

Lower costs to start a business (95% reduction), many more companies created & funded by angels / seed. Just 3 years ago there was talk of institutional investors “not being able to write small enough checks.” Seed funds now represent 67% of all funds being created now, which is up 100% from 6 years ago.

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

This is a theme that comes up in one the most influential business books for me of the past decade, The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb where he talks about the role that luck plays in business success. If you’re a tech startup person I know you know what I mean. I started blogging 2 years ago. And so it goes with startups.

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

SoCal Tech Calendar

MARCH 12, 2009

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 -- Agile/XPSoCal. A User Story Writing Workshop In this completely hands-on workshop, we'll work through writing a set of user stories for an example project. We'll start with some simple stories and build up to story writing for larger and more complex situations.

Writing 100

Writing Startup Examples 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. I filled up with 20 people pretty quickly and realized this schedule was masochistic. Felipe grew up in Brazil.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to. We want to give our brightest new startups the connections and interactions they need to help streamline success. Watch this space.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2010

Let me start by saying I’m a huge business book cynic. But Net had told me that he picked up some valuable lessons from the book, so I thought, “WTF? They can travel the world, take classes in interesting subjects, spend time with loved ones or start new hobbies. You’re on the DS (deferred startup) plan.

Startup 295

Startup Email Technical Review Course 295

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

I’m going to write a pure admiration piece. We attended a fbFund demo day ( which I rarely do but it was put on by my long-time buddy Dave McClure – who hadn’t yet started 500Startups – and Sheryl Sandberg who was much more of a mere mortal back then). Yes, I still used a Blackberry in 2009.

Startup 150

Startup Conference Ideas Writing 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. But when I’m looking to write my check I need to look in the eyes of the captain — the maestro who brings the whole orchestra together. A caller dialed in to ask us questions about his startup. That’s hard core.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

This is a post I’ve been dying to write for 18 months. But I never gave up. The opportunity came up to invest in this one and I pounced. Well, we started out a free text messaging platform. OK, that sounds like an interesting business, but nothing to write a freakin’ blog post about? More on that later.

Gogii 310

Gogii Invest Blogging Startup 310

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

When the masses start all running one way without questioning “why?&# – and when it defies any logic I can figure out in my head – I call bullshit. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. “ Question Authority.&#.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

I had this ethical dilemma pop up on one of the first deals I even did as a VC. I got a call from a VC friend of mine who said, “we’re looking at this deal but can’t write the full check. I decided to write a $2+ million check along with my co-investor who offered $750k. The night started harmless enough.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Writing 356

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2010

I’d like to offer you two “life hacks&# that I implemented in 2009 and one that I’m test driving in 2010. I scan it for the most important messages to be sure nothing urgent has popped up. They taught us to write down questions when they came up and batch them together in point sheets.

Product 280

Product Startup Email Technical Review 280

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

We remain confident in the long-term trend that software enables and the value accrued to disruptive startups; we also recognized that in a strong market it is important to ring the cash register and this doesn’t come without a concentrated effort to do so. In fact, I am still active on two boards where I first invested in 2009.

Startup 408

Startup Venture Capital Writing Invest 408

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Did they really need a Startup CTO or Developer or both? Otherwise, you’ll end up spending time with people who are not going to be interested. Was it a case of needing Homework?

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. the more money you give a startup the faster they grow.

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

Good idea & plan: You must start with a good idea and a PowerPoint deck (my outline is here , scroll down mid way). And a great product starts with the founder. Their name alone is enough to get meetings set up. The key to getting money is that the people writing the check trust you. I get that.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

This was 2009 and his understanding of audience engagement was far beyond anything I was hearing from most people at that time. We started hanging out a bit and discussing technology and entrepreneurship. It always started the same way – a founder would ask for an intro because they figured he could help with promotion.

Conference 150

Conference Slides Social Media Summary 150

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Innovation and Geography I ran across a post in Read/Write Web - Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? Ive personally been involved in the start-up world in Los Angeles for about 15 years, and have had the opportunity to work on many early-stage companies (e.g.,

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs? You likely are writing your first one of these. Make sure you look at 32 Questions Developers Should Ask a Startup Founder to spark possible additional features.

Develop 354

Develop Development Technical Review CTO Coach 354

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. The rest of this post series deals with the reasons why VC froze up in the first place, why investments have heated up recently and why the future of VC funding at the current pace is not certain.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

Over the years I’ve written extensively about the downsides of convertible notes for startups such as here , here and here. This was until about 2009 because most the investments in companies came from one, maybe two, sources. About 4 years ago I started pricing all of my deals as a function of “post money valuation.”

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Paul Kedrosky made the case for “naive optimism&# being an important part of startup success. I know that in late 2010 it’s not as popular to say this because we’re in the era of “super angels&# and feel-good startups. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. I’m writing this post to explain to entrepreneurs what you should be thinking about in terms of the VC’s you approach and the size and stage of their funds.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

socalTECH

MAY 18, 2010

For our interview today, we caught up with Al Eisaian , CEO of Pasadena-based IconApps (www.iconapps.com), which is developing mobile applications for the iPhone market. We caught up with Al recently to hear about his latest startup. We built that and put it on the App Store on December 24 of 2009.

Mobile 168

Mobile .Net Pasadena Software Review 168

socalTECH

JUNE 18, 2009

Our interview today is with Santa Monica-based OneCubicle (www.onecubicle.com), a new startup we ran across recently, which is looking to provide a more professional social networking site for younger people. Why did you decide to start yet another social networking site? It's not in my make up.

Social Network 100

Social Network Entertainment Startup CTO Coach 100

socalTECH

JANUARY 25, 2010

We spoke with Johnson about his new startup, as well as had him fill us in on the story behind VirtualTourist, how he bootstrapped that firm, and his exit. Johnson: Back in 1999, we started a company called VirtualTourist.com. We ended up growing it through the lean years, at least for the Internet space.

Content 204

Content Startup Sites Manhattan Beach 204

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2011

She also has served at DoubleClick, had a stint as an investment banker at JPMorgan, been a venture capitalist at Bertelsmann Ventures, and started with an Electrical Engineering degree before her MBA. Jennifer Sargent: HitFix started two and a half years ago. It was an opportunity I didn't want to pass up.

News 173

News Entertainment Startup Bertelsmann 173

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

TechZulu: Let’s start off with an obvious question. Pablo Fuentes: It first started in 2009 when I was in business school originally. I ended up staying and raising money and we finally were able to launch our Candidate app. But that also doesn’t mean write in short, incomplete job descriptions.

Mobile 86

Mobile Marketing Writing Startup 86

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

My friend Ethan Anderson put it best to me after the panel, “You probably shouldn’t have been up there. I wrote about it here (mostly starting at point 7) and Chris Dixon wrote a great post about it here. So in the past we needed VC to really get a startup going. I said almost nothing in the 30 minutes.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Paul Kedrosky made the case for “naive optimism&# being an important part of startup success. I know that in late 2010 it’s not as popular to say this because we’re in the era of “super angels&# and feel good startups. In the latter case many companies (Flickr, Delicious, Blogger, Writely, etc.)

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

Of course that website isn’t completely up to date but it’s a great resource for seeing the overall picture. Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. But let me start with some data.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

We’ve all become so used to having Microsoft in our lives that we’ve started to take their products and services for granted. And 450 million licenses of Windows 7 were sold since its launch in 2009, making it the fastest-growing operating system ever, and showing us that Windows is going to keep controlling the OS market share.

Writing 88

Writing Training Email .Net 88

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

Ive not found that much use for LinkedIn to help my blogging, but Im starting to think about this. I am in the middle of writing up some of my thoughts on this and will post about it and let you know. Im very happy with the time Ive spent building up my LinkedIn network. I definitely check people out using LinkedIn.

Blogging 150

Blogging CTO Coach CTO Hire Southern California 150

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 22, 2011

was published in 2009 and Time Wounds All Heels was written in 2008. Startup Tips From Jeff Bezos. For instance, I was recently asked by Inc.com to write a weekly column. If you have not already signed up to my email newsletter, you can do so HERE. Of these entries, four of them are also in my “all time” Top Ten.

Newsletter 205

Newsletter Blogging Santa Barbara Content 205

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

In the original version of his post, Andy writes. But Mark, many of the great firms are $500 million and up! When it went to raise its fund 10 years ago the rumor was that many LPs were disappointed with recent returns and did not re-up. By 2009 had reduced to around $15 billion in capital from LPs. billion each, $7.5

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 6, 2014

To get some up to speed, Rap Genius , as a team and company have upheld a reputation as anomalies in the tech world. Beginning with hip hop in 2009, they’ve since included different genre verticals into their model with rock, poetry, news, even bible. When we started, we did the personalities and just had fun with it.

Startup 93

Startup Mobile Entertainment Sites 93