Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Our fund (Upfront Ventures) recently returned >1x an entire $200 million fund just selling small minatory in secondary sales while still holding most of our stock for an ultimate public market exits. At Upfront we have always done 40% of our investing in Greater Los Angeles and it’s precisely for this reason.

Venture Capital 471

Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. It always amazes me how an entrepreneur can define his market opportunity so broadly, and then assess his competition so narrowly in the next breath. Competition and sustainable advantage.

Competition 113

Competition Metrics Startup Invest 113

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. It always amazes me how an entrepreneur can define his market opportunity so broadly, and then assess his competition so narrowly in the next breath. Competition and sustainable advantage.

Competition 116

Competition Metrics Startup Sales 116

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2017

I hear it all the time as an angel investor, but I also see that same naïve or cavalier attitude come back to haunt entrepreneurs once they really get out in the marketplace. What metrics should you use to measure success? Just because Google sales hit $1.5 Make sure all the elements are aligned before you commit.

Metrics 58

Metrics Resource Startup Training 58

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2011

For our Friday interview, we thought we'd catch up with Los Angeles-based MarketShare , the Elevation Partners-backed software provider, to hear where the firm is nowadays. We now have teams in our headquarters in Los Angeles, and offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Tokyo, and Bangalore. Did the TV stimulate search?

Social Media 235

Social Media Demand Activity Marketing 235

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

For example, if you are working on a great social networking idea to replace Facebook, and need funding, you probably won’t find any interested and focused VCs or Angel investors in Arizona, where I live. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana. But it is an important metric for firms in pursuit of explosive growth.

Startup 97

Startup Technical Review Oracle Software Review 97

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

If you invested in the first angel round of a startup company it is usually very hard to sell your stock – usually for many years if ever at all. Then you can do a little bit of research and find out that very few companies ever achieve this valuation in a trade sale so you’re clearly gunning for an IPO.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. The problem is that stakeholders, like marketing and sales, don’t know what the latest version of the roadmap is.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. Instead of making a few dollars per sale and hoping for thousands of sales, you sell to only a few customers, and charge much higher rates. it’s about measuring online influence and I’m big on metrics as a key element of business planning; 2.) I know I do.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

In the case of MakeSpace we had huge initial successes in New York City as Rahul led the scaling of our drivers, our trucks and our warehouses and we figured out the right price points to beat the local competition. We have been able to build deep customer insights on product, pricing, service, geography, competition, etc.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Custom Customer 286

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2013

The basic alignment framework of strategy, customers, people, and processes hasn’t changed, but the pace of technological, competitive, and social change has increased at an amazing rate. If you have had to pivot from the consumer market to enterprise customers, that requires new pricing models and new sales channels.

Startup 94

Startup Social Media Entrepreneur Framework 94

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 24, 2012

The basic alignment framework of strategy, customers, people, and processes hasn’t changed, but the pace of technological, competitive, and social change has increased at an amazing rate. If you have had to pivot from the consumer market to enterprise customers, that requires new pricing models and new sales channels.

Entrepreneur 93

Entrepreneur Social Media Startup Framework 93

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process.

Startup 107

Startup Outsource Development Training Outsource 107

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. It always amazes me how an entrepreneur can define his market opportunity so broadly, and then assess his competition so narrowly in the next breath. Competition and sustainable advantage.

Invest 74

Invest Tips Competition Metrics 74

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

I remember just a decade ago in 2003 when we all laughed at how dumb people in the 90′s were talking about the race to “capture as many eyeballs as possible” before your competition. The minute you try to monetize now they have metrics with which to beat you up and say you’re business has limitations.”

Venture Capital 412

Venture Capital Startup Funding Snapchat 412

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2015

For example, if you are working on a great social networking idea to replace Facebook, and need funding, you probably won’t find any interested and focused VCs or Angel investors in Phoenix, Arizona, where I live. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana. get the attention of the market they choose.

Startup 109

Startup Technical Review Oracle Software Review 109

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 16, 2015

There’s plenty of capital out there, but there’s also a lot of competition for startup funding. Angels (invest their own money) and super angels. If you’re raising funds from angels you’ll likely need to get investments from several different players. His best advice: take capital where you can get it.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Equity Funding 40

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2017

For example, if you are working on a great social networking idea to replace Facebook, and need funding, you probably won’t find any interested and focused VCs or Angel investors in Arizona, where I live. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana. But it is an important metric for firms in pursuit of explosive growth.

Sites 59

Sites Startup Technical Review Oracle 59

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2013

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process.

Outsource Development 92

Outsource Development Training Outsource Metrics 92

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. In addition to helping manage the board Chris also helps represent the interests of the angel investors / common stock holders. Further Reading.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2013

For example, if you are working on a great social networking idea to replace Facebook, and need funding, you probably won’t find any interested and focused VCs or Angel investors in Phoenix, Arizona, where I live. billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana. get the attention of the market they choose.

Startup 102

Startup Technical Review Oracle Entrepreneur 102

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

Through ongoing analysis and refinement of existing processes, establishment of standards and metrics, team building and mentoring, Sergey has established a foundation and culture in which developers can flourish. Bobby’s strong sales acumen, genuine charisma and leadership abilities make him an invaluable asset to the founding team.

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process.

Startup 102

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 102

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2010

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process.

Startup 95

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 95

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seed money that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. The metrics were good but we wondered how much better they would be when we expanded our product.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

If you are deploying a freemium business model, test your upsell strategy on a portion of your users to establish concrete free-to-paid conversion metrics. The dynamic of a competitive atmosphere allowed him to sell his cars at their list price while increasing the velocity of the sales process. Stay Limber.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Capital Research Custom 236

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Company grew by more than “400% each year” for past few years [assume growth metric = revenues]. Competition: Chegg (has raised $144 in debt and equity)—estimated by Steven Carpenter ( TechCrunch ) to be 10x more unique visitors than BookRenter (during peak book renting seasons) with nearly $140mm in revenues for 2010.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

We were over 2x up on this round, and we also had a bunch of individual investors who wanted to put in--people who had invested in our competition a few years ago. Jason Howe: Yes, it's a Series D, though our Series A was an angel funding. We were oversubscribed, and had a stack of term sheets. READ MORE>>

Startup 113

Startup CTO Hire Resource Venture Capital 113

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

And I have been impressed with Steven Kaplan and others at University of Chicago (my alma mater), who have been encouraging entrepreneurship through the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship , through angel investing , seed conferences and changes in teaching. We also spoke about technology systems in the perspective of global competition.

Venture Capital 403

Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. Our first big institutional round was $16.5

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I was an angel investor in his company, made a bunch of calls on his behalf and then I personally sent it out on AngelList. I was saying that I was happy it was all out in the open because I felt at least everybody could now understand the issues & opportunities from the perspectives of angels, entrepreneurs and VCs.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO’s and VC’s) - Steve Blank , July 15, 2010 If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. Metrics availability. Angel vs VC? - Not so bad.

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217