Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2023

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. This fallacy, often called historical myopia, essentially involves extrapolating only from recent positive events, and ignoring the reality that markets saturate or evaporate. Extrapolating you as the target customer.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2023

Every entrepreneur has an idea for transforming a market with innovative new technology, or transforming society with a new process. Entrepreneurs who have been really transformative, like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, seemed to know how to deal with all the right elements. Find enough venturesome capital.

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socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2018

This year, we're sponsoring the Recurring Revenue Conference (www.recurringrevenueconference.com), presented by Sutton Capital Partners. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about retaining and keeping your customers using the subscription model? How does customer service tie into all of this?

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 1, 2022

Every entrepreneur I know is dismayed by the number of friends who approach them with a line such as “I have an even better idea that will change the world, and one of these days I’m going to get around to starting my own business.” In today’s rapidly changing market, perfection is a fleeting and impractical objective.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2022

In my experience as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs in business, one of the biggest failures I see is a lack of self-leadership. For example, I often hear from aspiring entrepreneurs that “I had that idea first, and he stole it, and is now making money on my idea.” Build positive psychological capital to sustain your business.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

For decades, efforts to satisfy customers have been built around demographics – capitalizing on race, ethnicity, gender, income, and other attributes. Customer personalities define customer experience, and sets what they love, and what they hate. Display real customer value feedback versus value claims.

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Customer Custom Social Media Satisfaction 158

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2020

Traditional marketing may be adequate for linear growth, but it likely won’t catapult you to Amazon’s unicorn status , or make waves in the business world. For example, I usually hear about an aggressive marketing budget, with a plan to penetrate a few big retail chains, and some videos to catch your attention on YouTube.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2023

The rate of new entrepreneurs increased between 2013 and 2021, from 280 to 360 out of 100,000 of the adult population. Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever. The cost of social media done well is low.

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TechCrunch LA

JULY 9, 2019

Founded by serial travel entrepreneur Katelyn O’Shaughnessy, whose last company TripScope was acquired by Travefy, Doctours aims to connect patients with doctors to receive access to quality, affordable healthcare around the world. Doctours is certainly entering a lucrative market. O’Shaughnessy wrote in an email.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 5, 2021

Startups are the corporations of the future, so I have long believed that entrepreneurs who study existing corporate models, rather than ignoring them with disdain, will likely profit from the exercise. These are all huge challenges, as well as huge opportunities, for entrepreneurs. Stakeholder power. Environmental degradation.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? People were building.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

It’s easy to think the role of a VC is to have strong opinions about markets, trends, tech dynamics and so forth. Fundamentally venture capital is about human capital. But Gregg stayed and grew and took on more responsibilities and became a senior member of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud team. I don’t think this is the job.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2021

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined. It’s very frustrating.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2021

The recent pandemic was a strong signal for change, and I see most of you entrepreneurs and business owners responding to the business changes required and new opportunities presented. Here are some key strategies that I recommend to prompt you when changes to your business may be required: Look for a changing customer sense of value.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” Capitalize on the multiplier moment. These decisive moments, and how to respond, are outlined in Robert H.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2021

Some people even believe that entrepreneurs must be born with the right genes, and no element of education is relevant. In my view, the most effective entrepreneurs are those with a background of an array of real-life experiences, both positive and negative, as well as good academic and coaching activities.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2014

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s recent book, “ The New Experts: Win Today''s Newly Empowered Customers.” Capitalize on the multiplier moment. These decisive moments, and how to respond, are outlined in Robert H.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2020

Many entrepreneurs are so enamored with their product vision that they believe their own hype, and are convinced that the market for their solution is so huge that no one will ask them for independent market research data. Conduct your own customized market research. Modern libraries are still worth a visit.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

With the enormous changes to our economies and financial markets?—?how how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued?

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

As a business advisor and technologist, I often think about the large array of opportunities for entrepreneurs as technology seems to be evolving faster and faster. The opportunities to capitalize on these vehicles are huge, ranging from control software, hardware design, support facilities, to entirely new applications.

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 9, 2019

There's a new opportunity in clean technology investments, according to venture capitalist Aaron Fyke , the head of a new, Pasadena-based venture capital investment fund, Thin Line Capital (www.thinlinecapital.com). This is not a typical, venture capital investment. Those $60M rounds really don't fit the venture capital model.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2019

Today’s customers are overloaded and overwhelmed by too much information, so making a decision is a challenge. You may think this is only important to your marketing and sales people, but in reality it doesn’t matter how great your product or technology might be, you won’t succeed if you don’t understand your target customer decision process.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2021

Anyone who works with entrepreneurs will tell you that all are different. Others are really marketers out to make money fast, and believe that they can entice customers to any offering. The Opportunist is the speculative part of the entrepreneur in all of us. External forces (competitors and customers). Specialist.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked. Operational.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. Marketing of course often feels the opposite. A larger marketing team?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 8, 2020

Savvy entrepreneurs start testing their ideas on potential customers even before the concept is fully cooked. Before the product is set in stone, you can test your message and continue to refine it until it connects well with investors, as well as customers. Capitalize on yourself early. Marty Zwilling.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

In today’s totally interconnected world with its abundance of information, choices, and marketing, how your customers buy has drastically changed. Whether you are an executive, an entrepreneur, a marketer, or a salesperson, it’s time to look beyond how you sell, and focus on how your customers buy.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.). In my experience, entrepreneurs who are overly paranoid or are information hoarders rarely do well.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 17, 2018

For decades, efforts to satisfy customers have been built around demographics – capitalizing on race, ethnicity, gender, income, and other attributes. Customer personalities define customer experience, and sets what they love, and what they hate. Display real customer value feedback versus value claims.

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Customer Custom Social Media Training 100

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2012

I’ve noticed that most young entrepreneurs are more socially conscious today than ever before, which is a great trend. Examples of profitable companies practicing this model include Trader Joe’s , led by Doug Rauch as retired president, now CEO of Conscious Capitalism®, and the Container Store , led by Kip Tindell.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2014

Many entrepreneurs are so enamored with their product vision that they believe their own hype, and are convinced that the market for their solution is so huge that no one will ask them for independent market-research data. Conduct your own customized market research. Modern libraries are still worth a visit.

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Marketing Entrepreneur Statistics Research 97

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 8, 2020

The round was led by Qumra Capital, a new investor. Microsoft’s venture fund M12, also a new investor, participated in the round alongside Acrew Capital, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Munich Re Ventures, and Israeli entrepreneur Shlomo Kramer, who co-founded security firms Check Point and Imperva.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 14, 2021

How does an entrepreneur best deal with that environment? Jeremy applies his culture shift tenants to political and generic social issues, but I have adapted them here more specifically to the business realm of entrepreneurs and startups: Establish a social contract. I saw some real insights in the classic book by Jeremy D.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 2, 2022

Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked. Operational.

Entrepreneur 153

Entrepreneur Marketing Customer Custom 153

socalTECH

DECEMBER 28, 2017

This morning, we have a contribution from investor and investment banker Peter Cowen of Sutton Capital Partners. Sutton Capital Partners is a technology investment banking firm and we are, investors in local SaaS/subscription companies and is well known as the host of the annual Recurring Revenue Conference.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 26, 2020

That would be almost any bank that provides checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market accounts to businesses, and also makes loans to businesses. Most retail and commercial banks offer investment services to their customers, but these services have nothing to do with investing in your business.

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InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Thus, it is incumbent on entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into viable businesses before seeking venture funding. Entrepreneurs Are Never Stuck. I recently was sent a Tweet from an aspiring entrepreneur which said, “I have a prototype but I need funding to bring it to market. We were long on vision and short on capital.

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