Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2018

Every entrepreneur wants to hear “yes” during the fund-raising process but I would argue that being too risk averse and not pushing hard enough and be willing to hear a “no” is what holds back many people from “yes.” These are similar to the pipeline reviews I used to do with sales reps when I was a CEO.

Funding 189

Funding Software Review Entrepreneur Venture Capital 189

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

A while back I wrote a bunch of posts on Sales & Marketing and have been meaning to get back to that theme for a while. Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development.

Sales 346

Sales Startup Technical Review Customer 346

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

the most counter-intuitive fund-raising advice you’ll ever get I’m about to offer you some fund-raising advice that flies directly in the face of what most conventional wisdom will tell you. Let me start out with my premise: “Data rooms are where fund-raising processes go to die.” I have to back up and give you more context.

Funding 336

Funding Venture Capital Startup Email 336

socalTECH

MAY 6, 2014

Irvine-based PEAR Sports , a developer of personalized coaching apps for the iPhone and Android, has raised $5M in a funding round, to go towards its mobile apps and platform. PEAR Sports said the funding will go towards sales and marketing of its mobile app and hardware. READ MORE>>.

Coach 170

Coach Mobile Activity Platform 170

socalTECH

APRIL 4, 2013

That''s what Los Angeles-based FieldLevel (www.fieldlevel.com) has been working on, making it easier for coaches to network and exchange information on athletes. Brenton Sullivan: What we are is a private social network and platform for coaches to connect with each other, to exchange information on athletes. What is that process?

Coach 252

Coach USC Statistics Startup 252

TechCrunch LA

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

The total funds include backing from a Republic campaign, pre-seed investors and capital from the co-founders. Boyd Myers explained that there are sales and repeat customers, but it was too early to discuss growth metrics. The company will also hire additional talent and ramp up its sales and marketing efforts.

Startup 191

Startup Los Angeles Sample Funding 191

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 7, 2021

An edtech startup called Entity Academy — which provides women with training, in areas like data science and software development; mentoring; and ultimately job coaching — has raised $100 million on the heels of strong growth of its business, and an ambition to improve that ratio.

Mentor 297

Mentor Training Startup Course 297

Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale). And just for measure, VC’s fund less than 2% of all deals they do investigate. For you who fit that description, nice work.

Venture Capital 266

Venture Capital Class Invest Equity 266

Berkonomics

JUNE 29, 2017

If you have been following our recent insights, you’ll be up to speed knowing that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more.

Invest 243

Invest Entrepreneur Sales Startup 243

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 18, 2023

Any startup coach or business advisor will tell you that, on your way to being a great chef, you don't start your journey by inventing the ultimate entre. Have you projected sales and marketing costs, cash flow, and capital requirements? You know the basic ingredients, and you can visualize the results you want.

Startup 112

Startup Coach Metrics Marketing 112

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

I had an enjoyable conversation this morning with a young team straight out of college this morning and they were calling to ask advice on how to approach fund raising (angels vs. VCs, how to select a VC, etc.) VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. I think of VCs as coaches. Connections?

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. Another area we CEOs often meddle is in sales. I did this. ” PR.

Startup 150

Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

Planning and dealing with extra-ordinary events: M&A, fund raising, crises. By now you have many smart people around your board but probably people who don’t totally understand the nuances of your employees, customers, sales reps, marketing messages, technology challenges, competitors and strategic choices. Mentorship.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

Any startup coach or business advisor will tell you that, on your way to being a great chef, you don't start your journey by inventing the ultimate entre. Have you projected sales and marketing costs, cash flow, and capital requirements? You know the basic ingredients, and you can visualize the results you want.

Startup 156

Startup Coach Metrics Marketing 156

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. Working with early-stage teams : coaching, mentoring, setting strategy, rolling up sleeves: 9/10. So I think it’s now fair to rate me at 9/10 on follow-on fundings. I am closing 3 new fundings in April (2 new, 1 follow-on).

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2016

Increasingly I find myself engaging executive coaches at companies an trying to help executive teams get 360 degree feedback. The best leaders I know encourage coaches to come in and are willing to listen to feedback about themselves. In fact, I’d observe that most board meetings don’t on this important topic.

Coach 150

Coach Technical Review Framework Google 150

Frank Addante

OCTOBER 12, 2021

We have a Startup Studio and Early Stage Investment Fund. A good friend, and college athletics coach, very wisely said to me “you can’t fill a big hole with a bunch of little things.” We provide a startup studio which incubates and accelerates businesses and a pre-seed / seed investment fund. Doing good is good business!

Startup 105

Startup Case Study Ideas Invest 105

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

For example, in the sales silo of my former organization, it was common to point to marketing or development as the source of a sales issue, but communication across to these organizations took forever, and agreeing on a common solution was difficult. Find a coach who has a holistic view of all elements.

Sales 69

Sales Organization Entrepreneur Examples 69

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Most VCs did well academically and had enough career success that a venture firm was willing to give them an investment role or they were able to raise their own fund. For some of my more skeptical portfolio companies I simply asked them to run a trial of inbound sales calls and they were shocked.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital CTO Coach Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2010

Help these companies get funded and let them know that if they stayed in LA there was an ecosystem to support them. He was able to raise money from a VC in Minneapolis called Split Rock , grow the business to over $200 million in sales and sell to Experian for nearly $380 million. The rest is history. How’d we do?

Technical Review 259

Technical Review Venture Capital Southern California Tech Coast Angels 259

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

CapLinked says the round of funding and new appointment are an advancement in their move to displace the legacy left by Virtual Data Room (VDR) with their intuitive new product for coordinating on complex business deals such as asset sales, financings, and mergers and acquisitions. Yesterdays’ equity round of $1.6

Technical Review 88

Technical Review Software Review Bertelsmann Technology 88

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

Imagine that you funded Larry & Sergey, Chad Hurley & Steve Chen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus or Evan Williams. He’s bound to be able to help a company or two at the time of a sale. The best angels or angel funds will do tremendously well. Or eBay / PayPal, Salesforce.com, Skype, etc. People don’t forget.

Invest 280

Invest Angel Venture Capital Yahoo 280

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Due to the language and culture issues in Europe we opted for a country structure with an MD in each country and local sales, marketing & customers support staff. This is akin in the US to having sales staff in NY, SF & LA with your HQ in one of these locations. But it wasn’t just about company structures.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal. Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine. What lovely charts! Nobody seemed shocked.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Frank Addante

OCTOBER 12, 2021

We have a Startup Studio and Early Stage Investment Fund. A good friend, and college athletics coach, very wisely said to me “you can’t fill a big hole with a bunch of little things.” We provide a startup studio which incubates and accelerates businesses and a pre-seed / seed investment fund. Doing good is good business!

Startup 52

Startup Case Study Ideas Invest 52

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2018

Any startup coach or business advisor will tell you that, on your way to being a great chef, you don't start your journey by inventing the ultimate entre. Have you projected sales and marketing costs, cash flow, and capital requirements? You know the basic ingredients, and you can visualize the results you want.

Startup 81

Startup Coach Metrics Marketing 81

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

Most top tier VCs return about 3x invested capital and outlier funds (the best of a vintage) might return 6-8x. But the larger funds usually have lower returns because they are often investing bigger dollars at later stages with less risk and therefore lower returns. Yet their next fund had Facebook in it. And Coach Campbell.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

You can find a mentor, a coach, a project, or experience, to help you prepare for the role you are looking for. We were originally operating as a coaching company, and we built out this assessment technology for our own clients. It was really a meeting of the minds with the fund. It's very much matching pieces into a puzzle.

Help 100

Help Southern California Startup Technical Review 100

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

This insight follows closely the conclusions from the previous declaration, that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more.

Resource 149

Resource Startup Invest Entrepreneur 149

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

Any startup coach or business advisor will tell you that, on your way to being a great chef, you don't start your journey by inventing the ultimate entre. Have you projected sales and marketing costs, cash flow, and capital requirements? You know the basic ingredients, and you can visualize the results you want.

Entrepreneur 93

Entrepreneur Startup Coach Metrics 93

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

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. Three rules in sales: Why buy anything? Fund raising is bloody hard. Executive Summary. Create scarcity. Why buy me?

Develop 366

Develop Development Funding Venture Capital 366

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

We want to invest in early-stage technology enabled startup businesses – upfront in the funding cycle. We like to hire people and fund people who are deeply ethical and we try to be long-term in our investment thinking. This is something I try to coach against. We could all do better – I’m sure. Conviction.

Startup 150

Startup Coach Course Invest 150

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 11, 2021

Linktree has been around since 2016 and has more funding than its up-and-coming competitors. So, in February 2020, with little to no funding left, the company completely pivoted to its current link-in-bio business. Now, Snipfeed enters the ring with its own $5.5 We only make money if they make money,” Ramdani said. With its $5.5

Platform 286

Platform Commerce Startup Tool 286

socalTECH

MARCH 28, 2019

The last thing, is understanding how open and receptive all of these CEOs were to feedback, coaching, and improvement. If you look at the funding numbers for female-led and founded businesses, it's probably still only about two or two and a half percent of total funding. You can't be the best at everything.

Capital 162

Capital Entrepreneur Invest Artificial Inteligence 162

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

We have built SocialStay for scale so I think the ‘chasm’ is both a function of time and sales. You don’t need much… But what you do need is sales. I think it takes emotional maturity that I did not have while building FUEL to be able to synthesize information from advisors take the coaching.

Startup 233

Startup Design Mobile Social Network 233

InfoChachkie

MARCH 30, 2015

For many years after Microsoft became highly successful, its executives (yes, including Mr. Gates) flew coach. In a venture’s early stages, it equates to an additional dollar that must be raised in a future funding round, thereby diluting every shareholder. Bill Gates, Founder Microsoft [Tweet this quote]. However, do not count on it.

Startup 100

Startup Pricing Coach Incubator 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. So if all I need to do is make some customer calls, interview potential employees or help with his fund-raising decks – hallelujah. And improve.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365