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If You Don’t Define Your Personal Brand the Market Will

Both Sides of the Table

I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. Yet as obvious as it is to create messaging for your company, many people don’t consider their personal brands.

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What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

But what IS the right amount of burn for a company? Burn rate in case you don’t know is the amount of money a company is either spending (gross) or losing (net) per month. (it Conversely if you’re burning $600,000 per month (yes, some companies do) then you only have 5 months of cash left. Gross Burn vs. Net Burn.

Startup 383
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How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck

Both Sides of the Table

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. First, if it’s an early stage company, I don’t need to see a powerpoint deck.

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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Both Sides of the Table

I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. Good entrepreneurs are wrong often.

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Interview with Erik Rannala, MuckerLab

socalTECH

One of the biggest complaints you hear from both entrepreneurs and investors in Los Angeles, is the lack of a credible, visible startup accelerator in the Los Angeles area. First and foremost, we're focused on making companies become successful. How much are you investing in the companies who are part of the program?

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Time is the Enemy of All Deals

Both Sides of the Table

A reminder that it is important for all entrepreneurs is to remember to be careful about “deal drift.” When I was raising money for my first company we had closed a seed round in 1999 and were working on our A round. But we weren’t optimizing for dilution – we were building a $1 billion+ company and we wanted the runway to succeed.

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Most Common Early Start-up Mistakes

Both Sides of the Table

In the Beginning … This is a very important post to me because I find myself giving this advice all the time and if you don’t follow the basic advice here you can cause yourself much heartache down the line – even if your company ultimately becomes ĂĽber successful. It’s hard enough to build a successful company.

Startup 365