InfoChachkie

MAY 19, 2011

As noted in parts I and II of this series, agreements with Big Dumb Companies (BDCs) can be alluring and potentially fatal. This series describes how entrepreneurs can craft company-changing agreements with BDCs, while avoiding Kiss of Death contract provisions. Do Not Execute an Ambiguous Statement of Work.

Outsource Development 193

Outsource Development IP Technical Review Entrepreneur 193

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

In fact, I think the evidence is clear that many entrepreneurs started their journey while still in college, and capitalized on all the resources there, before moving on: Extend your technology focus with business basics. Every school recognizes the power of “hands-on” work to help you develop your own ideas into a business.

Entrepreneur 157

Entrepreneur Mentor Class Resource 157

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Enterprise time, as opposed to personal time management, is defined as the sum total of resources available to a company expressed in terms of time – time to develop, to debug, to produce, to deploy, to respond to issues, and to make changes in plans that are not working. Extending the Runway book available at www.berkus.com.

Resource 176

Resource Outsource Development Metrics Customer 176

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 10, 2021

Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. It’s still your company, so you have to follow-up, step in for disaster recovery, and keep the interplay between tasks and organizations working. No company that is static can grow or survive.

Startup 171

Startup Organization Training Entrepreneur 171

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 15, 2021

With contract players, you assume a project duration, with easy transition to new players for the next campaign. For example, if your first scaling effort is a global one, you should be prioritizing “global launch experience.” It’s a numbers game of filling positions, without clarity on the expertise needed to deliver now.

Demand 143

Demand Training Outsource Development Organization 143

socalTECH

AUGUST 4, 2015

Santa Barbara-based Ice Energy (www.ice-energy.com) has quietly been working away at developing energy storage systems to help smooth out the demand for energy on the nation's power grid. Mike Hopkins: The simplest example, is where part of their grid has become congested so much, because they have too much demand for the infrastructure.

Southern California 100

Southern California Technical Review Demand Outsource Development 100

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

In the initial phases of any new market you’re developing a product (hopefully with a minimal set of features), getting feedback from customers, refining your product based on user feedback and then re-launching your product. I believe that over capitalizing companies too early often favors the VC. Rinse & repeat.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

socalTECH

DECEMBER 3, 2012

It's surprising how often we run into rapidly growing companies that not many people have heard of, here in Southern California, but that's the case with El Segundo-based. NEOGOV , which has quietly built an enterprise software company supplying human resources software to the government and public sector. What is Neogov?

Software Review 243

Software Review SaaS Startup Technical Review 243

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. Clearly the founders and senior executives of a company are the most valuable resources and their time should be maximized on the most valuable tasks.

Outsource Development 150

Outsource Development Metrics Startup Sales 150

InfoChachkie

MAY 16, 2011

As an entrepreneur and startup investor, I have helped create companies which achieved two IPOs which collectively raised over $100 million, as well as two acquisitions which totaled $385 million. Rationale: My company is small, I am super busy and I am not a lawyer. No one has heard of you, your company or your solutions.

Startup 242

Startup Outsource Development Outsource Sales 242

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

Nearly all of the mistakes I made at my first company I fixed by the time of my second company. This is the only mistake I repeated twice and it is a mistake that I see many, many companies make. When you start your company the very first question you need to ask yourself is which kind of customers do you want to serve.

Startup 389

Startup Customer Custom Resource 389

Xconomy

JUNE 23, 2016

The center also asked the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. Firms are still pretty dependent on government contracts for their business,” but the industry has moved over the past two years to more private sector customers, said Michael Combs, a CBRE research manager in San Diego and chief author of the study.

San Diego 69

San Diego Study Outsource Development Report 69

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2014

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Almost anyone can start a company today on a shoestring budget, following these cost-cutting recommendations: Establish a solid legal structure for your business.

Entrepreneur 104

Entrepreneur Startup Social Media Commerce 104

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

With contract players, you assume a project duration, with easy transition to new players for the next campaign. For example, if your first scaling effort is a global one, you should be prioritizing “global launch experience.” It’s a numbers game of filling positions, without clarity on the expertise needed to deliver now.

Demand 92

Demand Startup Training Outsource Development 92

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 26, 2016

With contract players, you assume a project duration, with easy transition to new players for the next campaign. For example, if your first scaling effort is a global one, you should be prioritizing “global launch experience.” It’s a numbers game of filling positions, without clarity on the expertise needed to deliver now.

Demand 99

Demand Training Outsource Development Entrepreneur 99

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. Being profitable certainly makes your company more sustainable in difficult times.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 4, 2013

This is part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA – the overall methodology is described here. Unique Selling Proposition. Compelling Event. Often it’s the latter.

Sales 321

Sales Organization Startup Resource 321

socalTECH

JUNE 15, 2017

Our interview this morning is with Milana Rabkin , co-founder of Stem , a new startup which is developing a financial application which helps musicians and other content creators automate payments to members of their creative team. How did you start the company? Milana Rabkin: There are two very different stories.

Startup 140

Startup Content Metrics Platform 140

socalTECH

OCTOBER 19, 2018

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based Catalog (www.catalog.cc), a startup developing artificial intelligence software to help independent visual artists scale their content production efforts, announced it raised $1.5M Jacobo Lumbreras: My background for the last three years, I was at working at a company that Keith Ferrazzi had built.

Help 133

Help IP Content Google 133

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 17, 2013

Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. It’s still your company, so you have to follow-up, step in for disaster recovery, and keep the interplay between tasks and organizations working. No company that is static can grow or survive.

Startup 109

Startup Entrepreneur Organization Training 109

Frank Addante

JANUARY 23, 2007

► February (1) Building and Developing an A++ Team ► 2008 (14) ► December (1) Develop a Culture Roadmap ► November (2) Green Week - Save the Environment and Your Cash Creating a Culture of Innovation: Cultural Values. Outsourcing ► April (1) GoogleClick - Who owns your cash register? Startup 3.0:

Outsource Development 40

Outsource Development Develop Development Product 40

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

.” In that post I talked about how a few key people in any community can have an enormous impact on the fledgling success of the city or company. But I would point out that these days there are really talented tech developers & teams everywhere. Think Fred Wilson, Tony Hsieh or Brad Feld. Here are mine: 1.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Press San Diego 378

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 28, 2016

Twitter and GrubHub are just a couple of examples where CFOs have been asked to absorb COO responsibilities in the last couple of years. As startups grow from development organizations to a sustainable and repeatable business, processes must be documented, employees hired and trained and customer-support organizations built.

Entrepreneur 59

Entrepreneur Activity Training Outsource Development 59

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 17, 2012

Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. It’s still your company, so you have to follow-up, step in for disaster recovery, and keep the interplay between tasks and organizations working. No company that is static can grow or survive.

Entrepreneur 94

Entrepreneur Startup Organization Training 94

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Most new business owners I know feel the challenges of not enough time, money, and resources, and see these as problems rather than a competitive advantage. Many are quick to call this innovation, but I believe it is often just the resourcefulness of a highly motivated owner and team, who never give up in the face of a survival challenge.

Resource 111

Resource Competition Outsource Development Startup 111

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2011

Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. It’s still your company, so you have to follow-up, step in for disaster recovery, and keep the interplay between tasks and organizations working. No company that is static can grow or survive.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Startup Organization Training 111

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? This is going to be fairly specific to the company. Especially if the idea could be whipped-up by a few 24-year olds in a few weeks?

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? This is going to be fairly specific to the company. Especially if the idea could be whipped-up by a few 24-year olds in a few weeks?

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” This time I’ll use a hypothetical health-care web site company named NewCo as an example to illustrate the points. NewCo doesn’t have any of these yet.

Startup 93

Startup Patents Outsource Development Web 93

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 13, 2013

App developers are coming up with new ideas daily to make our lives easier. Your chores can be outsourced through Porter. The nuts and bolts of our tech company is that CMS in the middle, the connection engine. That’s the only thing that is outsourced. Our mobile phones are capable of doing almost anything these days.

Technical Review 87

Technical Review Mobile Startup Los Angeles 87

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 2, 2009

In the example above, you may find that although radio listeners cost $50 more than your average cost per customer, they may correspondingly have a longer life and thus a higher lifetime than your average customer. Several companies have aggregated smaller Internet radio stations, in a mode similar to Affiliate Networks, most notably Jetcast.

Customer 164

Customer Custom Advertising SEM 164

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

The era of stable lifetime jobs for business professionals within a single company are gone. Companies are rightsized quickly now as markets change rapidly, and business professionals are quick to jump to new opportunities for growth and survival, with no ties to special benefits or pension plans. Software Development Professional.

Startup 106

Startup Social Media Course Entrepreneur 106

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2020

The era of stable lifetime jobs for business professionals within a single company are gone. Companies are rightsized quickly now as markets change rapidly, and business professionals are quick to jump to new opportunities for growth and survival, with no ties to special benefits or pension plans. Software Development Professional.

Startup 164

Startup Social Media Course Entrepreneur 164

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

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 über successful. It’s hard enough to build a successful company.

Startup 365

Startup Technical Advisors IP Ideas 365

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

Way back in the early eighties, I was privileged to be part of the original IBM PC development team, led by Don Estridge. For example, even though we were leading an entrepreneurial effort within IBM, we found it a challenge to deal with the inbred mainframe culture, reverence for process, and accounting practices of a large company.

IBM 85

IBM IBM Entrepreneur Technical Review 85

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2016

For example, at any given moment in your business, you may be limited by development, marketing, or sales. Evaluate outsourcing as a quick solution to break the constraint. An example of a good strategic alliance was Barnes & Noble bringing Starbucks into their book stores. Acquire or merge with another company.

Startup 56

Startup Outsource Development Organization Outsource 56

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2015

Many of you will know that Twitter unexpectedly cancelled it’s contract to allow DataSift to resell Twitter data to 3rd parties. Simply put: We never intended to build a business on one company’s platform and despite market perceptions – we never did ! billion people.

Platform 150

Platform Course Customer Custom 150