Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Keep control by writing every check personally, and manage receivable and payables tightly. Your customers and competition make unexpected moves. Examples abound of startups who had to pivot for success, including Twitter moving from podcasts to social commentating, and Yelp moving from email to online.

Startup 131

Startup Entrepreneur Examples Customer 131

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

I got an email recently from my friend & fellow VC, Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. The idea that the course asks students to write public blog posts is a testament to its more modern teaching style. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2013

Competitive sportswoman. Kara on one side of the table showing me market sizes, competitive dynamics, product roadmaps, pricing plans for physical products with COGS and gross margins. Soleil returns emails at 1.30am. She helps write press releases. Remember, it’s about Lines, Not Dots. Stanford MBA.

Startup 398

Startup Design Downey Activity 398

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2013

This is sad, since “how to write a business plan” is a frequent topic found in every business journal, and a common title in the business section of every book store. Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually understand it yourself. What is the definition of a good business plan?

Sample 92

Sample Writing Startup Summary 92

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2012

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Your competitive advantage. Don’t kill your credibility by saying you have no competition.

Summary 97

Summary Writing Competition Sample 97

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 21, 2012

This is sad, since “how to write a business plan” is a frequent topic found in every business journal, and a common title in the business section of every book store. Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually understand it yourself. What is the definition of a good business plan?

Sample 96

Sample Writing Summary Startup 96

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Your competitive advantage. Don’t kill your credibility by saying you have no competition.

Summary 90

Summary Writing Competition Sample 90

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2010

This is sad, since “how to write a business plan” is a frequent topic found in every business journal, and a common title in the business section of every book store. Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually understand it yourself. What is the definition of a good business plan?

Startup 91

Startup Funding Sample Writing 91

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

When to get a lawyer - If you plan to be a venture or angel backed technology company (what I mostly write about) the best time to start meeting and getting to know lawyers is long before you ever start your company. I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. Many people start companies arse backwards.

Startup 318

Startup IP Southern California Entrepreneur 318

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The surest sign a fund-raising process has stalled is when you aren’t getting follow-up meetings or hearing from the VC or hearing from friends that they got a phone call or email asking about you. As a VC I of course want you to come see only me because that means I have no competition and have time to properly get to know you.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2016

Defy Ventures runs business plan competitions and has people like us who attend and give business advice and feedback. But if you commit one simple day of your life I literally promise you that you will email or Tweet me a “thank you” and tell me you’ve been moved. I will write about that as soon as Caroline is ready.

Writing 150

Writing Startup Design Training 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

The questions that a VC mulls before writing a check are precisely the questions you should be asking yourself. So when Sam Rosen came to me with the idea of disrupting storage with a product that is priced cheaper than existing incumbents and he could build a product that is a better service I was intrigued. Market Size.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

Big thank you to Darius Vasefi , of EyeOnJewels for the write up. People want to invest in people they trust – once you’ve made money for someone you can always go back, and even get better pricing. o Everything is for sale but it’s the price that moves the timing. o Put a timeframe/money – competition in the picture.

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Startup Customer Custom 304

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Your competitive advantage. Don’t kill your credibility by saying you have no competition.

Summary 55

Summary Writing Competition Metrics 55

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

<Note: I edited a few comments from Jeff's email, none of which related to our meeting in 2008.> Below is my email to Jim and Kevin, following my debriefing with the VoIP expert, who requested to remain anonymous. Most importantly, it just doesn't feel right to us to hold positions in competitive companies. > -jeff.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 5, 2010

When all goes well, it is a real partnership between the investors and the company management teams, figuring out the strategy, rolling with the punches you get from the economy and competition and working together to create a great company. That will change, though, and I see it happening now with hot pricing in certain segments.

Venture Capital 65

Venture Capital Capital Entrepreneur Competition 65

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

She can anticipate reactions to price increases or product changes by customers and she can sustain competitive challenges because she knows the customer will stick by her. They respond to email. I wanted to just write. I like writing. Many tech execs (and VCs) I know have “bunker mentality.”

Startup 150

Startup Coach Course Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

He listed all of the product releases that were up coming, the customers that were in the pipeline and where he saw his competition moving. When you account for competition for talent, the difficulty of retention, the cost of living and the difficulty of rising above the noise – there are many advantages of staying put.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Many people will write the history on why Ring became an enormously successful company and why it became a real-world unicorn in a world when many startups are anointed that merely on paper. He launched a business called Unsubscribe, which helped consumers deal with the deluge of email lists that one gets signed up to and get rid of them all.

Startup 247

Startup Pricing Product Marketing 247

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product - Seth Levine's VC Adventure , August 12, 2010 I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). There is no competition.

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. We had several emails back and forth where he provided basic details on the concept. But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

VCs are paying up at enormous prices to say that they have GroupOn, Facebook and Twitter on their roster irrespective of whether they really venture funded them or bought in late stage. They’ll send some intro emails to other VCs but they won’t sell hard that someone else “really has to look at this deal.

Startup 312

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Help 312

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Think about this: The investment banks and trading houses across the globe have invested billions of dollars in computing equipment and staff in order to process news that affects stock prices milliseconds before the rest of the market can process & transact on this same information. I can’t put it in writing but I won’t stop it.”

Platform 307

Platform News Startup Invest 307

Berkonomics

AUGUST 30, 2018

They allow me to preview new devices and technologies before release so that I might write about and speak about them in my “Tech Trends” keynotes. It did not hurt that Apple always seemed to trump the competition in design of the product and the product’s user interface too. Marriott called theirs “tier pricing”.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Pricing Design Product 120

Berkonomics

AUGUST 18, 2011

They allow me to preview new devices and technologies before release so that I might write about and speak about them in my “Tech Trends” keynotes. Email readers continue here.] Apple, for example, was nowhere near the first to introduce an MP3 handheld music player. Marriott called theirs “tier pricing”.

Artificial Inteligence 214

Artificial Inteligence Pricing Design Product 214