Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 4, 2023

The broad-brush push-marketing is no longer competitive. Consider collaborating via shared marketing efforts, trade-show both space, co-branding promotional products, referral agreements, and cross-linking web sites. Modern web layouts flow smoothly and quickly for an easier to read, satisfying experience.

Marketing 107

Marketing Technical Review Startup Innocal 107

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 10, 2020

The broad-brush push-marketing is no longer competitive. Consider collaborating via shared marketing efforts, trade-show both space, co-branding promotional products, referral agreements, and cross-linking web sites. Modern web layouts flow smoothly and quickly for an easier to read, satisfying experience.

Mobile 173

Mobile Marketing Technical Review Startup 173

From the Venture Trenches

APRIL 4, 2013

The pride and effort they have placed in building up their business should be reflected through their web presence. With over three billion local search queries in any given month on Google alone, no business can afford not to be on the web. If you are not flexing your digital muscle, your competition certainly is.

Web Design 58

Web Design Web Design Sites 58

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2020

If your forte is a service, like consulting or web site design, it’s harder to find guidance on what will get you funded, and how you can scale your business. On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business.

Startup 174

Startup Training Services Writing 174

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

.” * I first wrote about the changes to the Venture Capital ecosystem 10 years ago and this still serves as a good primer of how we arrived at 2011, a decade on from the Web 1.0 dot-com bonanza. If we wanted to we could have sold > 2x the fund easily in the secondary markets with significant upside remaining.

Venture Capital 471

Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

From the Venture Trenches

APRIL 4, 2013

The pride and effort they have placed in building up their business should be reflected through their web presence. With over three billion local search queries in any given month on Google alone, no business can afford not to be on the web. If you are not flexing your digital muscle, your competition certainly is.

Web Design 40

Web Design Web Design Sites 40

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. You can tell if they have a deep-seated competitive spirit. Can’t go a mile deep on competition?

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire Sales 286

socalTECH

AUGUST 7, 2014

The Vice President of Business Development reports to the CEO and is responsible for the direction and management of all worldwide sales operations direct and indirect, including market competitiveness, pricing, compensation, and distribution. Business Development Director, Colony Logic - Los Angeles.

SoCalTech 124

SoCalTech SaaS Los Angeles Platform 124

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2023

In all cases, it is crucial to set specific goals for each lead-generation campaign, keep track of the overall costs and measure the return on your marketing investment in terms of cost-per-action and cost-per-sale. Don’t hesitate to use small test projects to compare the results of multiple approaches.

Marketing 114

Marketing Invest Social Media SEM 114

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 4, 2021

With PPC, the goal is for the search user to not only see your ad, but to click on it to get to your website (click-through), and buy your widget (conversion to sale). It pays only if a customer clicks through AND takes a further action (conversion), such as buying a product or filling out a web form.

PPC 154

PPC SEO Paid Search Search Engine Optimization 154

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Competition: Chegg (has raised $144 in debt and equity)—estimated by Steven Carpenter ( TechCrunch ) to be 10x more unique visitors than BookRenter (during peak book renting seasons) with nearly $140mm in revenues for 2010. Private, flash sales site focused on apparel goods (women, men and children). Read more: TechCrunch.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Others admit to surfing the web even during religious services. If you are looking for a way to get a competitive edge, now is the time to start building a relationship with your customers, which includes active listening. Requests for input that are thinly disguised sales pitches won’t work.

Customer 104

Customer Custom Product Social Network 104

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

Put simply – you need enough users in a segment who care about what you’re doing to dictate investing further in the product or in sales & marketing resources. One of the things I have observed over the years is that a hard charging sales oriented founder/CEO can often hide the defects in a product. All totally free.

Startup 401

Startup Customer Custom Technical Review 401

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. In sales there are also three rules: Qualify, qualify, qualify.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2022

Of course, growth is implied in that equation, and is also required for maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. You might sell one of two of your widgets for $1 million each, entering profitability immediately, but then die because you can’t grow sales at that price. So let’s take a look.

Platform 118

Platform Snapchat Startup Course 118

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2020

In all cases, it is crucial to set specific goals for each lead-generation campaign, keep track of the overall costs and measure the return on your marketing investment in terms of cost-per-action and cost-per-sale. Don’t hesitate to use small test projects to compare the results of multiple approaches.

Customer 146

Customer Custom Marketing Startup 146

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 29, 2020

Others admit to surfing the web even during religious services. If you are looking for a way to get a competitive edge, now is the time to start building a relationship with your customers, which includes active listening. Requests for input that are thinly disguised sales pitches won’t work.

Customer 128

Customer Custom Activity Social Network 128

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Who are you on the web? It’s almost like the web equivalent of Facebook Connect. On the web each website wants you to log in to their website using a proprietary user name and password. New tickets about to go on sale for your favorite band – Tweet. Historically you are your email address.

News 324

News Web Email Startup 324

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 6, 2016

As the Internet continues to become populated with e-commerce sites, it’s becoming more and more difficult to generate web traffic, leads, and ultimate the sales for your website. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for e-commerce sites to accumulate a large number of sales thanks to social media interaction and promotion.

Commerce 58

Commerce Search Engine Optimization Sites Marketing 58

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0 Unfortunately this was reinforced by the many conferences that rushed to espouse the benefits of Web 2.0 Cisco and others went out to fill out their Web 2.0 portfolios.

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

They are tasked with “getting deals done” so they race around talking to tons of potential partners inking anything from channel sale deals , product integration, international distribution agreements, co-marketing arrangements, M&A discussions, etc. Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people.

Activity 164

Activity Conference Press Case Study 164

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

It’s insanely competitive to get into our industry so most have degrees from institutions like Stanford, Harvard, Wharton and University of Chicago (blatant plug ;-). Think of web vs. mobile. VCs, how to select a VC, etc.) and I realized that without years of experience it is tough to answer this question. Connections?

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Yes, it’s true that FOMO (fear of missing out) is driving some irrational behavior and valuations amongst uber competitive deals and well-financed VCs. hours per day on average, and that’s excluding the other 13 hours a day where we have our mobile devices, our connected TVs, our iPads and Kindles and soon our cars connected to the web.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

We feel pressure to hit milestones for a variety of reasons: Investor presentations, conference demos, customer sales meetings, competitive pressures, a need to drive revenue, business development commitments – whatever. CEOs are time-driven creatures. Intuitively all teams know that without strong deadlines projects drift.

Software 344

Software Startup Design Course 344

InfoChachkie

JUNE 4, 2012

As an entrepreneur, I helped create companies which achieved two IPOs and two trade sales totaling $385 million. Public relations at a startup is a sales process. Thus, you have negotiating leverage as long as a legitimate, competitive threat exists. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”.

Entrepreneur 272

Entrepreneur Outsource Ideas Technical Review 272

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

And despite an occasional debate about whether one should take “super angel” or VC money for an early stage deal (usually said both in jest and in intentional competitive positioning) – I would gladly have Chris involved in anything I’m working on. I am on record as saying that my opinion is that Web 2.0 “And importantly Web 2.0

Invest 303

Invest Company Companies Web 2.0 303

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

If your forte is a service, like consulting or web site design, it’s harder to find guidance on what will get you funded, and how you can scale your business. On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business.

Services 72

Services Startup Training Writing 72

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2012

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. Your competitive advantage. Identify your sustainable competitive advantage, like unique benefits, cost savings, or industry ties. Don’t kill your credibility by saying you have no competition. Executive team.

Summary 97

Summary Writing Competition Sample 97

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 26, 2012

The elevator pitch should be the first few paragraphs of your business plan, your executive summary, your investor presentation, and the first page of your web site. Unlike [competition], we [differentiation].” Present a sustainable competitive advantage. Use it in every networking situation and business conference introduction.

Startup 113

Startup Patents Template Competition 113

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

In the era of Skype, web conferencing tools and collaboration software conventional wisdom says that distributed startup teams can be just as effective as those that are in person. The conversations bleed into the sales messages the next time, they wend their way into software designs and form the plan of attach against competition.

Technical Advisors 335

Technical Advisors Outsource Development Offshore Startup 335

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 10, 2014

The broad-brush push-marketing is no longer competitive. Consider collaborating via shared marketing efforts, trade-show both space, co-branding promotional products, referral agreements, and cross-linking web sites. Modern web layouts flow smoothly and quickly for an easier to read, satisfying experience.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Startup Innocal Mobile 106

InfoChachkie

MAY 16, 2011

1) Expect Independent Channel Sales Reps To Perform Missionary Sales. Rationale: I cannot afford to hire a direct sales force. Fallacy: Third-party, OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing) representatives succeed once the sales process is defined, proven and documented. Public relations at a startup is a sales process.

Startup 242

Startup Outsource Development Outsource Sales 242

Tech.Co

MAY 26, 2020

And even better still, it offers a great deal for the publications who participate in the program, offering a competitive 8% conversion rate and an impressive 10% commission on each sale (more than double Amazon’s 4.5% commission). Just about the only downside to this option is that it’s limited to books and books alone.

Technical Review 130

Technical Review Buzzfeed News Networking 130

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

That results in huge savings--up to 75 percent--in price, and you can also do it all in about ten minutes, because we've integrated directly with your course schedule, and filtered through the entire web simultaneously. How did you come up with the web site? Jonathan Simkin: Certainly, it is extremely competitive.

UCSD 185

UCSD Course Startup Sites 185

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

This time I’ll use a hypothetical health-care web site company named NewCo as an example to illustrate the points. Assign probabilities to active customer sales efforts, just as sales managers do in quantifying a salesman’s forecast. I’ve written about this before, but it’s a mysterious subject, and I’m always learning more.

Startup 108

Startup Invest Patents Outsource Development 108

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

If you’re just a content company your advantages are too small to win on the web. Best is if you have a combination of ad revenue, sponsorships and some forms of non ad revenue (subscriptions, merch, music sales, etc.). I believe that the high revenue share YouTube takes encourages platform competition. Startup Lessons'

SEM 150

SEM Content Platform Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

This week I wrote about obsessive and competitive founders and how this forms the basis of what I look for when I invest. Back then there was no “cloud” so we had to plow money into hardware, software licenses and web hosting. So even after raising a $16 million A-round I still paid myself a paltry salary.

Startup 409

Startup Invest Venture Capital Writing 409