Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

Over the course of the first few months I saw a few people out on the street taking Birds and then a steady uptick in riders. That has allowed the company to launch in many markets, build amazing applications, design future versions of the scooter and monetize while many companies are still just drawing up their go-to-market plans.

Santa Monica 256

Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 23, 2019

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Every company needs this focus to attract the best minds and loyalty in both categories. Hire the right team.

Organization 128

Organization Startup Pricing Customer 128

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2021

Of course, no business wants to be the next Blockbuster , which kept charging straight ahead despite subtle clues that the Internet was changing everything. In addition to total sales, you need to look at categories and trends at lower levels. Trust your intuition and team input as weak signals.

Marketing 162

Marketing Social Media Metrics Customer 162

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2021

Some are really inventors, who view the challenges of building a business as a necessary evil. The Builder loves building a business from the ground up. Some might say that Elon Musk epitomizes this category. They build strong expertise, but often struggle to stand out in a crowded marketplace of competitors. Opportunist.

Entrepreneur 134

Entrepreneur Framework Mentor Web 134

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2016

That’s why today I’m so excited to finally be able to tell you about Density , a company I led a $4 million financing (2) along with Jason Calacanis (We’re teaming up on the board together! We’re essentially a data platform and envision others building applications to take advantage of this information.

Marketing 150

Marketing Course Startup Organization 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Here is a sample of the reading list for the course that gives you a flavor for just how modern and practical this course is. Jeff (also an HBS alum) co-teaches the LTV course with Professor Eisenmann about a student of theirs who had written a blog post about sales taking on some of my previous assertions.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

Of course passion isn’t enough. You need a great concept in which you will build something that is truly unique and that will be valued by your customers. So of course I want (need) to make money for my investors (LPs). But the two can of course go hand-in-hand. It’s even a direct quote in my Twitter bio.

Venture Capital 373

Venture Capital Startup Course Entrepreneur 373

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2020

Despite the fact that most of the CEOs I advise would claim to be in the first category, when I dig deeper I find that at best they are fast followers , due to the time consuming challenges of transforming any business in this digital age. Set up training courses that highlight agility, and adopt agile working practices.

Metrics 122

Metrics Training Satisfaction IBM 122

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Of course, every risk level can be mitigated by a good plan that addresses the issue, offers a credible action plan, and will convince you, as well as investors and customers, that what looks like a risk to many is actually a sustainable competitive advantage for your startup. Your startup is in a high-failure-rate business sector.

Startup 126

Startup Sites Technical Review Social Media 126

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

So I asked Ethan to build his product first and then we would fund. And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. We like to be able to see the concept.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

socalTECH

APRIL 1, 2019

Eli Portnoy: We started with food as our first category, and we have been very focused on it, specifically with quick server restaurants. There are only 30 teams in baseball, so for someone to win, someone has to lose. Eli Portnoy: There are so many lessons you learn on how to build a company.

Startup 113

Startup Culver City Competition Customer 113

TechCrunch LA

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

The first phase was the rise of the media platforms: YouTube, Instagram, etcetera, that allowed creatives to build audiences. Founders and investors circling the space suspect a wave of Silicon Valley interest is coming, however, and that it will alter the category entirely. Karat, a startup building a bank for creators.

Platform 170

Platform Marketing Tool Venture Capital 170

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2020

I pointed out that throughout history building companies has always taken time and we as a market have put an urgency to rush growth rates. It takes time to sell in your software, get it implemented, prove the value, build a business case, gain executive support and then roll it out more broadly. Harry posed these questions.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Writing 263

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

Do you imagine eventually raising VC and trying to build a faster growing company?” Of course when you think about it it’s kind of obvious but when people make snap judgments about information they hear about companies or read about in the press they often don’t take the time to start to consider the details. What did they actually do?

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2015

Sam’s goal was to build a tech company fulfilling the need for storing physical items in the cloud and to build a nationally-scaled business that would be hard to compete against. It’s not just big in Dallas but in San Diego, Phoenix and Sacramento but also Boston, Chicago, Washington and of course San Francisco.

Ideas 150

Ideas Startup Technical Review Pricing 150

TechCrunch LA

MAY 14, 2020

” The wider plan — coronavirus pandemic willing — is to start building out a network of physical clinics to go alongside the telehealth service, expanding out from the initial clinic in LA. She says the team is eyeing other locations in California to potentially open up later this year.

Startup 140

Startup Los Angeles Platform Research 140

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

Of course that website isn’t completely up to date but it’s a great resource for seeing the overall picture. Of course unsolicited spam has very low open rates and is filtered by the major providers. Here are some representative rates that we’re seeing by category. 94% of all online adults use email. I’ll wait.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

You want to send just enough to get the meeting (and of course a great deck sells better than a long email) and not so long that you don’t leave a chance to wow the person in your actual meeting. Almost every idea worthy of funding has 5 amazing teams trying to do the same thing and execution and team determines the winners.

Venture Capital 261

Venture Capital Slides Email Startup 261

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 6, 2013

I called 1-855-DOG-VACAY and spoke with Killina Benson from their concierge team and explained my circumstances. More like a temporary VC just to get some experience and of course we’d pay him. I said, “This category is going to be huge. So I asked him if he’d consider coming in an an intern of sorts.

Venture Capital 344

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review San Diego 344

socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2014

Are developers willing to invest their time and energy in building solutions around your products, company, or organization? Last year, we had our first hackathon, Hackamotive, since we are in the automotive category. I think the consumers found that interesting, and the teams found that fascinating. It was a great event.

Edmunds 172

Edmunds Southern California Ideas Startup 172

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 13, 2020

Lower targets indicate a very conservative team, or challenges that have not been disclosed. Highest on your list of fund usage categories should be business scaling requirements, such as marketing, inventory building, and staffing. Of course, projections don’t make reality, but they do force you to declare.

Ideas 123

Ideas Statistics Invest Marketing 123

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2011

We know the mantra: Team matters. Team is the only thing that matters. Your ability to keep up is dependent on having a great team of differing skills. Individuals don’t build great companies, teams do. The company with the best team on the field will win. So how exactly do you assemble such a team?

Startup 399

Startup Class Blogging Company 399

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 7, 2015

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Every company needs this focus to attract the best minds and loyalty in both categories. Hire the right team.

Entrepreneur 117

Entrepreneur Organization Startup Pricing 117

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 8, 2018

Early-stage ideas fall in the same category. In fact, entrepreneurs will always tell you that the invention was the easy part, and building an innovative business was the real challenge. Of course it helps to have innovative technologies before you start building a business. Don’t get me wrong.

Technical Review 86

Technical Review Patents Ideas Journal 86

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2019

Of course, every business owner I know will loudly proclaim that could never happen on their watch, but secretly they are not so sure, and would like to know how to prevent it. Every business leader needs to focus on continuous learning, adapting, and being the role model for the team. Workforce demographics quickly changing.

Customer 83

Customer Custom Demand Examples 83

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

The best of them: Spark Capital, USV, Foundry Group also understood that how they worked with these management teams was changing and I believe firms like this will continue to excel at early-stage investing. I would put my firm, GRP Partners in with the group working with teams in different ways. There are also others.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Capital Software Startup 296

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

It is, of course, a very recent phenomenon. If you want to understand the software trend that drove the creation of the seed-stage VC phenomenon I wrote about it that linked blog post but in short: cloud computing drove down the cost to create startups enabling a new category of investor.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Startup Invest Cloud Computing 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 19, 2017

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Every company needs this focus to attract the best minds and loyalty in both categories. Hire the right team.

Startup 59

Startup Organization Pricing Customer 59

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He invented the category of sponsored search. At the time when you did a search on Lycos, Alta Vista or similar for a category such as Cars you ended up getting 9 spam results and 1 proper website to meet your needs. And now, of course, UberSocial, Bill’s latest project. Summary notes, as always, provide below.

Competition 350

Competition Idealab Product CitySearch 350

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Of course none of these funds (my own included) want to be lumped into just one category because we all move across the spectrum. An obvious example that comes to mind is Roger Ehrenberg, whose fund Information Arbitrage , is looking at companies in these categories. The SimpleGeo API will provide you access to these services.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 22, 2018

Of course, every risk level can be mitigated by a good plan that addresses the issue, offers a credible action plan, and will convince you, as well as investors and customers, that what looks like a risk to many is actually a sustainable competitive advantage for your startup. Your startup is in a high-failure-rate business sector.

Sites 81

Sites Technical Review Social Media Entrepreneur 81

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 27, 2011

Note: This is the third installment in the Startup Team Building series. Did they build a team, did they go solo, did they dive into the task with relish or did they take on the mantel of a martyr? One or two failures spread over the course of an extensive career are not relevant. Read Part I HERE and Part II HERE.

Entrepreneur 252

Entrepreneur Paramount Startup Organization 252

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

Greg knows consumer businesses and customers, which has added tremendously to our team where I admittedly have more of a background in enterprise software, data and online video. The Draft team will answer questions there and so will Greg and I if you have anything for us.

Startup 150

Startup Outsource Development Mobile Southern California 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

million in team costs to code, launch, manage, market & sell our software. Of course there were variants – we preferred PostGres to MySQL and many people used other programming languages than PHP. I still think it was Amazon that created this category not the other way around. These are very different. Enter Amazon.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software Capital Startup 334

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2016

Of course, every risk level can be mitigated by a good plan that addresses the issue, offers a credible action plan, and will convince you, as well as investors and customers, that what looks like a risk to many is actually a sustainable competitive advantage for your startup. Your startup is in a high-failure-rate business sector.

Startup 104

Startup Entrepreneur Sites Technical Review 104

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 12, 2016

Part I, Team) Tact was founded by Chuck Ganapathi , who was formerly the SVP of Products at Salesforce.com having led initiatives like their chat product, CRM and mobile. Tact rose by building a mobile-first enterprise software company — but then they took it to the next level. Why Invest? Why Invest? Boy, were these analysts wrong.

Software 105

Software Mobile Artificial Inteligence Oracle 105

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2014

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Every company needs this focus to attract the best minds and loyalty in both categories. Hire the right team.

Startup 91

Startup Organization Pricing Customer 91