2011

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Should Startups Focus on Profitability or Not?

Both Sides of the Table

There are certain topics that even some of the best journalists can’t fully grok. One of them is profitability. I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” I mention journalists here because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is ALWAYS the right answer and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many “normals”

Startup 418
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32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder

SoCal CTO

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. I tend to ask a lot of questions, challenge aspects, make suggestions. But I've often been very surprised by one aspect of these conversations. Many of these founders have talked with several developers or development firms about their plans.

Develop 396
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Ten Startup Tips From Steve Jobs

InfoChachkie

Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include: Words of startup wisdom from Jeff Bezos. In the course of my recent interview with Guy Kawasaki , author and former Apple Evangelist, Guy describes Steve Jobs as: “… the world’s greatest CEO, ever. He did more for Apple’s shareholders, customers and employees than any other CEO has ever done for their shareholders, customers and employees.

Tips 279
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Savings.com: The California Internet Tax Law and Unintended Consequences

socalTECH

Last night, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill which taxes Internet retailers if they have California affiliates, a move which looks to have major impact on local companies who use Internet affiliate marketing. As part of that, Amazon.com, Overstock.com, and a large number of e-commerce retailers have cut off their California affiliates, saying that they will immediately stop paying them for referrals due to the move.

CPC 279
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Can You Ask for Office Rent Relief? How to Manage Your Lease During COVID-19

Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.

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Do You Have the Mentality to Manage a Startup?

Startup Professionals Musings

A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work. Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s a good start.

Startup 126
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The Top 10 Types of Douchebags in Tech and How NOT to Be One

Jason Nazar

Whatever else I accomplish in life, I certainly hope I keep my non-douchebaggy status. Treat each person you meet with respect, kindness and thoughtfulness. It’s a standard we can all strive for, but some seem to fall extra short. So here are my muses on the types of Douchebags you can run across in the tech world, and how not to be one. 1.) CEOs Whose Cockiness is Just Dickiness.

More Trending

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Predicting Product Adoption in Large-Scale Social Networks

SoCal Delicious

socalcto

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Lead, Follow or Get the Fuck Out of the Way

Both Sides of the Table

Today’s post courtesy of the Dave McClure school of vocabulary. About a month ago I was meeting with a seasoned entrepreneur. After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. He was recounting one of his higher profile startups to me. He founded the company, raised a bunch of money, built the product and established a good reputation and market position.

Startup 418
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Why You Need to Take 50 Coffee Meetings

Both Sides of the Table

50 coffee meetings. It should stick in your head as a metaphor for networking. For getting outside of your comfort zone. For starting relationships today that won’t pay off for a year. It’s the entrepreneur’s equivalent of “ 10,000 hours.&#. Anybody who has spent any time with me in person will be tired of this advice because I give it so frequently.

Startup 410
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Whom Should You Hire at a Startup? (Attitude Over Aptitude)

Both Sides of the Table

This post originally ran on TechCrunch. Startups. We know the mantra: Team matters. Is this philosophy exaggerated? Overrated? Cliché? No. Team is the only thing that matters. Whatever you’re working on now, the half-life of innovation is so rapid now that your product will soon be out-of-date. Your existence is irrelevant unless you continue rapid innovation.

Startup 399
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Never Ask a Busy Person to Lunch. Here’s Why:

Both Sides of the Table

OK. I know with a title like that I’m going to subject myself to people thinking I’m just being a grumpy, exclusive VC. That’s not the point. It’s honest advice so please judge once you’re read the post. I’ll keep it short. Meals or coffee are a great way to build rapport with other people and since I’m an ENTP I love breaking bread as much as the next guy.

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The Co-Founder Mythology

Both Sides of the Table

I spoke at Stanford last year about starting a tech company. They really cleverly chopped the video up into small bite-sized segments. So for anybody who reads my “This Week in VC&# transcripts but doesn’t watch the video – this one’s for you! It’s only 3 minutes, 44 seconds. I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# So embedded is this conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that it feels like heresy to even question it.

Startup 393
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Quick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations

Both Sides of the Table

In the past I’ve given some tips for handling meetings effectively, covering topics like: - How not to let your meeting go down a rat hole ; - Dealing with the elephant in the room ; - Dealing with skeletons in your closet ; - How to make meetings discussions, not “pitches&#. - A tale of two pitches (I eventually invested in the first company that pitched).

Tips 392
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Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups

SoCal CTO

I was asked by a reader how much equity he should give out to early employees and to service providers in a very early stage startup. I'll get to service providers in a later post. Founders vs. Early Employees To help with this discussion, let me start with a definition of "early employee." Steve Blank divides the individuals associated with startups as: Founders Early Employees (Employees # 1-25) Later Employees (Employees # 26-125) The reality is that the definition of founder and em

Equity 391
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The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Get

Both Sides of the Table

Overnight success. It’s one of the biggest myths in the tech industry. It’s a ongoing struggle to overcome this bias. I say “struggle to overcome&# because I care about young people entering our industry with a set of realistic expectations about what “normal&# is. If you take a snapshot during an extraordinary surge in valuations, M&A activity, IPOs and thus wealth creation you’d echo John Doerr’s famous quote from 1999 that, “The Internet is the gr

Startup 391
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32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder

SoCal CTO

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. I tend to ask a lot of questions, challenge aspects, make suggestions. But I've often been very surprised by one aspect of these conversations. Many of these founders have talked with several developers or development firms about their plans.

Develop 384
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Should You Really be a Startup Entrepreneur?

Both Sides of the Table

This post originally appeared on TechCrunch. One of the most common questions that entrepreneurs who meet me for the first time like to ask is, “Do you miss being an entrepreneur? Aren’t you ever tempted to go back and do it again?”. The obvious answer is yes. When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood. I guess it’s kind of like crack (not that I know from experience).

Startup 384
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10 Marketing Lessons for Early-Stage Tech Startups

Both Sides of the Table

I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “ good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. “ We need to learn from doing, by trial-and-error. If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory.

Marketing 380
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9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

Both Sides of the Table

This post originally appeared on TechCrunch. I’m a very big proponent of the “lean startup movement&# as espoused by Steve Blank & Eric Ries. The part of the movement that resonates the most with me (in my words) is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a large market for what they do.

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The Importance of The Narrative

Both Sides of the Table

I went to undergrad at UCSD, which is not a place known for its Greek institutions and my father grew up in South America and had know idea what a fraternity was. So I went to college with no expectation that I would ever join a fraternity let alone aspire to become president one day. Yet being in a fraternity was one of the most transformative experiences I had in college and prepared me better for becoming an entrepreneur than any class that I took.

Startup 365
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The End of the Web? Don’t Bet on It. Here’s Why

Both Sides of the Table

Fred Wilson recently posted a great video on his blog with the CEO of Forrester Research, George Colony. The money slide is the graphic below. The chart shows three scarce resources and their improvements over time. The top line is available storage (S), the middle line represents processing power (following Moore’s law) or (P) and the bottom line is the Network (N).

Web 355
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Here are 10 Tips from BuzzFeed to Make Your Content Go Viral

Both Sides of the Table

I recently had the pleasure of spending an hour with Jon Steinberg, president of Buzzfeed , a company who focuses on helping media companies make their content go viral. His words, “we find things on Sunday morning that will be on the Today show on Tuesday morning.&# That’s why people turn up to Buzzfeed. We talked about a lot of great stuff in the video including how to do sales calls and a how a new “culture of writing&# is emerging as a critical skill set in business today.

Buzzfeed 354
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The Future of Advertising will be Integrated

Both Sides of the Table

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Banner Ads. They first started in 1994 and are therefore almost as old as the Web itself. They were very effective back then, with the original ad garnering a 78% click-through rate (CTR) ! I guess from there we had nowhere to go but down. Nowadays banner ads get on average 0.2% CTR meaning for every 1,000 ads that are served up only 2 people click on them.

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How to Hunt Programmers for Your Startup - A Field Guide

SoCal CTO

This post is admittedly the outcome of a conversation with a few people over some beers. Some of it is a bit tongue-in-cheek and certainly we are greatly simplifying things. The people around the table included a bunch of us who would be prey in some situations. So, please take this in the spirit intended. The conversation centered around a founder who's key question is "Where Do I Find a Developer for My Startup?

Guide 349
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How to use PR Firms at Startups

Both Sides of the Table

One of the most frequent questions entrepreneurs ask about when they raise a little bit of money or are getting close to launching their first product is whether they should hire a PR firm. There is obviously no black-or-white answer, but I’ve tried everything from working a large international agency, to hiring in-house people to doing it myself.

Startup 349
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How Startups Can Use Metrics to Drive Success

Both Sides of the Table

You Manage What you Measure. One of the things I discuss the most with the portfolio companies I’m involved with is that “you manage what you measure.”. It’s a very important concept for me because in a startup you are constantly under pressure and have way too many distractions. Having a set of metrics that you watch & that you feel are the key drivers of your success helps keep clarity.

Metrics 346
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Why I’d Rather Err on the Side of Direct Feedback Than Pleasantries

Both Sides of the Table

A few weeks ago I was reading a blog post by MG Siegler that really struck a chord. The title was “The Jerk,” which is a reference to both the Steve Martin film but more precisely to Robert Scoble’s interpretation of Steve Jobs having just read his biography. The gist of MG’s argument is that he’d rather work with people who are openly critical of his ideas if it helps him to perform better than to have a bunch of “yes men” around who just say what a gre

Press 337
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Why Startups Should Raise Money at the Top End of Normal

Both Sides of the Table

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. 2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. I acknowledged this in the article. You can be pissed off, but I don’t set prices.

Startup 336
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Ten Startup Tips From Amazon Founder, Jeff Bezos

InfoChachkie

In August 2004, FastCompany published an article titled, Inside The Mind Of Jeff Bezos , written by Alan Deutschman. Although the article is informative, it is the accompanying sidebar that has remained with me over the succeeding years. Under the heading, “The Book On Bezos,” the callout lists ten actionable and impactful nuggets of startup advice.

Tips 279
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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Take On Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment

InfoChachkie

As I noted in Why Most Business Books (Still) Suck , I am generally not a fan of business books. Although many are entertaining, most fail to provide entrepreneurs with a sufficient return on their time investment. If you are a leader at a startup and you are reading a business book, you are not closing customers, raising capital, improving your product, or spending time with your loved ones.

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Pawn Stars Teaches Entrepreneurs How To Not Negotiate - Real Lessons From Reality TV

InfoChachkie

I was recently working at my kitchen table while my adolescent son was watching the History Channel’s reality TV show Pawn Stars. The show caught my attention, as a litany of extremely unsophisticated individuals sold their family heirlooms and other.

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Eleven Startup Tips From Mark Cuban

InfoChachkie

Article first published as Eleven Startup Tips From Mark Cuban on Technorati. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include: Jeff Bezos , Steve Jobs and Richard Branson. Mark Cuban is a lifelong serial entrepreneur, launching his startup career with a variety of teenage schemes, including buying and selling collectable stamps to pay for college.

Tips 274
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Interview with Brian Norgard, Namesake

socalTECH

One of the stealthiest Los Angeles startups to emerge in the last few months has been Namesake (www.namesake.com), headed by Brian Norgard and co-founded by Dan Gould. Norgard has been keeping Namesake close to the vest, but we were able to visit him at the firm's headquarters in West Hollywood, where he gave us an overview of what the firm is doing.

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Interview: Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder AngelList and Co-Maintainer Venture Hacks

InfoChachkie

Messenger : Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder AngelList and Co-Maintainer Venture Hacks. Former Founder Epinions. Investor in Twitter, Foursquare, DISQUS, and (by Naval’s own admission) “a lot of other companies you have never heard of”. Dharmesh Shah, Founder of HubSpot and of OnStartups , recently published a great post entitled, Raising Money On AngelList , which offers insights germane to my conversation with Naval.

Startup 273
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Interview with Bong Koh, LifeCrowd

socalTECH

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based LifeCrowd (www.lifecrowd.com) unveiled its service to help connect people with real life activities. The firm is initially focusing on the Los Angeles market, and connecting people with fun, interesting classes, activities, and more in the local area. The company was founded by Bong Koh, a former EIR at Prism VentureWorks and venture capitalist at Advanced Technology Ventures; he also co-founded ibeatyou.

Startup 271
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Startup Children – How To Parent An Entrepreneur (Part I) - Teach Your Children To Create Something Out of Nothing

InfoChachkie

Note: This is part I of a five part series. Access the second installment HERE , part III HERE , part IV HERE and part V HERE. I recently answered the question “ What are good ways to raise your children to be entrepreneurs? ” on Quora. My response was brief and straightforward, which is common of popular Quora answers (as discussed in How To Write An Effective Quora Answer ).