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What Did I Learn From the First VC Check I Ever Wrote?

Both Sides of the Table

I had just left Salesforce.com where I was VP, Products, after they had acquired my second startup. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. Over the past 2.5

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How Many Angels is the Right Amount for a Startup to Have?

Both Sides of the Table

I save room in literally every deal to invite angels (or seed funds) to co-invest with me. Even if one disagrees with the premise, why would anyone feel the need to attack Mike for writing it? With strong leads (VCs, seed funds or large angels) there is an unwritten Pottery Barn Rule. This is a hard one.

Angel 150
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Some Career Advice for Aspiring Tech CEOs

Both Sides of the Table

” It was meant both as a call to those writing angel checks into other people’s companies that they ought to think about putting that capital toward themselves either by becoming a startup founder or (and this was my real point) by taking an under-market salary in a company where they can learn the right skills to do it in the future.

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What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

We’re going to start aggressively spend money on marketing our product. Gross margin (GM) is the amount of profit you make per sale of your product or service taking into account your total costs of selling that product or service. So money spent should add equity value or create IP that eventually will.

Startup 383
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The Long-Term Value of Loyalty

Both Sides of the Table

No rule is ever absolute no matter how it sounds when one writes a blog. I learned how to better run a product management process. I learned how to integrate customers into our product development process. I wrote a large check to one of them for a startup with no product and no real plan. We were family.

Startup 285
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Top 120 Startup Posts for 2010

SoCal CTO

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc.

Startup 378
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Get Inside the Mind of an Angel Investor

Both Sides of the Table

When I meet with Tom offline it’s obvious that he immediately is thinking about product issues, technology trends, funding rounds, etc. At Sony, he didn’t feel like he could “steer the ship” and get his ideas heard so he left and started GUBA, GUBA had no seed funding. Are there warning signs? (0:26:44).

Angel 302