Remove Product Remove Sales Remove Technical Advisors Remove Venture Capital
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If You Don’t Define Your Personal Brand the Market Will

Both Sides of the Table

I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. For 1991 I was very technical and also had a lot of practical business implementation experience in technology. ” F**k.

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How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck

Both Sides of the Table

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. I’m a product geek more than a spreadsheet ninja.

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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. We want a strong balance sheet (um, ok. Think DropBox, Airbnb, Uber, Maker Studios.

Startup 383
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10 Marketing Lessons for Early-Stage Tech Startups

Both Sides of the Table

Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.). My general rule is that it’s good to be stealth in the early days while you’re building your product and testing your market. Most people totally advise against stealth.

Marketing 380
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Some Career Advice for Aspiring Tech CEOs

Both Sides of the Table

There is a second set of career discussions I have even more frequently than my “angel yourself” advice but this type is almost never discussed publicly in blogs, which tend to emphasize only billion-dollar opportunities, 20-something technical founders and Silicon Valley elitism.

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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Both Sides of the Table

I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody.

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Frank Addantes FounderBlog: Startup 5.0 – I’m just going to chill out for a bit… (OK, for a month…)

Frank Addante

Under Process, Over Deliver So, you need to develop a product? ▼ 2006 (20) ► December (2) Just Say What it Is 12 Proven Guidelines for Rapid Product Development. ► August (3) Venture Capital - What's the rush? Venture Capital Funding 7. Build a SWAT team 3. Zondigo, Inc. Relaxing 2.

Startup 40