Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

*. If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe.

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Venture Capital Startup Invest Cloud Computing 150

socalTECH

DECEMBER 26, 2019

Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. First, within our portfolio I am really excited about Wheels (Crosscut led the seed round at the end of 2018). in 2005 for $680M.

Southern California 100

Southern California News Platform Class 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 RSS was something that had appeared.” “….I was starting.

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

socalTECH

DECEMBER 21, 2017

For today's interview, we spoke with Richard Sussman , who is leading up investments for a new venture capital firm in town, NordicEye (www.nordiceye.com), which just saw a big exit in one of its very first investments, Los Angeles-based Weblife. What's wonderful about this new fund, is we literally started in April of 2017.

Southern California 133

Southern California Startup Venture Capital Invest 133

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 17, 2010

Paul Graham built the mold at Y Combinator , which he founded back in 2005. With modest variations on Paul’s pattern, this new class of mentors-plus-capital programs has grown to include TechStars operating in Boston, Boulder, and Seattle, Austin Capital Factory , deep in the heart of Texas, LaunchBox in the DC area, and a number of others.

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Incubator Mentor Capital Startup 80

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

I recently wrote about the 12 tips to building successful startup communities. I lived in London from 1997-2005 and for 6 of those years ran my startup based out of London. I talk about it often including in my own personal narrative. Everything I learned about startups I learned by making mistakes at my first one.

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Startup Ideas Education Class 350

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2019

I was reading an old article written by marketing guru Seth Godin a while back where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. But add another five years, and Google had made it, going public in 2004 with a market capitalization of $23B. He later changed the name to Facebook.

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Startup Yahoo IBM IBM 111

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. I spoke about a lot of things during the keynote. I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. source: Capital IQ. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

Danielle goes through some commentary from Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen about burn rate and then goes on to discuss her own burn rate and others publicly weigh in. There are many times when being overly capitalized before you’re ready is a negative. But what IS the right amount of burn for a company?

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Startup Company Companies .Net 383

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

He’d been working at a well-funded startup for about a year and had come to terms with the fact that the startup was really a pretty dumb idea. Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. Tesla is not.

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Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). I should say that I agree that naive optimism in entrepreneurs can produce higher beta (upside or flops) and that’s good from an investment standpoint if you’re looking for big returns.

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Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

In that post I talked about how to select a law-firm for a startup. This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. For starters, David had once been an entrepreneur himself so it seemed like such a natural fit. It was very widely read. It should be: Local; Right-sized; and. He was a mensch.

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Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 6, 2013

I was reading an old article written by marketing guru Seth Godin a while back where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. But add another five years, and Google had made it, going public in 2004 with a market capitalization of $23B. He later changed the name to Facebook.

Startup 118

Startup Yahoo IBM IBM 118

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5 I’m writing this post to explain to entrepreneurs what you should be thinking about in terms of the VC’s you approach and the size and stage of their funds.

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Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Los Angeles-based Crosscut Ventures (www.crosscutventures.com) is one of the newest venture capital funds in the area, and has quietly been working on funding local companies over the last year. Brian Garrett: We started Crosscut Ventures about a year ago. Let's talk a bit about your background. What do you invest in?

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Southern California Startup Palomar Rustic Canyon 153

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). And if I were an entrepreneur I’d rather find investors who understood “my space&# so that in tough times they felt comfortable about “doubling down.&#. Not everybody agreed.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2010

One of Southern California's successful, serial entrepreneurs is Winston Damarillo , who founded Gluecode, which he sold to IBM in 2005. We thought we'd catch back up with Winston to hear about the Morphlabs. The company is about three years old, and we had our first product initially in Japan. We brought that to the U.S.

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Southern California Startup Cloud Computing El Segundo 242

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

I thought then that the best way to value a start-up is to give value to those elements of progress by the entrepreneur or team that reduce risk of success. I should have done more about this subtle interpretation when first seeing this, and will attempt to make up for that now.

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Startup Examples Metrics Marketing 120

socalTECH

JUNE 6, 2011

Those programs--epitomized by YCombinator in the Bay Area, and TechStars in Boulder, Colorado--attract newly minted entrepreneurs with a mixture of cash and mentoring, and a program which rapidly takes ideas and turns them into viable, executing businesses. Typically, venture backed companies, always entrepreneur led.

Startup 221

Startup Mentor Southern California Incubator 221

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

This is the fourth article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). But then again I remember in the late 90′s when people were talking about the “new economy&# and the “old economy&# and how the old rules didn’t apply. How’d that work out?

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Invest Angel Startup Marketing 283

socalTECH

APRIL 5, 2017

And, even more impressively, it's now seeing more than $100M in annual revenues--without ever having taken any institutional or venture capital. We spoke with CEO Bryan Cheung to learn more about LifeRay, and how it grew from a church basement and open source to $100M+ in revenues, without ever taking outside capital.

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Diamond Bar Customer Custom Organization 169

socalTECH

JUNE 13, 2019

We caught up with Pluto TV's co-founder and Chief Growth Officer, Ilya Pozin , to hear about how the company started, and its path to acquisitionas well as to get some tips on startup success. We were building it about a year before we launched. How did the acquisition come aboutwere you looking for a buyer at the time?

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Startup Content Demand Netflix 124

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

We then spoke about startups. What I’ve learned about Sequoia is that when you’re straightforward about the facts they just try to help. He grew up in Connecticut attended Yale undergrad and worked for IBM after graduation doing M&A, strategy and venture capital. Nothing but value add. They look at data.

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Startup Venture Capital Web Ideas 286

socalTECH

AUGUST 15, 2014

We recently spoke with the CEO and co-founder of Kixer, Keith Bonnici --most recently SVP of Business Operations at Scopely--about the startup, which recently announced a seed financing round. What we saw back in 2005, was that everyone was making a ton of money on desktop ads, because that''s where the users were. What is Kixer?

Mobile 124

Mobile Web Artificial Inteligence Technical Review 124

SoCal Delicious

MAY 6, 2012

where entrepreneurs share their stories. 63 Los Angeles Entrepreneurs To Be Proud Of By mario on May 2, 2012 in Features , grid. Free Corporations For First-Time Entrepreneurs. Right now they’re setting up 500 free corporations for first time entrepreneurs. Here are 62 63 Los Angeles entrepreneurs we can be proud of.

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Los Angeles Entrepreneur Angel Fractional CTO 78

socalTECH

APRIL 7, 2011

Many local entrepreneurs might know Todd Jerry , formerly a venture capitalist at Anthem Venture Partners. The prefab building area has seen some recent venture capital interest, most recently with Blu Homes in Boston, which just scored some new venture capital. First, explain what your company is all about?

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Santa Monica Venture Capital Anthem Design 190

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. Tempus Fugit.

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Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

socalTECH

OCTOBER 26, 2016

We spoke earlier with Cody Simms , Executive Director of Techstars America and who leads the program in LA, to hear more about why the startup accelerator operator is opening up its third accelerator here, why Los Angeles has turned out to be one of the leading sources for startups across its network, as well as Cody's advice to entrepreneurs.

Startup 100

Startup Los Angeles Mentor Class 100

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 31, 2016

I was reading an old article written by marketing guru Seth Godin a while back where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. But add another five years, and Google had made it, going public in 2004 with a market capitalization of $23B. He later changed the name to Facebook.

Yahoo 59

Yahoo IBM IBM Startup 59

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 26, 2011

I was reading an article written by marketing guru Seth Godin a while back where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. But add another five years, and Google had made it, going public in 2004 with a market capitalization of $23B. In 2005, Facebook still showed a yearly net loss of $3.63

Yahoo 118

Yahoo IBM IBM Startup 118

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

We caught up with Kanaan to learn more about uCast Global. Thats what uCast is all about. Kanaan Jemili:We have about six areas we focus on. The other thing we do, is were very transparent about sharing data with them, like user data and advertising data. Kanaan Jemili. What is uCast? Who are your core customers?

Content 113

Content Startup Mobile Platform 113

socalTECH

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Taher tells us about his journey from Silicon Valley to Southern California, the inspiration behind the site, and where he hopes to take the business next. Say you're a Realtor, you probably get lots of business based on referrals, and when past customers talk about you in a good light, that sends more customers your way.

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Startup Newsletter Customer Custom 193

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 24, 2011

I am currently at the annual VC in the OC program held in Irvine CA by OCTANe , an organization that connects people and ideas to resources and capital in Orange County. Over 600 people came to this event to listen share and network, including entrepreneurs, VC’s and investors. in 2009 and #1 in LED quality in 2010.

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Orange County OCTANE Technical Review Outsource Development 104

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this.

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Venture Capital Marketing Startup Social Network 255

InfoChachkie

JULY 20, 2015

Six outstanding entrepreneurs have created this sweet flavor of success in one of the most beautiful places on earth – Santa Barbara, California. As Emmy Award winning comedian Bill Grundfest aptly points out in this video , entrepreneurs should seek the intersection of the things they enjoy doing and the tasks which will make them money.

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Santa Barbara Startup Sales Entrepreneur 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. This article originally ran on PEHub.

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Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

We brought together Peter Cowen of Groundwork Equity , Mark Suster of GRP Partners , Rick Smith of Crosscut Ventures , and Richard Yen of Saban Ventures -- all of who will be on the judging panel for the Tech Coast Angel's Fast Pitch on February 24th, to give us a their hints and tips about pitching to venture capitalists.

Tech Coast Angels 100

Tech Coast Angels Ideas Entrepreneur Invest 100