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. After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. My blog was wiped out. Tempus Fugit.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. How did you start blogging? “My In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 was starting. You still need the presentation to back that up. Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

So I ask you – if you’re being reactive to somebody else’s emails are you really being as productive in your company as you could be? You’re writing a freaking blog post! The same kind of tasks that a startup team has. I spend tons of time each day on portfolio company issues. “But WAIT !!!

Email 314

Email Product Startup Writing 314

socalTECH

JUNE 30, 2011

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based Gamzee (www.gamzee.com), a new game company founded by Howard Marks, the co-founder of Activision and Acclaim Games, announced a seed round of funding. We caught up with Howard to hear about what Gamzee is all about, and where he thinks the next big thing in games is going to be.

Activision 217

Activision Platform Startup Mobile 217

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

One example is that they introduced a program where their founders can pool together shares from their company and exchange them for a small portfolio of other First Round Capital companies. As a courtesy if you enjoyed his write-up please check out his startup company, ChannelStack. and Half.com.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Steve Jillings has a long track record of running successful startups in Southern California, ranging from such companies as FrontBridge Technologies (sold to Microsoft in 2005 for over $200M) and Vantage Media (acquired in 2007). To learn more, we caught up with Steve. Every other hand goes down, and ours stays up.

Marina Del Rey 238

Marina Del Rey Startup IP Examples 238

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Paul Kedrosky made the case for “naive optimism&# being an important part of startup success. I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on my background. Let’s call these cards 1996-99 and 2005-08. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Paul Kedrosky made the case for “naive optimism&# being an important part of startup success. I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on the skills I’ve developed in my career. Let’s call these cards 1996-99, 2005-08 and 2010+.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

So that we’re speaking the same language I would define “exclusive” as a period in which your company is prohibited from doing business with certain customers or business partners, which is why many incorrectly assume this is necessarily bad. I need to give credit for the topic to PR Malloy who Tweeted me this question.

Outsource Development 150

Outsource Development Startup Customer Custom 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. 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.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. We then spoke about startups.

Startup 286

Startup Venture Capital Web Ideas 286

InfoChachkie

JULY 21, 2011

We help companies reward their employees with perks. Perks are one of the most cost effective ways for a company to recruit and retain employees. 5) When I interviewed people at my past startups, I rejected them if they asked me about our dental plan, as true entrepreneurs don’t care about such pedestrian benefits.

Summary 246

Summary Tips Sales Entrepreneur 246

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. People get too worked up over the word. As any historian of bubbles will tell you – there were periods of bubbles in assets as arcane as tulips , South American trading companies , dot-com bubbles & housing bubbles. I believe that. Why I believe we’re in a bubble.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

socalTECH

JANUARY 15, 2009

Our startup interview this morning is with Josh Stomel , founder of ResumeBucket (www.resumebucket.com), a new web site that is focused on helping people share their resumes with the world. Stomel--who is bootstrapping the startup from his recruiting firm, NeoHire--explained the site to us. What's the idea behind the site?

Startup 140

Startup Yahoo Sites Oversee.net 140

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

We’ve all become so used to having Microsoft in our lives that we’ve started to take their products and services for granted. All we have to do is look at the data, though: Since its launch in 2005, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has sold 66 million copies worldwide. That makes it the first in console sales. Giving back.

Writing 88

Writing Training Email .Net 88

socalTECH

JULY 13, 2009

Mark has also been quite active mentoring entrepreneurs, We caught up with Mark to hear about what kinds of investments GRP is looking at nowadays, his view on the software-as-a-service market, and how best to approach him with a pitch. Mark Suster: Let's start at the 50,000 foot level, then I'll segue into that question.

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Starting November 3-5 (This week) BlogWorld kicks it off as will TechZulu. Shani Higgins joined Technorati in 2007 to lead strategy and day to day operations for the company¹s advertising sales, business development and the Technorati Media advertising network. Jace Hall is the President and founder of HDFILMS INC.

Los Angeles 75

Los Angeles Angel Social Media Media 75

socalTECH

APRIL 25, 2011

We spoke with Scott about GOGII and textPlus, the shifting mobile market, and also what lessons he's applied to his new startup. We loved the mobile space, and when we sold Jamdat we felt that market was just getting started. We felt there had to be an easier way to reach a broad audience in mobile, so we started looking at messaging.

Gogii 200

Gogii Mobile Activision Electronic Arts 200

socalTECH

APRIL 30, 2010

Last week, San Diego-based Confident Technologies (www.confidenttechnologies.com) announced that it had acquired the assets of Vidoop, and created a company focused on security and authentication of users. We spoke with Curtis, along with William Goldbach , Executive Vice President at the firm, about the company.

Technology 124

Technology Web Sites Orange County 124

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Starting November 3-5 (This week) BlogWorld kicks it off as will TechZulu. Shani Higgins joined Technorati in 2007 to lead strategy and day to day operations for the company¹s advertising sales, business development and the Technorati Media advertising network. Jace Hall is the President and founder of HDFILMS INC.

Los Angeles 49

Los Angeles Angel Social Media Media 49

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

We’ve hung out periodically over the past few years and I have enjoyed debating many startup topics. Like many companies they experimented with many pricing models. They realized for them this was dumb because people didn’t want to use up their credits so viral adoption wasn’t happening quickly enough.

Startup 303

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Writing 303

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I’m inspired by the enthusiasm of the young, emerging startup ecosystem that is here. As I gear up to give a keynote at the annual Seattle 2.0 awards dinner on Thursday night I started reflected on what it would take to “change the trajectory&# for Seattle or for any regional market, really.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

SoCal Delicious

MAY 6, 2012

Features like this, as well as our daily interviews wouldn’t be possible without the amazing support of our sponsor eMinutes – a law firm here in Los Angeles that focuses on helping entrepreneurs structure their companies. Right now they’re setting up 500 free corporations for first time entrepreneurs. Thank you @eminutes. .

Los Angeles 78

Los Angeles Entrepreneur Angel Fractional CTO 78

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding. Nevertheless, if you share too much in your funding process or meet too many VCs expect a certain amount of your ideas to spread around the startup community. We spoke briefly about why.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

On the one hand were the blogs that “blew up&# and became real businesses like TechCrunch, GigaOm or TalkingPointsMemo. On the other hand were everybody else including those that tried to make a full time of it like Robert Scoble as well as those that did it as a side job like VCs, CEO’s and start-up entrepreneurs.

Blogging 219

Blogging Venture Capital Startup Social Media 219

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Spark Capital is relatively new to VC (founded in 2005) yet has become one of the hottest new VCs having invested in Twitter, Tumblr, AdMeld, Boxee, KickApps and many more companies. We both felt that the critical reasoning skills and writing skills were critical to our career development. Founded in 2008 by Mehdi Maghsoodnia.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 13, 2010

I started blogging in 2005 and then re-started blogging about a year ago. You can start in a lightweight, community friendly way like on Tumblr or Posterous without much effort. I’ve always believed that you learn a great deal when you’re presenting, teaching or writing about what you know.

Blogging 250

Blogging Social Media Writing Startup 250

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 9, 2010

I believe that this is a major new area of growth & innovation for the Internet as Cloud Services start to form deeper & richer layers. You can think of even your PC as a stack in which the hardware manufacturers handled physical layers, Microsoft handled the OS layer and application companies built higher up in the stack.

Startup 343

Startup Technical Review S3 Services 343

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

In more than a decade of writing about the Internet and tech-enabled businesses I’ve learned that mobs don’t do nuance well. When you achieve economies-of-scale advantages it doesn’t benefit you to help newer companies draft off of your infrastructure to rise and compete against you. It’s Hobbesian economics 101. Enter blockchain.

Course 280

Course Startup Framework Marketing 280