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Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

I started my first company in 1999 and was admittedly swept up in all of this: Magazine covers, fancy conferences, artificial valuations and easy money. I learned to avoid unnecessary conferences, avoid non-essential costs and strive for at least a neutral EBITDA if for no other reason than nobody was interested in giving us any more money.

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13 Ecosystem Builders That Are Boosting Startup Growth

Tech.Co

In 2006, a passion to help startups grew into Tech Cocktail , a company whose mission was to showcased burgeoning companies in bars around the country. BlackTech Week was created in 2014, and in four short years, they’ve gained over 2700 participants, 150 speakers, and 3 pitch competitions. BlackTech Week (Miami, FL).

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How FreeConferenceCall.com Made Audio Conferencing Free

socalTECH

If you are like us, a huge number of the conference calls you participate in are enabled by a company called FreeConferenceCall.com , which has enabled free conference calls for millions of startups and large businesses alike. But, how can the company offer up free conference calling services, and what''s the story behind the service?

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This Week in VC: Michael Montgomery (President, Montgomery & Co.)

Both Sides of the Table

The Montgomery Conference : one of the top technology events of the annual calendar in the United States and held every March. Founded by James Reinhart out of Harvard Business School (semi finalist in annual business plan competition). Founded in 2002 and expanded after founders graduated from CMU in 2006. We discussed: 1.

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Are Business Plans Still Necessary?

Both Sides of the Table

I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 Unfortunately this was reinforced by the many conferences that rushed to espouse the benefits of Web 2.0 What about your competition – how much do they charge? There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0

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Surveying SoCal's M&A Landscape, with David Siemer

socalTECH

Siemer & Associates runs its annual conference next week to delve into the same topics. For the more questionable ones, ones with less sustainable differentiation, this time it''s a little tougher than a couple of years ago, and certainly much more so than 2006 and 2007. For good companies, it''s a great exit opportunity.

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Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

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. The Original Post (after the jump): Venture Capital, By Mark Suster (December 2nd, 2006). Page 3: Competition. My blog was wiped out. Can it really be a month since my last blog posting?