Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

I’ve had a post in my head for months – maybe longer – about the role of a CEO. I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. This breaks Matt’s rule about not being a bottleneck. Both are basically people businesses. Selling the company.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Their first fund was a $75 million fund raised in 2006 and they very recently announced a brand new $130 million fund. In the intro section of the show we talked a lot about why VC funds are becoming smaller again and where Greycroft fits. Gilt Group is currently the largest private sale web site in US. Time will tell.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

socalTECH

JULY 16, 2010

Last week, San Diego-based provider of web content classification and security services developer BrightCloud was acquired by Webroot , and we thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to founder Quinn Curtis about how the acquisition of his firm came about. With any startup, that's always something you think about.

San Diego 145

San Diego IP Acquisition Web 145

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

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. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

socalTECH

APRIL 13, 2015

Gregg Parise , the CEO of the company, sat down to talk to us about the company''s launch. What is Events.com all about? We''re all about communications, outreach, and consumer facing products, in addition to those core business solutions built around the enterprise. The world today is not about that.

Software 100

Software Activity Startup San Diego 100

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 It has also brought about my favorite new term – Ramen Profitable. So, definition: when I talk about a business plan I’m not talking about a 40-page Word document outlining your market approach. Here’s why.

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2010

I’m not talk about the age old debate amongst investors whether you back entrepreneurs, markets or products (or as people like to hedge – product / market fit). Today’s post is about my investment thesis. He was telling me about a deal he had done. I have already written about this. I’m unequivocal on that topic.

Entrepreneur 321

Entrepreneur GRP Partners Venture Capital Invest 321

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a great leader and seem to be having this conversation a lot lately about Facebook, Yahoo!, Your sales team is pounding the table because engineering won’t ship new features fast enough. Marketing wants the sales teams to use the materials they’ve produced.

Entrepreneur 330

Entrepreneur Yahoo Startup Technical Review 330

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2010

File this under both Startup Adivce and Sales & Marketing Advice. Journalists don’t know enough about your company before the show, don’t have time for proper research, and you will be competing for their time afterward with 49+ other companies that want them to write about you. - They’re human.

Tips 307

Tips Startup Press Blogging 307

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Especially fun when you get him telling stories about his pilot experiences. So while it started more about finding solutions to get him driving cars more or logging airline miles he also focuses on big, industry-changing ideas. Currently has 1.8mm users and adding about 15,000 users/day. Actually, I’ve done this!

Zag 248

Zag Truecar Venture Capital CarsDirect 248

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

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. What IS relevant about the size of a VC’s fund?

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2019

First of all, the glory days of “dot.coms” are gone, when investors “didn’t care” about profitability, and all the big money was focused on user count growth. You might sell one of two of your widgets for $1 million each, entering profitability immediately, but then die because you can’t grow sales at that price. So let’s take a look.

Snapchat 74

Snapchat Startup Course Yahoo 74

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. He decided that our largest customers would be involved in the setting of our priority lists (we did some of this internally in the early years but we saw it mostly as a sales process). This was 2006 and we were now working on our second company.

Organization 280

Organization Customer Custom Tips 280

socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2012

Since Dolgoff is raising money for his 2D-to-3D startup via Fundable, we thought it would be interesting to hear about the project, and how he ended up turning to Fundable. Tell us about your project? Because we want to get into production, marketing, and sales, right now we're listing on Fundable.com.

Startup 252

Startup Sites Patents Outsource Development 252

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

billion dollar sale to Oracle from Bozeman, Montana. If you’re about to devote your professional life to building a business, and ready to sacrifice the blood, sweat, and tears it requires, seriously consider this question. Being close to your customers, your vendors, or even your competitors can make all the difference.

Startup 97

Startup Technical Review Oracle Software Review 97

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

For entrepreneurs who want to learn about how to work with investment banks, how to position yourself to be acquired and what the IPO markets look like this is the episode to watch. Founded in 2002 and expanded after founders graduated from CMU in 2006. This is often in the 5-7% range. Total raised: $1.3mm. TechCrunch. TechCrunch.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Mission Ventures Capital Help 242

socalTECH

OCTOBER 2, 2012

We thought it might be interesting to talk with one of the fund's managing directors, Jeb Spencer about the fund's success in technology investments, plus how it managed to raise another fund in this kind of environment, plus its unique goal of getting companies to an acquisition--and not an IPO.

Acquisition 168

Acquisition Software Review Technical Review Equity 168

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. Two weeks after Brad’s post I was at the 140 Conference in LA and I held open office hours for any entrepreneur who wanted to spend 15 minutes talking with a VC about their business.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

socalTECH

APRIL 16, 2010

One of the types of startups we see most of nowadays, are private sale, limited time bargain, and local group buying startups. What is the site all about? How did DealPerk.com come about? Let's talk about your background, and also how this related to CheapCheapCheat? Albert Ko: I've always liked the local edge.

Orange County 170

Orange County Startup Sites Southern California 170

socalTECH

MARCH 30, 2011

Around the 2006 timeframe, they hit $3M, and we saw the unique position that they could occupy in the industry. Talk more about your philosophy of investments? We raised our fund in 2006 to follow this exact model. They were big names--Fortune 500 customers. Are you still investing out of that fund?

Capital 168

Capital Hermosa Beach El Segundo Invest 168

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

A reminder that it is important for all entrepreneurs is to remember to be careful about “deal drift.” We had people hearing through the grapevine that we were about to raise money and new investors started calling us to get in on the deal. This isn’t a story about Black Swan events. VC, sales, biz dev, M&A or otherwise.

Venture Capital 301

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Technical Advisors 301

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.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

I must admit I discuss this very frequently with portfolio companies but hadn’t thought to write about it. Sales is all about knowing the key values of your buyer: What are they trying to achieve in working with you, why do they care about your solution and how will it help them economically?

Outsource Development 150

Outsource Development Startup Customer Custom 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

By now you will likely have read Andy Dunn’s scathing post about Venture Capitalists in which he decries the industry’s masses. After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. billion in returns.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

This should not be confused with raising too much money as many companies did in 2006-08. Three reasons: There is a relative valuation between the price a VC pays and their expectations of what it will exit for in an IPO or trade sale. But imagine a VC that did 12 deals per year in 2006, 2007 & 2008.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Xconomy

JULY 26, 2016

With a cloud lingering over the peer-to-peer lending industry, privately held National Funding is disclosing new details today about its operations, in a bid to step into the light and differentiate itself as a fintech company and alternative lender. The lender said it has provided capital to about 25,000 businesses nationwide.

San Diego 40

San Diego Help Software Review Funding 40

Xconomy

JULY 26, 2016

With a cloud lingering over the peer-to-peer lending industry, privately held National Funding is disclosing new details today about its operations, in a bid to step into the light and differentiate itself as a fintech company and alternative lender. The lender said it has provided capital to about 25,000 businesses nationwide.

Software Review 40

Software Review San Diego Funding Customer 40

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. And at the 11th hour they pulled out.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

When I went to raise money in 2006 I thought I knew every term in a term sheet but somehow I still got a bit duped by the option pool shuffle. I thought to myself, “OK, they were willing to F me when they thought I had no idea what I was talking about. No hidden terms. So they agreed to match True’s term sheet.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 13, 2013

First of all, the glory days of “dot.coms” are gone, when investors “didn’t care” about profitability, and all the money went to growth. You might sell one of two of your widgets for $1 million each, entering profitability immediately, but then die because you can’t grow sales at that price. So let’s take a look.

Startup 96

Startup Course Yahoo Funding 96

Xconomy

OCTOBER 16, 2016

After raising $30 million, San Diego-based Certona said it is moving to accelerate its product development, expand its sales and marketing team, and improve its client services as an e-commerce technology vendor. It wasn’t about raising multiple rounds and burning jet fuel. It has allowed us to scale in a very measured way.”.

Artificial Inteligence 40

Artificial Inteligence Commerce San Diego Web 40

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

We sat down with Lee Essner , the firm's CEO and founder, to chat about the company. What is AccessDNA all about? We also give users and consumers who have used those services the opportunity to rank those providers and tell about their experience. How did the company come about?

Content 150

Content Services Resource Sample 150

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

First of all, the glory days of “dot.coms” are gone, when investors “didn’t care” about profitability, and all the money went to growth. You might sell one of two of your widgets for $1 million each, entering profitability immediately, but then die because you can’t grow sales at that price. So let’s take a look.

Startup 93

Startup Course Yahoo Invest 93

socalTECH

AUGUST 3, 2012

We spoke with John Mudge , CEO of iBN Sports (www.ibnsports.com), to learn more about the Lake Forest-based company's success in making content pay on the Internet, and how his company's relationship as one of YouTube's Premium Channels is helping with that effort. It's a combination of revenue models.

Content 212

Content Google Southern California Orange County 212

Eric Greenspan

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Their tactic is to first incent a merchant by sharing data on how many hits their website gets from people inquiring about their particular type of business. How they knew anything about us is beyond me, but that is where we got started. I was saddened to read them as we really are all about EXTREME Customer Service at Make It Work.

Santa Barbara 265

Santa Barbara Technical Advisors Email Technical Review 265

socalTECH

OCTOBER 29, 2008

Total Immersion recently moved its headquarters here to the Los Angeles area, and we caught up with Bruno to learn more about the firm, its technology, and why it moved here to LA. Let's start off with a little bit about Total Immersion. How did the company come about? is mainly some sales and delivery engineers.

Startup 100

Startup Advertising Los Angeles Sales 100

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.

Venture Capital 255

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Social Network 255