Remove 2011 Remove Product Remove Sales Remove Writing
article thumbnail

The Changing Venture Landscape

Both Sides of the Table

I’m over-paying for every check I write into the VC ecosystem and valuations are being pushed up to absurd levels and many of these valuations and companies won’t hold in the long term. The market today would barely be recognizable by a time traveler from 2011. Are we in a bubble?” By definition?—?I’m dot-com bonanza.

article thumbnail

Should Startups Focus on Profitability or Not?

Both Sides of the Table

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. Is it one product line or multiple? One of them is profitability.

Startup 418
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Why Startups Should Raise Money at the Top End of Normal

Both Sides of the Table

2: As expected at least one person accused me of writing this post because I want to see lower valuations. As an early stage investor you’re often planning around 10x your investment at the time your write your first check so in this case you’d be going into your investment expecting an exit of $800 – $1.2

Startup 336
article thumbnail

Why Most of Your Assumptions About Phone Calls are Wrong

Both Sides of the Table

All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey). The three largest webmail services had over 1 billion global users at the end of 2011. In the US alone there are 30 billion inbound sales calls every year. There are 2.9

Email 339
article thumbnail

Trade Show Guerilla Marketing – Booth Babes With Beards

InfoChachkie

I always enjoy a great guerilla marketing story, such as TestFlight’s use of T-shirts and Tacos to gain Steve Jobs’ attention at Apple’s 2011 developers’ conference. For instance, a senior executive from a major media agency, who did not attend the show, was prompted by a bearded-booth-babe tweet to contact the company’s VP of Sales.

Marketing 209
article thumbnail

Interview with Steve Jillings, TeleSign

socalTECH

2011 was an incredibly huge year for us, and 2012 will be the same way. That ended up as a $200 million sale to Microsoft. One of the big things about Telesign, and if you go back to the founders, and the things they did well before I got here, is they spent lots of time and effort around writing patents and protecting their IP.

article thumbnail

US Economic Risks (Sept 2010): Impact on Investors & Entrepreneurs

Both Sides of the Table

VCs have also gone back to writing checks because as an industry we can’t be seen as “sitting on the sidelines” for years at a time. trillion out of our homes and spent 2/3rds of it on flat screen TVs, trips to Hawaii, time shares, Apple products and everything else we couldn’t afford. VCs get paid to “put money to work.&#.