Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 29, 2011

Other writers, like Guy Kawasaki, have irreverently called some of these “entrepreneur lies,” but I prefer to think of them as innocent over-enthusiasm or over-confidence that can kill your deal. If your product really represents a paradigm shift, you probably haven’t figured out yet what problem it solves.

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Entrepreneur Funding Innocal Competition 108

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 10, 2015

Every entrepreneur I know can’t find enough hours in a day to do the good things they want, and yet they often find themselves saying yes to new requests. In addition to saying yes too often, some entrepreneurs under pressure say no poorly, by attacking the requestor or by avoiding any definitive response.

Entrepreneur 104

Entrepreneur Startup Tips Conference 104

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 20, 2014

Want to be an entrepreneur? In addition, Entrepreneur Magazine recently included UCSB in its Top 50 Schools For VC Backed Entrepreneurs at number 37. This allowed the curriculum to efficiently find its product / market fit. A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes. Don''t go to Wharton or Harvard.

Santa Barbara 258

Santa Barbara Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 258

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

A popular myth these days is that successful entrepreneurs must attract investors to get their businesses going, when the reality has been that more than 80 percent of new businesses are started and grown with no outside investment at all. They forget that the product or service makes the brand, not the environment.

Startup 101

Startup Entrepreneur Equity Summary 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2015

As a model, think high-quality marketing collateral, with text and graphics in columns and sidebars, but focused on the value of your business, rather than selling your product. Include your sustainable competitive advantage. Professional investors look for the right people more than the right product.

Summary 101

Summary Patents Technical Review Competition 101

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2015

As an angel investor, I hear many entrepreneurs making negative comments about competitors or asserting they don’t have any competitors. They don’t realize that knocking competitors is assessed as a weakness and denying that you have any competition suggests there is no market for your solution.

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Capital Competition Case Study Patents 63

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2015

According to Urban Dictionary , hype is “a clever marketing strategy where a product is advertised as the thing everyone must have, to the point where people begin to feel they need to consume it.” Early hype actually should precede the final product, and consists of proof-of-concept stories, media events and industry exposure.

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Startup Marketing Entrepreneur Social Network 97

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2015

A sense of urgency won’t save a bad idea or the wrong team, but the good news is that it will fail faster, allowing people to move on quickly to more productive opportunities. It does mean a proactive and ever-vigilant plan to keep moving forward with the market and stay ahead of competition, even if you must make your own products obsolete.

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Startup Social Media Customer Custom 103

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

Entrepreneurs need to look more broadly into the business-to-business (B2B) space for more lucrative opportunities. Segments that come to mind include product tracking, navigation, safety, security, local business search, and payments. See who checks into your competition. Track the competition. Marty Zwilling.

Competition 84

Competition Entertainment Advertising Social Media 84

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2016

Entrepreneurs and startups are big believers in innovation, but sometimes they forget that innovation must be continual to assure long-term success, rather than the one big-bang idea that initiated their journey. People pay for a great user experience, in finding the right product, buying it, using it, and getting support.

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Startup Organization Demand Customer 58

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

The number of startups rose in 2015 for the first time in five years, with the largest year-over-year increase in two decades. Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever. Marty Zwilling.

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Startup Social Media News Tool 61

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

A large bank started using us, with 18,000 employees in Australia, and the next thing we new we were delivering the product to the the U.S. We've been flirting with profitability all year, and are approaching $3M in ARR, but we also want to scale and build up our business, our product acceleration, and continue our client success.

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Help Southern California Startup Technical Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2015

For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. Here investors are looking for feature problems or quality issues on the current product. Status of the solution.

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Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Entrepreneur 108

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2015

Every entrepreneur needs a value proposition statement for his or her startup that can hook potential investors and partners in less than a minute -- the short time you might join them in an elevator on the way to their offices. Your second sentence should acknowledge competition, but highlight your added value.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 10, 2015

When I first took a look at it, I was overwhelmed by all the terminology and acronyms, so I spent some time sorting it out and simplifying it for aspiring entrepreneurs and the rest of us: A site owner gets paid when a visitor clicks on an ad. This model, called pay per click (PPC), is the one most commonly offered to entrepreneurs.

Advertising 99

Advertising CPC PPC Sites 99

StartUp Beat

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

What do entrepreneurs do when they finally establish their startup? shouts, the conference maintains a theme that is much like Burning Man, and coincidently the event’s 2015 iteration did in fact hold a Burning Man festival. . Pirate summit also adds a financial incentive of $50,000 to spice up the competition.

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Conference Startup Artificial Inteligence Competition 40

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2015

After working with dozens of entrepreneurs, I’m still amazed that some seem to be able to do the job easily and effectively, always in control, while others always seem to be struggling, out-of-control, and fighting the latest crisis. In that context, entrepreneurs should carefully review the points made by Denny F.

Startup 61

Startup Entrepreneur Training News 61

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2015

Entrepreneurs could learn about loneliness of success: nobody talks about. Mark Suster (@msuster) July 19, 2015. The Yo-Yo Life of a Tech Entrepreneur. But needed to be seen. And the immediate reaction was obvious – that failure can be pretty lonely, too. Of course that’s true. Entrepreneurshit.

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Press Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 2, 2012

But entrepreneurs need to look more broadly into the B2B space for more lucrative opportunities. Segments mentioned include product tracking, navigation, safety, security, local business search, and payments. See who checks into your competition. Understand the competition. Sponsorships and advertising. Lead generation.

Services 82

Services Competition Mobile Entertainment 82

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

If one entered between 2009-2015 he or she is no doubt in the “hazard” phase where one need to be careful about thinking he know more about the industry than perhaps he do. With perfect information and too much competition you pay up or they walk right down the street and get it from somebody else.” Same as I felt.

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2015

Every entrepreneur must effectively collaborate with many people, including internal team members, partners, customers, and investors. Real collaboration requires leadership and initiative from the entrepreneur in order to drive the collaborative process and make the whole team better than the sum of its parts.

Startup 58

Startup Entrepreneur Product Guide 58

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

We build products and services tied to mobile carriers. Those technologies allow us to scale and offer a superior product for customers. In 2004 and 2005, I was at DivX in San Diego, and I was head of product there. That was a big transition, at first, to try to create new products and services that are enjoyed by people.

Content 113

Content Startup Mobile Platform 113

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

Twilio has now raised around $235 million, including a July 2015 round totaling $130 million. We typically do not ask entrepreneurs to visit our offices in Santa Barbara, but Jeff wanted to meet with Kevin, an investor in our Fund who helped us vet opportunities and occasionally invested alongside of us. It's Me, Not You.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 3, 2015

Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) April 29, 2015. It spoke to me because it so resonates with my nearly daily advice to entrepreneurs and VCs alike. I went as far as to call it the best Tweet of 2015 so far because it encapsulated my advice so succinctly. I saw this Tweet recently by Scott Belsky, co-founder and CEO of Behance.

Startup 150

Startup Venture Capital Invest Framework 150

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2013

New entrepreneurs who want to survive, and optimize the growth of their startups, need to think globally, and act locally, from day one. What all this doesn’t mean is that you should roll out your product in every country at the same time. with demands for new products and services. Reinforce your brand in international markets.

Entrepreneur 97

Entrepreneur Patents Startup Offshore 97

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

We try to hire people who we believe will be upfront and respectful of entrepreneurs and know that it’s far easier to judge ones decisions on the outside than it actually is to have to make the tough decisions inside of a startup every day. Empowerment is hard for most startup entrepreneurs. Conviction. Team Building.

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Startup Coach Course Invest 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 20, 2011

New entrepreneurs who want to survive, and optimize the growth of their startups, need to think globally, and act locally, from day one. What all this doesn’t mean is that you should roll out your product in every country at the same time. with demands for new products and services. Reinforce your brand in international markets.

Entrepreneur 103

Entrepreneur Patents Offshore Startup 103

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

Too many entrepreneurs look for that one magic bullet -- an exciting new technology, perhaps, or their own determination to make the world a better place -- to override any shortcomings in their startup model. Sustainable competitive advantage. Too many competitors or a product with minimal differentiation makes a startup risky.

Pricing 100

Pricing Technical Review Entrepreneur Startup 100

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 7, 2015

Most technical entrepreneurs focus hard on building an innovative product, but forget that an elegant solution doesn’t automatically translate into a successful business. Defining the right business model requires the same diligence as designing the right product, but the approach and skills required are different.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Pricing Startup Software Review 108

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

Valuing any company can be difficult because it requires a degree of forecasting future growth & competition and ultimately the profits of the organization. ” “This will be great for VCs and bad for entrepreneurs.” In 2015 in the US there were $77 billion written into startup tech companies.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2015

Image via Flickr by Side Wages Some entrepreneurs forget that they need an innovative business model along with an innovative solution to have a successful startup. If we design a great product, investors will find us." Technologists forget that investors are buying a chunk of the business, not the product.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Startup Social Media Competition 60

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 13, 2012

New entrepreneurs who want to survive, and optimize the growth of their startups, need to think globally, and act locally, from day one. What all this doesn’t mean is that you should roll out your product in every country at the same time. with demands for new products and services. Reinforce your brand in international markets.

Marketing 104

Marketing Startup Patents Offshore 104

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

And as I’ve written about before – building a personal brand is extremely important in today’s competitive job market. Lemkin (@jasonlk) January 31, 2015. I know it will be hard for you to believe in 2015 but in 2006 Palo Alto (where I lived) was kind of dead. Here’s how he did it. Some background.

SaaS 150

SaaS Venture Capital Conference Technical Review 150

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

How many times have you heard or suspected that a certain entrepreneur was just lucky? Without fully discounting that random good things sometimes happen, I’m a firm believer that great entrepreneurs make their own luck. In the heat of a thousand daily crises, it’s too easy for an entrepreneur to delegate expense management.

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Startup Mentor Entrepreneur Social Media 96

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2015

As an angel investor, I get requests almost every day to review a new product or website, and provide feedback on its potential success. Yet I can’t remember the last time any entrepreneur asked me to assess personal potential, despite the fact that most investors will admit they invest in the person more than the product.

Startup 106

Startup Incubator Entrepreneur Metrics 106

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

As an advisor to many entrepreneurs, I still hear frequently the irrational exuberance that crowdfunding is the quick alternative for startups that are passed over by overly demanding angels or venture capital investors. It usually takes more than you can collect just to build and deliver the product. Startup revenues come later.

Startup 100

Startup Equity Entrepreneur Demand 100

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2020

As an advisor to many entrepreneurs, I still hear frequently the irrational exuberance that crowdfunding is the quick alternative for startups that are passed over by overly demanding angels or venture capital investors. It usually takes more than you can collect just to build and deliver the product. Startup revenues come later.

Startup 151

Startup Equity Funding Demand 151