Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 7, 2015

One of the big questions that every entrepreneur struggles with is how much funding they should request from investors in the first round. Here is where projections of cost, pricing, volumes and cash flow are critical. The average valuation for angel investments is $2 million, which will get you $500,000 for 20 percent of your startup.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 21, 2015

Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. With this model, a startup pre-sells their product early, at a cheaper price, in exchange for a pledge. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 2/13/2015.

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InfoChachkie

JANUARY 25, 2016

Unfortunately, the coming market correction will reverberate to all stages of venture investing. The constant media coverage of the aberrant unicorn valuations has caused otherwise level-headed entrepreneurs to expect investors to participate at prices which are detached from their startups’ fundamentals.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

You thought media twitter was bad… You thought tech twitter was bad… — Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) August 24, 2015. So why invest in that period of uncertainty unless it’s early-stage and thus valuation matters less. If the next 30 days stays calm then investment will pick up. So, too, investments.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2015

Most new entrepreneurs assume that great investors will find their startups based on the compelling solution the founders have created. Thus it behooves every entrepreneur to optimize their investment strategies early, based on time and dollar costs, as well as odds of success. There are just too many scams.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

I challenge any entrepreneur, for example, to define the difference between "seed-stage" and "early-stage" financing. Most investors won’t touch a first-time entrepreneur at this stage. These funders often offer convertible notes, rather than the traditional priced equity. A micro venture capital firm.

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socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

Santa Monica-based March Capital Partners (www.marchcp.com) has just announced a brand new, $240M venture investment fund, led by longtime venture investing veterans Jim Armstrong, Sumant Mandal, Gregory Milken and Jamie Montgomery. What is the investment focus for this fund? It's all about the entrepreneur.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2015

When pitching to investors, entrepreneurs always seem to start with a customer pitch, then add a slide or two about the business. Investors are business experts, while the entrepreneur is more likely the product expert. Partnerships, distribution channels and pricing models should be included. “If

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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. Since investors tend to invest in people, more than the idea, the personnel review is normally the highest priority item.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2015

Entrepreneurs often ask me why investors expect financial projections for a new startup even before the product is built and while the market is still being defined. You shouldn’t invest in an undefined business. Five-year revenues, based on your volumes and prices, should penetrate at least 10 percent of the target market segment.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 2, 2015

Yet, as an advisor to startups, I see some common disasters, and recommend some anticipation and recovery moves that can save every entrepreneur some painful time and money. While every entrepreneur needs to remain upbeat and optimistic on all of these, it is also smart to anticipate the worst case scenarios that are possible with each.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2015

Every entrepreneur is quick to tell friends and potential investors about his or her vision of changing the world, about all the customers who have expressed an interest, and about all the other investors who are lining up to get a piece of the action. Many entrepreneurs feel they need to spend more money to increase traction.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2015

" Investors want to buy into an entrepreneur with a startup that can provide evidence of an ability to double customer productivity, at half the cost, with patented technology. If you sell for half the price of a competitor, but you lose money on each item, it’s hard to make it up in volume. Clearly define your business model.

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socalTECH

AUGUST 7, 2014

I had worked a year in investment banking, and Jasper was out of USC. The two of us really wanted to be entrepreneurs. So, we wondered what we could do at a low price point, things like transcribing voicemail, things like social media sentiment analysis. Before that, I was in New York, City. That was really what did it.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2015

Yet, due largely to non-technology business considerations, including pricing, safety concerns and support infrastructure, there are none that most people can name. Every entrepreneur needs to keep a priority focus on these big-picture business issues, well before he commits his resources and his future to a technology that he loves.

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InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

Twilio has now raised around $235 million, including a July 2015 round totaling $130 million. In the startup world, the former happens when a VC makes a bad investment, and the latter occurs when they miss a great opportunity. Yet most VC's bury their failures under six feet of denial. Unicornless. billion) and ISS (sold to IBM $1.3

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Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 26, 2016

In 2015 an additional 237 thousand joined the online community. As online viewership and behaviors grew in 2015 – the average U.S. As online viewership and behaviors grew in 2015 – the average U.S. In 2015, issues of online security and data privacy consumed headlines. Data Security Concerns Dominate.

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socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

Andrew Schydlowsky: We entered this market in 2015, and we are backed by a combination of institutional investors, and some family offices, as well as some very experienced and successful angels and operators. Andrew Schydlowsky: I'm a serial entrepreneur. How did you start the business? We evolved and expanded from there.

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 29, 2015

Those loans are very mis-priced, in our opinion. Where there are lots of players focused on different types of equity, different types of investments, different types of debt, they're doing it in a very unfocused manner. Brett Crosby: We have been in invitation-only mode for all of 2015, and that's been growing and growing.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

We want to invest in early-stage technology enabled startup businesses – upfront in the funding cycle. In fact, 90% of our investments are either Seed or A-round investments (10% are B-round). We’re a national venture capital investment firm but with our roots firmly in Los Angeles. That’s healthy.

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Xconomy

AUGUST 12, 2016

Xconomy spoke with Jacks and CEO and longtime tech entrepreneur Bill Haney about the venture, a cancer immunotherapy startup that is relying on funding from family offices—among them the Disney family—rather than venture firms. —Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB ) disclosed the name for its coming hemophilia-focused spinoff: Bioverativ.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

There is much discussion online and also in small, private groups, about why the price of technology companies – public and private – are falling. I’d like to explain as best I can my opinion on what is going on because most of what I hear from entrepreneurs is not only wrong but is reminiscent of what I heard in 1997-2000.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

I remember when seed funds first started (they were being incorrectly called “super angels” and then Micro VCs before Seed Funds stuck) and every LP (who invest in VCs) told me they weren’t convinced about Seed Funds (too small, too hard to pick winners, would they be able to follow on?). Now seed funding is conventional wisdom.

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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. Businesses require an equally elegant business model, with the right price, messaging and delivery channel to the right target customers to keep the dream alive and growing.

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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. Validated pricing and a sufficient revenue stream. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 9/18/2015.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 18, 2015

Or the influx of massive new amounts of entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs seeking fortune and fame? “Trade in an asset at a price that strongly deviates from an asset’s intrinsic value” The arguments against that, “This time the startups have real revenues!” Are LPs to blame? None of these.

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