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

JULY 24, 2015

In this age of relationships, you, the entrepreneur, are a very important element of your new brand, and it’s never too early to start marketing the value of your expertise, insights and ideas. Every entrepreneur should count on at least a couple of adjustments or pivots before they get it right. Start today.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 26, 2015

In fact, the willingness and determination to overcome the risks of a new venture is one of the first criteria that defines an entrepreneur. Generations of successful entrepreneurs, including Thomas Edison, categorized every failure as an experiment, and each one told him successfully what didn’t work. Every human grieves over a loss.

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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. Thus crowdfunding is clearly not the panacea for funding and success that many entrepreneurs envision.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2015

Here is my summary of some major considerations that every entrepreneur needs to evaluate against the cost and effort to attract equity investors: Completing a grant application is real work. Otherwise find an inexpensive class on grant writing. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 6/3/2015.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

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. ” “This will be great for VCs and bad for entrepreneurs.” What is the True Sentiment of VCs? ” “Sure, prices are dropping.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2015

Too many entrepreneurs naively believe that candidates with lofty titles from a larger company can easily do the same job for their startups. Everyone must know how to listen, talk and write. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 6/12/2015. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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InfoChachkie

JANUARY 25, 2016

If such write-downs only impacted the faux unicorns and their avaricious investors, there would be little need for alarm. 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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InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

In 2015, LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com for $1.5 For those who don’t have the time to listen to our entire talk, I’ve highlighted several key takeaways below, along with the corresponding video timestamp, to facilitate quick access to issues of interest to entrepreneurs. billion, making it a bonafide unicorn.

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InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

I taught a somewhat crazy course about writing and deploying a scalable website in Ruby on Rails and deploying it in EC2. When you began your teaching career, did you plan on eventually being an entrepreneur? What guidance can you give to anyone in a financially safe career who longs for the exciting life of an entrepreneur?

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socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

At Idealab, we saw many shots on goal with companies who were consumer focused, and we have found the quality of entrepreneurs going to consumer Internet companies has changed dramatically, which represents a real opportunity. It's all about the entrepreneur. That's when you start meddling in the company.

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InfoChachkie

JANUARY 4, 2016

In November of 2015, Citrix announced that it will spin out the “GoTo” Division, of which GoToMeeting remains the flagship product, as a standalone public company. I was writing them multi-seven figure checks each month, because they were generating tens of thousands of customers. Special thanks to Dan Engel, CEO of Mobile1st.com.

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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. I wanted to just write.

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socalTECH

JANUARY 8, 2020

Curtis is the former publisher of the Robb Report, which he sold back in 2015, and has a long history of operating media companies that have published such titles as Home Office Computing, Home Theater, Mobile Computing, Worth, and many others. That's what we want to be here. You have to make every minute special.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 16, 2015

Boy wearing Oculus Rift via Wikipedia 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. He points out that the word crowd precedes funding in crowdfunding.

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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.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Starting in 2009 I began writing checks consistently, year-in and year-out. I was in it for the love of working with entrepreneurs on business problems and marveling at technology they had built. During this era, from 2009–2015, most founders I knew were in it for building great & sustainable companies.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2015

Based on my experience as an investor and mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, one of the quickest ways to kill your credibility and your startup is to offer a poorly written business plan, or none at all. An entrepreneur who can’t manage a plan, probably won’t be able to manage the new business.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

Don’t be fooled by the slight dip in 2015 – the size of funds & timing of deals in market in any year can skew the data set. 61% of VCs said valuations were “marginally down” in Q4 of 2015 but 91% expect price decreases in the next two quarters. ” How seriously is the “lower your burn message?

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

My initial blogging inspiration was actually Brad Feld because as an entrepreneur I always wanted to work with Brad after reading his advice on term sheets and the like. In stead of just writing operating and funding advice Fred also talks about industries. I remember writing about online video nearly 5 years ago.

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InfoChachkie

JUNE 9, 2015

Good news: a quick review of TechCrunch’s March 2015 List of Top 20 U.S. My Forbes co-contributor Geri Stengel concurs that something is happening in the Volunteer State, writing last month about that state’s emerging women entrepreneurs. Savvy entrepreneurs - seek out programs which incorporate these post-graduation activities.

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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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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. The funny thing about “too much money” is that it doesn’t just come from entrepreneurs. why do I write p.s.’s sometimes?

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2017

Starting back in 2015 and throughout much of 2016 people started commenting that my blog had become a lot more political. Our most famous current rocket entrepreneur — Elon Musk — was from South Africa. The writing on this show is some of the best writing in modern American comedic shows.

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