Both Sides of the Table

MAY 3, 2015

Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) April 29, 2015. I went as far as to call it the best Tweet of 2015 so far because it encapsulated my advice so succinctly. Other times she comes back with even more conviction about the founders, market or products. I saw this Tweet recently by Scott Belsky, co-founder and CEO of Behance.

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Startup Venture Capital Invest Framework 150

Tech.Co

JULY 17, 2015

Dates: August 10-14, 2015. Overview: Over the course of 5 days, you will learn not only what an MVP, proof of concept, go-to-market strategy, and user experience design are, but also learn to pitch, meet with real investors and mentors and learn from already successful startups. Where: Santa Monica. Time: 9AM-5PM. 5 Tech Hubs.

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Santa Monica Course Startup Mentor 70

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 3, 2015

Entrepreneurship is all about leading – leading customers to a new product or service, leading a startup team to peak performance, and leading a new business to the market opportunity, while providing maximum return to stakeholders. Coaching and mentoring are key to the leadership role. People ignored see no leadership.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 23, 2015

As a mentor to entrepreneurs, I often get asked what you can do to build the right culture. There is no rule that marketing needs to report to the founder, or that every startup needs a chief operating officer. Mentoring and training programs need to be put in place early. If there is no consistency, there is no culture.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Mentor Training 102

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 2, 2015

By definition, every startup is predictably unpredictable, since new solutions have no proven track record, startups are usually building a new market, and the world around them is changing faster than ever. Five major elements of every business include your people, product, opportunity, money and marketing.

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Startup Entrepreneur Marketing Satisfaction 105

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2015

Based on my own experience mentoring real entrepreneurs and likely candidates, there are at least eight categories of non-starters. In today’s rapidly changing market, perfection is a fleeting and impractical objective. Pragmatists create a minimum viable product (MVP), test it in the market and iterate to success.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2015

The successful entrepreneurs I have met and worked with over the years all seem to share that passion for learning, and they see rapid market change not as a problem, but as an opportunity for them to move ahead of the crowd in changing the world. Find a business mentor, as well as a friend.

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Startup Case Study Entrepreneur Class 103

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2015

Thus the burden is on you to capitalize on your strengths, find co-founders and team members to fill the gaps and find mentors and advisors you trust. Building a new business requires good leadership to develop the market, attract customers, motivate the team and conquer the unknowns.

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Startup Entrepreneur Mentor News 108

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2015

As the founder, you won’t have a finance chief, a marketing staff or a requirements manager. Provide mentoring and self-learning opportunities. Yet every new team member can be assigned an in-house mentor, provided with online seminar opportunities and given special assignments to facilitate new learning.

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Startup Mentor Layoffs News 99

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2015

As an advisor and mentor to startups, I try to make sure entrepreneurs understand both the pros and cons of an IPO as an exit strategy. Private companies typically have an internal board of friendly owners, unlikely to be pressured by the media to consider an unfriendly tender offer from another major player in the market.

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Entrepreneur Startup Report Statistics 98

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

Here are some of the key new rules I have learned by starting my own company, investing as an angel in other startups and mentoring many more new entrepreneurs over the last few years: Do incorporate a company, but keep it simple. Take advantage of social media and free websites for marketing. The control is yours to keep.

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Startup Search Engine Optimization Social Media Outsource Development 108

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2015

The founder needs to be a mentor and advisor, as well as a leader. Able to adapt or pivot the business to respond to the market. Founders who are close enough to the front lines are required to listen to market feedback and be savvy enough to respond. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 8/12/2015.

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Startup Technical Review Paramount Entrepreneur 102

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 10, 2015

The good news is that none of these need be mutually exclusive, according to recent studies of market trends. It’s important to learn from peers, advisors and mentors that the required mindset must be combined with specific actions, including the ones outlined above, before value can be harvested.

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Entrepreneur Training Demand Customer 102

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2016

Mentoring and technical assistance from volunteer or paid experts. An incubator won’t help you if the market opportunity is small, the competitors are large, or your solution doesn’t address a real need. Direct seed funding, for a share of the equity, and introductions to investors.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

A new VC seed market has been emerging, especially over the past five years: It usually appears in the form of a prototypical seed round of $1 million to $1.5 Most accelerators provide small seed investment in the range of $25,000, as well as mentoring, workspace and professional services, in exchange for an equity stake in the company.

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding 104

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

Pyramid schemes and work-at-home scams sound good in the marketing pitch, but nobody wins. Do you promote a culture of teamwork, mentoring, and training? Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 9/16/2015. With the best dreams, customers get great value as your business makes money.

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Entrepreneur Ideas Customer Custom 107

socalTECH

DECEMBER 7, 2016

Barry Lieberman: My backgruond is about 35 years in technology, business development, and sales and marketing. I built my own company around marketing services, and have been around business development, marketing, custom service, and sales, and also on the consumer side of technology, a little bit a mix of the two.

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Tech Coast Angels CTO Coach Startup Pasadena Angels 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 6, 2023

Way back in 2015, the Kickstarter Pebble smartwatch raised $20.3 Board seats can’t be negotiated, and even informal mentoring in decision and governance processes is unlikely. Your options for funding just increased, or at least you have a new way to get some real market feedback on the demand for your solution.

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Equity Platform Entrepreneur Statistics 80

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

You can find a mentor, a coach, a project, or experience, to help you prepare for the role you are looking for. Anne Fulton: I'm actually a Kiwi, a New Zealander, and all of our product and marketing is done out of New Zealand. The education around new products and bringing them to the market is the same in both markets.

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Help Southern California Startup Technical Review 100

Tech.Co

JULY 12, 2017

The BB-8 app-enabled Droid had such a global adoption among kids and adults that it was named the number one Star Wars toy of 2015. What you might not realize is that the adorable droid was the brain child of Sphero, a robotics and digital technology company and an alumni to the Disney Accelerator program.

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Artificial Inteligence Startup Entertainment Press 106

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 20, 2016

In fact, the latest figures show that crowdfunding has already grown to over $30 billion in 2015, exceeding the amounts contributed by either angel groups or VCs alone. In 2015, the new Kickstarter Pebble smartwatch raised $20.3 Early crowdfunding successes have been undeniable. million, smashing the old Kickstarter record of $13.3

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Equity Platform Entrepreneur Demand 54

Xconomy

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Gomez said he was inspired to start Canopy San Diego after spending time at CanopyBoulder , the cannabis industry fund and accelerator founded in 2015, less than three years after Colorado voters approved a similar marijuana legalization initiative. billion in 2015—a number estimated to grow by 25 percent this year to $6.7

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San Diego Startup Southern California Invest 40

Xconomy

NOVEMBER 13, 2016

I started with a list of companies already screened by the San Diego Venture Group’s annual venture summit, and consulted with investors and startup mentors to refine the list. Four of the companies here were founded in 2014, another three were started in 2015, and two—CureMatch and Lymber—debuted earlier this year.

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San Diego Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Startup 40

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? And then in the late 90’s money crept in, swept in to town by public markets, instant wealth and an absurd sky-rocketing of valuations based on no reasonable metrics. What happened? People were building.

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Venture Capital Startup Marketing Pricing 466

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 3, 2015

Almost all credited their spouse, or a mentor, in helping them achieve their success. When Roxy approached them there was “authentic core-synergies in how each brand approached the market.” I was actually working for The Hollywood Reporter at the time and enjoyed the benefits of this marketing drive.:).

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Conference Entertainment Startup Digital Hollywood 40

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. Marty Zwilling ** First published on Entrepreneur.com on 1/16/2015.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

Fred has of course been a public mentor to us all with his market-defining terminology that he popularized including “freemium” and “mobile first.” What you may not know is that Fred has been a behind-the-scenes mentor to many of the newer VCs in the industry including myself. That always stuck with me.

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Venture Capital Startup Writing Blogging 150

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.

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SaaS Venture Capital Conference Technical Review 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2015

In my perspective as an advisor and mentor to many entrepreneurs, there are a set of basic strategies that can be applied to every startup to dramatically improve the odds of success, no matter what the business domain. You also need a sales pipeline, customer acquisition costs and marketing costs as a percent of revenue.

Startup 101

Startup Metrics Resource Mentor 101

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

As a member of the advisory board for several startups and a mentor to other entrepreneurs, I’ve accumulated my own list of strategies and recommendations on where “going the extra mile” can save you from disaster or supercharge your startup for maximum growth under any circumstances. Actively listen to mentor and customer feedback.

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