TechCrunch LA

JUNE 3, 2022

On Lafayette Street in SoHo, young, fashionable women lined up around the block to enter a minimalist, millennial oasis, the most perfect Instagram feed brought to life. billion company in the brutally competitive beauty industry, especially one with such broad appeal. allocate 98% of their funding to startups helmed by men.

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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. Most are sitting on large portfolios of private companies that are raising money now or will need to do so in the future and they know that they’re up against some headwinds.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

As an advisor to many startups, I often see business principles espoused that may make sense for a large and established business trying to foster innovation but won’t work for a new startup. Great ideas will have no trouble getting funded. Big businesses fund internal ideas with the money and people they already have.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 3, 2016

I find that this type offers the most value to new entrepreneurs or startups in the early idea stage. Most incubators start their program with some aptitude and business acumen tests. Costs, returns in equity and funding access. The best ones also charge an up-front participation fee for services provided.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Many startup businesses – tech or otherwise – fail. Trying outrageous new things or even trying mundane things but in new ways but with extreme quality & innovation is what fuels the tech startup industry. But today I want to give you advice on how to decrease your odds of failure in a startup.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Entrepreneurs who are looking to attract investors need to develop and pitch a plan -- preferably written -- that answers every potential investor question about your startup before it is asked. This is also the place to first mention patents and any other differentiators that put you ahead of competition.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 20, 2016

Thus the top priority of every entrepreneur who wants funding should be to build and highlight their “dream team” of co-founders, executives and advisers, to attract the biggest and best investors. On the other hand, having failed in an earlier startup may be an advantage, if positioned properly, and some learning is evident.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

After listening to hundreds of startup pitches, and reading even more business plans, most new venture investors develop their own favorite list of “red flags” that signal the beginning of the end of their interest. Every startup needs focus, due to limited resources, so setting irrational goals implies overall poor business acumen.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2016

As an entrepreneur looking for professional investors, one of the quickest ways to lose credibility and get rejected is to start with a ridiculously high pre-money valuation. Patents filed, even provisional, as well as trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets count as barriers to entry and sustainable competitive advantages.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 25, 2016

If you expect an equity investment from reputable investors for your new startup, you need to know the boundaries that often limit their interest. There are many other more mundane reasons that your startup might be deemed non-fundable, depending on your own circumstances, where you live, or the case you have put together.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 29, 2016

I believe that the resourcefulness to turn constraints into competitive differentiators and new opportunities is a trait that separates the great entrepreneurs from the “wannabes.” Startups funded by large venture-capital investments rarely think about productivity. Focus on a top productivity bottleneck each week.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2016

The lesson of finding help, connections, and even funding where other people may never look is one that makes all the difference in the entrepreneur lifestyle. Most universities have a file of patents from project work that they are willing to license to any entrepreneur for business commercialization, with little or no cost up front.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2016

In fact, investors recognize that founders usually learn more from mistakes than from success, so a well-explained startup failure can improve their odds of funding the next time around. As an active angel investor and startup advisor, I’ve seen many of the same stumbling blocks repeated all too many times.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2016

Whether you are talking to peers, competitors or investors, you as an active entrepreneur will be judged on your familiarity with today’s startup and funding jargon. This term is currently applied to recent startups who profess a current valuation which exceeds $1 billion. Could your startup be the next one? Sweat equity.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 11, 2016

Angel investors are still the lifeblood of early-stage startups, despite the surge of activity in crowdfunding and an increasing early interest from venture capitalists. Contrary to a popular myth, angels don’t fund dreams. These are required to show that you have a defensible competitive advantage or at least a barrier to entry.

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LATechDigest

MAY 23, 2016

EXPERT DOJO Investor Festival Brings Together Startups, VCs ( link ). SPACES VR Launches with $3M Funding ( link ). — Audrey Bellis (@audreybellis) May 19, 2016. NFTE Hosted Their Annual Entrepreneur Competition. — Scott Perry (@scottperry) May 18, 2016. — LA 2024 (@LA2024) May 18, 2016.

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socalTECH

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

We caught up with Fuel50 founder and CEO Anne Fulton to learn more about the startup. Anne Fulton: Fuel50 is a career pathing startup, part of the HR technology landscape. How did you start the company? Even when I had babies, I started a company making baby clothing with designers for a few years. What is Fuel50?

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2016

In my experience in large businesses as well as years of advising startups, I see far too much focus on product skills, and too little on people and process skills. Storytelling and projecting a vision are foundational skills that are required from the first moment in starting a business. It’s up to you to clear the way.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2016

million in funding on TechCrunch led by Harmony Partners and Upfront Ventures to double its footprint of 3 cities (New York, Chicago & Washington DC) to 6 in 2016. We raised this capital in what has increasingly become a difficult market for fund raising so I’d like to share with you some details on how we get it done.

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LATechDigest

JUNE 20, 2016

Startups in the Sky. EA Announces Weekly eSports Competitions ( link ). Bixel Exchange (@BixelExchange) June 15, 2016. LATech Digest (@LATechDigest) June 15, 2016. LATech Digest (@LATechDigest) June 16, 2016. LATech Digest (@LATechDigest) June 16, 2016. Suzy Ryoo (@suzywillow) June 16, 2016.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

Nearly every startup I have spoken to over the years – including some where I’m a co-investor – talks positively about the support they’ve gotten from A16Z. Of course not every VC has the fund size or the fee size to build services at this scale yet many provide extremely well-regarded programs that are valuable.

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Tech.Co

OCTOBER 26, 2017

Founded in 2013 by Dirk Ahlborn and Bibop Gresta, HTT started the global movement built around passionate people, companies, and institutions from around the world. million in Series A financing from Sherpa Capital along with three other funds. The suit was subsequently settled out of court, and BamBrogan then founded Arrivo.

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socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2016

For one�according to Los Angeles startup mPulse Mobile (www.mpulsemobile.com), you can help remind people about their appointments, and make sure they take their prescriptions�along with many other use cases. It's a highly competitive market. We're not bumping anybody out, and there's no competition sitting in that space today.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2016

Even worse, this “feature creep” often makes the final product late to market, sluggish and more expensive than competition. Focus” is the key to success in a startup, and a minimum viable product (MVP) that does a few things better than anyone else will get more attention quicker from your market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 24, 2016

Every entrepreneur I know starts out with a strong conviction that their solution is a perfect match for their target market, and yet almost every one later admits a need to “pivot” before finding their groove. Few entrepreneurs know that even the most successful startups had pivots, which rarely get mentioned.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2016

My first suggestion is that entrepreneurs need to forget the old myth that all they need to do is sketch an idea on a napkin, and investors will line up to invest. Non-credible funding request or unreasonable valuation. Naïve expectations on funding terms and process. Marty Zwilling First published on Forbes on 07/25/2016.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2016

Due diligence is going the next step, to meet and interview all key members of the team, visit the business location and follow-up with early customers and advisors. In fact, it’s really just an in-depth common-sense analysis of key success parameters of any startup to assess the risk before final commitment. Skeletons in the closet.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 25, 2016

Every new entrepreneur who has not spent years in corporate life has the advantage of an unbiased look at business opportunities, but at the same time has the disadvantage of missing critical business experiences that can cost them dearly in their first startup venture. Startups don’t come with formal training courses.

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Xconomy

JULY 19, 2016

In 2015, Cybersecurity startups saw 332 funding deals with investments hitting the highest ever at $3.8 New funds have been raised dedicated to this segment. For 2015, there were 133 information security M&A deals, according to 451 Research’s Tech M&A Outlook 2016. Symantec Forces the Industry to Stay Competitive.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2016

That’s the right place to start, but real growth and scale requires attracting customers who are not like you. More dramatically, both Facebook and YouTube started out focusing on people dating but expanded their focus when they found dating was giving them limited growth. Extend your solution features to meet new interests.

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Xconomy

AUGUST 26, 2016

Mylan bumped up the price of the EpiPen 400 percent, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton responded with a tirade against drug price hikes, and—much like when Clinton railed against drug pricing last year—biotech indexes promptly plummeted more than 3 percent. —Pfizer wasn’t done after scooping up Medivation.

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Xconomy

OCTOBER 28, 2016

The 2016 election is (thankfully) almost here, and as one biotech analyst noted this week, a possible Democratic victory is to blame for a big October sell-off in biotech stocks. The drug system went off the market in 2015, leaving Mylan’s EpiPen without competition and setting the stage for the furor over Mylan’s price hikes.

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Xconomy

JULY 29, 2016

Those were some of the topics of a question-and-answer panel held at Xconomy’s Robo Madness West 2016 conference last month. What are some examples of government-funded research in AI and robotics that is happening today that will set the stage for tomorrow’s products? Begole : What is the future of autonomous defense systems?

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Xconomy

JANUARY 10, 2019

The market caps of some of the most successful tech titans reach as high as $1 trillion. Yet in 2018, perceptions about these dominant companies often reflected uneasiness and doubt—and for some, so did their stock performance.

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