Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2016

His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs. His top eight required skill set elements for sales don’t even mention product skills, and match my view of the right skill set for successful entrepreneurs, with only a few priority changes: Creating and sharing a vision. Negotiating and creating win-win deals.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2016

In my role as a business advisor, I often see well-meaning entrepreneurs try to be everything to everyone, which results in many things done poorly, and few totally delighted customers. People are confused by multiple messages, and employees are frustrated trying to personalize customer experiences.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

And here’s an important point that I think modern entrepreneurs often forget: Investors are “co-owners” of your business. The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. Mentorship.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2016

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction. Entrepreneurs in this category are real risk takers, such as Elon Musk.

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InfoChachkie

AUGUST 8, 2016

It may seem hard to believe, but even in 2016, there remain a number of successful consumer brands that are not sold online. I thought it would be interesting to understand the challenges and concerns of entrepreneurs who began selling online for the first time in 2016, so I sat down with Heidi Muther, COO at Z S upply , LLC.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

Despite a valiant effort, we only briefly succeeded in putting IBM in the personal computer business, but our efforts changed my view of entrepreneurs forever. No consideration can be given to experience running a startup, breadth of skills, or even thinking like an entrepreneur. I still enjoy the journey as well as the destination.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 30, 2016

Being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle that requires staying power, because starting a new business is a long-term process with many tough challenges. Great entrepreneurs will tell you that they may have pivoted many times, down to their last dollar, but have never given up. I look for that same determination in every new founder.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

Successful entrepreneurs understand the difference between a good business relationship with more people and having more friends. In the world of entrepreneurs and startups, professional relationships are critical. You need business partners, investors and customers. You can’t start a business with friends alone.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 18, 2016

As a startup advisor and investor, I’ve met many aspiring entrepreneurs, and I often get asked the question, “I have a great idea for a startup – do you agree that it real potential?” If you are dreaming of an opportunity to get rich quick, the entrepreneur route is not for you. You enjoy building relationships as well as products.

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SoCal Tech Calendar

NOVEMBER 3, 2016

Wednesday, November 9, 2016 -- Disrupt Your Market to Grow Big and Grow Fast. join us at our November Entrepreneur Speaker Series event where Tom White, Director of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator at CSUN, will reveal the secrets to “Disrupt Your Market to Grow Big and Grow Fast.” Cal Lutheran Center for Enterpreneurship.

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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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SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 14, 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016 -- GAN-LA Presents Small Business Breakfast Series: How to Build a Brand with Authentic Storytelling. Join us at the Pepperdine West Los Angeles Graduate Campus and learn invaluable information about what it means to be an entrepreneur. Breakfast provided.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 25, 2016

If you can’t provide a memorable customer experience, your startup won’t survive very long these days. You now need more than loyalty from your customers -- they need to be your best advocates. The bar is being raised, so every entrepreneur needs new initiatives just to stay in the ballgame. Culture growth follows the leader.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 5, 2016

In my experience as an advisor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I often encounter the myth that an initial startup requires investors. The media tends to highlight experienced entrepreneurs who succeed with early new venture funding, like Uber’s Garrett Camp , but fail to point out the more common bootstrapping successes.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

With interactive social media and video everywhere, everyone needs to feel they have a relationship with their leaders, and every brand needs leader personification for customers to relate. Here is my adaptation of his engagement principles for all the aspiring entrepreneurs I advise: Learn to adopt an outsider’s perspective.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 7, 2016

I found this illustrated well in a new book I just finished, “ A Paperboy’s Fable ,” by a young entrepreneur and writer Deep Patel. Although just seventeen years old, Patel has some great insights that I can extrapolate for every aspiring entrepreneur to answer the most common question I get as an advisor and mentor – “Where do I start?”

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2016

For too many small businesses, customer service is still seen as a “burden.” Entrepreneurs don’t realize that this burden is actually costing them over $200 billion in repeat sales, according to a recent study by the W. These days, relationships and online reviews are key drivers for over 80 percent of new customers.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2016

Customers are acclimating to change faster than ever before, technology is evolving very rapidly, all markets are instantly global, and the cost of entry is lower than ever. Bold entrepreneurs put more effort into communicating the new market ecosystem value, and their natural product fit. But now I believe that times have changed.

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TechCrunch LA

JUNE 3, 2022

After all, Glossier’s founder and CEO Emily Weiss is very, very far from the first entrepreneur to profit off of our desire to look good. The following year, she stepped down as CEO, and by 2016, her company filed for bankruptcy and was purchased by Boohoo. Glossier’s commoditized feminism aside, it’s no easy task to launch a $1.8

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2016

As a startup advisor and investor, I find that more and more entrepreneurs avoid using the term “profit” in pitching their new venture. Of course, I understand and don’t condone bad actors who get greedy, and exploit ways to unjustly squeeze customers and employees. Solve a painful problem for customers who have money to spend.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Too many entrepreneurs put their best creative thinking into the startup idea, and believe that the business implementation simply requires following tried and true business practices. To win, you need to think outside the box to deliver a better customer experience, business model, and new positioning. Start thinking outside the box.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 28, 2016

Steve Jobs was a one-in-a-million entrepreneur who seemed to violate many conventional rules of starting a business and dealing with people, yet undeniably achieved great success. As a result, I don’t recommend to aspiring entrepreneurs that they try to emulate his style as a model for their first startup.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

The biggest challenge for every entrepreneur and every startup today is to get noticed and remembered in today’s information overload. The number of entrepreneurs worldwide is huge, starting an estimated 50 million new businesses in the past year, or 137,000 per day. Stories relay events, and these events have to happen somewhere.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2016

Many entrepreneurs assume that everyone will love their solution as much as they do, so they tune their marketing focus based on their own needs and wants. That’s the right place to start, but real growth and scale requires attracting customers who are not like you. Update your technology to reach new customer segments.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Does your business have a visible positive strategy, or do your customers and employees still see your primary focus as closing more sales and killing competitors? Certainly that has been the strategy of many companies, and has worked in the past, but today’s customers and workers are looking for more. Market and customer positioning.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 9, 2017

The average business person fights a customer culture shift, rather than looking for it. Thus I recommend that the rest of us need to step outside our comfort zone, and start practicing some specific strategies to recognize cultural shifts, and maybe even start a few trends of our own: Embrace online social interaction with customers.

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socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 26, 2017

In April of 2016, we raised our seed round, of $1.3M. Helen Lee: Since then, fast forward, we left Techstars with around 2,000 customers, and today have over 90,000. It's about the leadership team, and to prepare not just for open enrollment for 2018, but to service the 100,000 customers we'll have on board. READ MORE>>.

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Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 27, 2016

TechZulu is excited to invite you to the 2016 Startup and Entrepreneur Forecast taking place Thursday, February 11 from 7 p.m. We will have amazing panelists from Crosscut Ventures, Machine Shop Ventures, Techstars, and more to be announced soon who will share their insights and forecast for startups in 2016.

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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. Solo entrepreneurs rarely find an investor. Investors talk to each other and they love warm introductions to up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 15, 2016

As an advisor to startups and an angel investor, I encounter many Millennials as entrepreneurs who are leaders and great role-models for the rest of us in business. Most great entrepreneurs, including Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell, have talked about their failures as the key to later success.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 21, 2016

There are a few entrepreneurs who seem to always be ahead of the rest, and are able to sense where the market is going tomorrow. Everyone wants to support the entrepreneur with the courage to make bold decisions, and can make it happen. So what does one have to do to get on the list? His new product presentations were legendary.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 19, 2020

After wrestling with recalcitrant homeowners, husbanding their parcels of land to keep their property values high, the state’s leadership passed a law that increased the availability of new rental units and put more money into homeowners’ pockets in 2016.

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Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 26, 2016

6 Entrepreneurs share their predictions for this year’s evolution of online industries, which will be key for small businesses across the globe in 2016. In 2016, the price of mobile data will remain relatively stable. wireless carriers will begin to treat enterprise customers differently. Wireless Global Connections.

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StartUp Beat

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Grigori Mikayelyan was a failed and an aspiring entrepreneur; furnished with a new idea – and determined to make a success of it – he became a Lyft driver to conduct customer research with his passengers. What prospective entrepreneur wouldn’t benefit from canvassing such a broad scope of opinion?

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

Every entrepreneur I know feels the pressure of the thousands of things that need to get done, all seemingly at the same time. These are the endless stream of email, phone calls, and daily crises which prevent really important accomplishments, like closing customers. There is just not enough time! Rest makes you more productive.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2016

It only takes one person come up with a great startup idea, but in my experience as an investor, it’s a rare entrepreneur who has all the skills and resources to build a business as well as a solution. Many entrepreneurs outside the U.S. Every first-time entrepreneur should find a co-founder who has built a startup before.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2016

Most aspiring entrepreneurs look to their alma mater, or any university, as a source of classes that can help them, but neglect to think outside the box or take advantage of all the other resources to be found there. Access to entrepreneurs-in-residence, business mentors. Access to intellectual property and current research.

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