Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2020

Many startup founders I know avoid establishing a formal advisory board or board of directors for as long as possible, with the excuse that this is just another burden, or it has more risk than value to the founder. A reasonable place to start is one percent of your company equity, plus actual expenses to cover travel and meeting attendance.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2020

If you want to make a great first impression on a startup investor or an advisor like me, don’t try to convince me or show me how busy you are. I’m sure you all know someone who always seems to be overworked, but often comes up short on the delivery side. As an entrepreneur starting a new business, you have a lot to learn.

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Product Startup Tips Entrepreneur 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2020

Of course, most of you expect that raising money will be difficult, as well as staving off competitors, and handling that occasional toxic customer. There are just not enough hours in a day, and knowledge available, to keep up with it all. In a startup, this can be a team member, investor, or even a vendor.

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Entrepreneur Startup Course Examples 122

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2020

The mindset you need for real communication must be focused on building relationships, surfacing ideas, generating trust, and building commitment, whether it be with your team, customers, or suppliers. One of the biggest problems I see in startups is everyone trying to do too many different things, straining resources and confusing customers.

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Startup Ideas Examples Metrics 124

TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 26, 2022

In numerous interviews throughout the past two years, Weiss and other executives have emphasized the company’s focus on its direct-to-consumer online shipping model and obsession with iterating the customer experience based on feedback. billion valuation from Lone Pine Capital, Sequoia, Forerunner Ventures and others.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2020

As an angel investor, I see plenty of startups focusing on building an innovative product, but I’m looking for the few who are also leading with an exponential growth strategy, to put them in the category of the next Amazon or Google. Let your highly motivated customers be your best marketing advocates for new customers.

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Marketing Startup Examples Customer 170

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2020

Due to the pervasive Internet, the scope of most successful startup teams today has become global. According to recent reports , these come from all the way up and down the age and experience spectrum, including up to ninety percent of the current Baby Boomers, as well as Millennials.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

Out of curiosity, I often ask aspiring entrepreneurs like you, who come to me for help, what drives them to take on the workload and risk of a new startup. Of course, drivers have to be backed up by some realities, like necessary resources, adequate skills, relentless determination, and a market of people interested in supporting your dream.

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Tech.Co

JUNE 22, 2021

This, of course, is potentially game-changing news for Shopify users. For publishers, it offers a potentially lucrative revenue stream — especially if the publishers can manage to refer potential customers at scale on relatively big-ticket items. billion on Prime Day 2020 — that's more than the annual GDP of Monaco in just two days.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2020

I’m sure you have all seen entrepreneurs and startups with great ideas that never seem to live up to their potential, while others with more mundane solutions seem to take off quickly and never slow down. If you tell me that you have been working on your startup for two years, but can’t quite quantify the progress, I’m not impressed.

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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. allocate 98% of their funding to startups helmed by men. It’s no wonder, then, how we’ve ended up with the paradox of the “girlboss.” .

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

As an entrepreneur, I understand your passion when pitching your solution to investors and customers, but passion alone won’t make one more technology pitch stand out above all the rest. I’m not talking here about trying to be a stand-up comic, or weaving theatrical tales. Relate when and where your passion started.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2021

They are quick to claim the credit for things in their domain that work, but also quick to disclaim responsibility for problems that keep popping up. I often think of the scope of this example in my role as mentor to a struggling entrepreneur who is quick to blame his problems on employee mistakes, or even changing customer expectations.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2020

I’m sure all of you are convinced that your new business will create the next trend and ride the wave to success, but the reality is that most startups fail , so anticipating future trends is clearly harder than it seems. Smart entrepreneurs continually test their perceptions against those of customers, outside leaders, and experts.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

A broken process or a subtle quality issue can generate a flood of customer satisfaction problems, cost overruns, and loss of market share. Of course, this all has to start with you having the confidence and conviction that there is at least one solution to every problem, and that you can find it. Then pick the best one.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 27, 2020

As an aspiring entrepreneur, one of the most important things you need is a memorable “ elevator pitch ,” to communicate your startup value proposition and leave a great first impression on friends, investors, employees, and future customers. Customers think about alternatives, and investors worry about competitors.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. When you look at how much median valuations were driven up in the past 5 years alone it’s bananas. We’ll just wait until companies that last raised in 2019 or 2020 come to market.”

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Venture Capital Marketing Technical Review Seed Funding 416

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2020

It seems that most of you entrepreneurs I meet in my role as business advisor are convinced that starting a new business requires equity investors, exponential growth, and a plan to go public via IPO. If your passion is customers, you definitely will be happier as a lifestyle entrepreneur. Use flexibility to match your lifestyle.

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Statistics Equity Satisfaction Entrepreneur 124

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2020

Just two weeks into it we are just starting to come to grips with what will no doubt wreak big financial, emotional and obviously dire health consequences and suffering for many. He produced a very detailed analysis of his customer base and which would be affected. Don’t insulate yourself?—?handle you should do it.

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Demand Guide Customer Custom 215

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 1, 2021

Of course, any highly emotional and unmanaged conflict can certainly lead to chaos and a dysfunctional organization. To get you started on the right foot, here are the key principles that I see most often working: Make the resolution a part of a larger process. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 12/15/2020.

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Activity Organization Examples Satisfaction 145

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 4, 2021

After working many years in business, both in large companies as well as startups, I’ve realized that you can learn more from peers and mentors than from any formal education program. Of course, nothing beats learning from your mistakes , but that’s a painful and very time-consuming journey.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2020

Set up training courses that highlight agility, and adopt agile working practices. The passion and commitment that characterizes startups inevitably fades, particularly if things aren’t always going well. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 03/03/2020. Transformation fatigue from continual challenges.

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Metrics Training Satisfaction IBM 122

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2020

The result is that you often take a big financial hit, and lose key customers, before you realize that the change didn’t work. For example, several years ago Apple was so convinced that their new Apple III model would be a winner that they rolled it out broadly, rather than do a controlled release first with some key customers.

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Sample Customer Custom Tool 124

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2019

An Insider’s Perspective “Bird Zero” that are custom designed by the company There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth where few really appreciate the speed and scale of what has happened. Simply put?—?there

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Tech.Co

JANUARY 9, 2018

With computer science jobs predicted to increase by 22 percent by 2020 according to the U.S. Near the nation’s capital, Arlington, VA has a thriving startup community that supports female-led companies, startups in STEM, cyber security, defense, and everything in between aimed at improving the status quo.

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Artificial Inteligence Startup Product Cloud Computing 70

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

One of the questions we discussed is, “How much capital should a startup raise?” In his words, [in some instances] “because lots of capital is available, the company takes on the capital and that ends up resulting in no constraints on decision making and so the company decides to do five things in stead of just one.”

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Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Jim opened up with his thoughts on concept and communication. “We know we need to communicate more” he says, and in many instances, mobile developers also need to open themselves up to automotive needs in regards to safety and production. Jim rounds out his speech by beseeching his peers in the tech sector. Look out for it!

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Mobile Google Startup Technology 94

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2020

As a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I often feel the frustration of someone trying to build a startup in the wrong place and time, and wrongly attributing their struggle to personal limitations. I saw these addressed well in a new book, “ The Startup Community Way ,” by Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway.

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Resource Startup Capital Mentor 131

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 3, 2020

Good examples of initial focus by an entrepreneur would include Jeff Bezos when he started Amazon as an online marketplace for books only, and Elon Musk starting PayPal as an online bank. Even if this is your first startup, you must have some personal life evidence that you finish things you start, never give up, and stay focused.

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Entrepreneur Startup Patents Resource 126

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

He left traditional media at the top of his game to be the founding CEO of Next New Networks, one of the first digital video startups, backed by Spark Capital and bought by YouTube in 2011. billion to finance US startups.) Beatriz has been a tireless public advocate of the role of Latinx leaders in startups, technology y media.

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Media Content Course Technical Review 269

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 26, 2020

In fact, contrary to popular opinion, my experience as a business advisor tells me that building a business may actually be the hard part, compared to coming up with an innovative new idea, or even inventing the solution to a hard problem. Target a higher customer need and ability to pay. Save your technical bragging for the experts.

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Customer Custom Examples .Net 136