Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2015

Investors expect to see credible third-party evidence that you are targeting a billion-dollar opportunity, with double-digit growth. Include your sustainable competitive advantage. Patents or other intellectual property are a real competitive advantage for a startup, but first to market and working harder are not sustainable.

Summary 101

Summary Patents Technical Review Competition 101

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

Almost every online business I know (eCommerce, online software, mobile games) invests heavily in “customer acquisition” This includes investments often not properly measured (SEO, PR, Social) as well as costs that people measure more precisely (advertising, SEM, FB CPA/CPI ads). Take for example, an eCommerce company.

SEM 150

SEM Content Platform Acquisition 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2015

Here are the motivation elements that investors expect to hear: Size and growth potential of the market opportunity. Investors will impatiently expect a winning business model, customer segment definitions and volume projections. Competitor positioning and sustainable competitive advantage.

Product 103

Product Slides Customer Custom 103

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

Of course it’s a competitive market so MCNs competing for top talent not only compete on rev share to talent but also to services that they provide talent. It is the world’s best customer acquisition for video consumers to get them to come to your O&O where you can make your $25 CPMs. Except for 2 things: 1.

Networking 366

Networking Media Content Customer 366

Tech.Co

APRIL 24, 2018

Many have exited via successful acquisitions, while others have IPO’ed with the same impressive result. Being a part of the SOTY alumni lasts well beyond the pitch competition. One of our advisors heard about the Startup of the Year competition and thought we should consider pitching. A Strong Alumni Network.

Startup 70

Startup Competition Google Capital 70

socalTECH

OCTOBER 7, 2010

The firm is announcing today that it has just reached its 17 millionth registered user, having added more than 300,000 new users since its August acquisition. In 2009/2010, I joined the team which had been building out the Titan platform, with the idea that the competitive gaming model was very attractive. In August, we acquired Xfire.

Competition 154

Competition Acquisition Sites Los Angeles 154

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2015

You only get one chance to make a great first impression. You win here by getting the customer immediately engaged, and keeping him there, by knowing their interests and expectations better than any competitor or alternative. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 101

Customer Custom Startup Course 101

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

there may be major competitive changes in the market that makes your next funding round hard (e.g. you might do a great job in a great market but a competitor raises $3 million when you raised $500,000 and suddenly you have to compete with them. . - you may hit unexpected bumps in the road yourself making the next round tough.

Startup 319

Startup Venture Capital Capital Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

Ariel built a strong brand where consumers knew what to expect when ordering her products (sheets, towels, table clothes, robes, etc.) If you’re in the market for pure functionality and you value the lowest costs, Amazon will always be a great bet. companies that have to spend too heavily on customer acquisition). Get Physical!

Product 296

Product Course Customer Custom 296

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2017

As an angel investor and business advisor on new ventures, I expect to see five-year financial projections from every entrepreneur. Founders point to the great number of financial unknowns in any new business, and are reluctant to “commit” to any numbers which may come back to haunt them later. Project unit-volume and price levels.

Pricing 57

Pricing Startup Entrepreneur Invest 57

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 18, 2014

We continue to see a ton of interest not only from great companies in Los Angeles, bu companies from all over the world and the country. When a company either has revenues, if that''s the primary metric, or if it''s a consumer application, high user acquisition and engagement, we know there is some degree of product-market-fit.

Incubator 187

Incubator Southern California Startup Ideas 187

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2015

Watch that patent provide a real barrier to competitive entry. Re-live that moment of inspiration that resulted in an innovative design and implementation for your product, and is now providing you with a sustainable competitive advantage. Appreciate the media accolades and peer success feedback. Increasing customer focus and loyalty.

Satisfaction 101

Satisfaction Entrepreneur Customer Custom 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2014

You only get one chance to make a great first impression. You win here by getting the customer immediately engaged, and keeping him there, by knowing their interests and expectations better than any competitor or alternative. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 98

Customer Custom Entrepreneur Startup 98

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

You only get one chance to make a great first impression. You win here by getting the customer immediately engaged, and keeping him there, by knowing their interests and expectations better than any competitor or alternative. This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 52

Customer Custom Startup Course 52

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Messenger : Rob Duva , Co-Founder, COO RingRevenue, prior Director of Customer Acquisition, CallWave. At CallWave, Colin was CTO, Jason was CFO and I was in charge of product marketing and customer acquisition. It’s these different perspectives that have allowed us to create a great product and great partnerships.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2012

“it’s smart to use an impending investment valuation to drive a higher acquisition valuation” I would like to amend her statement slightly to read, “it’s smart to use an impending investment valuation to drive an higher acquisition.” Christin goes on. A nice play if you can make it.”

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Pricing Social Network Acquisition 316

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. Greathouse: Great products and companies that came out (of) Santa Barbara. I have always worked on early stage products. Semick: They are.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 2, 2016

Watch that patent provide a real barrier to competitive entry. Re-live that moment of inspiration that resulted in an innovative design and implementation for your product, and is now providing you with a sustainable competitive advantage. Appreciate the media accolades and peer success feedback. Increasing customer focus and loyalty.

Satisfaction 61

Satisfaction Startup Customer Custom 61

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2016

In other words, you may have a great new product, but no distributor penetration means no shelf space and no customers. Expect some channel conflict as a cost of doing business. Every international market is unique in channel expectations, purchasing behavior, and pricing.

Pricing 54

Pricing Customer Custom Sales 54

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 27, 2013

How about mergers and acquisitions? For good companies, it''s a great exit opportunity. That''s not a valuation you''d expect, if the company has not a penny of revenue. You should be thinking about how passionate you can be about building a great company. Exits usually come for great companies.

Southern California 124

Southern California SoCal Commerce Invest 124

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I called the meeting a 10/10 because we had a great 90-minute discussion in which we had great rapport. And when you finish the demo you can bring in the other important components such as competition, team, customer acquisition strategy, etc. The white board is a great way to make this happen. Mobile app?

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2016

On the other end of the spectrum, others focus totally on building a product, assuming a great product will assure business success. Lagging measures come later, including volumes achieved, cost of customer acquisition, and market penetration. Every entrepreneur needs ideas and the focus on building a great solution.

Ideas 54

Ideas Entrepreneur Customer Custom 54

InfoChachkie

MAY 16, 2011

As an entrepreneur and startup investor, I have helped create companies which achieved two IPOs which collectively raised over $100 million, as well as two acquisitions which totaled $385 million. 1) Expect Independent Channel Sales Reps To Perform Missionary Sales. During those same 25-years, I also made innumerable mistakes.

Startup 242

Startup Outsource Development Outsource Sales 242

socalTECH

MARCH 6, 2017

It's very exciting to find these apps, and once we make those acquisition and changes, see if our expectations and projections are meeting up with what happens in reality, once we actually own the application. We saw that and said--there are lots of apps out there, lots of great app. We have a huge acquisition pipeline.

Media 153

Media Mobile Startup Acquisition 153

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2010

First, I believe that Seesmic has an excellent product – especially the web version of their product and that having another senior and experienced exec like Loic Le Meur would be great for Twitter. And I saw a lot of this first hand in Salesforce’s acquisition of my company, Koral, which was a content management company.

Acquisition 287

Acquisition Develop Development Conference 287

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

His view: sometimes entrepreneurs expect too much value from the partner. We talked about who the great firms in Europe are (Index, Accel) as well as the hottest seed investors: Robin & Saul Klein. FTC is considering an investigation into Apple’s anti-competitive practices. Are “strategic investors&# (e.g.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Google Web Sites 225

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2016

What they don’t realize is that about half the investment deals fail to close at this stage, including mergers and acquisitions , during the due-diligence process. Everyone expects a few flaws, but serious undisclosed issues will likely kill the deal. Competitive positioning and barriers to entry.

Technical Review 55

Technical Review Help Innocal Startup 55

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

We want money to make some acquisitions (investors would prefer to fund M&A if they know specific deals – not to encourage bad behavior. But this strategy great depends on point 3. High fixed costs + high debt rates killed many great companies in Dot Com 1.0. We want a strong balance sheet (um, ok. Startup Lessons'

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

I believe that the advertisers they started with were probably disappointed that the cost per customer acquisition was not the same as search. Those expectations were probably too high, in terms of the CPA. That will be a great low rate, but you only ran 1/5th of your schedule. It should not be done on a computer.

Google 124

Google Advertising Media Startup 124

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

If they only ever received updates then don’t expect them to be bought into tough decisions when you inevitably have the board meeting where the news isn’t positive. No great board wants you distracted with doing a whole bunch of financial analysis that is strictly for board purposes. Sometimes they don’t even know.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

However, in the world of startups, relationships that go beyond a casual acquaintance can provide your adVenture with a significant competitive advantage. This duality of Bro relationships results in circumstances in which your Bro is also your Bro Foe, as discussed at great length in Kiss of Death. free weekly Infochachkie articles!

Startup 113

Startup Organization Allegis Commerce 113

InfoChachkie

JUNE 25, 2009

I established such a relationship with a fantastic lawyer and he taught me a great deal over the 10 years we worked together. Thus, every time you submit a request to your lawyer, make it very clear when you really need a response – this will help your Legal Eagle to effectively manage his time and ensure that he meets your expectations.

Technical Advisors 124

Technical Advisors Technical Review IP Patents 124

Frank Addante

JULY 30, 2007

Internet Advertising ASP) Exit: $112M IPO and acquisition Lesson: Think big. 6 startups = 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure, millions in venture capital $, hundreds of employees in cities worldwide and the building of my latest venture, the Rubicon Project - one of the fastest growing advertising companies in history. Zondigo, Inc.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Outsource Development Advertising 40

Frank Addante

AUGUST 27, 2007

Internet Advertising ASP) Exit: $112M IPO and acquisition Lesson: Think big. 6 startups = 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure, millions in venture capital $, hundreds of employees in cities worldwide and the building of my latest venture, the Rubicon Project - one of the fastest growing advertising companies in history. Zondigo, Inc.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Outsource Development Web 2.0 40

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 18, 2015

Like all startups you can’t be successful without a great product and Shep felt he had what the market wanted but he just needed to get noticed. He also found great marketing loopholes. Or that marketing is simply about online customer acquisition. Shep launched his career managing a no-name artist called Alice Cooper.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Course Social Media 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

They are, in fact, great news for traditional venture capitalists. Yes, it’s true that FOMO (fear of missing out) is driving some irrational behavior and valuations amongst uber competitive deals and well-financed VCs. The most successful of these businesses will still need venture capital to scale their businesses.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

Internet Advertising ASP) Exit: $112M IPO and acquisition Lesson: Think big. 6 startups = 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure, millions in venture capital $, hundreds of employees in cities worldwide and the building of my latest venture, the Rubicon Project - one of the fastest growing advertising companies in history. Zondigo, Inc.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40