Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. Gross margin positive != End of story.

Metrics 150

Metrics Startup SaaS Course 150

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2009

Hint: He was an entrepreneur. The same is true of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is so highly valued in the Western World that some people try to convince themselves that they are an entrepreneur, when in fact they would be better off at a Big Dumb Company (“BDC”). Entrepreneur Does Not Equal Inventor.

Entrepreneur 153

Entrepreneur Ideas Writing Startup 153

InfoChachkie

MARCH 2, 2010

We were happy to accommodate his request, as the money derived from the sale of the sets allowed us to purchase vintage cards via our weekly newspaper ads. Tags: Entrepreneur Launching Venture Strategic Planning The Fringe. Because our labor was essentially free, we undersold all the other dealers at the shows. from the Wharton School.

Pricing 138

Pricing Advertising Marketing Startup 138

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 4, 2014

In fact, for the past 27-years, he has specialized in bringing exotic travel destinations to those of us who are healthy and active but whose competitive sporting days are long behind us. If you could share one startup lesson with a young entrepreneur, what would it be? A version of this article previously appeared on Forbes.

Entrepreneur 187

Entrepreneur Startup Social Media Resource 187

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 27, 2010

Entrepreneurs who experience promising initial success also play a similar game. The company was approached by a Big Dumb Company (BDC) who made a nominal acquisition offer within months of the company’s founding. The term “flip” is used derisively by institutional investors to describe the sale of young companies.

Entrepreneur 124

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Acquisition Pricing 124

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 27, 2010

Entrepreneurs who experience promising initial success also play a similar game. The company was approached by a Big Dumb Company (BDC) who made a nominal acquisition offer within months of the company’s founding. The term “flip” is used derisively by institutional investors to describe the sale of young companies.

Entrepreneur 124

Entrepreneur Acquisition Pricing .Net 124

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

But as I like to tell entrepreneurs, great PR could add $10 million to your valuation or increase your chances of closing a round 2x and either case is a reason to make sure you have good press. Enterprise Sales – The very first thing a potential customer does when you email or call to set up a meeting is Google you. I promise.

Press 415

Press Google Course Writing 415

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. We were based in London.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

As an entrepreneur looking for an idea, it makes sense to explore problem areas within your knowledge comfort zone, but when you are building a business with the solution, you have to stretch your comfort zone to keep up with the market and stay ahead of competitors. The idea is the only easy part. The hard part is the business execution.

Social Network 94

Social Network Startup Ideas Entrepreneur 94

InfoChachkie

JULY 21, 2011

5) When I interviewed people at my past startups, I rejected them if they asked me about our dental plan, as true entrepreneurs don’t care about such pedestrian benefits. 3) I’ve heard some great stories about your weekend sales “boot camps.” We hired people who did not have outside sales experience.

Summary 246

Summary Tips Sales Entrepreneur 246

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

Entrepreneurs have to be wily in all of their transactions, especially long-term commitments, such as property leases. I always encourage entrepreneurs to put a provision or two into their agreements that might have a low likelihood, but a potentially big payoff. A version of this article previously appeared Forbes. Greathouse: Agreed.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Design Acquisition Sales 113

InfoChachkie

JULY 26, 2010

Entrepreneurs can emulate de la Guerra’s strategy and make their adVenture appear far larger than reality and thus increasing its influence and market reach while discouraging competitive threats by creating an industry alliance. Revenue – We generated significant fees, over and above our product sales, from our members.

Entrepreneur 168

Entrepreneur Santa Barbara Startup Conference 168

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

They are frustrated by the past decade of subpar returns for the sector. The movie, “The Social Network” might have had more of an impact on creating future entrepreneurs than any other event of the past 5 years. If you prefer the super short version – I’ve summarized the post in the final section.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

Entrepreneurs should likewise endeavor to maximize their utility by playing as many positions on their startup team as they can effectively master. As discussed in Beach Volleyball , entrepreneurs generally enjoy simultaneously filling multiple roles during a startup’s early days. free weekly Infochachkie articles! Availability.

Startup 222

Startup Coach Sales Entrepreneur 222

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. It’s true this was much bigger in the dot com era but I’ve studied the data and know that over the past decade these numbers are right. billion each, $7.5

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Rather than obsessing about an indirect gauge of customer satisfaction, entrepreneurs should focus on improving their Net Profit Score. Shockingly, some of the recommended tactics pitched by NPS gurus could actually decrease your sales by solidifying a propensity to not promote your solution. Turning Net Promoters Into Net Profits.

.Net 182

.Net Satisfaction Entrepreneur Custom 182

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

DTC entrepreneurs are more focused on immediate impact, because if they’re not selling product, there’s no large brand propping them up. I oversee sales, marketing and partnerships, and my role is really trying to figure out which brands make most sense to partner with MuteSix. What type of clients do you work with?

Commerce 211

Commerce Content Marketing Startup 211

Tech.Co

JANUARY 15, 2018

MVF was founded in the UK by five friends in 2009, and has driven incredibly fast growth over the past 9 years. Our model evolved over time as the landscape changed, from ticket sales and sponsorships to online advertising, content marketing, and consulting. Today, I’m excited to announce that Tech.Co Most importantly, we like them.

Media 175

Media News Organization Content 175

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Rather than obsessing about an indirect gauge of customer satisfaction, entrepreneurs should focus on improving their Net Profit Score. Shockingly, some of the recommended tactics pitched by NPS gurus could actually decrease your sales by solidifying a propensity to not promote your solution. Turning Net Promoters Into Net Profits.

.Net 168

.Net Satisfaction Custom Customer 168

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Unless you are a serial entrepreneur with a string of successes behind you, you need a business plan to convince investors that you can build a business out of the dream that has been driving your passion to change the world. Current and past titles don’t convey this information. Marketing, sales, and customer experience.

Startup 65

Startup Writing Patents Competition 65

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Messenger : Rob Duva , Co-Founder, COO RingRevenue, prior Director of Customer Acquisition, CallWave. Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ringrevenue’s call performance marketing platform enables ad networks, agencies, advertisers & publishers to generate more inbound sales calls.”.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Founder, Founder, Founder At Upfront we talk regularly about how 70% of our investment decision in Seed and A rounds is the quality of the entrepreneur and 30% is the quality of the idea. Jamie Siminoff is not only one of the single best true entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, he’s amongst the best we’ve worked with in the country.

Startup 247

Startup Pricing Product Marketing 247

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2012

What I want to talk about today is one of the insider baseball discussions of our industry this past week: The odd fact of the $500 million financing round completed just before the company sold for a B. ” In this week’s discussion with entrepreneurs I think the word impending wasn’t used often enough. .”

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Pricing Social Network Acquisition 316

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 4, 2016

It was a decade ago that I led the sale of Expertcity (creator of GoToMeeting) to Citrix. During the early 2000’s, my team grew the company to one of the largest SaaS businesses of its day, with sales of $70 million. Circa 2001, Yahoo publicly declared that they didn’t do cost per acquisition (CPA) deals.

SaaS 100

SaaS Yahoo Advertising Custom 100

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. Examples of VC platform services include: recruiting, marketing, design support, inside sales reps, consulting, accounting services and so forth. There is no right or wrong – these are the three basic models.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Platform Startup Resource 150

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

We have built SocialStay for scale so I think the ‘chasm’ is both a function of time and sales. Do you have any advice for emerging entrepreneurs regarding how they can be frugal without compromising their company’s value prop? Yeah, I have made plenty of mistakes in this category in the past.

Startup 233

Startup Design Mobile Social Network 233

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2016

Almost every entrepreneur looking for outside investors has heard the annoying rejection, “You are just too early – come back when you have more traction.” Use experiments to test every element of your business model – cost, price, marketing, sales channel, customer acquisition cost, lead conversion rate, and lifetime value.

Metrics 57

Metrics Funding Startup Custom 57

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 20, 2009

Fortunately, entrepreneurs need not fear running afoul of this sin when crafting their business plans, because all of them are inherently imperfect and imprecise. Although entrepreneurs need not fear offending God with their flawless business plan, it remains a worthwhile ideal. free weekly Infochachkie articles! Perfect Imperfection.

Custom 153

Custom Customer Acquisition Entrepreneur 153

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

The campaign was so successful it eventually catapulted 7-Up’s sales to rival that of both Coke and Pepsi, making it the third most popular soft drink in the US. When evaluating a potential Institutional Investor, entrepreneurs should consider what they are not , as much as what they are.

Entrepreneur 140

Entrepreneur Cloud Computing Invest Funding 140

InfoChachkie

MARCH 16, 2010

Although this is a somewhat unusual real estate transaction, it reflects a surprisingly common scenario in the world of mergers and acquisitions, with one important distinction. My House Is Not For Sale. Our response was that there was no “price” as our company was not for sale. free weekly Infochachkie articles!

Company 160

Company Companies Pricing Santa Barbara 160

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

The campaign was so successful it eventually catapulted 7-Up’s sales to rival that of both Coke and Pepsi, making it the third most popular soft drink in the US. When evaluating a potential Institutional Investor, entrepreneurs should consider what they are not , as much as what they are.

Entrepreneur 157

Entrepreneur Invest Funding Capital 157

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 2, 2009

Decreasing Your Customer Acquisition Costs. Ultimately, your overall customer acquisition costs should calculated as an average of a variety of marketing channels. Thus, include these unattributed customers in your overall calculation of customer acquisition costs. However, you are only paid for ads that generate sales.

Custom 164

Custom Customer Advertising SEM 164

socalTECH

APRIL 2, 2014

Carla Bourque: Smartify has been based in Pasadena for the past three and a half years. It''s unique in that we can integrate that into CRM systems, email systems, point-of-sale. carla bourque smartify facebook social marketing entrepreneur startup interview' What is Smartify? READ MORE>>.

Marketing 196

Marketing Pasadena Platform Email 196

InfoChachkie

JUNE 16, 2011

5) Twitter’s recent $40M acquisition of TweetDeck is an interesting development. TweetDeck is a very natural acquisition, it certainly brings talent that knows how to build Twitter applications. What we have seen over the past year, running 25,000 endorsements, we want to get more into the post-click experience.

Social Media 252

Social Media Platform Media Networking 252

InfoChachkie

MARCH 8, 2011

John Greathouse , Entrepreneur, Investor, Professor and Freshman In The School Of Life. I write a bit more about how entrepreneurs can protect their ideas here: Spilling The Beans. I encourage emerging entrepreneurs to utilize Quora. Zuckerberg “stole” their idea of creating a social network for the Harvard student community.

Writing 150

Writing Social Network Ideas Entrepreneur 150

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2017

The biggest hurdle, initially, was getting suppliers past the �friend or foe� question. Really, we're the sales and marketing arm of those companies. You have to make sure your cost of acquisition, retention rates, and conversion metrics are all in place. How we made it easy, is a system we call Quickrentz.

Startup 174

Startup Metrics Custom Customer 174

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

I’m looking for somebody who can sell, but not better than our head of sales. You want somebody who can raise $15 million to build out your R&D, business development and sales organizations. These are the skills I look for in entrepreneurs and leaders. Real entrepreneurs are able to attract others to their calling.

CTO Hire 363

CTO Hire Technical Review Startup Demand 363