socalTECH

OCTOBER 2, 2012

We thought it might be interesting to talk with one of the fund's managing directors, Jeb Spencer about the fund's success in technology investments, plus how it managed to raise another fund in this kind of environment, plus its unique goal of getting companies to an acquisition--and not an IPO.

Acquisition 168

Acquisition Software Review Technical Review Equity 168

Xconomy

OCTOBER 5, 2016

These smaller and younger companies often have fewer legacy systems and are more willing to take a risk with their business models than larger organizations. – Do you have great information about your customers’ goals and “life events”? – Are you great at partnerships and acquisitions?

Organization 91

Organization Customer Custom Study 91

socalTECH

OCTOBER 16, 2019

Santa Monica-based TV Time , a developer of an app which lets users report information about their engagement with TVs and movies, has acquired New York City-based Mediamorph , according to the two companies. Financial details of the acquisition wer e not announced.

Southern California 113

Southern California Santa Monica Media Entertainment 113

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2013

Employees will care only about work they create.” Sales will be the organization’s sole focus.” If sales are the only way to get rewarded in your organization, then sales will take precedence over other activities. Hire employees who have strong skills, with the motivation to learn new ones. Marty Zwilling.

Entrepreneur 97

Entrepreneur Training Sales Technical Review 97

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2022

The key elements of leadership in a company, both individual and organizational, are less tangible, but very critical in setting a market value for investment, acquisition, or going public. Good performance management is more about rewarding desirable behavior than penalizing bad performance. Focus on talent and people growth.

Technical Review 129

Technical Review Funding Organization Coach 129

socalTECH

MAY 7, 2019

The Tech Coast Angels , the largest organized angel investment group both in Southern California as well as across the venture ecosystem, says it backed a total of 53 companies in all of 2018, putting in a total of $10.8M across those companies. million in Tourmaline Labs.

Tech Coast Angels 113

Tech Coast Angels Invest Angel Company 113

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

The “doers” in your organization. You motivate, cajole, reassign tasks, hire, fire and push the organization forward. Of if your VP Sales isn’t complaining about marketing she’s trying to get the function reporting to her. They want to help the organization determine what must be built and when.

Entrepreneur 385

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Sales 385

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 5, 2020

When people talk today about buying food, alongside traditional grocery stores and other physical food markets, they increasingly talk about grocery delivery companies, restaurant delivery platforms, meal kit services and more that make or provide food to people by way of apps. ” I don’t doubt that he means it.

Technical Review 343

Technical Review Startup Marketing San Diego 343

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Some rules about stock options and phantom stock: [Email readers, continue here…] The real insight here is that stock options or phantom stock are the tools of early-stage businesses used to attract great talent when there is not enough cash to pay market rates. How about multiple classes of stock?

Equity 156

Equity Class Pricing Sales 156

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2023

Most are still confused about the right priority. In my view, the pendulum is swinging back, with investors looking more for the traditional indications of business integrity, stability, and growth: Some element of organic growth is a good thing. Re-investing profits to grow the business is organic growth.

Organization 94

Organization Invest Customer Custom 94

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2020

Most are still confused about the right priority. In my view, the pendulum is swinging back, with investors looking more for the traditional indications of business integrity, stability, and growth: Some element of organic growth is a good thing. Re-investing profits to grow the business is organic growth.

Organization 173

Organization Invest Customer Custom 173

Tech.Co

DECEMBER 4, 2020

Most impressive, Amazon had Hsieh retain his role as CEO, and gave him latitude for projects like his famous book, Delivering Happiness , which spun out into a separate organization of its own; continuing to focus and build out the Zappos company culture; and testing new management paradigms such as Holacracy.

Commerce 206

Commerce Statistics Customer Custom 206

Tech.Co

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

To be eligible for the program, you need to be a NASE member, and monthly and Silver members have to be involved with the organization for over 90 days. The organization also recommends that interested businesses attend teleconference presentations to learn more about the process, alongside watching this YouTube video.

Technical Review 193

Technical Review Software Review Startup Competition 193

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

San Diego-based Active Network said this week that it has signed the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) and Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, the two largest parks and recreation organizations in Minnesota, as a customer. According to Active, the two organizations are using its software to manage and automate their daily operations.

Activity 164

Activity Networking San Diego News 164

Berkonomics

MAY 27, 2021

They protect the company by overseeing the expenditure of company money for expansion, acquisitions, purchases of large assets, hiring of senior management and more. Often, a board meeting is entirely devoted to issues of growth, with members chiming in to help the CEO with marketing issues or customer acquisition.

Resource 156

Resource Acquisition Class Help 156

socalTECH

JULY 8, 2021

So talk a little bit more about this effort to be a high school on your corporate campus? We care about consumer electronics, we care about consumer insights, we do a ton of engineering ourselves, and do most of the design of products ourselves. How did this all come about? That said, these things are always challenging.

Belkin 113

Belkin Playa Del Rey El Segundo Education 113

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

Every lifestyle entrepreneur starts their business to be their own boss and follow their passion, so they don’t even think about having investors, a board of directors, or going public. Of course, that doesn’t dilute the owner’s equity, but it may well limit you to organic growth, versus international rollouts and acquisition options.

Entrepreneur 148

Entrepreneur Startup Equity Course 148

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

What can you tell us about MuteSix as an agency? Greg Gillman: We’ve been around for about nine years. And then bit by bit, we grew the organization. For agencies that work with large brands, usually it’s more about impression buying versus performance buying. Image Credits: MuteSix.

Commerce 211

Commerce Content Marketing Startup 211

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

The key elements of leadership in a company, both individual and organizational, are less tangible, but very critical in setting a market value for investment, acquisition, or going public. Good performance management is more about rewarding desirable behavior than penalizing bad performance. Focus on talent and people growth.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Organization Coach Invest 124

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2018

One of those companies is Los Angeles-based Love Goodly (www.lovegoodly.com) co-founders Justine Lassoff and Katie Bogue Miller , who sat down and told us about their company, focused on cruelty-free, non-toxic beauty and skincare products. Katie joined about a month after we started, as part of the founding team, as head of merchandising.

Startup 157

Startup Commerce Los Angeles Product 157

Xconomy

SEPTEMBER 16, 2016

They foster customer trust, which is essential in driving growth and customer acquisition. Investors and customers expect companies to do all they can to proactively protect the integrity, privacy, and confidentiality of this data. Ultimately, strong security measures do more than just prevent risks.

Startup 40

Startup Framework Statistics Customer 40

socalTECH

JULY 9, 2012

We thought it would be insightful for our readerswho are usually looking to get acquired by other companieson what the thought process of those large companies making those acquisitions are. For a company like yours, what goes into your acquisition strategy and what thoughts went behind the Anue acquisition?

Acquisition 173

Acquisition IP Networking Marketing 173

TechCrunch LA

MAY 25, 2019

Last week, I wrote about an alternative to venture capital called revenue-based financing and before that, I jotted down some notes on one of VCs’ favorite spaces: cannabis tech. Before I tell you about a few other up-and-coming beverage makers, I must beg the question: Does the beverage industry need disrupting? Fundraising.

Startup 223

Startup Venture Capital Newsletter Tips 223

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

There is excitement about the possibilities of real change and an infectious “naive optimism” about how everything is possible. As companies get this initial customer feedback on their product they start to have to ask harder questions about unit economics: How much does it cost us to acquire a new customer?

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2021

No matter how passionately you believe that everyone needs one, and positive feedback from friends and early adopters (false positives), before you invest in scaling the business, make sure you set and meet good metrics in cost of customer acquisition, recurring sales, and margin. Mergers and acquisitions also require new skills.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Case Study Mentor Software Review 131

socalTECH

AUGUST 27, 2014

We caught up with CEO and co-founder Brett Rossman to learn more about the company and how it''s been able to grow, profitably, all without raising a dime of outside capital. What is ConsumerTrack all about? There''s lots of technology development behind what you do - can you talk about that? We do that methodically.

Startup 239

Startup El Segundo Marketing Media 239

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 23, 2022

Employees will care only about work they create.” Sales will be the organization’s sole focus.” If sales are the only way to get rewarded in your organization, then sales will take precedence over other activities. Hire employees who have strong skills, with the motivation to learn new ones. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 134

Startup Training Sales Entrepreneur 134

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 28, 2020

The massive windfall won’t mean anything for Scopely’s strategy as the already wildly profitable business continues to grow both organically and through its acquisition strategy of major mobile gaming studios, according to co-chief executive, Walter Driver. billion, according to a person familiar with the financing.

Los Angeles 252

Los Angeles Mobile Platform Entertainment 252

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. Customer acquisition cost. End of story.

Metrics 150

Metrics Startup SaaS Course 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2020

I’m not talking about just making incremental improvements in their products and processes, but more fundamental changes to the business model, such as the following: Announce a new market launch that fits your core competency. Use outside investment and acquisition to expand your scope. Remember when you were a startup?

Customer 143

Customer Custom Examples IBM 143

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 24, 2013

For about 50 years, (…cough M) Ad Men, or marketing and sales individuals, have been the kings of organizational hierarchy … and then came the Internet of things and engineers took over the throne. Thus, you need to enable new ways to create a scalable customer acquisition process. It’s the whole conversion flow.

Hulu 111

Hulu Startup Social Media Organization 111

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

I first met Greg about 4 years ago or so. He shared tons of information about how how they were using marketing to quantitatively make marketing decisions at HauteLook and acquire customers for prices that were far cheaper than similar companies. So I began talking to him about joining the fund. So we talked about his joining.

Venture Capital 360

Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup Invest 360

socalTECH

JANUARY 23, 2020

For those who haven't heard of Emburse, talk about what you do? Eric Friedrichsen: Emburse is all about expense management and accounts payable automation. Eric Friedrichsen: The reason my background relates so well here, is I worked for Concur for about eight years. We have put a general manager in charge of each of them.

Platform 124

Platform Report Los Angeles Technology 124

socalTECH

DECEMBER 26, 2018

I met with many deeply talented entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, community organizers and professionals who are thriving in these separate yet overlapping (and interdependent) ecosystems. What was the biggest news for your organization in 2018?

Southern California 113

Southern California SoCal Pasadena Startup 113

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 2, 2013

Mark framed his comments around the culture he built at Citrix, which has been augmented (and complicated) by the significant number of acquisitions the company executed during the past decade. A culture is about everyone belonging to something they believe in. It's about caring about someone else first. Culture Club.

RSS 221

RSS Startup Customer Custom 221

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2020

In a larger public company, it’s all about making your quarterly numbers, versus investing in strategic growth alternatives that may not pay off until several quarters later. Every business team becomes inwardly- focused by default, comparing themselves only emotionally to others they know within the organization.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Layoffs Social Media Metrics 124

socalTECH

JANUARY 9, 2014

We spoke to CEO Brian Nickerson --an Internet veteran with time at Yahoo and Internet Brands--about the company and its goals. We organize savings online. They made a number of significant acquisitions in that space, My co-founders, Sammer and Chris, worked together at Internet Brands. What is Chippmunk?

Internet Brands 257

Internet Brands Content Startup Sites 257