Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

All businesses these days are too complex to be one-person shows, so you need all the complementary held you can find to keep up with customers and competition, fill your expertise gaps, and scale the market. Using metrics to measure results and commitments. Marketing your personal brand and your vision.

Startup 113

Startup Customer Custom Technical Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2022

Thus, in my mentoring of potential technical entrepreneurs who have a real passion for their technology, I often recommend that they find a co-founder who can manage the marketing and execution elements of the new venture. The competition will improve, the market will change, and your customers will demand more.

Mentor 133

Mentor Startup Customer Custom 133

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever. Years ago, it cost a million dollars for a new e-commerce site, one that you can now create for almost nothing with current tools and technology. Marty Zwilling.

Tips 161

Tips Startup Social Media News 161

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

The world around us is being disrupted by the acceleration of technology into more industries and more consumer applications. Technology solutions are now used by authoritarians to monitor and control populations, to stymie an individual company’s economic prospects or to foment chaos through demagoguery. What Has Changed in Financing?

Venture Capital 471

Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 7, 2020

I’m not suggesting that you model your startup after the complex corporate organizations you hated in your last job, but there are at least eight key functions and activities that every investor expects to find in a startup proposal with any real potential to change the world. Formalize the use of tools and information technology.

Entrepreneur 131

Entrepreneur Outsource Development Startup Competition 131

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. Competition isn’t won or lost by your marketing decks?—?it’s it’s won by how you innovate and by how you execute. A deck is a deck. Just send it.

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2020

Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure. The challenge is to avoid the bad risks, while actively seeking and managing the smart risks. Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives.

Entrepreneur 129

Entrepreneur Resource Metrics Customer 129

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2018

They think they are saving costs by not using the latest technology to capture data, and minimizing storage. No human or paper tracking systems are a competitive alternative. With today’s technology, data flow and coordination are readily achieved through common Internet protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Artificial Inteligence 84

Artificial Inteligence Metrics Commerce Software 84

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 12, 2015

The most common proposals I hear are for yet another social networking site ( over 200 active ), or another dating site (now over 2500 in the US alone). It starts with a vision, but benefits quickly from a structured process of idea generation, evaluation, prototyping, customer feedback, and success metrics. Ownership. Value creation.

Entrepreneur 101

Entrepreneur Startup Coach Metrics 101

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2021

First, you as the leader must be a role model for the actions you desire – including positive communication, active coaching, rewards for results, as well as providing required tools and training. Today’s complex environments requires the use of innovative systems and technology for timely and reliable feedback from customers and colleagues.

Customer 114

Customer Custom Satisfaction Metrics 114

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2016

The most common proposals I hear are for yet another social networking site ( over 200 active ), or another dating site (over 2500 in the US alone). It starts with a vision, but benefits quickly from a structured process of idea generation, evaluation, prototyping, customer feedback, and success metrics. Set milestones and meet them.

Coach 64

Coach Metrics Competition Ideas 64

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2018

In this era of rapid market and technological change, I know I have to challenge my small business advisory clients to keep innovating and stay ahead of the game. Other champions of innovation, including Elon Musk with SpaceX and Hyperloop, always seem to be building future opportunities from trends and technology turns.

Metrics 58

Metrics IBM IBM Competition 58

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2015

The last thing they can afford is to waste any of these, but in my mentoring and coaching activities, I see it happening all too often. Waste in a startup is any activity that spends resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers. Focus on activities rather than results.

Resource 105

Resource Startup Entrepreneur Training 105

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2014

The last thing they can afford is to waste any of these, but in my mentoring and coaching activities, I see it happening all too often. Waste in a startup is any activity that absorbs resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers. Focus on activities rather than results.

Entrepreneur 115

Entrepreneur Resource Training Product 115

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure. The challenge is to avoid the bad risks, while actively seeking and managing the smart risks. Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives.

Startup 115

Startup Resource Metrics Entrepreneur 115

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2017

Fuzzy words, like “improved usability”, “paradigm shift,” and “breakthrough technology” won’t convince investors, customers or deter competitors. What metrics should you use to measure success? Define both hard data and soft (anecdotal) metrics on the new solution, as well as on the productivity of you team.

Metrics 58

Metrics Resource Startup Training 58

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2018

The last thing they can afford is to waste any of these, but in my mentoring and coaching activities, I see it happening all too often. Waste in a startup is any activity that spends resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers. Focus on activities rather than results.

Resource 52

Resource Training Entrepreneur Activity 52

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2015

I’m not suggesting that you model your startup after the complex corporate organizations you hated in your last job, but there are at least eight key functions and activities that every investor expects to find in a startup proposal with any real potential to change the world. Formalize the use of tools and information technology.

Outsource Development 99

Outsource Development Startup Competition Ideas 99

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2014

Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure. The challenge is to avoid the bad risks, while actively seeking and managing the smart risks. Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives.

Startup 113

Startup Resource Metrics Entrepreneur 113

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure. The challenge is to avoid the bad risks, while actively seeking and managing the smart risks. Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives.

Resource 64

Resource Metrics Entrepreneur Customer 64

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2011

Its primary goal is to focus on identifying what is truly driving demand, analytically, so that our customers can optimize their activities. We have a very sophisticated, analytics and software platform that over half the Fortune 50 are now using, to help guide how they invest in marketing and sales activities and investments.

Social Media 235

Social Media Demand Activity Marketing 235

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2017

Show how production workflow software expands customer reach, streamlines processes and reduce costs, rather than merely introducing the latest technology. This active discovery mindset searching for new questions drives real innovators away from more of the same. One metric now commonly used is called the Net Promoter® Score (NPS).

Customer 85

Customer Custom Product Marketing 85

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 28, 2016

I’m not suggesting that you model your startup after the complex corporate organizations you hated in your last job, but there are at least eight key functions and activities that every investor expects to find in a startup proposal with any real potential to change the world. Formalize the use of tools and information technology.

Ideas 62

Ideas Outsource Development Startup Competition 62

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever. Years ago, it cost a million dollars for a new e-commerce site, one that you can now create for almost nothing with current tools and technology. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 61

Startup Social Media News Tool 61

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

In the case of MakeSpace we had huge initial successes in New York City as Rahul led the scaling of our drivers, our trucks and our warehouses and we figured out the right price points to beat the local competition. We have been able to build deep customer insights on product, pricing, service, geography, competition, etc.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 27, 2013

We don''t spend a lot of time there, except that we''re active investors and bankers who are affected by what''s happening in the IPO market. This might be self serving, because we have a bias and a number of global offices, but international buyers in Asia are far more active now. One area of interest is cross border M&A.

Southern California 124

Southern California SoCal Commerce Invest 124

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. prefer instead to divide it according to the mindset of users: whether or not they are actively looking to purchase something (i.e. Do fewer structured activities. Tesla is not.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2017

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Facebook’s winning strategy was a laser focus on increasing active user counts and time spent online. Less is more.

Competition 65

Competition Social Media Metrics Customer 65

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2022

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Facebook’s winning strategy was a laser focus on increasing active user counts and time spent online. Less is more.

Startup 144

Startup Social Media Metrics Customer 144

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

The difference in what we're doing, is we're an active sensor network. Unlike Walmart, you don't have to walk through a reader or interrogator, because we have an active tag with a five year asset life, saying here I am. We are really focused on the active RFID tagging area. We started with Wi-Fi based technology, using 802.11.

Startup 113

Startup CTO Hire Resource Venture Capital 113

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2019

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Facebook’s winning strategy was a laser focus on increasing active user counts and time spent online. Less is more.

Social Media 87

Social Media Metrics Customer Custom 87

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

65 million monthly actives. What in your product is truly differentiated in the market to solve this problem (where do you believe you’re strong against the competition in functionality or delivery). INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA. Like DeviantArt. With 30 million registered users on a global basis. billion monthly page views.

Startup 401

Startup Customer Custom Technical Review 401

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

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. And in a market with too much capacity (too many startups) the leverage was completely in the hand of buyers at M&A activity finally picked up. Today’s Normalization.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

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. It became a social activity.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

No, that IS NOT a competitive advantage - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 12, 2010 This is part 1 of the series: 5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches. Listening to first-time entrepreneurs talk about their competitive advantages is as predictably invalid as the local weatherman's 10-day forecast. Make it unique.

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217