Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 29, 2023

Frequent discussions with peers and customers on open questions will keep you from being led astray by your own biases. If you’re producing just one page, one blog post, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be good and final, and you start to worry about quality. Frequency keeps the pressure off. Frequency nurtures frequency.

Startup 109

Startup Writing Blogging Ideas 109

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2020

Frequent discussions with peers and customers on open questions will keep you from being led astray by your own biases. If you’re producing just one page, one blog post, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be good and final, and you start to worry about quality. Frequency keeps the pressure off. Frequency nurtures frequency.

Startup 173

Startup Writing Blogging Ideas 173

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

You help them on stories, act as a source, develop real relationships, read their stories and eventually when you have news they’re more willing to have a conversation. I pointed out the fact that they only ever talked to the press when the had an announcement and that it was a continual process. It’s a continual process.

Startup 349

Startup Writing Press Blogging 349

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). It’s a continual process.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people. So they create a task list of all the marketing activities an organization can do: press releases, web site updates, customer case studies, blog posts, daily Tweets, Facebook fan page, attending conferences, etc. Let me give you an example.

Startup 323

Startup Press Development Team Review SEM 323

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. Developing O&O (owned & operated) businesses (outside of YouTube).

Networking 366

Networking Media Content Customer 366

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people. So they create a task list of all the marketing activities an organization can do: press releases, web site updates, customer case studies, blog posts, daily Tweets, Facebook fan page, attending conferences, etc.

Activity 164

Activity Conference Press Case Study 164

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2016

You Need to Find Your Mojo A Chip On Your Shoulder A few years ago I wrote a blog post on entrepreneurs with a chip on their shoulders. The founders and team develop a huge confidence level that appropriately increases risk-taking, output, expansion, deals, revenue, press and everything that is a consequence of initial successes.

Startup 150

Startup Press Entrepreneur Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

Nobody likes to hear you say, “we can’t tell you anything we’re in stealth mode&# so develop some generic talking points that don’t give anything away when you’re asked what you do. But don’t let this information get out into the general press and don’t market more than a few months out.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 18, 2012

Mark is a Partner at GRP Partners and authors one of the most widely read startup blogs, BothSidesOfTheTable. We just knew that we were onto an idea that no one had thought of and we had better be in the press first because, of course, there is a first-mover advantage. Business development is sales. Winning customers is sales.

Entrepreneur 272

Entrepreneur Startup Conference Santa Barbara 272

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

And if you are – what on earth are you reading such a boring blog as this?!? OK, that sounds like an interesting business, but nothing to write a freakin’ blog post about? Gogii spent way more effort marketing to what I call “The USA Today market&# rather than the tech blog market. But I never gave up.

Gogii 310

Gogii Invest Blogging Startup 310

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. I was thinking back to a few previous “insider baseball&# blog debates that raged for several weeks: AngelGate (aka Bin38 secret cabal), convertible debt vs. equity, bubble vs. not, and now the AngelList discussion.

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts. Email updates frequently.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

It's like WordPress, but instead of blogging, it provides an online community, which is self-hosted. We have about 8500 customers there, but only a small percentage have built great communities that took off, and the rest floundered. SocialEngine is four years old, and that's the startup we applied to TechStars with.

Startup 242

Startup CTO Coach Blogging Social Media 242

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

In the initial phases of any new market you’re developing a product (hopefully with a minimal set of features), getting feedback from customers, refining your product based on user feedback and then re-launching your product. Markets develop for a complex set of factors that are often beyond all of our control.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

Xconomy

JUNE 23, 2016

The center also asked the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. Firms are still pretty dependent on government contracts for their business,” but the industry has moved over the past two years to more private sector customers, said Michael Combs, a CBRE research manager in San Diego and chief author of the study.

San Diego 69

San Diego Study Outsource Development Report 69

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

Yet, without realizing it, John and Kyle had begun to build a community of virtual stakeholders who eventually developed an emotional bond with the company. blogging, in a sense. If we had a blogging platform then, we would have been blogging. If we had a blogging platform then, we would have been blogging.

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233

Xconomy

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

Cyber industry alliances, the thinking goes, could make customers’ cyber defenses stronger and easier to manage. The alliance aims to address these challenges by not only better aligning security vendors, but also by creating a more connected security system for their customers. That’s the goal, at least. “We

Press 40

Press Symantec Organization IBM 40

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2018

Frequent discussions with peers and customers on open questions will keep you from being led astray by your own biases. If you’re producing just one page, one blog post, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be good and final, and you start to worry about quality. Frequency keeps the pressure off. Frequency nurtures frequency.

Startup 57

Startup Writing Blogging Entrepreneur 57

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2010

I have read much commentary on my Twitter stream (ironically) and in the press about how investors are going to abandon investments in the Twitter ecosystem because they seem to appear hostile to ecosystem partners. Let’s face it, if people want to blog as a career they have to be able to make money. Let me explain.

Advertising 276

Advertising Startup Platform News 276

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I wanted to also post the series here to have it as a resource on my blog for future entrepreneurs who stop by. Having been through the experience as an entrepreneur twice myself I have developed a list of what I think it takes. Your customers don’t care that you went to Stanford, Harvard or MIT. It’s just you now.

Entrepreneur 338

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Google 338

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2013

Frequent discussions with peers and customers on open questions will keep you from being led astray by your own biases. If you’re producing just one page, one blog post, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be good and final, and you start to worry about quality. Frequency keeps the pressure off. Frequency nurtures frequency.

Entrepreneur 100

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 10, 2016

Frequent discussions with peers and customers on open questions will keep you from being led astray by your own biases. If you’re producing just one page, one blog post, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be good and final, and you start to worry about quality. Frequency keeps the pressure off. Frequency nurtures frequency.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 60

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 25, 2010

Chris Dixon wrote a blog post last week titled, “ Techies and Normals &# in which he defined “Techies&# as people who are not just “early adopters&# but also have more of a geeky, technical, product bent. Anyway, Chris’s blog got me thinking about Techies and Normals. He is both. Zero thought = flying blind.

Product 348

Product Startup Design Blogging 348

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

Yet, without realizing it, John and Kyle had begun to build a community of virtual stakeholders who eventually developed an emotional bond with the company. blogging, in a sense. If we had a blogging platform then, we would have been blogging. If we had a blogging platform then, we would have been blogging.

Newsletter 133

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 133

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

Other signs of engagement are: they ask you to meet with portfolio companies (they want feedback on your product and you), they ask you to meet a colleague, they set up a call to go through a product demo / financial walk-through, they ask to speak with customers, etc. This goes into the heart of my controversial blog post (coming soon!

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2010

" 8 Questions to Ask When Interviewing at a Startup - Instigator Blog , June 18, 2010 Job interviews are meant to be conversations. Don Norman at Business of Software 2009 - Business of Software Blog , June 21, 2010 Imagine you’re on the first slide of your powerpoint presentation and want to move to the next slide. Guess what?

Startup 175

Startup Venture Capital Slides Blogging 175

Xconomy

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

The Carlsbad, CA-based company has also developed software that it says can help healthcare providers and other organizations keep track of orthotic devices and bill patients for their use. Specific financial terms were not disclosed in a press release announcing the agreement.

Startup 40

Startup Paramount Organization Software 40

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

Diverse search results include stream updates, blog posts, news articles, photos, videos (versus Twitter/FaceBook1 only). Online social game network; make their own games (FarmVille, Mafia Wars, FrontierVille) in addition to allowing third-party developers to access network. -Real-time search engine. Read more: PaidContent.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Google Web Sites 225

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

It’s why I always work hard to find images for my blog posts & why all of my keynote presentations are visual rather than bullet points with words. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. It’s how we package our company story and drive our press coverage. So I thought I would.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Today I’m announcing that GRP Partners is doubling down on the Twitter ecosystem by investing in DataSift , a company who provides a real-time data platform and tools to third-party developers and corporations. I believe this makes Twitter the perfect ecosystem for development. How about if they knew how often I came to Vegas?

Platform 307

Platform News Startup Invest 307

Xconomy

SEPTEMBER 29, 2016

Today the synthetic biology company announced an expansion of its headquarters in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood, including a second, larger lab space for designing and making custom yeast and other microbes. Xconomy toured both spaces—dubbed Bioworks1 and Bioworks2—earlier this week (see photo slideshow above).

Design 40

Design San Diego Customer Custom 40

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

No rule is ever absolute no matter how it sounds when one writes a blog. That is when no customers wanted to work with Internet startups because we as an industry had burned so many customers. I learned how to integrate customers into our product development process. We fought for every customer together.

Startup 285

Startup Venture Capital Sales Software Review 285

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch ran my article yesterday as a guest post but I wanted to have a copy here for anybody who missed it and for future readers of this blog. I was on an airplane 2-3 times / week meeting potential customers, investors, employees, business partners and the press. I scheduled runs with teammates and even with customers.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Here they’re already carrying a bag with products from many vendors so while there at the customer they just have to mention your product and budda bing. Great inches eked out on tech blogs or industry rags. They’re the ones who can help you identify customers that have a need for your product. End of story.

Startup 293

Startup Sales Marketing Product 293

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

You want somebody who can raise $15 million to build out your R&D, business development and sales organizations. I am a strong believer that leadership and team development comes from these daily interactions. They fund people with no customers. We need to sign up a few more customers and prove we can make money.&#.

CTO Hire 363

CTO Hire Technical Review Startup Demand 363

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 3, 2014

Blogs are a huge part of marketing. Follow them on Twitter, read their blog posts, if they do guest posts read those as well. Check out Smartshoot which is a site of videographers ready to lend their creativity to your campaign development by crowdsourcing their ideas and services. Indiegogo uses direct credit card processing.

Startup 109

Startup Examples Social Media Media 109