Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 8, 2013

I met fellow hustler Brian Curliss about 2 years ago at a Startup Weekend event that I was covering. It came as no surprise whatsoever when I found out that his new company MailLift was called up to the big leagues to join the 500 Startups accelerator. So what is so special about 500 Startups you ask?

Startup 86

Startup CTO Coach Mentor Class 86

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 9, 2021

As a mentor to startups and new entrepreneurs, I continue to hear the refrain that business plans are no longer required for a new startup, since investors never read them anyway. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or if your last startup failed, it’s all about standing out above the crowd of others like you, and demonstrating your readiness.

Entrepreneur 156

Entrepreneur Tips Funding Startup 156

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

Fund raising. But it’s critical for your business, for you as a leader and people who excel at fund raising have an extreme advantage over those who do not. As a VC I also have to fund raise every three years and these posts 100% apply to VCs raising money, too. It definitely has a “d” in it, as in it’s really not fun, raising.

Funding 236

Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 236

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2021

Think of a brand evangelist team online as people blogging about your product, or posting links to it in every forum. Brand evangelists offline talk up your product lines at cocktail parties or recommend your services to friends while watching their kids' soccer game. Develop viral content. That’s a double death wish.

Marketing 139

Marketing Startup SEM Blogging 139

Tech Coast Venture Network

APRIL 22, 2010

Virgina Lorimor There are several options for financing a start-up business that tend to follow a natural course in a business’ development: Personal Investment. This is where all entrepreneurs have to start. Understand how to value you company (more to come in a future blog!) and remember ideas alone have NO value.

Startup 124

Startup Tech Coast Angels TCVN Incubator 124

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

I am super excited to announce that today is a day of lots of new things for my partners & me: A new fund, a new office and a new brand. Let’s start with the fund. We have previously raised funds in 1996 ($200 million), 2000 ($400 million) and 2008/9 ($200 million). We love all of LA and fund all regions.

Funding 343

Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. Andrew & Petri posed a question to me, “If Walt Disney were starting his company today, what kind of company would he build?” But I’m guessing the narrative is similar elsewhere.

Funding 373

Funding Technical Review Startup Screening 373

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

In my view, starting a new business has never been easier, and according to reports from the Kauffman Foundation , the numbers are here to show it. Who would not want to join the unicorns (recent startups with a current valuation of over $1 billion)? Establishing your brand with interactive social media.

Tips 161

Tips Startup Social Media News 161

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2021

Three Rules of Fundraising “Sales” One of the common mistakes I see startups as well as VCs make is spending too much time on top of funnel prospecting. than it is to start narrowing down and doing the work to close the deal, or risking hearing a no. it’s not just startups who do it. But here’s the thing?—?it’s Why buy me?

Sales 375

Sales Startup Funding Invest 375

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

It is also a result of pent-up demand. Consumer spending is 70% of the economy and will continue to be stretched – We can look all we want at tech innovation, VC funding cycles and hot M&A deals, but ultimately growth and therefore investment must be underpinned by revenue. See point 2 below.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Startup Funding Technical Review 269

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

Everybody has a blog these days and there is much advice to be had. Many startups now go through accelerators and have mentors passing through each day with advice – usually it’s conflicting. There are bootcamps, startup classes, video interviews – the sources are now endless. Improving startup productivity ?

Startup 407

Startup Framework CTO Coach Sales 407

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. In my post “ Measure twice, cut once ” I’ve outlined how to plan before you start raising. You can short-hand this as “engagement.”

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC“ There’s a great meme developing this morning on the need to simplify funding terms and documents. That prompted Fred Wilson’s blog [.]. Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice.

Funding 252

Funding Startup Venture Capital Blogging 252

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 21, 2013

million new pages added to the Internet every day, the biggest challenge for every entrepreneur is to get found, and get some credibility for a new startup. I can attest from experience that publishing a regular blog to properly showcase your offering, even before you have it, is a most cost effective approach in time and money.

Blogging 104

Blogging Product Startup Writing 104

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

According to the SEC we’re not allowed to market the fact that we’re fund raising, so I won’t. But for some strange reason they make you file your progress on fund raising, which is the widely picked up by the press. So it is now publicly known that we have closed $150 million in our 4th fund.

Blogging 420

Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 10, 2020

Team up with Black firms already doing the work. The program is expanding to Chicago in 2021, the blog post notes. Mujhid had to communicate that the “community they’ve built may formally cease without emergency funding.” Read the whole HBCUvc blog post here. Among the strategies?

Equity 220

Equity Technical Review Venture Capital Blogging 220

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

It had an influence on the people who fund our industry in a negative way as many asset managers who fund our industry read this flawed report. I wrote about this in a blog post last year titled “ It’s Morning in VC ” but I never made the full deck available until now. Now they are funding & holding.

Venture Capital 362

Venture Capital Capital Startup Writing 362

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

I was reading Danielle Morrill’s blog post today on whether one’s “ Startup Burn Rate is Normal. I love how transparently Danielle lives her startup (& encourages other to join in) because it provides much needed transparency to other startups. Let’s set up a framework.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2021

There is also more going on in every location, so this personal need and super sensitivity to the local community has spawned a new breed of Internet startups, called “hyperlocal.” What’s more difficult than building one successful startup? Try building 50 successful startups. Expanding city-by-city is expensive.

Startup 144

Startup Sites Content Sales 144

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2023

In my view, starting a new business has never been easier, and according to reports from the Kauffman Foundation , the numbers are here to show it. Who would not want to join the unicorns (recent startups with a current valuation of over $1 billion)? Establishing your brand with interactive social media.

Entrepreneur 104

Entrepreneur Startup Social Media News 104

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 17, 2013

A while back I received a discouraging note from an entrepreneur with a patent and a medical software application who couldn’t find a dime of investment, and was grousing that seed funding just wasn’t available anymore. Fundraising is indeed brutally tough at all stages, and the seed funding is the hardest to find.

Software Review 106

Software Review Funding Startup Seed Funding 106

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons.

Startup 261

Startup Press Blogging .Net 261

socalTECH

MARCH 10, 2016

Los Angeles-based Mucker Capital said this week that it has closed on a new, $45M fund, Mucker III. The fund, run by Erik Rannala and William Hsu, did not detail the limited partners in the new fund. Mucker Capital started fundraising for that new fund in May of last year. READ MORE>>.

Capital 100

Capital Funding Blogging Los Angeles 100

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2013

I made many classic first-time mistakes which serves both as my warning signal of which teams to avoid funding (if I perceive they will make critical mistakes often led by hubris) and also as my source for coaching others. Startups are filled with enormously talented people – often product people & engineers.

Startup 412

Startup Press Course Entrepreneur 412

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 12, 2018

seems like an unlikely place to grow one of the next billion-dollar startups in the booming Los Angeles tech ecosystem. But it’s here in the (other) Valley’s southernmost edge that investors have found a startup they consider to be the next potential billion-dollar “unicorn” that will come out of Los Angeles.

Glendale 271

Glendale Los Angeles Startup Technical Review 271

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2014

With the estimated 510 million live websites at last year-end, and 280,000 new ones being added every day, the biggest challenge for an entrepreneur is to get found, and get some credibility for a new startup. The biggest excuse most startup founders mention is too much to do building a product, mapping strategy, investors, etc.

Startup 101

Startup Blogging Writing Google 101

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

Good idea & plan: You must start with a good idea and a PowerPoint deck (my outline is here , scroll down mid way). Very few people fund individuals. And a great product starts with the founder. Their name alone is enough to get meetings set up. I’ll make my next posting shorter. I get that.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

I recently read a post over on VentureHacks titled, “ Top Ten Reasons Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers &# written by Scott Walker (who blogs on legal issues for entrepreneurs ). Many people start companies arse backwards. I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. Shame about that pesky FAS 157 ruling.

Startup 318

Startup IP Southern California Entrepreneur 318

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. I worked with an entrepreneur who was to appear at a startup networking event where he was to talk about his company’s plans.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. Final startup grind from msuster. And the folks at Startup Grind have been kind enough to invite me to present this morning in Mountain View on the topic.

Startup 388

Startup Slides Outsource Development Sales 388

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

One of my favorite events last year was attending Startup Grind where I got to interview Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma. ” We talked about my influences as a younger person and what got me started in technology and entrepreneurship. And of course we talked about many of my views of building startups.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

Brad wrote up his answer here – you should read it because it’s very instructive for how I believe communities ought to think about naming conventions. In his blog he says, “I responded that I thought it was stupid. This is the list I would start with. ” It was not a planted question by me. downtown LA].

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Santa Monica 304

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

I often advise startup companies not to try and pin all of your brand equity into an announcement. It’s something you must earn over time by living up to the name you define. We are trying hard to live up to the guidelines we laid out for our investors, our portfolio companies and our community. It would be out of sync.

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Startup Blogging Platform 324

socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2013

Los Angeles-based venture capital investor GRP Partners announced this morning that it has raised a fourth fund, worth $200M, and also renamed the firm Upfront Ventures. The 17-year old firm, which also said it will open up a brand new home at the center of Silicon Beach, signing a 10-year lease for a space on 7th Street in Santa Monica.

GRP Partners 164

GRP Partners Funding CitySearch Truecar 164

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. blog here ).

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. Actually, I should start by saying – I’m not a lawyer and you might want to get someone who can help you understand your position here.

CTO 167

CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 167

socalTECH

JUNE 29, 2017

Los Angeles-based venture capital investment firm Upfront Ventures has announced its latest fund, Upfront VI , to the tune of $400M, the company said on Thursday. According to Upfront, the new fund brings its total combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion. READ MORE>>.

Funding 100

Funding Los Angeles Blogging Venture Capital 100