Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2023

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. This fallacy, often called historical myopia, essentially involves extrapolating only from recent positive events, and ignoring the reality that markets saturate or evaporate. Failing to adapt to tectonic shifts in the market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2022

In my experience as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs in business, one of the biggest failures I see is a lack of self-leadership. For example, I often hear from aspiring entrepreneurs that “I had that idea first, and he stole it, and is now making money on my idea.” Build positive psychological capital to sustain your business.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 12, 2019

Most entrepreneurs are quick to assert to potential investors that their product or solution will kill the competition, but unfortunately your opinion alone is not enough to convince most experienced investors. First of all, you need some convincing market research that your solution addresses a real and growing problem.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2021

The recent pandemic was a strong signal for change, and I see most of you entrepreneurs and business owners responding to the business changes required and new opportunities presented. Often new competitors do fail, but they may highlight a consumer trend that you can capitalize on now, before it comes back to haunt you later.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2020

Traditional marketing may be adequate for linear growth, but it likely won’t catapult you to Amazon’s unicorn status , or make waves in the business world. For example, I usually hear about an aggressive marketing budget, with a plan to penetrate a few big retail chains, and some videos to catch your attention on YouTube.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? People were building.

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socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

San Diego-based Qualcomm said Tuesday that it is launching its second annual venture investment competition, the Qualcomm Ventures QPrize competition. According to the firm, this year's competition will provide up to $750,000 in seed funding to entrepreneurs working on mobile ventures. READ MORE>>.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. Extremely talented people are ultra competitive. A larger marketing team?

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socalTECH

JANUARY 22, 2019

This morning's interview is with Kevin O'Connor , a longtime investor and serial entrepreneur, who is now running venture capital investment firm ScOp Venture Capital. Congrats on the new name for your venture capital firm. It's always hard with venture capital. Tell us a little bit about the firm?

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

With the enormous changes to our economies and financial markets?—?how how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued?

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2021

Anyone who works with entrepreneurs will tell you that all are different. Others are really marketers out to make money fast, and believe that they can entice customers to any offering. These are the ultimate chess players in the game of business, always looking to be two or three moves ahead of the competition. Opportunist.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.

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InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

MBA’s are an easy target for entrepreneurs’ scorn. I too have taken shots at MBA’s, describing why they are not typically well suited for startup life in Why Entrepreneurs Hate (Most) MBAs. As Peter Thiel, Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir once put it, MBA’s are “high extrovert/low conviction people.” “When M.B.A.’s

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

Winning customers as an entrepreneur in a startup has many parallels to a young army trying to penetrate some formidable new and unfamiliar territory. Too many startups rush into battle early, assuming any progress will somehow give them the competitive advantage. Lining up your resources is critical, but so is time to market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2019

He is regarded by many as the number-one authority on virtual staffing and personal outsourcing, and is himself a successful entrepreneur based in the Philippines. I was impressed with his summary of the top ten outsourcing mistakes made by entrepreneurs, followed by real guidance on how they can and should be avoided. Be flexible.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2011

This is the final part of a 3-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software & the venture capital industries. With more competition in early-stage many VCs are investing smaller amounts at earlier stages. But … Downsizing Venture Capital. The series started here if you want to read from the start.

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InfoChachkie

JULY 23, 2012

Serial entrepreneur, venture investor and startup accelerator pioneer Brad Feld has notoriously mocked traditional marketing throughout his career. If you have amazing products, the marketing of those products is trivial. If you have $hitty products, the marketing is impossible. Trada – Guerilla Marketing In Action.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 31, 2018

The most successful entrepreneurs and business owners I know are humble, and they don’t have an inflated sense of self. The only “sustainable competitive advantage” in business is self-awareness. I come from the same world, with an additional decade advising entrepreneurs, and I enthusiastically confirm his view.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 2, 2022

Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.

Entrepreneur 153

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

On the other hand, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. His focus is on entrepreneurs in America, but what he says applies to every other country as well. This next frontier lies in building enterprises as an entrepreneur, rather than waiting for innovation and opportunity from large corporations.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2023

Entrepreneurs seem to have blinders on when looking at competitors. Expand the market for both. Typically, there are market opportunities that neither of your core competencies can win alone. Let market response dictate a later split, merger, or acquisition. Benchmark your practices against a true peer.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2018

Since I am a techie at heart, I always get excited when founders pitch their new innovation as “disruptive,” meaning that it is so unique that it will create a new market and disrupt the existing value network, displacing established products and markets. These didn’t happen by following the conventional paths of entrepreneurism.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2020

Every entrepreneur has an idea for transforming a market with innovative new technology, or transforming society with a new process. Entrepreneurs who have been really transformative, like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, seemed to know how to deal with all the right elements. Find enough venturesome capital.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

It really is possible for an introvert to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though you can’t expect to start and build a business alone. Every entrepreneur, especially an introvert, can benefit from the perspective of another business person, ideally one who has prior experience in the domain you are about to enter.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 17, 2019

Traditionally, the majority of entrepreneurs have been logical thinkers, problem solvers, with full attention to details. Of course, the best solution would be a new wave of so-called whole-brain thinkers, but this term is usually reserved for Einstein and Picasso, and no entrepreneurs that I can name. Creativity is the key word here.

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InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 17, 2012

However, certain questions can be tricky for an entrepreneur to answer. Below are five common questions an entrepreneur will encounter when seeking venture funding. Handled appropriately, these questions provide investors a window into an entrepreneurs’ soul, which minimizes the chances of a future misalignment.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

And I am often approached by entrepreneurs in cities which don’t have a vibrant VC community. Just ask the people of Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Iowa, Princeton, Dallas or countless other cities that don’t have enough venture capital. Thus, a desire to invest more locally where I think I have a competitive advantage.

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TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 21, 2018

” Venture capital investors are deploying capital outside the Bay Area more than ever before. High-profile entrepreneurs and investors, Peter Thiel, for example , have left. “It’s hard to make a difference in San Francisco as a single entrepreneur,” said J.D. ” J.D. Here's why.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

As an investor in startups, I most often see entrepreneurs who are technologists, or at least have a real passion for a specific product. They rarely highlight their marketing and relationship skills , even though, in my experience, these are more often the key to success in business than product skills.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 29, 2019

This is like talking about the NBA and the value of its sponsorships and broadcast rights as if that is the entirety of the basketball market in the US. Eric P: You have a fascinating background as a serial entrepreneur while you were a teenager. Delane P. : Eric P: What then drove you to found PlayVS?

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2022

I expect that should seem intuitive to all entrepreneurs, but every investor I know has many stories about startup funding requests with major business model elements missing. The most common failures are solutions looking for a problem, lack of a defined market, or an inadequate revenue model. Target market. Sales/Marketing.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2015

As an angel investor, I hear many entrepreneurs making negative comments about competitors or asserting they don’t have any competitors. They don’t realize that knocking competitors is assessed as a weakness and denying that you have any competition suggests there is no market for your solution.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

It is simply the most important way to proactively control your career development and how the market perceives you. It will affect your ability to get the right jobs and promotions as well as your ability to attract talent and capital. That was fine with me – the market is the market. That was the market.

Technical Advisors 385

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2014

Winning customers as an entrepreneur in a startup has many parallels to a young army trying to penetrate some formidable new and unfamiliar territory. Too many startups rush into battle early, assuming any progress will somehow give them the competitive advantage. Lining up your resources is critical, but so is time to market.

Entrepreneur 119

Entrepreneur Resource Training Competition 119

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2022

On the other hand, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. His focus is on entrepreneurs in America, but what he says applies to every other country as well. This next frontier lies in building enterprises as an entrepreneur, rather than waiting for innovation and opportunity from large corporations.

Startup 126

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Most aspiring entrepreneurs understand that you can’t build a business if you won’t commit to delivering a product or service, but many are hesitant or refuse to commit to any financial forecasts. Project based on your market size how many widgets you will sell in every channel. Forecast sales-volume expectations.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2022

Entrepreneurs are now measured against the “triple bottom line” (TBL or 3BL) of people, planet, and profit. How does any entrepreneur define the right balance, and then measure their performance against real metrics? Many young entrepreneurs seem to think that capitalism and making profit are dirty words.

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