Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

I also recently wrote a post about a company that came in for a presentation and never even got the slides out or presented a demo. It’s the same as in any sales-oriented meeting and make no mistake raising money is sales. I need something structured like slides or a demo to orient me. How big is the market?

Venture Capital 238

Venture Capital Slides Startup Sales 238

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2018

controlling your psychology ) you no doubt have heard me say that raising capital is a sales & marketing process. If the questions aren’t organically flowing you have “pocket slides” after the main deck you can pull out to share more information or analysis. This is critical to build a cohesive venture capital firm.

Venture Capital 314

Venture Capital Technical Review Invest Slides 314

The Quigley Report

MARCH 4, 2008

Early stage VCs typically say that the ebbs and flows of the stock market don't effect the valuations they pay in start up financings. You see, unless a company only plans on raising one early stage funding round, it must eventually seek capital from a different cast of characters: the later stage or 'growth capital' providers.

Startup 40

Startup Slides Marketing Clearstone 40

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog. Thus is venture capital. My blog was wiped out.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2011

A perfect round number is ten slides, with the right content, that can be covered in ten minutes. Here are the ten slides you need: Problem and market need. Make sure to communicate the relevance of your product / services to market needs. Investors like $1B markets with double-digit growth rates. Executive team.

Slides 93

Slides Competition Sample Sales 93

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Reasons to Have a Broad Group of Management Present From a non-exec perspective there are some obvious reason board members want to hear from the heads of sales, market, product, HR, engineering, finance and support. I’ve outlined the key functions in the graphic below. The non-obvious reason is this?—?when

Startup 161

Startup Slides Ideas Guide 161

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

In a VC business when you raise additional capital you need to “level up” and act the round you are. What they do with the money is add more engineers and maybe hiring a marketing person. If it’s an enterprise software company you can no longer rely on tacit knowledge to win sales campaigns. Act your stage.

Startup 381

Startup Resource Venture Capital Activity 381

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. It freed up Ophir to grow out our sales organization, to work more closely with agencies, to innovate on product and to raise capital. Here’s the dilemma.

Outsource Development 150

Outsource Development Metrics Startup Sales 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

As startup entrepreneurs we all want to work with them because having their name as reference clients makes it so much easier for marketing, PR, selling to other customers, fund raising and even recruiting. While I’m a huge believer that sales bonuses should always be uncapped, I think capping PBW’s is a good idea.

Startup 298

Startup Sales Slides Metrics 298

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

In business, entrepreneurs hunt for new innovative solutions to problems, new ways of beating competitors, new markets, and new customers. They love the continuous hunt, for investment capital, resources, talent, and new markets. Only a few of these slide into farming, as the company grows in employees and products.

Entrepreneur 95

Entrepreneur News Slides Startup 95

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Entrants will be evaluated based on their plan’s originality, strategy, and market opportunity. CapLinked is an online platform that gives private companies, investors, and their advisors tools to manage a capital raise or asset sale, network, and exchange updates. says CapLinked CEO Eric M.

Competition 70

Competition Idealab Slides Startup 70

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 28, 2015

In business, entrepreneurs hunt for new innovative solutions to problems, new ways of beating competitors, new markets, and new customers. They love the continuous hunt, for investment capital, resources, talent, and new markets. Only a few of these slide into farming, as the company grows in employees and products.

Entrepreneur 106

Entrepreneur News Slides Startup 106

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2009

I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. After the sales meetings I would ask the exec afterward, “how do you think it went?&# We used to do this in our sales slides.

Venture Capital 275

Venture Capital Sales Slides Startup 275

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 12, 2014

In business, entrepreneurs hunt for new innovative solutions to problems, new ways of beating competitors, new markets, and new customers. They love the continuous hunt, for investment capital, resources, talent, and new markets. Only a few of these slide into farming, as the company grows in employees and products.

Entrepreneur 109

Entrepreneur Startup News Slides 109

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 31, 2017

In business, entrepreneurs hunt for new innovative solutions to problems, new ways of beating competitors, new markets, and new customers. They love the continuous hunt, for investment capital, resources, talent, and new markets. Only a few of these slide into farming, as the company grows in employees and products.

Entrepreneur 54

Entrepreneur News Slides Startup 54

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 9, 2014

One would imagine with so much influence and potential capital flying in the packed room, the atmosphere must have felt thicker than a frenzied shark tank. They’ve captured their market quickly by being the first providers of affordable luxury bookings with a business model to fill in a large amount of unused travel inventory.

Startup 111

Startup Mobile Commerce Education 111

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 16, 2015

The bottom line is that you should raise to accelerate growth and in order to optimize market timing. There’s plenty of capital out there, but there’s also a lot of competition for startup funding. His best advice: take capital where you can get it. If your product is capital-intensive this can be a good financing option.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Equity Funding 40

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

No cookies for guessing which reason they use to market to us. If you want to hear an entrepreneur talk about this topic listen to Farb Nivi tell the story of how he got Rob Lord to invest in Grockit and how that led to Reid Hoffman and in turn Benchmark Capital, Integral and Atlas – more than $15 million in total.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

socalTECH

JUNE 13, 2012

You can slide it onto the corner of your iPhone, or you can flip it over, and it you get a wide angle lens. I was all-in, and even if Kickstarter didn't meet my funding goal, I was confident I was going to be able to get it to market, although it would be much harder to go that way. Unscrew that, and you get a macro lens.

Patents 191

Patents Ideas Design Startup 191

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll refine your sales and investor pitch. He left out capital sources, but it's still a pretty succinct list of the types of people / communication you should be having early stage. I like how Mark Suster handles the question in 10 Marketing Lessons for Early-Stage Tech Startups. You need all of these people to bake the cake.

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll refine your sales and investor pitch. He left out capital sources, but it's still a pretty succinct list of the types of people / communication you should be having early stage. I like how Mark Suster handles the question in 10 Marketing Lessons for Early-Stage Tech Startups. You need all of these people to bake the cake.

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We had a special edition of This Week in Venture Capital this week shooting out of the Next New Networks offices in New York. Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital. The Spark Capital website (it’s one of my favorites). BookRenter – plus a discussion about Chegg … what is going on in the university book market?

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 17, 2020

Email readers, continue here… ] The Angel Capital Association (ACA) lists over four hundred member groups, located throughout the USA. You will have to hone your story well, down to fifteen minutes and perhaps fifteen slides in your presentation. Then there is venture capital. How many angel groups are there?

Equity 156

Equity Technical Review Class Organization 156

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2009

I run a monthly meeting called the VCA that represents the majority of Southern California venture capital firms. Benjamin Joffe (the author), a Frenchman who runs a consultancy in China that tries to help non-Asian investors understand the innovation occurring in Asia as a way to bring ideas to their local markets. slide 29).

Slides 188

Slides Southern California Social Network Startup 188

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. This is true whether your at a sales meeting or at a VC firm. This happens often is sales meetings or VC meetings. Congratulations.

Venture Capital 318

Venture Capital Startup Sales Writing 318

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

The deck itself was produced by a committee of functional team lead who were asked to do 5–7 slides each for an update. Each section head reads his / her 5–7 slides. If you put up 5 slides on “what should we order for lunch today” the board will spend 30 minutes debating that. There are too many pages. It passes the weight test.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Berkonomics

APRIL 3, 2014

Angel Capital Association (ACA) lists over four hundred member groups, located throughout the country. You will have to hone your story well, down to fifteen minutes and perhaps fifteen slides in your presentation. Angel groups invest from $250,000 to $1,000,000 or more in qualified investments.

Equity 232

Equity Startup Organization Invest 232

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

When I need to give a speech and I’m writing a slide for my deck, I think up the story in my mind that I’m going to tell for this slide. As a VC it’s how I think through which markets will be attractive in the future, which ones I want to be in now and how the technology & business world will likely evolve.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

I spent my days meeting companies, figuring out what areas of the market interested me and trying to get a sense for how VCs thought about fair valuations. I started showing my partners more deals that I found interesting and doing loads of analysis on the future of markets I thought were ripe for disruption. The market had tanked.

Marketing 305

Marketing Venture Capital Funding Technical Review 305

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - . - 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? First Principles.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298