Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2020

Most aspiring entrepreneurs look to their alma mater, or any university, as a source of classes that can help them, but neglect to think outside the box or take advantage of all the other resources to be found there. Online or evening entrepreneurship classes for anyone. Access to intellectual property and current research.

Class 124

Class Startup Resource Mentor 124

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Last week, the University of Southern California 's Viterbi School of Engineering announced that it had established a new, business plan competition, the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition ([link] specifically aimed at students in the engineering school. Why a business plan competition, and why in engineering school?

Competition 154

Competition Southern California Mentor USC 154

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2022

Outbehave Your Competition to Create Customers for Life ,” offers eight key principles for defining and managing the experience to keep it consistent and profitable: Keep every employee on stage, delivering an experience. They have to out-behave and outperform your competition. Gregg Lederman, in his classic book, “ ENGAGED!:

Customer 123

Customer Custom Services Training 123

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2018

The new paradigm, driven by disruptive technologies, cloud-served supercomputing, and the new generation of young adults with global empathy, is partnering and giving something now for a competitive advantage in the future. FabLab s is an example of a new class of facilities for entrepreneurs to start experimenting early.

Competition 60

Competition IBM IBM Startup 60

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

The new paradigm, driven by disruptive technologies, cloud-served supercomputing, and the new generation of young adults with global empathy, is partnering and giving something now for a competitive advantage in the future. FabLab s is an example of a new class of facilities for entrepreneurs to start experimenting early.

IBM 131

IBM IBM Startup Examples 131

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 24, 2023

As I work with businesses who are struggling to restore staffing and recover after the pandemic, I see a new culture and a new generation of workers who have found strength in working remotely from their homes, and savoring their ability to survive on their own terms. Millions have bowed out of the labor market.

Layoffs 113

Layoffs Technical Review Startup Class 113

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2017

I’ve always been looking for the specific behaviors required to make the change, so I was pleased to see some real guidance in a new book, “ The Melting Point ,” by Dr. Christian Marcolli, a world-class expert on sustainable high performance. Leaving work every day exhausted leads to burnout and easy meltdowns. Never over-commit.

Tips 58

Tips Class Activity Coach 58

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2021

We are all works in progress. Regularly assess and refine your competitive advantage. Your competitive advantage is the interplay of three different, ever-changing forces – your assets, aspirations and values, and the market realities of supply and demand. World-class professionals don’t try to take on the world alone.

Startup 143

Startup Entrepreneur Demand Competition 143

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

“They demonstrate best-in-class expertise with Facebook and Google paid ad platforms. In today’s highly competitive ad environment, both content and data are kings. For agencies that work with large brands, usually it’s more about impression buying versus performance buying. The key takeaway?

Commerce 211

Commerce Content Marketing Startup 211

Tech.Co

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

You'll be able to see your entire team's scheduled work and make sure that there are no gaps. Timeline also works on the Trello Android and iOS apps, helpful for keeping abreast of your work on-the-go. The Table view is helpful for work that covers multiple teams or when boards simply get too big to manage.

Software Review 149

Software Review Guide Technical Review Class 149

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

Most colleges have now added classes in entrepreneurship to include the necessary business focus to technical majors that usually drive innovative ideas. Every school recognizes the power of “hands-on” work to help you develop your own ideas into a business. Make a summer internship your best learning class.

Entrepreneur 157

Entrepreneur Mentor Class Resource 157

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2022

A major chunk of this activity is provided by the newer class of “super angels,” who often look more like micro-VCs, except that they are investing their own money. The conventional VC approach of giving a big boost to a few good startups that were born to be great, doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Guide 136

Guide Venture Capital Funding Class 136

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Design together, the course that introduced the idea for brightblu, they were concurrently taking three other classes: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Marketing and Art of the CEO. The biggest motivator for starting brightblu was John Greathouse’s Entrepreneurship class.

Class 231

Class Startup Santa Barbara RSS 231

Berkonomics

JULY 5, 2018

Ever think about growing your business with the plan to sell it someday, cashing in on your hard-earned work over the years? Most businesses fall into the class of those that can be sold someday to a willing buyer. Or if you’re an employee with stock options, are you aware of the increases in value you can make with your efforts?

Class 226

Class Email Competition Entrepreneur 226

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 9, 2022

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to getting ahold of an appointment for your hair or another treatment…that’s a different story: The bespoke nature of a lot of the work has meant that a large swathe of the professionals providing these services have stayed offline when it comes to interfacing with customers.

Help 195

Help Startup UCLA Tool 195

socalTECH

JUNE 20, 2012

For two years, it was a mentorship program, that worked with twenty three different companies, but did not have a fund, did not have an office, and didn't take any equity. We got over 400 applications for the ten slots we had open in this class, and we picked ten amazing companies. Our current class has performed incredibly well.

Class 261

Class Mentor Startup Santa Monica 261

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

Outsourcing your core competency does not work. It takes a long immersion in the marketplace for someone to be a true insider, understand the subtleties of the competitive landscape, recognize the people who are true assets (independent of titles), and look through the propaganda of technical collateral and PR campaigns.

Technical Advisors 123

Technical Advisors Startup Outsource Development High Tech 123

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

It’s not hard to find people willing to write the narrative that “venture capital is not an asset class” or “venture capital has performed terribly.” Having worked through the data with Glenn I am even more optimistic about venture capital than I was even a year ago.

Venture Capital 362

Venture Capital Capital Startup Writing 362

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

The new paradigm, driven by disruptive technologies, cloud-served supercomputing, and the new generation of young adults with global empathy, is partnering and giving something now for a competitive advantage in the future. FabLab s is an example of a new class of facilities for entrepreneurs to start experimenting early.

Startup 124

Startup IBM IBM Examples 124

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 18, 2023

First you work in the kitchen for a while, learning some tools of the trade, experiment with a few recipes, and test on willing clients. You need a good cook, good marketing, and first-class service. In all cases, don’t skip the basic training. Finally you create and document your recipe (business plan). For now, get cooking!

Startup 112

Startup Coach Metrics Marketing 112

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 23, 2022

As a business advisor and investor in new startups, I see how difficult it is to make any process work, no matter how well designed, if the team is dysfunctional. For this to work, team members must commit themselves and freely accept accountability for their actions. Of course, some balance is required.

Coach 128

Coach Organization Mentor Startup 128

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 16, 2019

Outbehave Your Competition to Create Customers for Life ,” offers eight key principles for defining and managing the experience to keep it consistent and profitable: Keep every employee on stage, delivering an experience. They have to out-behave and outperform your competition. Gregg Lederman, in his classic book, “ ENGAGED!:

Customer 84

Customer Custom Training Satisfaction 84

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Innovate In the early years of a startup there is a lot of kinetic energy of enthusiastic innovators looking to launch a product that changes how an industry works. I truly enjoy working with innovators who dare to take on the system and I embrace the unknown with them. As an early-stage VC I love this phase.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

For you who fit that description, nice work. Whether the partner is a supplier looking to gain a lock on your business as it grows or a customer looking to create a competitive barrier through use of your product, such an investment typically carries fewer restrictions than from a professional investor and less oversight.

Venture Capital 266

Venture Capital Class Invest Equity 266

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 5, 2021

Based on their work in CleanTech and sustainability, Heck and Rogers outline five strategies for existing companies to apply to current practices and processes for dramatic efficiency improvements in the use or production of resources. The tighter the loop, the greater the value captured and the stronger the competitive differentiation.

Startup 162

Startup Resource Entrepreneur Social Media 162

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 18, 2010

If you are addicted to Facebook, you may be in for a big shock when you go to work in the corporate world. Advanced persistence threats (APT) – opens the door to a new class of intelligent application cracking tools. You need to be plugged in to be career competitive with hyper-networked peers, and keep ahead of competitors.

Social Network 87

Social Network Networking Tool Sites 87

socalTECH

DECEMBER 27, 2018

And a host of interesting companies in last mile have cropped up to give the Amazon ecosystem some competition, like two companies from the last Techstars LA class - Shipsi and PRZM. A certified executive coach, Anna works with her portfolio companies to build great teams, develop a sound strategy and create a strong network.

Startup 124

Startup Press Commerce Southern California 124

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 2, 2015

Don’t bash the competition. Every investor knows how vulnerable a new startup is to competitors, so investors always ask about your sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. That says you are competitive today, have a real barrier to entry, and the potential to remain ahead of the competition for a long time.

Startup 118

Startup Competition Patents Resource 118

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 8, 2016

They hire world-class animators and sweat every detail of the drawings. And they have used influencer marketing on YouTube like nobody else I’ve seen, running authentic competitions with top YouTubers including PewDiePie. They are doing tens of millions in revenue and the first product hasn’t even been live for 2 years.

Startup 150

Startup IP Class Media 150

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 13, 2012

However, at most startups, competitive advantages are derived from a combination of invention and innovation, as described more fully in Inventor Or Innovator – Which Are You? Startups often out-maneuver their larger rivals by changing the key parameters upon which competition has historically been based. The Berkoff Blastoff.

Startup 198

Startup Competition Activity Class 198

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 19, 2020

A major chunk of this activity is provided by the newer class of “super angels,” who often look more like micro-VCs, except that they are investing their own money. The conventional VC approach of giving a big boost to a few good startups that were born to be great, doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Funding 125

Funding Venture Capital Startup Class 125

InfoChachkie

JULY 7, 2014

At the same time, most startups are small enough that the interns are able to interface with people that actually have expertise, so they gain real-world skills while performing meaningful work." . Meaningful Work – Treat your interns as adults and magical things will happen. We typically hired about one third of our interns.

Startup 257

Startup Santa Barbara Competition Class 257

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

First you work in the kitchen for a while, learning some tools of the trade, experiment with a few recipes, and test on willing clients. You need a good cook, good marketing, and first-class service. In all cases, don’t skip the basic training. Finally you create and document your recipe (business plan). For now, get cooking!

Startup 156

Startup Coach Metrics Marketing 156

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 31, 2019

I’ve always been looking for the specific behaviors required to make the change, so I was pleased to see some real guidance in a classic book, “ The Melting Point ,” by Dr. Christian Marcolli, a world-class expert on sustainable high performance. Leaving work every day exhausted leads to burnout and easy meltdowns. Never over-commit.

Class 93

Class Activity Coach Satisfaction 93

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2016

Most aspiring entrepreneurs look to their alma mater, or any university, as a source of classes that can help them, but neglect to think outside the box or take advantage of all the other resources to be found there. Online or evening entrepreneurship classes for anyone. Access to intellectual property and current research.

Entrepreneur 55

Entrepreneur Capital Class Startup 55

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support. I wrote separately about that here – regarding “hiring people who punch above their weight class.”

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2014

Don’t bash the competition. Every investor knows how vulnerable a new startup is to competitors, so investors always ask about your sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. That says you are competitive today, have a real barrier to entry, and the potential to remain ahead of the competition for a long time.

Entrepreneur 110

Entrepreneur Competition Patents Resource 110