Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 18, 2011

Having paying “Customers” is what makes the cash register roar. An entrepreneur having low self worth is the number one deterrent for a potential customer not buying into what you are selling. Using your service or owning your product isn’t why a person buys, it’s the experience your customer will have. Second, how to get leads.

Customer 85

Customer Custom Marketing SEO 85

InfoChachkie

APRIL 25, 2011

If you are a leader at a startup and you are reading a business book, you are not closing customers, raising capital, improving your product, or spending time with your loved ones. I have used Guy’s previous book, The Art Of The Start (Art ), in my UC Santa Barbara New Venture Creation class for the past five years. No doubt, he did.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Blogging Class Entrepreneur 279

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. ” I know it sounds obvious.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 20, 2013

It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential employees, customers and VCs. So I thought I’d write a piece on how not to suck when you give a presentation. Show some energy!

Slides 399

Slides Startup Conference Writing 399

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

seed and they are writing $1.25m of it you can expect them to require a board seat) The competitive landscape (If you have several sources of capital you can likely politely decline the board request or can grant them a seat but ask for it to be “common appointed” and those revokable if you need in the future). And importantly?

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

The idea that the course asks students to write public blog posts is a testament to its more modern teaching style. I wrote separately about that here – regarding “hiring people who punch above their weight class.” To aim – which means helping sales reps figure out which target customers to focus on.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

You can ask them to come and watch your videos at your owned & operated websites (O&O) where you can make higher margins as well as ask directly for more meaningful customer information such as Facebook connections, Twitter oAuths, email addresses and the like. To produce content that people want to watch takes unique skills: Writing.

Company 339

Company Companies Technical Review Content 339

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

It's a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential employees, customers and VCs. So I thought I'd write a piece on how to not suck when you give a presentation. I spoke about this yesterday on Fox Business News.

Twiistup 124

Twiistup GRP Partners Tips UCLA 124

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Simply put – I’d be in search of a VC who had an intuitive sense of my product, my customers, my organizational issues, my competitors, etc. Neither class of people should give up easily. EQ and Team Leadership?

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2010

In writing anything positive about any of the companies I’m not suggesting that it means that I prefer them to any of their competitors. Also, some of the deals I write about I have actually seen as part of their fund raising process. They have done 3 startups in the customer support space and one that wasn’t.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Capital Email Blogging 265

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. Writing a book will be fun. Neither is very strategic nor in the best interest of either set of customers that VCs have (portfolio companies & LPs). You hire people who look good on paper. After 6 months – you know.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

John gave me the book after I spoke at his entrepreneurship class at UCSB. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while and was going to use AngelList by Nivi & Naval as the basis for my example and the perfect prompt came yesterday when I read Fred Wilson’s blog post on AngelList.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2011

Journalists write stories that have an appeal to readers whether the accusations have merit or not. Understand the Gravity of the Situation for Your Customers. The obvious starting points to think to yourself are: Has something happened that fundamentally affects my customers or partners? How do you lose that debate?

Startup 329

Startup Press Training Media 329

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. I don’t want to speak to customer service reps!!

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2012

Alain Theriault, better known as StartupCoach , tells entrepreneurs that, on your way to being a great chef, you don't start by writing a cook book (business plan), you work in the kitchen for a while, you learn some tools of the trade, you experiment with a few recipes, you test on willing clients. then you can start writing a recipe.

Startup 96

Startup Writing Metrics Marketing 96

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

If you're a web publisher, or even a brand developing your own outreach to customers through a newsletter or microsite, how do you efficiently gather and curate all of the news and information out there? It wasn't just a keyword for BMW or Mercedes, it was finding content specific to the BMW 3 Series, or Mercedes C Class.

Web 237

Web Newsletter Content Startup 237

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Sam is the managing director of Launchpad LA and we were about to pick our 2012 class of entrepreneurs. She focused on her customer. The premise is that you should blog for your customers, suppliers and ecosystem – not for your peers. How’s that for an ex painter? Sam just told me, “You HAVE to meet Tracy.

Startup 363

Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

41:00 Transitioning from software to writing. 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand. 1:05:35 Middle class job of the next generation: software development! Will these norms change? 36:30 Eric: Social media is great for people with social capital. 38:00 Should you use avatars? 46:18 iOS Vs. Android.

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

USC has a fantastic program, in that you are able to be in class, and both learn the concepts and apply it to business. People in the blogosphere were writing that this product was what they were looking for, and was another point of affirmation. Noah Auerhahn: Our difference, is we're customer centric.

USC 207

USC CPC Sites Startup 207

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

I was influenced heavily before my career even began because in my undergraduate work I took a ton of statistics classes that showed how easily we human brains fall prey to easy biases and slights of data and try to draw conclusions that don’t exist. Coming back with an empty chamber for the third battle is much worse than not coming back.

Venture Capital 182

Venture Capital Statistics Writing Report 182

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

I’ve started writing up some of those sales & marketing lessons and I plan to continue to build that section out over time. Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. Customers buy solutions to solve their problems.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2015

Otherwise find an inexpensive class on grant writing. Some entrepreneurs become stuck in development, fixated on winning just one more grant, rather than moving on to marketing and real customers. The only real funding that counts in startup success comes from customers. Seek funding from multiple sources concurrently.

Pricing 100

Pricing Equity Technical Review Research 100

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 14, 2015

More use of the Internet translates into better access to customer data, more opportunities for communication with customers, and the potential for automating many aspects of the business. Collect & Use Customer Data. Automated mailing tools are a major resource for entrepreneurs. Workflow Management.

Entrepreneur 40

Entrepreneur Technology Email Tool 40

socalTECH

MAY 19, 2017

We're entirely born in the cloud, so it's a piece of software installed within a customer's system. Not to plug myself, but I've done some writing and published a book with O'Reilly, talking about security misconceptions. You buy a piece of hardware, and install it on a local server you have, and on your local server farms.

Web 138

Web Startup Southern California Software 138

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 7, 2011

Alain Theriault, better known as StartupCoach , tells entrepreneurs that, on your way to being a great chef, you don't start by writing a cook book (business plan), you work in the kitchen for a while, you learn some tools of the trade, you experiment with a few recipes, you test on willing clients. then you can start writing a recipe.

Entrepreneur 91

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Metrics 91

InfoChachkie

JULY 21, 2011

You decide how much you want to invest in your employees and then you give your employees the control to build a custom perk package for themselves. Every day, let’s learn from our customers, and I did that in Iraq. We brought in 10 – 20 people in each class. What must a startup do to motivate you to write them a check?

Summary 246

Summary Tips Sales Entrepreneur 246

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

The best MBA class I took was an investment strategy class. Despite my cynicism of MBA’s , this class was very valuable to me. The pricing problem – So an investor put $5 million at a $10 million pre-money valuation in a company with a great beta product but no real customers. VC’s are not immune to this phenomenon.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 10, 2012

The team subsequently earned a coveted position in Launchpad LA's current accelerator class after winning the Crowdstart LA competition. The company posted a Show HN entry entitled, " We built a better solution for customer analysis and support.". The posting resulted in 40points and about 30comments.

News 198

News Sites Startup RSS 198

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

In the summer of 2006 over a cup of Peet’s Coffee, you told me about this new thing called “cloud computing” and that you were trying to come up with a creative way to incorporate it into the curriculum of your upcoming UCSB Computer Science class. From day one we focused on customers.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

It forces the founder to spend time in front of customers. Now the AP class. sometimes I’m just in that mood and when I am my writing style takes on my inner grumpiness. why do I write p.s.’s sometimes? ” I believe firmly in capital efficiency in the early days. It forces innovation. Straightforward.

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

But being best-in-class at online marketing is also a sine qua non to standout from your peer group. You might write a piece now and then that catches fire but there is nothing repeatable that would be useful for a business. Simply write a great book? It’s worth a quick read. My argument is pretty simple.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to. It was a great chance for the class to interact with the community in LA. There were prominent founders of business like PriceGrabber, LowerMyBills and MyLife.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. Once you’ve been around for a few years, attracted some great people, landed real, paying customers and raised venture capital you’ve likely got a talented team around you. Both are basically people businesses.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 18, 2010

Advanced persistence threats (APT) – opens the door to a new class of intelligent application cracking tools. My clients and customers use it, and I need to stay in sync. This is uncharted territory for some companies, who are struggling to write the “guidelines” and “code of conduct” manual. To me, the answers are clear.

Social Network 87

Social Network Networking Tool Sites 87

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

In terms of the software, our student learning software, we're able to provide a very customized, personalized learning experience for students. If you're teaching classes of 32 maybe even 37 students, it's difficult to know where students are. However, on the group side, a class has 15-17 students. Jake got a similar amount.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Messenger : Rob Duva , Co-Founder, COO RingRevenue, prior Director of Customer Acquisition, CallWave. 9) In Getting The Band Back Together , I write about the power of serial Founding teams. At CallWave, Colin was CTO, Jason was CFO and I was in charge of product marketing and customer acquisition. It won’t be easy.”.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. I believe a bubble occurs when a market is willing to pay greater than intrinsic value for an asset class. That asset class need not represent the broader market. They are often bound by geographies and asset classes. customers who paid for services often get burned.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309