Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

For example, “We just patented a new battery technology that will cut your smartphone charge time and cost in half.” Be sure to include this in your “elevator pitch,” which you must always deliver as a prelude to your technology features. Use non-fuzzy terms to quantify customer value. Quantify the market opportunity in business terms.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

InfoChachkie

JUNE 9, 2015

Obtaining funding is a key milestone, but equally important is helping fledgling companies build institutional mass once they leave the relatively safe confines of an accelerator. Bringing an accelerators’ graduates back as mentors provides value to the next class, certainly. Provide High Impact Exposure Beyond Your Hometown Press.

Startup 100

Startup Class LAMP Santa Barbara 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility. That is the definition of Disruptive Technology.

Company 339

Company Companies Technical Review Content 339

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. For starters some funds are small and thus while they put $750k into your company to own 10% of your company they might not be able to write another $2 million if you then raise a $20 million round (10%).

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2013

And it’s the latest in a series of investments we’ve made in building out our practice as the LA technology market continues to grow robustly and attract entrepreneurs and investors. He was in the inaugural class of 500Startups and became chief evangelist as far as I could tell. Help us review a few deals.

Startup 372

Startup Course Ideas Invest 372

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2015

Thus founders seeking funding for a good cause or a new technology often seize on grants from universities, government agencies and philanthropic organizations as free money to solve their problems. Otherwise find an inexpensive class on grant writing. Technology is not enough. In the U.S. In the U.S.

Pricing 100

Pricing Equity Technical Review Research 100

socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

Jim Armstrong: It's broadly technology, from consumer Internet, to marketplaces, from Internet infrastructure to enterprise software. I think there are a lot of opportunities across all of these areas of technology, especially as it relates to Southern California. You have to help people get better, and not try to fix things.

Southern California 113

Southern California Capital Funding Invest 113

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2013

What is a hackerspace, and why might having them available in the area help the tech community? We caught up with Tara--who some might know from her efforts on RepresentLA--on what LA Makerspace is all about--and how places like LA Makerspace are key to bringing the technology and technical community together. What is LA Makerspace?

Startup 227

Startup Tool Ideas Class 227

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

A critical stage for most first-time entrepreneurs is getting their idea developed into at least a prototype to validate their technology. Experts are available to help, but fees are high. You need to make an ROI assessment of value versus cost on outside help at this stage. Detailed grant accounting requirements.

Funding 90

Funding Technical Review Startup Research 90

socalTECH

MAY 19, 2017

Venice Beach-based Signal Sciences (www.signalsciences.com) has created sofdtware designed for those application developers to help protect those web applications. We decided we'd take this solution out, and help solve that same pain for a broad group of people. We want people to hear about us and our product, and how we can help them.

Web 138

Web Startup Southern California Software 138

socalTECH

JUNE 13, 2011

Well, Los Angeles-based KarmaGoat (www.karmagoat.com) has figured out a way to help people get rid of those unwanted items they have--and provide those proceeds to charity. That gift of livestock can help families out of extreme poverty. Did the experience at Anderson help you with starting the company?

UCLA 256

UCLA Startup Ideas Help 256

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

Bruce, along with his wife Lynda, created a learning company from their garage, initially by holding in-person classes and later selling VHS tapes via mail order. Bruce and Lynda eventually grew their startup into a global powerhouse, offering 5,700 classes and 255,000 video tutorials to over 4 million users. I did not do well.

Sales 113

Sales Education Startup Class 113

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

It’s true the some VCs have started writing so many checks that they resemble stock pickers but the majority of us still have less than 10 board seats at any time and tend to go pretty deep so the result is that we care deeply about where we commit our time. The practical uses for uBeam technology is limitless. Was it safe?

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

socalTECH

JUNE 6, 2011

We're looking to launch our first class in the fall, with five to ten companies, with the TechStars model of a small capital investment, and a seed investment of $6000 per founder. I helped them raise a few rounds of funding, ran their European operations. The target is that during the fall we'll launch the beginning of the class.

Startup 221

Startup Mentor Southern California Incubator 221

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

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

The firm has created a tool which uses software and semantic search to help in the whole process of curating content. We're a content curation platform, software-as-a-service for content, and we are focused on helping companies engage their customer more directly using content. It's all about what is happening on the realtime web.

Web 237

Web Newsletter Content Startup 237

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

It is with this backdrop that I was really happy to learn from my friend Ethan Anderson (HBS alum & founder of RedBeacon) about an awesome program at HBS run by Tom Eisenmann called Launching Technology Ventures. The idea that the course asks students to write public blog posts is a testament to its more modern teaching style.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2010

The competition is set up to award $50,000 to the best team each year, and is also tied to a class on entrepreneurship for engineering students. The reason for that, is in my opinion, the majority of the innovations that have improved our nation in the past 150 years have been due to technology and engineering innovations.

Competition 154

Competition Southern California Mentor USC 154

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

We held a 90-minute demo session where 150 of LA’s VC’s and senior technology executives watched the LPLA V2 group present in small groups of 12-15 each. 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.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

On the SAT/ACT side, in classroom tutoring, we have used our technology to automate the back office. What our program does, is if you get a question wrong, we help determine where you need help. If you're teaching classes of 32 maybe even 37 students, it's difficult to know where students are. That's a big part of it.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

I recommend that you start by writing down the attributes you would want people to think about when they think about your brand. An innovator in technology, especially monetization. World-class education including Caltech, USC and UCLA. Home of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), which helps put rockets into space. .”

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. But being best-in-class at online marketing is also a sine qua non to standout from your peer group. Of course once submitted you could send out links to your friends and ask them to upvote your content and that would help. Simply write a great book?

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

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. It helped me avoid chasing deals (and a house) in 2007/08 and it led to GRP’s fastest pace of investment in many years in the first three quarters of 2009 at a time when many others weren’t investing.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

Founded in the summer of 2011 and their first product out a few weeks ago amSTATS wants to help users to follow fitness events and programs near them and find a great fitness trainer to help them stay fit. Sergey Belyankin is our Chief Technology Officer. Jenna can also search for local events, boot camps, or fitness classes.

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

This started as a post in which I was going to write out tips to personal branding and became in stead an essay of my own branding journey. For 1991 I was very technical and also had a lot of practical business implementation experience in technology. In my next post I will take on the topic of how to control your brand. We take MBAs.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

This does not mean you shouldn’t solve big, complex problems or write complex code. You imagined him as the kid in your class at school at the front of the room raising his hand at every question and saying, “Oooh, me. Quick story – I once helped a friend get an interview with a journalist at the Financial Times.

Entrepreneur 370

Entrepreneur Startup Press Venture Capital 370

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 30, 2012

Months of submissions and the amazing help from our judges , the Spotlight is shinning down on awesome companies that were born right out of Southern California. For those who still might be wondering what Spotlight: LA Tech is all about, It’s a screening room for new technology homegrown in our region. The time has finally arrived!

CalTech 91

CalTech Company Companies Idealab 91

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

He writes with a great perspective and is well worth reading. But in the end we selected David Lin , a superstar who did 4 years at the technology investment banking firm Montgomery & Co and 4 years as Director of Strategy at the comparison shopping site PriceGrabber where he dealt with many operational issues.

Startup 337

Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337

socalTECH

JULY 29, 2009

This morning, Knowledge Genie (www.myknowledgegenie.com) launched a new web site that helps experts and authors publish online information to the web. Instead of writing a book, we wanted to develop a platform to bring our methods to life, and scale our knowledge. If you've written a book, it can help reinforce that knowledge.

Geni 100

Geni Web Guide Platform 100

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. It helps to think positive and focus on the awesome things that are indeed possible.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. I’ve started writing up some of those sales & marketing lessons and I plan to continue to build that section out over time. Obviously to understand a “class&# of people you have to make broad generalizations. Here are mine.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

socalTECH

JANUARY 15, 2009

Our startup interview this morning is with Josh Stomel , founder of ResumeBucket (www.resumebucket.com), a new web site that is focused on helping people share their resumes with the world. I went on to Oversee.net, and helped to build that company from 60 to 250 employees. Plus, we will provide resume writing services.

Startup 140

Startup Yahoo Sites Oversee.net 140

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. I found that a lot of my time went into spending time with the country MD’s to show them that they were still important to me and that I was still willing to help with sales campaigns. Both are basically people businesses.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 5, 2013

Wednesday November 20 th , 2013 was a special day for the technology entrepreneurs at the University of Southern California. My job is to help you not get a job,” Marks announced. LA is up and coming and is a great place to be because everybody is helping each other out. It will soon be the technology city of choice.

Startup 107

Startup Los Angeles USC Southern California 107

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

We typically do not ask entrepreneurs to visit our offices in Santa Barbara, but Jeff wanted to meet with Kevin, an investor in our Fund who helped us vet opportunities and occasionally invested alongside of us. Per the email below, Jeff leveraged his discussion with the industry expert to enlist his help with future investors.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

We've basically taken advantage of all the new technology out there--especially, the web-based service model. If you've taken a course, and need an application to do chemistry or math analysis, there's a store where you can write, share, sell, or buy those applications. They were looking for someone to help and guide them.

Education 124

Education Startup Course Tool 124

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 17, 2020

In most cases, these applicants for equity funding must be rooted in technology to apply to this limited discussion. Here is a class of investor we’ve covered before, one usually focused upon you and less upon your business case. Often grouped into formal organizations, these investors are sophisticated, helpful, and connected.

Equity 156

Equity Technical Review Class Organization 156