socalTECH

AUGUST 1, 2011

Los Angeles-based LegalZoom , the online legal document provider, is the target of a class action lawsuit in Missouri, which is looking to block the ability of the firm to provide wills, leases, and other documents. READ MORE>>.

Legalzoom 160

Legalzoom Software Class Writing 160

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. To be clear – I’m not saying huge successes make a VC less likely to be helpful to you – I’m just saying it’s not a guaranteed predictor. I’m not afraid to help make difficult decisions.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 3, 2020

I found some great help in outlining the elements of this process in the classic book, “ Disruptors ,” by Kunal Mehta. In fact, Mehta focuses on a special class of entrepreneurs that he calls disruptors. Then write them down. One obvious alternative is to become an entrepreneur. Take action now.

Entrepreneur 123

Entrepreneur Satisfaction Writing Metrics 123

InfoChachkie

APRIL 16, 2012

Eric (Ries) was a student in one of the very earliest customer development classes at Berkley. Four Steps was essentially my class notes. Large companies write business plans, why of course, that’s the organizing document for a startup. One of the best students I ever had. That was the implicit statement.

Startup 229

Startup Class Press Custom Development 229

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. In addition to helping manage the board Chris also helps represent the interests of the angel investors / common stock holders.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital Blogging 365

socalTECH

OCTOBER 28, 2010

So, I ended up writing that first book, and Bruce helped me with the research, and that was one way we got to know each other before we were even dating. We had the idea to rent out a local school over spring break, put up a website ad, and start offering classes. At the time, I got Lynda.com. That's how we really started.

Startup 242

Startup Web Design Writing Web 242

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

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%). You now own 20% of a company valued at $50 million but you’ve put in $4m to get that.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 20, 2013

So I thought I’d write a piece on how not to suck when you give a presentation. You’re not lecturing to a college class, you’re not at a cocktail party and you’re not chatting with a small group in a board meeting. Help us to get to know him or her. Show some energy! One strategy I sometimes employ.

Slides 399

Slides Startup Conference Writing 399

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. Convert Graduate-Founders Into Mentors.

Startup 100

Startup Class LAMP Santa Barbara 100

InfoChachkie

APRIL 25, 2011

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. I read Enchantment anticipating that it might augment my Entrepernurial Selling class, which focuses on influence and persuasion, rather than sales tactics. No doubt, he did. Prototype Your Work.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Blogging Class Entrepreneur 279

Tech.Co

SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

Indeed, whether you’re a producer, screenwriter, director, actor, cinematographer, editor, art director or composer (or some combination of these) Stage 32 offers classes to meet your specific needs. Classes with a wide geographic appeal. Among those that have paid for a Stage 32 class, 91% say they’ll do it again in the future.

Education 82

Education Entertainment Class Manhattan Beach 82

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 10, 2015

They hoped that taking a controversial stance against the immensely popular book would help Contagious cut through the clutter of the 11,000 business books which are published annually. To make his point that the message matters more than messenger, Professor Berger writes, “…think about a forest fire. Igniting A Forest Fire.

Tips 100

Tips Ideas Class Writing 100

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

He can’t help himself: He’s Dave. I told him only 2 weeks ago when we were in London together that I wanted to write a blog post that has been in my head for 2 years. How to help his companies. When he writes them online his Tourette’s comes out and sometimes the substance gets lost in the style. My pal Dave has problems.

Startup 309

Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

I even plan to use it in my upcoming UC Santa Barbara Entrepreneurial Selling class. Guy, how would your 2004 book, Art Of The Start , differ, if you were writing it today? If I were writing the book today, there would be a whole chapter or two…about how to use Facebook and Twitter. That doesn’t work.”.

Santa Barbara 262

Santa Barbara Technical Review Social Media Startup 262

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2013

When I sit down to write every week I never really imagine what is going to end up resonating the most with people but it seems I’ve most often been defined by my post that I Invest in Lines, not Dots. 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

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

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

This is smart because amazing board members can be transformative with important advice and access and can also help attract other great board members (and team members). I actually think having a formal board can really help you. Bad board members can make business very unpleasant. Do you need a board when you first start you company?

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

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. Phase III is all about helping you take your innovation to market, or commercialize it. Another alternative is to find an inexpensive class on grant writing.

Funding 90

Funding Technical Review Startup Research 90

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.

Sales 113

Sales Education Startup Class 113

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

socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

You have to help people get better, and not try to fix things. We can now write $20M, $25M, and $30M checks to existing, breakout companies in our portfolio. The reason for that, and it's really important, is the bane of this asset class is the generally poor liquidity that venture capital provides.

Southern California 113

Southern California Capital Funding Invest 113

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to write it because I have mixed feelings about AngelList. I didn’t want to write it because the bloggosphere doesn’t always do nuance well. So why I am writing it then? A few reasons. You should read this post.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2011

Journalists write stories that have an appeal to readers whether the accusations have merit or not. Journalists aren’t going to write about you all the time unless you’re Facebook. Use it as an excuse to get a journalist to write about you. It doesn’t help you. Help them with other stories.

Startup 329

Startup Press Training Media 329

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. Stuart Lander has joined Upfront Ventures to help us run operations. Writing a book will be fun. The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. You REALLY know.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

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. SendGrid helps improve delivery. What I like? Big market. 12.5mm in Series C.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Capital Email Blogging 265

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2013

What is a hackerspace, and why might having them available in the area help the tech community? You can learn from others in the space, or take a class. It's membership based, and the goal for us is to eventually be sustainable through membership, by putting on events and classes, and so on.

Startup 227

Startup Tool Ideas Class 227

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2015

Every organization willing to give you money is looking for specifics on what you will do with it and how it will help the grantor and expects answers to every detailed bureaucratic question. Grant providers may not require a seat on your board to help you make decisions, but your spending processes will be carefully monitored and audited.

Pricing 100

Pricing Equity Technical Review Research 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Your “anchor talent” helps attract audiences that in turn want to discover new artists. This helps get CPM rates higher – even within YouTube. Where talent shows up unknown you don’t have huge revenue splits and you benefit them by helping them build audience / fame. Set design. Post-Production.

Company 339

Company Companies Technical Review Content 339

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

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Or if you’re pinched on time the summary is below and the time coding can help you watch a brief snippet on topics that interest you. 41:00 Transitioning from software to writing. 1:05:35 Middle class job of the next generation: software development! Eric is so damn good. I could have gone 2 hours. Will these norms change?

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

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

OCTOBER 15, 2016

On September 10th of this year I spent an entire day in California State Prison with people who had committed felonies and worked with them on business plans to help them create legal enterprise upon their release as part of Defy Ventures 6-month training program. I am committed to finding ways to help graduates get jobs.

Writing 150

Writing Startup Design Training 150

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 31, 2014

I found some great help in outlining the elements of this process in a recent book, “ Disruptors ,” by Kunal Mehta. In fact, Mehta focuses on a special class of entrepreneurs that he calls disruptors. Then write them down. By writing these goals, you add validity to each target and create a mental desire to see them fulfilled.

Entrepreneur 100

Entrepreneur Satisfaction Startup Writing 100

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. Would they build a world class team. Were they ambitious?

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

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

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. Fariborz Maseeh: Initially ,we hope that the business plan competition would help solve one of the fourteen National Academy of Engineering grant challenges.

Competition 154

Competition Southern California Mentor USC 154

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