Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

Let me start by saying that Clayton is one of the most influential people on my thoughts about markets that led to both the concept behind my first startup and my main theses in investing. In many ways I think general purpose writing & thinking skills are as valuable as math skills. Internationalization of Technology.

Venture Capital 403

Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

Recruiting – One of the hardest tasks of any startups is recruiting world-class talent. Of course you need a new angle to get a journalist interested because they don’t simply want to write what everybody else has covered. It doesn’t work that way. Press loves company as much as they love exclusivity.

Press 415

Press Google Course Writing 415

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

While many of my friends bragged about their 5 condos in Florida I kept talking about how the real estate market was in a bubble – their gains an illusion. above inflation yet in many markets in the US & Europe prices were rising at 10-25% per year. “Yeah, but there is a shortage of supply.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 13, 2022

Writing in business is not the same as in an academic environment. We can find tons of "marketing' courses in colleges and universities but everyone must think that “selling” is intuitively obvious. Most classes in college focus on a narrow area of interest, which just teach students to focus on problems through one lens.

Class 140

Class Course Email Social Network 140

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

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

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

They have seen one side of a market where many of us have seen the ebb and flow multiple times. Still, market amnesia by ordinarily rational actors always surprises me. 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.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2013

Business Writing for Email. Writing in business is not the same as in an academic environment. We can find tons of "marketing'' courses in colleges and universities but everyone must think that “selling” is intuitively obvious. entrepreneur business classes startup college course business professional'

Class 93

Class Course Writing Slides 93

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. Jordan Hudson. Sam had different plans.

Startup 372

Startup Course Ideas Invest 372

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. And that’s real cash that LPs can’t put to work in other asset classes. That’s money that fuels our startup ecosystems.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital Marketing Seed Funding 150

InfoChachkie

APRIL 16, 2012

Steve is also a Stanford Professor and noted marketing entrepreneur. 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.

Startup 229

Startup Class Press Custom Development 229

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

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

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. He did it yesterday, “Mark, I’m going to write a blog post following on from your VC’s aren’t dumb. ” I know it sounds obvious.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

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

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. SEO marketing vs. social marketing. Neither class of people should give up easily. and I realized that without years of experience it is tough to answer this question. Most VCs are book smart. It’s not you.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets. Would they build a world class team. Could we produce this at cost? Did anybody hold patents that would prevent us from using this technology?

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

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? AngelList is a great way to market your deal.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

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.” In my post I specifically talked about the integration of marketing and sales.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

They write into their investment documents that they will occupy a seat on the board for as long as they are invested in the company, thinking of this as a protection for their investment and tool for them to influence growth. All other board functions are secondary. Shareholders such as the investors are granted few rights by law.

Class 179

Class Coach Invest Sales 179

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 2, 2011

Here is their inaugural class. I was prepared way more for business success in my political science classes than in my economics ones (I was a double major). In Poly Sci I learned critical thinking and writing. You’re more entrepreneurial than 99% of people in any b-school class. So is this a good idea?

Education 322

Education Startup Incubator Class 322

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Can you imagine investing in the stock market where your price was determined at a future date and the better that company performed the HIGHER the price you paid for that investment. So if I write you a $500,000 check into a convertible note with a $4.5 So you’re taking all of the pricing risk. That’s complicated.

Startup 354

Startup Pricing Equity Venture Capital 354

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Market downturn – We all know that investors move in herds. The best MBA class I took was an investment strategy class. Short answer – yes.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

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. The Dave I know is very insightful about marketing, channel management and building developer ecosystems. Wasn’t when Dave started championing it and making it a tenet of his incubator class.

Startup 309

Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

socalTECH

JANUARY 7, 2015

Fountain Valley-based flash memory maker Kingston Digital is targeting the new 4K and HD video capture market, with a brand new, ultra high speed microSD flash memory card. The new memory cards are significantly faster than the SD Association''s minimum performance requirements for Speed Class 3 cards, which is 30MB/s read/write.

Class 100

Class Writing Marketing Product 100

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. This is the market that Wonga serves and they are killing it! Big market.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Capital Email Blogging 265

socalTECH

JUNE 13, 2011

Jonathan Lehmann: I was awarded the Larry Wolfen Entrepreneurial Spirit Award at UCLA, after getting amazing coaching from Matt Ridenour in our business plan development class. Obviously, once we're comfortable with that, the big challenge is marketing KarmaGoat. When did you create the business?

UCLA 256

UCLA Startup Ideas Help 256

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

I use George Bush vs. Al Gore as allegory and I’ve been using it with entrepreneurs for years to sink in a simple point about how to communicate with the market. This does not mean you shouldn’t solve big, complex problems or write complex code. Before that he was a US senator. Call on me. I know the answer.”

Entrepreneur 370

Entrepreneur Startup Press Venture Capital 370

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

So why is online video such an attractive market to build a startup? These markets represent about $600 billion of total spend between them, leaving tons of opportunities for startups to disrupt and grow large. But a market in which every network competes to sign up the largest talent by throwing rev share deals at them is also stupid.

Companies 339

Companies Company Technical Review Content 339

socalTECH

JUNE 6, 2011

To try to change that, two entrepreneurs, Dan Dato and Bruce Brown, are launching a new effort called Upstart LA (www.upstart.la), which aims to bring that venture accelerator model into this market. These were companies like Autobytel when it was Pete Ellis and three other people, a company called Interactive Marketing Inc.,

Startup 221

Startup Mentor Southern California Incubator 221

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. Obviously to understand a “class&# of people you have to make broad generalizations. Features don’t win or lose sales – especially in nascent markets. Here are mine.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

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. DataPop : DataPop was founded by performance marketing veterans from Yahoo!,

Companies 276

Companies Company Startup Southern California 276

InfoChachkie

JUNE 16, 2016

When I arrived at Wharton many moons ago, I was told that all first-year students take the same set of Core classes. Like a sheepeople, I dutifully signed up for the required classes. Yet I was told by everyone, Professors, Advisors and students alike, that there was “no way” I could get out of taking my remaining Core classes.

Entrepreneur 100

Entrepreneur Class Course Writing 100

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. The problem is – the perfect guy for the job was head of European Marketing for Salesforce.com and Saleforce has continued to go from strength to strength. After 6 months – you know.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

At that point, we realized we needed more money to get things to market, and that's when we went out and raised a round from the Maverick Angels. USC has a fantastic program, in that you are able to be in class, and both learn the concepts and apply it to business. Noah Auerhahn: Our difference, is we're customer centric.

USC 207

USC CPC Sites Startup 207

socalTECH

APRIL 30, 2009

According to CEO Chris Lyman and VP of Product and Marketing Corey Brundage, the idea for the fight club came when Lyman ran into Reilly in a restaurant, and learned about his fighting class. Lyman also said that the participants will be wearing lots of safety guards, like shin guards, mouth guards, head wraps, and more.

Culver City 140

Culver City Startup Training Class 140

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

He writes with a great perspective and is well worth reading. We had more than 700 resumes, short-listed 65, interviewed 16 in one-hour meetings had 6 full-day interviews including a presentation by the candidate on a selected market opportunity and we did 3 finalist dinners to test cultural fit. I had to laugh a bit reading it.

Startup 337

Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337