Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

As a founder, when you’ve been dealing with these kinds of objections for a couple of years it becomes natural and you easily handle objections on price, product & competition without much thought. Some examples of common objections across many companies: 1. It is tacit knowledge.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2014

It’s super hard not to want to spend more time with these companies. Competition is fierce. I always ask when somebody sends me a deal, for example, are you already a shareholder in the company? I got an email recently from a VC who had invested in a company a small amount in a seed round. Why am I so lucky?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Email 333

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. There is an inherent value that any company has. I acknowledged this in the article.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2012

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Skip the acronyms, history of the company, and the disruptive technology behind your solution.

Summary 97

Summary Writing Competition Sample 97

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

What is it to start up a company, and run it to the brink of shutdown�only to have it acquired and restarted immediately? We caught up with co-founder Joey Flores on the story behind the company's brush with death, and its recent acquisition by You42, which was announced last week. So, we decided to shut down the company.

Software Review 100

Software Review Startup Metrics Content 100

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

We’ve had just one market since then and it could confuse one into thinking: every deal finds downstream investors, every company good or bad finds a home, you know anything at all about brazil, india, china or even saas sales, ecommerce or analytics (you know all these in a bull market). Too much money too early often f s companies up.

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Skip the acronyms, history of the company, and the disruptive technology behind your solution.

Summary 90

Summary Writing Competition Sample 90

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2012

I realized a while back that creating a new company for the first time is a lot like whipping up a great dinner entree for the first time – you need a recipe, even though it may look simple. then you can start writing a recipe. All the investment money in the world won’t make your company succeed, if you have the wrong team.

Startup 96

Startup Writing Metrics Marketing 96

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

I remember just a decade ago in 2003 when we all laughed at how dumb people in the 90′s were talking about the race to “capture as many eyeballs as possible” before your competition. The minute you try to monetize now they have metrics with which to beat you up and say you’re business has limitations.”

Venture Capital 412

Venture Capital Startup Funding Snapchat 412

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. What makes their story more remarkable, in the age of 20-something billionaires, is that both of the company’s founders are in their 50’s.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens. He did it yesterday, “Mark, I’m going to write a blog post following on from your VC’s aren’t dumb. VCs crave the ability to help portfolio companies. He is very pleasant when he calls and writes.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Tech.Co

DECEMBER 12, 2017

And when it’s time to apply to an accelerator, making sure your company is presented in the best way on the application can significantly improve your chances. Admittedly, that last part is an exaggeration but they were bad enough that I am writing this essay in the hopes that you will read it and not make these mistakes.

Tips 70

Tips Startup Statistics Metrics 70

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 7, 2011

I realized a while back that creating a new company for the first time is a lot like whipping up a great dinner entree for the first time – you need a recipe, even though it may look simple. then you can start writing a recipe. All the investment money in the world won’t make your company succeed, if you have the wrong team.

Entrepreneur 91

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Metrics 91

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Innovation is the key, to keep each process small, but make it more effective than competitors and big-company processes.

Startup 107

Startup Outsource Development Training Outsource 107

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. One of them is profitability.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Even when your startup is a one-man show, you will soon find that you are “out of control,” unless you start organizing and writing down how and when key things need to get done. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. But having no process does not make you more competitive.

Startup 102

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 102

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2015

I’ve tried over the years to write many times about the realism of the downsides of being an entrepreneur because there is a complete cognitive dissidence between what you read about yourself in the press and what you feel internally about where you’re at in the journey. . — Mark Suster (@msuster) July 19, 2015.

Press 150

Press Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 150

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Skip the acronyms, history of the company, and the disruptive technology behind your solution.

Summary 55

Summary Writing Competition Metrics 55

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2010

Even when your startup is a one-man show, you will soon find that you are “out of control,” unless you start organizing and writing down how and when key things need to get done. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. But having no process does not make you more competitive.

Startup 95

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 95

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2013

Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Innovation is the key, to keep each process small, but make it more effective than competitors and big-company processes.

Outsource Development 92

Outsource Development Training Outsource Metrics 92

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

Working with professional athletes combined with my natural leadership ability and experience in business development makes me uniquely suited to lead a technology company in the health and fitness industry. Any competition in LA? We haven’t identified any competition in LA, specifically. Athletes can join for free.

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

socalTECH

JANUARY 15, 2009

We also provide the consumer a slew of tools, that will help them upload their resume and manage their online identity, plus we also have a resume builder function, detailed metrics on exactly who is viewing their resume, and the ability to create and manage multiple versions of their resume. Is this at all competitive with LinkedIn?

Startup 140

Startup Yahoo Sites Oversee.net 140

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

It turns out that to build a successful company you ultimately need this strange thing called “revenue” that people don’t just hand you: You need to earn it. Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. MakeSpace provides physical storage.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

We need venture debt, factoring companies and public markets. So what took me $2 million at my first company now takes $20,000. A new group of investors have clustered around writing earlier-stage, smaller checks. Others should swing for the fences - Some companies are designed to be big, industry changing plays.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

socalTECH

MARCH 6, 2017

After I sold my last company, Shift, in May of 2015, I took some time off to look for the next thing to do. A lot of what we've been looking at are the metrics. It seem that now, versus a few years ago, it's a lot more competitive to try to get out and acquire a user profitably for an app.

Media 153

Media Mobile Startup Acquisition 153

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most board meetings are administrative updates that accomplish very little other than inform board members about the performance of the company since the last board meeting. Nobody knows how many outstanding shares are in the company so nobody knows what percentage Mary’s 22,475 shares is equal to. The meeting starts.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 25, 2014

Erin Korogosky – Beckon , Performance management for marketing companies. Susan Etlinger – Altimeter , research and consulting company for business disruption. Alex Taub – Social Rank , Twitter metrics and engagement tool. Anima Sarah Lavoy – Connect , Geo locational convenience for your social networks.

Entertainment 99

Entertainment Google Entrepreneur Course 99

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Spark Capital is relatively new to VC (founded in 2005) yet has become one of the hottest new VCs having invested in Twitter, Tumblr, AdMeld, Boxee, KickApps and many more companies. We both felt that the critical reasoning skills and writing skills were critical to our career development. Founded in 2008 by Mehdi Maghsoodnia.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

In many ways I think general purpose writing & thinking skills are as valuable as math skills. We also spoke about technology systems in the perspective of global competition. He believes that one of the financial metrics taught at business schools and reinforced by Wall Street has accelerated offshoring of industries.

Venture Capital 403

Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. We were based in London.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I was an angel investor in his company, made a bunch of calls on his behalf and then I personally sent it out on AngelList. I think how hard it is for me to be hands-on with a handful of portfolio companies. I’ve had to do this with 2 companies at the same time. Through this process he raised $2 million. So I thought, WTF?

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Many of our job postings for Engineering positions describe the company as a place “where the word ‘millions’ is used frequently and in many contexts&#. SaaS 101: 7 Simple Lessons From Inside HubSpot - OnStartups , July 19, 2010 It’s been a little over 4 years since I officially launched my internet marketing software company , HubSpot.

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217