Berkonomics

JANUARY 24, 2019

Entrepreneurs tend to remain in the business niche they know best. Usually that means one they once or recently spent time in as an employee or manager within a company where they had little or no ownership. You cannot complain that the document or information in question is more than five years or two employers old.

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Company Companies News Startup 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 28, 2021

As an angel investor in early-stage startups, I’ve long noticed my peers apparent bias toward the strength and character of the founding entrepreneurs, often overriding a strong solution to a painful problem with a big opportunity. Find and enjoy the company of one or more mentors.

Entrepreneur 165

Entrepreneur Mentor Ideas Invest 165

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2022

Here are some key insights that I and others have collected for mature company leaders, as well as serial entrepreneurs. With today’s information overload , you can’t assume that people will know that you and your new innovative solution even exist. I advise working the next one as thoroughly as the first one.

Entrepreneur 144

Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Social Media Commerce 144

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2012

I have seen some entrepreneurs go into first meetings willing to share almost anything about their company. I’ve seen this back fire on entrepreneurs who say things like, “Well, we’re not talking financials with investors yet.”. ” But very few companies can get away with this. The First Meeting. So why are we here?”

Technical Review 316

Technical Review Venture Capital Customer Custom 316

SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 8, 2017

Saturday, October 14, 2017 -- Caltech Entrepreneurs Forum - Cybersecurity. The Caltech Entrepreneurs Forum will be devoted to identifying entrepreneurial opportunities for providing tools to combat cyber threats. Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Stan Stahl, president of Citadel Information Group and SecureTheVillage.

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CalTech Entrepreneur Tool Customer 100

Berkonomics

APRIL 12, 2018

Small companies most often scrape by with borrowed or invested funds, doing everything possible to grow and prosper with limited resources. So, it is like a punch in the gut when an employee makes a claim against the company for a perceived or actual but unintentional violation of a law or regulation. So, my advice is simple.

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Entrepreneur Class Resource Email 226

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2020

His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs. His top eight required skill set elements for sales don’t even mention product skills, and match my view of the right skill set for successful entrepreneurs, with only a few priority changes: Creating and sharing a vision. It’s up to you to clear the way.

Entrepreneur 134

Entrepreneur Startup Sales Customer 134

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Creating a gerat company in a relative vacuum is an exercise in complete trust that the entrepreneur knows what’s best for the customer, perhaps even without interaction with such a customer. So, I’ve developed the three step dance in order to help form a repeatable method of how to create a great company from an early idea.

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Company Companies Startup Customer 229

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2020

In my role as a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that most have the technical challenges well understood, but many are a bit short on some basic street smarts , or basic business realities. Although Elon Musk doesn’t talk about it very much, he owns over 350 patents through Tesla, just one of his many companies.

Entrepreneur 173

Entrepreneur Patents Startup Technical Review 173

SoCal Tech Calendar

FEBRUARY 3, 2017

Thursday, February 9, 2017 -- TCVN Workshop: Structure Your Company the Right Way. Choosing a structure for your company is typically a confusing and difficult process. While most choices are not irrevocable, it is in entrepreneur’s best interest to make a well-informed decision early. Corporation or LLC? or S-corp.?

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TCVN Company Companies Entrepreneur 100

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Someone on Quora recently asked me to answer the following question: Why Do Digital Entrepreneurs Hate MBAs? Tech entrepreneurs' consternation with MBAs does not rise to the level of loathing. As noted in Startup Advice From College Dropouts , successful entrepreneurs are often poor students.

Entrepreneur 279

Entrepreneur Technical Review Case Study Class 279

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2011

tl;dr version: If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. – entrepreneurs never seem to focus on anything other than ownership percentage. It’s no surprise that I got a bit fawked on my first company. VCs were negotiating with asymmetric information.

Venture Capital 304

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Guide Blogging 304

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2020

Although most people believe that being a successful entrepreneur is all about having the right idea, I’m convinced from my years of experience as a startup advisor and investor that’s it’s more about you as a person. The best entrepreneurs are not just dreamers of the next big thing – they have to be great facilitators and problem solvers.

Entrepreneur 129

Entrepreneur Examples Blogging Customer 129

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

The realm of an entrepreneur is all about change, but in my experience as a mentor to business founders, I hear too much about incremental change, and not enough about revolutionary change. Great entrepreneurs cross industry boundaries to find synergies, and are constantly in learn mode on several fronts.

Entrepreneur 103

Entrepreneur Social Media Artificial Inteligence Examples 103

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

I thought I’d try to look at it from a different lens, that of the entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur you should assume that. They might not actively “collude&# and say “let’s collectively keep the price down&# but in the resulting discussion pricing information will flow – whether intentional or not.

Pricing 292

Pricing Entrepreneur Technical Review Venture Capital 292

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2014

Facebook has created an environment where millions of people can hold billions of conversations with people and companies, transforming how people expect to interact with each other and the world. More and more company and personal services are being virtualized to the Cloud. Online gaming has moved from the geeks to the mainstream.

Startup 99

Startup Social Media Entertainment Metrics 99

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. Good entrepreneurs are wrong often.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

But there are a lot of things that become norms in the VC industry that always drove me crazy from entrepreneur’s side of the table. Translation for any first time entrepreneurs can mean one of: a. So he left and focused on starting companies. In an entrepreneur I need to see the anti VC character. They still do.

Entrepreneur 297

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Java 297

Berkonomics

AUGUST 5, 2021

When do most companies communicate? Early stage company investors as a group have a common gripe – almost universal. Information flows from the company irregularly, in fact most often when the company is urgently in need of more money. How companies do gain traction for additional rounds.

Invest 156

Invest Study Email Activity 156

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 9, 2012

Who are the top tech companies to work for in Los Angeles? Despite a huge number of companies, we found there are a number which. Despite a huge number of companies, we found there are a number which. Demand Media consistently popped up near number one in the list of "companies to work for" from our readers. Demand Media.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Company Companies Southern California 279

InfoChachkie

MAY 12, 2014

I recently received an email from a former student in which he described how he was able to secure a lunch meeting with a high-profile entrepreneur who is operating multiple ventures in parallel. When I attended Startup Weekend in Berkeley, I was inspired by parallel entrepreneur Adam Cheyer''s keynote speech. Meeting Adam Cheyer.

Entrepreneur 211

Entrepreneur Santa Barbara Email Startup 211

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

One of the most common questions that entrepreneurs who meet me for the first time like to ask is, “Do you miss being an entrepreneur? I thought I’d talk a bit about the differences I’ve experienced between being an entrepreneur & a VC – you know, from “both sides of the table.&#. On Being an Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur 384

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Ideas 384

Berkonomics

JANUARY 20, 2012

Entrepreneurs tend to remain in the business arena they came from. Some are alumni from companies that would be a competitor to the enterprise being created or joined. What is the rule about those pesky non-compete agreements signed upon discharge or sale of the previous company?

Company 136

Company Companies News Design 136

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

Every mature company I know is looking for more innovation from within. They are painfully aware that tenure on the list of S&P companies is shrinking – from thirty-three years back in 1964, down to twenty-four in 2016, and predicted to be just twelve by 2027. Intrapreneurs have to always think like entrepreneurs.

Company 93

Company Companies Software Review IBM 93

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 20, 2013

” I have long thought about and written about the personal toll that being an entrepreneur places on your life. These were amongst some of the most read blog posts I have written, which shows me that the stress, pressures and loneliness of being and entrepreneur resonates. They start with their own journey.

Entrepreneur 370

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Social Network 370

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. Most Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs I know are more like Al Gore. how informed will they be about our product / service? It is election season.

Entrepreneur 370

Entrepreneur Startup Press Venture Capital 370

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 7, 2018

In my experience mentoring new entrepreneurs and aspiring business leaders, I see far too many who seem to be driven by all the wrong reasons. He makes a convincing argument that the best leaders and entrepreneurs follow their intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations. To be a successful entrepreneur, one can never stand still.

Entrepreneur 98

Entrepreneur Satisfaction Ideas Patents 98

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

One of the realities of being an entrepreneur is that you have to keep learning and changing to survive. Unfortunately, in mature companies, a larger and larger percentage of employees forget company survival and customers as the objectives, and focus only on their own personal gain. Optimizing risk, not minimizing it.

Satisfaction 147

Satisfaction Organization Customer Custom 147

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

I was recently interviewed for an article that appeared in Fast Company titled, “ Why you should start a business in LA.&# If you’re interested in the topic it’s worth a read, but I thought I’d elaborate on the topic since it comes up all the time. But we have a great city for building technology companies.

Company 290

Company Companies Technology Startup 290

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

“Hi [entrepreneur], I hope all is well. I’m an investor at [Big Name, Large Fund VC] and recently came across [Your Company]. It's big, well known & we've invested in all of these really cool companies]. I know the firm well and I know the entrepreneur & his business well. What fits your schedule?

Venture Capital 294

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Email Equity 294

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

Thursday night was the unveiling of the newest batch of Launchpad LA companies. 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. Have a look at the companies below.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

A group of Southern California businesses are attending the Entrepreneurs Festival taking place in Tech City UK , looking to potentially set up shop and foster business partnerships in London. Today marks the start the festival, an effort to establish a center of technology entrepreneurship in England.

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Southern California Entrepreneur Mentor Mobile 180

Xconomy

JANUARY 14, 2019

Back in the days of H&Q, bankers and entrepreneurs flocked to San Francisco to get information about biotech companies that was otherwise hard to come by. Investors, thrilled—or spooked—by the details proffered by company representatives, would rush to a trading desk set up in the Westin St.

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San Diego Company Companies Conference 65

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 17, 2020

While the business didn’t work out, it put the budding young entrepreneur (and college dropout) on a path that would lead him to launch the Los Angeles-based startup Bambee , a company that lets small businesses give their employees access to the same kinds of human resources services that large companies have.

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Services Resource Santa Monica Los Angeles 281

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2023

Entrepreneurs seem to have blinders on when looking at competitors. If your customers would benefit by having products from both companies, you might negotiate the opportunity to include the other’s product as an add-on. No entrepreneur has all the insights they need, and none should be so arrogant as to assume they hold all the cards.

Startup 105

Startup Outsource Competition Entrepreneur 105

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2023

His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs. His top eight required skill set elements for sales don’t even mention product skills, and match my view of the right skill set for successful entrepreneurs, with only a few priority changes: Creating and sharing a vision. It’s up to you to clear the way.

Startup 154

Startup Sales Entrepreneur Customer 154

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2016

His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs. His top eight required skill set elements for sales don’t even mention product skills, and match my view of the right skill set for successful entrepreneurs, with only a few priority changes: Creating and sharing a vision. It’s up to you to clear the way.

Entrepreneur 106

Entrepreneur Sales Startup Customer 106