InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

In most cases, I provide some combination of the following advice: Brevity - Maximum length: two pages. Too Techie - Tone down emphasis on the technology underlying your venture; an interested investor will perform tech diligence at the appropriate time. No VC Fit - Match your venture with appropriate funding source.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. 10 is the new 3.

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. It’s always fun debating companies with Dana because she’s always so knowledgeable on deals – particularly those in the digital media, ad-tech and eCommerce spaces.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I just completed an exercise where I went out to hire a new associate for my VC firm, GRP Partners. I had to laugh a bit reading it. So back to MBAs.

Startup 337

Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

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

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

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

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. Ajax was the new buzzword and many companies went overboard. People mistook extra doses of Ajax for a successful product. and the subsequent acquisition sprees of companies like Google, Yahoo!

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. You’re a small fish. They wanted advice.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&# Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough. Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC. Remember that most fund raising takes time. Why don’t VC’s follow up?

Venture Capital 277

Venture Capital Startup Email News 277

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

I took the opportunity this past week to publish summary notes of some of the VCs and entrepreneurs I had interviewed on This Week in VC. One of my goals in doing the show was not only to educate entrepreneurs but also to put a human face on many of the VCs in our industry as VCs can be hard to get to know. Thank you. (if

Capital 265

Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. Cloud computing and the open source movements have brought down the costs of starting a company by more than 90%.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Sometimes that’s venture capital generally (like last year’s conversation with Reid Hoffman ) and sometimes it’s in a space where I’ve invested (like mobility and city innovation with Bird’s Travis VanderZanden , one of our portfolio founders.) And so it is with video. Quibi = “quick bites”). But Quibi has raised $1.4

Content 244

Content Netflix Platform Mobile 244

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 11, 2010

in a Series A funding round, the company said this morning. The round was led by Rincon Ventures, and also included IA Ventures, Momentum Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, and angels. Tags: datapop venture capital search marketing advertising overture yahoo. READ MORE>>.

Yahoo 145

Yahoo Paid Search GRP Partners SoCalTech 145

socalTECH

JULY 16, 2015

Woodland Hills-based Readz , a new startup that is aiming to help marketers quickly create microsites, landing pages, white papers, and other content, said today that it has raised more than $7.15M in funding, and launched its products. The company says it first raised funding in 2011, and has been operating in stealth mode.

Woodland Hills 100

Woodland Hills Tool Mobile Marketing 100

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Social Proof in Action … Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of using social proof and authority in raising venture capital. Social proof is defined as “looking for others to guide our decisions&# and is also one of the most important techniques in acquiring customers in your company. We are evangelists.

Marketing 294

Marketing Customer Custom Technical Review 294

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2021

As a business advisor, I have to recommend even to established companies that they review and revamp their competitive strategy now, even if it appears to be working today. As a simple example, the Wal-Mart website now shows shoppers more products that they may like, based on previous purchases.

Competition 142

Competition Software Review Social Media Customer 142

socalTECH

OCTOBER 31, 2014

XO (formerly Moonfrye), the e-commerce company founded by Soleil Moon Frye and Kara Nortman, announced a merger with toy and crafting brand Seedling (www.seedling.com), which was founded by Phoebe Hayman. The two renamed themselves Seedling, and announced a new funding round from Upfront Venturess.

Commerce 138

Commerce Mobile Startup Product 138

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). So why did Larry need to return?

CTO Hire 309

CTO Hire Organization Google Course 309

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of the series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. These trends have put pressure on traditional VCs. So VCs spent a couple of years experimenting with earlier-stage investing, which is OK. Funny, that.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Capital Software Startup 296

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

After weeks of StartupDemo submissions we are now ready to announce the participating startup companies for the StartupDemo event being held at Wokano Sept. We took great consideration for every startup company that applied. They make it easy to collect investment funds, track ownership, and provide targeted updates to investors.

Company 106

Company Companies Web Evite 106

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

Creating awareness for your brand and products is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise. Ever notice how some companies tend to be in the press all the time and your big new product launch struggled for inches?

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Understand Personality Types – One of the benefits of working for a big company (Accenture) was that we had lots of speakers come in and train us in topics like leadership, creativity, presentations, strategy, etc. You’ve got 20 slides and we’re only on page 3. 25% of VCs are expressives, like you.

Slides 358

Slides Venture Capital Startup Summary 358

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2013

I made many classic first-time mistakes which serves both as my warning signal of which teams to avoid funding (if I perceive they will make critical mistakes often led by hubris) and also as my source for coaching others. Startups are filled with enormously talented people – often product people & engineers.

Startup 412

Startup Press Course Entrepreneur 412

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2015

I felt this myself as we went from a few founders huddled into a tiny room to the front page of the Financial Times, an influx of VC interest, magazine covers, invitations to high-profile events and the pressures of trying to live up to this perception and the economic opportunities everybody expected. Every founder knows this.

Press 150

Press Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2016

million in funding on TechCrunch led by Harmony Partners and Upfront Ventures to double its footprint of 3 cities (New York, Chicago & Washington DC) to 6 in 2016. We raised this capital in what has increasingly become a difficult market for fund raising so I’d like to share with you some details on how we get it done.

Startup 150

Startup Pricing Marketing Product 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 10, 2015

To make this work, you need heavy traffic on your site -- probably at least a million page views per month -- which most sites never achieve in their lifetimes. While you are doing all this work, of course, you need deep pockets to fund all your efforts, content and growing website hosting fees.

Advertising 99

Advertising PPC CPC Sites 99

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 9, 2013

I spoke this past week at the LeWeb conference in London, which was a superbly well run event with a very quality production team. And it was convenient for me because we also held our annual London board meeting of DataSift , who helps companies processes and analyze large volumes of social plus enterprise data in realtime.

Marketing 361

Marketing Course Pricing Networking 361

InfoChachkie

JUNE 23, 2011

Messenger : Jason Lehmbeck , Co-Founder and CEO of DataPop , former VP of Emerging Ad Products at Overture Services and Yahoo! We started the company (because) …if you asked the average consumer what they think of the ads they see, if they see them at all, they are largely irrelevant and in many cases annoying. You guys never broke up.

Yahoo 210

Yahoo Startup Advertising Summary 210

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 4, 2016

Whatever type of content you run – and be it a music, video or print platform – Native Ads uses well-made and resourced content to advertise products in a way that makes advertising a positive addition, rather than a negative affect. In June 2015, the platform managed to raise some $20 million in Venture Capital (VC) funding.

Advertising 40

Advertising Platform Venture Capital Content 40

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah.

Startup 286

Startup Venture Capital Web Ideas 286

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2011

If you want a very quick primer on all the stuff nobody ever tells you about raising venture capital check out this video where Mark Jeffrey & I break it down on This Week in VC. All of this is covered in more detail on the TWiVC video above (and much of it is covered in text on this blog on the “ Raising VC &# tab).

Venture Capital 340

Venture Capital Slides Doc Startup 340

socalTECH

MAY 26, 2011

Donnelly, and he also was behind eCompanies, which invested in such companies as JAMDAT Mobile, Boingo Wireless, and USBX. Jake's latest venture is Brighter (www.brighter.com), a service which is aimed at helping consumers find pre-negotiated rates on dental care. Youve been in involved in a lot of very successful ventures.

Startup 249

Startup Pricing Southern California Networking 249

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 19, 2011

TechZulu is heading out to CES and we have tons of products/gadgets/games/companies to review and interview. Network with hundreds over delicious four course dinner followed by panel on Attracting Venture Capital, and Top Trends for Social Media, Mobile Apps and Consumer Devices. So make sure you Follow @techzulu.

Social Media 84

Social Media Newsletter Mobile Startup 84

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2011

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based HitFix (www.hitfix.com) an online news site focused on entertainment, announced it had raised $2M in a funding round. However, it was an idea and concept which had been brewing for awhile, and besides, I had a personal interest in starting my own company and wanting to be an entrepreneur.

News 173

News Entertainment Startup Bertelsmann 173

socalTECH

OCTOBER 1, 2010

We create a profile page, which allows referrals to be sent out, to allow businesses to request things from their customers. My sweet spot is taking companies to market. I've actually gone to four startup, so far, taking them from prototype to production, when they are able to sell the company or have it run on its own.

Startup 193

Startup Newsletter Customer Custom 193

socalTECH

DECEMBER 9, 2010

Last night, Santa Monica-based Factual (www.factual.com), the data provider and data tools firm, announced a big, $25M funding round from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. The firm is headed by Gil Elbaz , who is known for co-founding Applied Semantics, the firm which invented Google's AdSense product.

Artificial Inteligence 203

Artificial Inteligence Century City Web Santa Monica 203

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

John Lusk, along with his Co-Author Kyle Harrison, leveraged their humble company''s newsletter into The MouseDriver Chronicles , a New York Times bestselling book. Upon graduation from Wharton, John and Kyle launched a startup based upon a simple, pedestrian product: a computer mouse shaped like the head of a golf driver.

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233