Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. If you haven’t read Adam Lashinsky’s awesome new book about Apple , you should. And that leads me to today’s post.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business. In fact, I believe modern entrepreneurs need to be super sales people, in the most positive sense, to their team as well as customers. No pain usually means no sales.

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Sales Training Startup Customer 139

Berkonomics

JULY 23, 2020

How about outside investors? Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event. Especially when outside investors, venture capitalists, or angels, have put in substantial money and the sales price is less than the value of their investment. There are some questions a distressed sale brings to mind.

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TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 12, 2022

We gained sort of a cult following because we had healthy meals at an accessible price point.”. Deerman had watched other meal delivery companies, like Munchery and Sprig , close years earlier and had gotten creative with the company’s business model as a result. On days when we did the ‘Positive Popups,’ people loved it.

Invest 175

Invest Los Angeles Startup Funding 175

socalTECH

MAY 28, 2013

In real life, you can just about bargain a price for anything you want to buy--a car, a house, even that new stereo from your local electronics store. Joe Marrapodi: GreenToe is a name your own price marketplace for products. It''s very similar to the Priceline.com model, where you name your price for a flight or hotel.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 10, 2023

From the moment such an investor looks seriously at your company, the investor or VC partner is thinking of the end game, the ultimate sale of the company or even of an eventual initial public offering. There is no middle ground. The newest investor has the power. Draconian terms?

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 26, 2017

The most striking example was the one hundred–million–dollar purchase of one of my companies by a New York private equity investor using only five million of its cash. If there are enough of these, the CEO or founder can announce a valuation as high as double the actual negotiated enterprise value of the company.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual.

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Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Let’s talk about the reality of taking money from professional investors. But the intent of these “forced” placements of a representative on the board is obviously to watch over the company’s use of invested funds and to help grow the company in value. It is not the first time we’ve covered this general subject nor the last.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

This is part of a series on sales & marketing. I previously covered how early phase sales teams should be “evangelical&# and consultative in nature. The first post on scaling sales dealt with “aiming&# your sales teams – making sure they were focused on the right opportunities.

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Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Software as a service (SaaS) is a popular business model because it facilitates the delivery of incremental value to customers, while allowing the vendor to adjust their prices over time. However, such price increases generally occur after new utility has been provided to the customers. A hybrid of the SaaS model is emerging.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2010

This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

recently wrote a post talking about how some VCs meddle in operating company decisions or some executive teams are too reliant on VCs to jump in and make hard calls for them. At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. I did this. ” PR.

Startup 150

Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 150

socalTECH

JULY 10, 2019

The company has raised $1.9M We spoke with CEO and co-founder Spencer Price to learn more about the company. Spencer Price: Halla is the only software company to dynamically profile human tastes so we can help people make better choices. Spencer Price: That's a fair question. What is Halla?

Pricing 113

Pricing Startup North Hollywood Platform 113

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 3, 2019

It’s the fifth new car design to come from Tesla’s shop since the company was founded in 2003. Tesla said that it would begin tooling for the Model Y later this year and that the company would be producing the vehicle at its “gigafactory” in Nevada. Musk later said they would be hiring more service technicians.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 6, 2022

First, the marginal exit event: Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event for the early investors, including the entrepreneur or the founders. Most sophisticated investors will take either a promissory note or preferred stock, both of which come before founder or management stock in a sale or liquidation.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

So when I meet with GRP portfolio companies that do enterprise sales I try to emphasize the following: 1. The most important thing to be careful about is to be sure WHY you’re doing the PS business. This might mean helping customers buy traffic, arb’ing deals, helping with RTB pricing or trading, etc.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

A while back I wrote a bunch of posts on Sales & Marketing and have been meaning to get back to that theme for a while. Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development. You learn by asking.

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Sales Startup Technical Review Customer 346

InfoChachkie

APRIL 13, 2015

Avoid a simple pricing mistake which could sink your startup. Because I am cheap and I know that car dealers are incentivized by the manufacturer to hit quarterly and annual sales goals. Thus, the value of a sale at the end of a quarter can be significant, if the sale contributes to obtaining a manufacturer''s incentive.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey). It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Much more data in the full post. Google knows it.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

Danielle goes through some commentary from Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen about burn rate and then goes on to discuss her own burn rate and others publicly weigh in. But what IS the right amount of burn for a company? I often see companies burning $100,000 per month (net) looking to raise $6-8 million.

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Startup Company Companies .Net 383

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 5, 2022

It’s not about necessarily building something for a hardcore buyer today,” co-founder and CEO Alex Perelman told TechCrunch. “We The feed shows videos of homes on the market, as well as a price tag. Users can also view listings on a map, then click to see a video about the home. But Perelman isn’t worried. “If

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Content Pricing Seed Funding Los Angeles 255

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

I’m over-paying for every check I write into the VC ecosystem and valuations are being pushed up to absurd levels and many of these valuations and companies won’t hold in the long term. However, to be a great VC you have to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. dot-com bonanza. Seed has become an option factory for many.

Venture Capital 471

Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2023

Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale). There is a lot to say about retaining control. For those of you who fit that description, nice work.

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Venture Capital Startup Class Invest 295

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Celebrating that strategic partnership Many of us make it a priority to find and partner with companies that can add to our offering or extend our reach. It takes real effort and planning on both sides of a partnership between companies to make it work. Why would this partnership – one that benefits both companies – fail to succeed?

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Press Sales Training Resource 156

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 5, 2015

In his premier film appearance in the blaxploitation send-up “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” Chris Rock inadvertently addresses a key pricing challenge faced by most entrepreneurs. Watch this 93-second clip and see if you can identify the pricing pitfall addressed in this humorous snippet. Price = Value. How Much For A Rib?

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Pricing Product Startup Customer 100

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

When do you sell your company? Companies sometime run out of cash in the midst of their increasing success, and often find that sources of loans or investment are not freely flowing at the moment of need. Not so long ago, Basil Peters wrote his book, “Early Exits,” after analyzing 150 young companies and their exits.

Pricing 156

Pricing Invest Equity Entrepreneur 156

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 14, 2013

If you have your eyes and ears open, you can discover sales lessons in unexpected places, including the cable TV show, Say Yes To The Dress. There are a number of solid sales techniques on display by the Say Yes team. Throughout the sales process, they continually probe and modify their sales approach, based on the bride's feedback.

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Sales Startup Activity RSS 251

Berkonomics

JANUARY 28, 2021

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked away from deals where the entrepreneur insists on a start-up pre-money valuation that is so high, no angel could expect to make a return upon the investment, even with a reasonable sales price for the company down the road. And here’s the “why.”. More of my stories.

Outsource Development 156

Outsource Development Startup Outsource Venture Capital 156

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 22, 2011

Feature, not a company. Whether something is a feature or a company is clearly subjective. And sometimes features (say, Twitter) turn into companies. It’s about 10 minutes long. We spoke about my interest in cloud computing, digital media and mobile. It’s a market commentary, not a company commentary.

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Company Companies Gogii Google 295

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Los Angeles-based car sharing marketplace HyreCar, which provides access to cars for drivers int he ridesharing, food, and package delivery services business, says it expects to raise $25.85M in a public offering of the company's stock, which priced on Wednesday evening. Davidson & Co., Maxim Group, and Ladenberg Thalman & Co.

Los Angeles 113

Los Angeles Pricing Sales Capital 113

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 8, 2020

He did note that in the four markets where the company has gone live since launching its business in January 2019 — San Diego, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire , and Sacramento — has yielded an annualized revenue run rate of over $400 million in gross merchandise value (the total value of home sales transacted on its platform).

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Sales Demand San Diego Funding 282

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business. In fact, I believe modern entrepreneurs need to be super sales people, in the most positive sense, to their team as well as customers. No pain usually means no sales.

Sales 106

Sales Entrepreneur Customer Custom 106

Berkonomics

JULY 26, 2018

These are so succinct, so well defined, so precise that everyone in sales and everyone involved in marketing must be able to answer these three questions without pause, and convincingly. It would pay you to work over this set of questions in a special session with sales, marketing and senior management in the room at once.

Sales 226

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 226

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 21, 2017

Let’s talk about the reality of taking money from professional investors. But the intent of these “forced” placements of a representative on the board is obviously to watch over the company’s use of invested funds and to help grow the company in value. It is not the first time we’ve covered this general subject nor the last.

Invest 243

Invest Sales Resource Email 243

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 17, 2022

I’m not talking here about a small pivot. I’m talking about the kind of change that moved Apple from personal computers to music distribution to consumer electronics, and Amazon from books to e-Commerce to cloud computing services. Prices begin to decline quickly. This S-Curve, with no correction, can quickly lead to disaster.

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Startup Pricing Cloud Computing Customer 106

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

Being too late and you back an “also ran” You also need to be right about the team. I’ve sometimes been right about the market value but too early. You’re thinking about one bullet at a time. At Upfront we often talk about these as “shots on goal” (a fitting soccer analogy given the EURO 2020 tournament is on right now).

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Funding Startup Writing Invest 294