Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

It was a pleasure to write them myself. He presented the idea at the TED conference in the mid 90′s and was literally boo’d while he was on stage. they can build teams that really focus on building & marketing great products. All of that are in this week’s episode of This Week in VC. Overture (Goto.com).

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Competition Idealab Product CitySearch 350

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

The reason for this is that the executives who founded the company have so much tacit knowledge of how to position their product relative to the competition that they can easily win campaigns when they’re involved. So I often work with teams to get them to codify the key things they do well that the competition does not.

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Sales Startup Competition Customer 336

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

It’s why in this article I advise that people “market today not futures” because you don’t want your playbook in the hands of the competition. The other thing that tech execs often want to do is to delegate the PR to their marketing person. In a startup this is a mistake.

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Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

15 years ago we were at the peak of Internet hype with the launch of many over-capitalized businesses with a market size & opportunity was limited. The VC market has right-sized (returned back to mid 90′s levels & less competition). But markets value high growth over short-term profitability. Why is this?

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Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

Every industry organization has regular local meetings and annual conferences for education purposes and bringing the right people together. Write a business plan for your desired new business. Sources should include local startup incubators, blog owners, and government support organizations, such as SCORE.

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Startup Tips Coach Satisfaction 114

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2019

In addition, the discipline of producing it, like writing a business plan, will help you immensely in understanding the key elements that drive you and your business. I often hear the excuse that writing a book takes precious time away from building and running your business, which you cannot afford.

Writing 19

Writing Technical Review Entrepreneur Advertising 19

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2021

This may mean attending industry conferences, taking college courses, or reading some key books. In many cases, the challenge may just be your ability to market yourself, and what you know. It may be time for you to start your own blog, write a book, or volunteer as a speaker at public events in your domain.

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Entrepreneur Course Satisfaction Guide 132

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Yet I find that few of today’s workers realize that succeeding as a freelancer requires a whole new focus on “marketing” yourself. As you know, things can change quickly, as businesses try to survive and adapt to an evolving market, so it’s better to be prepared than caught off guard. Write down some target objectives and milestones.

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Startup Outsource Development Competition Social Media 98

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

I will add to this as I write more in the coming weeks on the topic. The funding rounds will also build customer confidence and they’ll help journalists feel air cover in writing your more important pieces when you brag about customers, traction, revenue or whatever. This is true on all of the major tech blogs. Funding is news.

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Startup Funding News Press 355

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

PR isn’t something that can be delegated – The other thing that tech execs often want to do is to delegate the PR to their marketing person. Obviously you should have somebody that helps you research journalists, gets you meetings, pitches stories, helps prep you for interviews & helps make sure your writing is cogent.

Startup 349

Startup Writing Press Blogging 349

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. Startup Grind was a truly awesome conference and Derek the consumate host. We spoke about what succeeds early in technology market evolutions.

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Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2010

In fact, I said as much in September 09 at a Twitter conference in LA on a panel that Guy Kawasaki was moderating. And aside from having great market power (the main reason for Twitter to own the client and the customer) advertising is one of the primary reasons that I believe Twitter needs to own the client applications.

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Acquisition Develop Development Conference 287

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage.

Services 72

Services Startup Training Writing 72

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

Some people do the conference circuit too much, get involved in lots of side projects and attend every entrepreneur dinner. When I was running startups I felt like a horse with blinders on because I was super focused on the content management market and ignored many other markets. I get to choose what I write about.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

I had a chance to discuss AngelList Syndicates with Naval at Michael Kim’s Cendana LP/VC conference on a panel with Naval, Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures) and Mike Brown, Jr. If you know, VCs end up writing sizable checks into their own funds, which is important in better aligning interests. Must be doing something right!

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 27, 2014

On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage.

Services 105

Services Startup Training Writing 105

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

He has it on stage, too, at conferences. 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. My pal Dave has blogger Tourette’s.

Startup 309

Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 17, 2016

On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage.

Services 61

Services Startup Training Writing 61

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2010

File this under both Startup Adivce and Sales & Marketing Advice. Journalists don’t know enough about your company before the show, don’t have time for proper research, and you will be competing for their time afterward with 49+ other companies that want them to write about you. - Many other great companies are not. -

Tips 307

Tips Startup Press Blogging 307

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. People who believe the former believe that you should see the market demand before too many people know you’re “in market.”

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

awards dinner on Thursday night I started reflected on what it would take to “change the trajectory&# for Seattle or for any regional market, really. He listed all of the product releases that were up coming, the customers that were in the pipeline and where he saw his competition moving. Are you going to do all of this?

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

socalTECH

MARCH 2, 2020

The other nice thing about that, is as things are happening on the same computer, there is no server code to write. It's really simple to write an application, compared to the complexity of an application that is multi-user. Usually, investors like to invest in people who are taking an existing platform and extending it into a market.

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Platform Startup Examples Web 168

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. Our first big institutional round was $16.5

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. I decided to write about my experience and to be blunt. It became a huge kerfuffle with many VC partners writing to thank me for the post, which exposed those that gave their industry a bad name. And covered we did.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

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. Ask for short conference calls.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2017

In this age of information overload, success is all about building a brand that stands out above the competition. That means that you need to overtly market yourself, rather than wait and hope that the right people or customers will find you. Start a blog and write for industry forums and newsletters.

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Startup Organization Newsletter Content 55

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. My partner, Brian McLoughlin , attends almost all Financial Services conference, makes a number of investments in the space and has relationships across the sector.

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Venture Capital Startup Sales Writing 318

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 1, 2013

CreatorUp is the online web series school teaching the next generation of web series creators how to make and market their own new video projects on the web. Learning experience includes: on-demand online video tutorial courses, live video-conference workshops, as well as individual online consultations, live workshops, and group programs.

Web 93

Web USC Course Guide 93

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

But putting no time into anchoring your beliefs because you’re too busy executing sales, marketing, support, product & engineering is an easy recipe for leadership drift. There are always flavors-of-the-month strategies or markets that are in favor in the tech startup world. We could all do better – I’m sure.

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Startup Coach Course Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Think about this: The investment banks and trading houses across the globe have invested billions of dollars in computing equipment and staff in order to process news that affects stock prices milliseconds before the rest of the market can process & transact on this same information. Real time + location equals marketing opportunity.

Platform 307

Platform News Startup Invest 307

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2010

They taught us to write down questions when they came up and batch them together in point sheets. I try not to let this happen but after a 2-day conference or after a vacation I really, really struggle. I argued that this would be the best product in the market because Google would continue to innovate.

Product 280

Product Startup Email Technical Review 280

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

so compelling (other than the fact that the CEO Sean Rad is a great young technology leader and his advisers – Brian Norgard , Dan Gould and Evan Rifkin - are some of the guys I respect most in the LA tech market.). But then I went to the Parnassus Group’s Twitter 140 conference run by Steve Broback and Brett Schulte.

Ideas 286

Ideas Advertising Google Technical Review 286

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 6, 2012

“Competition for the future is about what you are doing today,” Vijay Govindarajan preaches passionately from the stage at the front of the Metro Toronto Convention center on June 5th, 2012 at the Art of Leadership Conference. In the boxes he writes: 1. Manage the present. Selectively forget the past.

Pricing 80

Pricing Statistics Examples Design 80

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2010

Maybe the market views this as not worth the price you paid? So by offering convertible debt you can avoid a price discussion in the same way that angel investors sometimes do in order to win competitive early-stage deals. They might put the kibosh on company travel and not attend some key meetings or conferences.

Startup 290

Startup Funding Venture Capital Pricing 290

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 25, 2014

But considering the huge number of collaborative efforts, contacts, and great run-ins we experienced at this year’s little black sheep of a tech conference, in Austin, TX; we couldn’t possibly leave all the laundry out to dry. Erin Korogosky – Beckon , Performance management for marketing companies.

Entertainment 99

Entertainment Google Entrepreneur Course 99

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Paul Graham on trends for the future - Business of Software Blog , August 25, 2010 Paul Graham spoke at last year's Business of Software conference. We had to write a CRM to keep track of them all. A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , August 9, 2010 This is Part 3 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.?

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Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191