Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2014

If the deal is from out of your geography and/or out of your focus area or a deal is being referred by a well-know investor who normally co-invests with similar syndicates – at least ask yourself, “Why am I so lucky to be getting this call.” I avoid Demo Days like the plague and have publicly said so. End of story.

Venture Capital 337

Venture Capital Invest Ideas Entrepreneur 337

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 21, 2020

The first page of the business plan better be an executive summary which gives the investor a taste of the financials, as well as opportunity, competition, and key executives. “I Investors invest in the jockey, more than the horse. Let me show you a demo rather than a business plan.”

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Statistics Startup Social Media 124

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I’m comfortable with introductions and then getting into the demo.&#. I believe in this so much that, despite my post advising you to be prepared for the *norm* in VC, I wrote a post about a company that came in for a presentation and never even got the slides out or presented a demo. Just jump into the demo after intros.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2021

The Founder needs to remember that meetings up to this point have been primarily off-site, with staged demos, and managed personally by the CEO or a small team. If there are conflicts within the team, or differing views of the strategy, or evidence of missing processes and tools, the investment process will likely be terminated.

Technical Review 151

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Invest 151

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Some readers have commented that in today’s world you shouldn’t even need a PowerPoint presentation – in this era you should always just demo your product. I also recently wrote a post about a company that came in for a presentation and never even got the slides out or presented a demo. Act III – The Demo.

Venture Capital 238

Venture Capital Slides Startup Sales 238

Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

Email readers, continue here…] Bootstrapping: This term describes your ability to start a business with little investment and grow it using internally-generated funds. Strategic partner” investors: If you can find a strategic partner willing to invest in your enterprise, consider it a blessing.

Venture Capital 266

Venture Capital Class Invest Equity 266

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. You can tell if they have a deep-seated competitive spirit. Can’t go a mile deep on competition?

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire Sales 286

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 18, 2014

We just had the demo day for our third batch of companies. I do think the way we work with companies is a little different from other programs, in that we view it much more like the wasyI personally think about investing and venture capital. It''s not a three month program, demo day, and folks move out or move on.

Incubator 187

Incubator Southern California Startup Ideas 187

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Packaging, pricing & discounts – In the early days of my first company we always had “list prices&# we quoted to customers and of course we were always willing to negotiate based on who the client was, how important the business was to us, who the competition was and how well the deal was negotiated. We called it PUCCKA.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

Tech.Co

APRIL 24, 2018

Not to mention there’s a chance at a possible investment from the Established Investment Community. Being a part of the SOTY alumni lasts well beyond the pitch competition. One of our advisors heard about the Startup of the Year competition and thought we should consider pitching. A Strong Alumni Network. APPLY HERE.

Startup 70

Startup Competition Google Capital 70

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 27, 2020

Describe technology and features, not competitiveness. Customers still buy from people, and investors invest in you and your team, more than the solution. You shouldn’t expect to get an investment commitment in the elevator, or close a customer deal in the first minute. Highlight the solution more than the team.

Sample 127

Sample Summary Startup Slides 127

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 8, 2015

The first page of the business plan better be an executive summary which gives the investor a taste of the financials, as well as opportunity, competition, and key executives. “I Investors invest in the jockey, more than the horse. Let me show you a demo rather than a business plan.”

Technical Review 109

Technical Review Entrepreneur Startup Statistics 109

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There are too many deals to look at, too many seed funds or angels asking you to look at deals and weekly “demo days” with manicured and monocultural presentations crafted by experienced story tellers to help even the mundane idea sound like it will. I still plan to keep more normal pace of investment which is 1-2 deals per year.

Software Review 150

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Invest 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

The first page of the business plan better be an executive summary which gives the investor a taste of the financials, as well as opportunity, competition, and key executives. “I Investors invest in the jockey, more than the horse. Let me show you a demo rather than a business plan.”

Entrepreneur 119

Entrepreneur Technical Review Statistics Startup 119

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 5, 2018

The first page of the business plan better be an executive summary which gives the investor a taste of the financials, as well as opportunity, competition, and key executives. “I Investors invest in the jockey, more than the horse. Let me show you a demo rather than a business plan.”

Funding 62

Funding Technical Review Entrepreneur Startup 62

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. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support. This includes presentations, ROI calculators, competitive analyses and so forth.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 22, 2018

There will be demos, tutorials, and presentations on how to be safe.” “Lime would have an opportunity to control the narrative, engage with the local community, and invest in Santa Monica. They can make it clear that they care about the constituency there.

Santa Monica 221

Santa Monica Startup Technical Review Education 221

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

They demoed the electricity transfer with a physical device that looked like something that would never be allowed on an airplane. Meredith Perry came up with the idea for uBeam while still in college at University of Pennsylvania and like many great inventors won her school’s business plan competition. But it seemed to work.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2012

Competition and sustainable advantage. List and position your competition, or alternatives available to the customer. Highlight your sustainable competitive advantages, and barriers to entry. What equity is the company willing to give in return for the investment? What is the timeframe of return on investment?

Slides 99

Slides Competition Sample Sales 99

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

You can cash out whenever they want or just save as an investment. Here is a demo of our trading platform: Do you have plans to launch an offline-say SMS-based bitcoin? Any competition? We have lots of competition. The CoinMKT then becomes their trading account so that they can begin trading cryptocurrencies.

Southern California 76

Southern California Startup Platform Santa Monica 76

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 8, 2014

This is the killer feature for the giant YouTuber base invested in sub-$2,000 cameras, of which most lack HD-SDI required from previous TriCaster models. The Demo unit we were shown included a battery-powered external HDMI monitor and USB wireless mouse & keyboard, allowing for a full TriCaster setup with only one power plug!

Screening 103

Screening Entertainment Content Platform 103

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2015

The Founder needs to remember that meetings up to this point have been primarily off-site, with staged demos, and managed personally by the CEO or a small team. If there are conflicts within the team, or differing views of the strategy, or evidence of missing processes and tools, the investment process will likely be terminated.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Entrepreneur 108

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

The first attention we started getting was after we launched the company publicly at Demo on September 25th of this year. A number of VC’s stopped by our booth or watched our demo on the DEMO website and we had about 5 proactive inquiries. The first VC I met with came from attending DEMO. Page 3: Competition.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

socalTECH

MARCH 2, 2020

How did you get investors interested in investing in such a large project like a new operating system? Usually, investors like to invest in people who are taking an existing platform and extending it into a market. Are Android and iOS then your competition? David Smith: That's a very good question. It's all working.

Platform 168

Platform Startup Examples Web 168

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 21, 2011

I dropped in to check out the contest a few times during the competition and the environment was uplifting and exciting. Sparqlight – parts prebuilt before competition. Quick Web App Builder (QWAB) – parts prebuilt before competition. The coolest part about these products was that most of the were live working demos.

Santa Monica 90

Santa Monica Startup PHP HTML 90

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 2, 2012

Many VC firms and investment banks receive as many as ten plans per day, so it’s hard to get them salivating. Remember, investors invest in people before ideas. Prototypes and demos attached. Fill the text with acronyms. They assume heavy use of acronyms in inconsiderate, lazy, or maybe an intentional obfuscation of facts.

Summary 97

Summary Technical Review .Net Ideas 97

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

million led by GRP Partners, with participation from Baroda Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), Daher Capital, Double M Capital, Karlin Ventures, Clark Landry, Andy Rankin, and Launchpad LA. YieldMetrics has already raised $1.7 The product integrates with Salesforce, Twitter, Zendesk and many other popular SaaS products.

GRP Partners 96

GRP Partners Startup Tech Coast Angels Bertelsmann 96

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2011

Competition and sustainable advantage. List and position your competition, or alternatives available to the customer. Highlight your sustainable competitive advantages, and barriers to entry. What equity is the company willing to give in return for the investment? What is the timeframe of return on investment?

Slides 93

Slides Competition Sample Sales 93

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. If you don’t believe in your bones that you’re amazing then it’s no wonder you don’t want to sell them on making the investment.”

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

If you give $2 million for 20% of a company ($8 million pre + $2 million investment = $10 million post-money valuation) that has no product and no customers and it turns around 3 months later and sells for $5 million it would hardly be fair for investor to get $1 million back (20% of the proceeds). Get yourself in a big demo day competition.

Press 357

Press Startup Yahoo Venture Capital 357

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Many VC firms and investment banks receive as many as ten plans per day, so it’s hard to get them salivating. Remember, investors invest in people before ideas. Prototypes and demos attached. Fill the text with acronyms. They assume heavy use of acronyms in inconsiderate, lazy, or maybe an intentional obfuscation of facts.

Summary 97

Summary Technical Review .Net Ideas 97

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2010

Competition and sustainable advantage. List and position your competition, or alternatives available to the customer. Highlight your sustainable competitive advantages, and barriers to entry. What equity is the company willing to give in return for the investment? What is the timeframe of return on investment?

Slides 94

Slides Competition Sample Sales 94

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

How To Pitch A Product - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , August 4, 2010 I've said a bunch of times on this blog that the perfect pitch is a very short intro to provide context followed immediately by a demo. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note.”. Developer.

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2010

People tend to overvalue past investments when making forward-looking investment decisions. Just because a product has a patent, deep complexity and an obvious competitive advantage does not mean that it can fly by itself into the market. had two occasions recently to review products which had clear market leadership.

Startup 175

Startup Venture Capital Slides Blogging 175

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

We feel pressure to hit milestones for a variety of reasons: Investor presentations, conference demos, customer sales meetings, competitive pressures, a need to drive revenue, business development commitments – whatever. There is nothing that will focus the mind more than not wanting to be on stage with a demo that bombs.

Software 344

Software Startup Design Course 344

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

But there are other reasons people churn – low product quality, inability to understand the value of the product, costs, competitive products, etc. Revenue metrics are one of the first things I ask for from the startups in which I invest. It has to come from somewhere. You need to win share of mind. Revenue Metrics.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup SEO Customer 346

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

This Panel is filled with investing super stars who will be going over must have content for all the startups and entrepreneurs out there. Investment trends in startups that are about or related to social media. They make it easy to collect investment funds, track ownership, and provide targeted updates to investors.

Social Media 71

Social Media Technical Review Mixergy Tech Coast Angels 71