Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2016

Defy teaches them personal finance like how to keep a checking account, the difference between debt and equity, what cashflow is and so forth. Defy Ventures runs business plan competitions and has people like us who attend and give business advice and feedback. She was smart (she started her career in private equity!)

Writing 150

Writing Startup Design Training 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. 3. We then addressed competition in the context of SiteAdvisor and how it is important for journalists, customers, and the companies themselves. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 22, 2010

After you have successfully attracted angels or venture capital with your business case, your million dollar product idea, and you have a signed term sheet, there is still one more hurdle to overcome before investors write the check. Product or service readiness. Sustainable competitive advantage. No validated pain, no deal.

Technical Review 90

Technical Review Writing Competition Tips 90

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. ” I know it sounds obvious.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2010

Most advisors will tell you to write the business plan first (20-30 pages), then distill the key points into a set of Microsoft PowerPoint slides for standup presentations to potential investors. Make sure to communicate the relevance of your product / services to market needs. Competition and sustainable advantage.

Slides 94

Slides Competition Sample Sales 94

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

When to get a lawyer - If you plan to be a venture or angel backed technology company (what I mostly write about) the best time to start meeting and getting to know lawyers is long before you ever start your company. I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. But make it competitive.

Startup 318

Startup IP Southern California Entrepreneur 318

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

I get to do a deep dive on their business model, product roadmap and competitive positioning. I was always in a “service&# industry. You call in from your vacation because you’ve had a service outage. The upside for entrepreneurs is the equity in their business. I get to choose what I write about.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

InfoChachkie

JUNE 4, 2012

Evaluate their sincerity by asking them to accept equity in exchange for all or a portion of their overall compensation. Thus, you have negotiating leverage as long as a legitimate, competitive threat exists. Your commitments to investors must be significant enough to compel them to write you a check. Fallacy: Yes.

Entrepreneur 272

Entrepreneur Outsource Ideas Technical Review 272

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

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. When you account for competition for talent, the difficulty of retention, the cost of living and the difficulty of rising above the noise – there are many advantages of staying put.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

We had to write a CRM to keep track of them all. equity debate. The right way to position against competition - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , August 23, 2010 This is Part 4 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.?? There is no competition. What’s going to happen in the future?' We declined.

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. If you give away your product or service to the first 10 customers, that’s a good learning experience, but it’s not real traction. It’s also the keystone to convincing investors that you have a “sustainable competitive advantage.”

Funding 112

Funding Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire 112

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

That, plus I love the space of high-customer-service, focused eCommerce for moms worried about what their kids eat & wear.&#. He has set up an office, a process & people around him that are helpful to entrepreneurs in need of hands-on skills in a mass service way. I know this guy is a money maker.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. If you give away your product or service to the first 10 customers, that’s a good learning experience, but it’s not real traction. It’s also the keystone to convincing investors that you have a “sustainable competitive advantage.”

Startup 104

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 104

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

Big thank you to Darius Vasefi , of EyeOnJewels for the write up. Later they became big business in Financial services lead-gen. o Put a timeframe/money – competition in the picture. Matt’s commitment to re-investing in tech startups is reminiscent to this great Fred Wilson post of “recycling capital. &#.

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Startup Customer Custom 304

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

Gross margin (GM) is the amount of profit you make per sale of your product or service taking into account your total costs of selling that product or service. So money spent should add equity value or create IP that eventually will. In that article I linked to I outline the difference between gross margin & net margin.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. If you give away your product or service to the first 10 customers, that’s a good learning experience, but it’s not real traction. It’s also the keystone to convincing investors that you have a “sustainable competitive advantage.”

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 101

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. It’s usually a spreadsheet or PowerPoint (deck) of the upcoming changes to a product or service. Greathouse: Yea, that’s an impressive list.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. If you give away your product or service to the first 10 customers, that’s a good learning experience, but it’s not real traction. It’s also the keystone to convincing investors that you have a “sustainable competitive advantage.”

Tips 88

Tips Startup CTO Hire Press 88

From the Venture Trenches

MARCH 27, 2013

Yet despite his ability to raise over $1 billion of private equity and to build an organization that is worth $5 billion as of this writing, Mason was shown the door. Many service businesses or eTailers can quickly grow to five or ten million in revenues but struggle to expand further. Does your business model scale?

Venture Capital 45

Venture Capital Capital Anthem Startup 45

socalTECH

MARCH 6, 2017

It seem that now, versus a few years ago, it's a lot more competitive to try to get out and acquire a user profitably for an app. But then it's easy to transition into a conversation about another part of our business, which is the publishing and monetization service for these apps. And they are all roller coasters, as you know.

Media 153

Media Mobile Startup Acquisition 153

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

You don’t have unlimited equity to dole out. She can anticipate reactions to price increases or product changes by customers and she can sustain competitive challenges because she knows the customer will stick by her. I wanted to just write. I like writing. What I’m talking about is making tough decisions.

Startup 150

Startup Coach Course Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. customers who paid for services often get burned. I believe that. And well they should be.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. but: Something is Still Missing.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

InfoChachkie

JUNE 25, 2009

As outlined in Beware the Consultant , be wary when selecting a professional services firm. Like most mature markets, the legal profession is highly segmented with respect to the services provided and markets served. Even so, the majority of firms focus on servicing well-established BDC’s. free weekly Infochachkie articles!

Technical Advisors 124

Technical Advisors Technical Review IP Patents 124