Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 11, 2013

Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. First of all, Seth Godin pointed out a few years ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Develop viral content.

Marketing 99

Marketing Entrepreneur Startup SEM 99

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Here investors are looking for feature problems or quality issues on the current product. A hard look will be taken at the technology maturity, the current development progress, and customer satisfaction with early product shipments. Status of the solution. In addition, manufacturing and inventory levels will be reviewed.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Invest 118

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ringrevenue’s call performance marketing platform enables ad networks, agencies, advertisers & publishers to generate more inbound sales calls.”. In today’s market, so much focus is placed on transacting business online. Why aren’t there a half-dozen well-funded startups running up your tailpipe?

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2012

Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. First of all, Seth Godin pointed out a few years ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Develop viral content.

Marketing 95

Marketing Startup SEM Blogging 95

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

In most cases, I provide some combination of the following advice: Brevity - Maximum length: two pages. No VC Fit - Match your venture with appropriate funding source. Hopefully this straightforward format will help you avoid overly obtuse verbiage, while keeping your executive summary to two pages. Competition.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2015

Few investors these days have the time or patience to read a full business plan, so a better way to catch their eye is with a tightly written and well formatted two-page executive summary. Skip the fuzzy marketing terms, such as "easier to use," "lower cost" and "disruptive technology."

Summary 101

Summary Patents Technical Review Competition 101

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 21, 2011

Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. First of all, Seth Godin pointed out a couple of years ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Develop viral content.

Marketing 90

Marketing Startup SEM Blogging 90

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

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

They are tasked with “getting deals done” so they race around talking to tons of potential partners inking anything from channel sale deals , product integration, international distribution agreements, co-marketing arrangements, M&A discussions, etc. You have a marketing department with three people.

Activity 164

Activity Conference Press Case Study 164

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

As a startup advisor and investor, I recommend a pitch deck with about 10 slides backed up with a written business plan of approximately 20 pages, both containing quantified answers to the following key questions. This is also the place to first mention patents and any other differentiators that put you ahead of competition.

Invest 108

Invest Startup Slides Equity 108

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2012

As a member of the local Angel group selection committee, I’ve seen a lot of startup presentations to investors, and I’ve never seen one that was too short - maybe short on content, but not short on pages! Here are the ten slides you need: Problem and market need. Solution product & technology. Opportunity sizing.

Slides 99

Slides Competition Sample Sales 99

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

People mistook extra doses of Ajax for a successful product. The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. I have seen really great product people espouse the death of the business plan. Do so at your peril.

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Tech.Co

AUGUST 1, 2017

Once a novelty act reserved for indie band albums and curious art projects, crowdfunding is starting to play a major role in the world of startups and new products. There’s a lot of opportunity in crowdfunding, but the market is more crowded now (no pun intended) than it ever has been. The interest is well-placed.

Startup 93

Startup Social Media Tips Ideas 93

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Every new startup I know dreams of being funded by an angel investor. Yet according to the latest data from AngelSoft , only about 3 out of 100 companies who initiate the formal request process actually get funded. Remember the old adage that “investors fund people, not ideas.” Build a prototype product.

Angel 89

Angel Funding Technical Review Startup 89

socalTECH

MAY 23, 2012

How do a bunch of German moviemakers end up in Los Angeles, running a site helping studios to market and promote their films via their venture backed startup? We create a page which starts at first rumor, and engages and supports those projects. MOviepilot is starting to bring its movie recommendations and discovery site to the U.S.,

Startup 164

Startup Paramount Netflix Entertainment 164

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

There was no viral social networking products back then like Twitter where people could easily discover your content. I had intended to talk about how bad the process could become, not to name-and-shame anybody (and The Funded was not yet around). I hadn’t thought about the fact that he would become aware of my link.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2010

As a member of the local angel group Selection Committee, I’ve seen a lot of startup presentations to investors, and I’ve never seen one that was too short - maybe short on content, but not short on pages! Here are the ten slides you need: Problem and market need. Solution product & technology. Opportunity sizing.

Slides 94

Slides Competition Sample Sales 94

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. No investor wants to wait that long for his payback, or fund the years of waiting. Industry & market sizing. Start with the evolution of the overall industry, market segmentation, market dynamics, and customer landscape.

Competition 113

Competition Metrics Startup Invest 113

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2011

As a member of the local Angel group selection committee, I’ve seen a lot of startup presentations to investors, and I’ve never seen one that was too short - maybe short on content, but not short on pages! Here are the ten slides you need: Problem and market need. Solution product & technology. Opportunity sizing.

Slides 93

Slides Competition Sample Sales 93

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

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. No investor wants to wait that long for his payback, or fund the years of waiting. Industry & market sizing. Start with the evolution of the overall industry, market segmentation, market dynamics, and customer landscape.

Competition 116

Competition Metrics Startup Sales 116

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

Last year at this time I spoke at VidCon and gave this presentation in which I said YouTube was “the Walmart of Online Video” but I also commented that I felt YouTube was vulnerable to competition because their rev share to MCNs wasn’t high enough to allow MCNs to build a profitable business inside of YouTube.

Invest 291

Invest Content Media Networking 291

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 20, 2016

Thus the top priority of every entrepreneur who wants funding should be to build and highlight their “dream team” of co-founders, executives and advisers, to attract the biggest and best investors. If your team has a depth of expertise in software, that won’t help you get funding for a new hardware solution.

Startup 60

Startup Entrepreneur Software Review Technical Review 60

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. I have always worked on early stage products. Greathouse: Great products and companies that came out (of) Santa Barbara.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

Can a startup gain a foothold in the competitive market by designing the right UX and user experience to make a job and career site for everyone? There''s a huge demand for a limited supply of employees, in particularly, there a large demand for product developers, and there''s a shortage of experienced people.

Design 174

Design Sites Cornerstone OnDemand Startup 174

Tech.Co

MAY 22, 2018

Truth be told, your only path to some serious funding is perseverance and diligence in getting meetings and being prepared. One of the biggest turn offs for investors are founders who don’t know the basics of their business, especially their market and customer. What startup teams don’t realize is that having competition is good.

Tips 70

Tips Help Slides Technical Review 70

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

The strategy of GigaOm and where they differentiate in the market. Venture Capital funds: the different between “closed funds&# (which typically have a 10-year time horizon) and “evergreen funds&# which re-invest profits back into the fund. Are “strategic investors&# (e.g.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Google Web Sites 225

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Their first fund was a $75 million fund raised in 2006 and they very recently announced a brand new $130 million fund. Closing a VC fund in 2009/10 is a major achievement in and of itself. In the intro section of the show we talked a lot about why VC funds are becoming smaller again and where Greycroft fits.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

Maybe small amounts of money for what founders reading these pages dream of but life-changing for many. Before this South Korean wonder spread across the globe I had written about a trend in global audiences that exists when the costs of production are nearly zero and the costs of distribution are also nearly free. billion views.

Startup 380

Startup Media Content Platform 380

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 24, 2012

Every new startup I know dreams of being funded early by one of the 318,000 active Angel investors in the USA alone. Here is my list of top ten action items to best prepare you for success in achieving a funding event with Angels: Incorporate the business now. Remember the old adage that “investors fund people, not ideas.”

Angel 104

Angel Screening Summary Startup 104

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 17, 2012

Armed with a degree in Marketing and Business from University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and an Operations experience from Ireland, UAE and Egypt , Ciaran Connolly, 36 teamed up with Ernist Turdubaev 33, with a Master of Arts – Retail and Government Sector to launch ProfileTree. Any funding yet?

Advertising 79

Advertising Services Social Network Startup 79

socalTECH

OCTOBER 10, 2013

We''ve now reached critical mass in content, and in Asia we''re number three in the amount of information on products and suppliers online. We went from no suppliers to now over 160,000 suppliers, over two million products online. Michael Kleist: We''re seed funded, and have already raised money from twelve investors.

Southern California 170

Southern California Startup SoCal CTO Hire 170

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

That’s because a company’s value is a composite of all of the quantitative and qualitative factors that comprise a company: revenues, expenses, risks, growth prospects, quality of the management team, competitive advantages, strength of the intellectual property, and so forth. Detail isn’t important; tracking your progress is.

.Net 89

.Net Metrics Competition Template 89

socalTECH

APRIL 14, 2010

I was working with sponsors and partners, and finding that they were interested in identifying smaller markets where they could hone in on an audience, versus buying ads on something like iVillage with millions of eyeballs. MyGloss.com is our home page, and we also aggregate across our network, and that's definitely a popular destination.

Networking 230

Networking Social Media Startup Search Engine Optimization 230

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. No investor wants to wait that long for his payback, or fund the years of waiting. Industry & market sizing. Start with the evolution of the overall industry, market segmentation, market dynamics, and customer landscape.

Invest 74

Invest Tips Competition Metrics 74

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Every new startup I know dreams of being funded by an angel investor. Yet according to the latest data from Gust (formerly AngelSoft), only about 3 out of 100 companies who initiate the formal request process actually get funded. Remember the old adage that “investors fund people, not ideas.” Build a prototype product.

Invest 99

Invest Angel Technical Review Summary 99

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

The Mimiboard beat ten other apps from Africa to be the best at the App demo competition held at the Nairobi Open Innovation Summit in May. For example, goods for sale – people add items that are for sale, their contact details, images of the product. Using our quick export function – he can embed this on a website or facebook page.

Advertising 91

Advertising Media News Content 91