Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2023

So before you decide to move your manufacturing, software development, or call center out of town, make sure you understand the following considerations: Don’t give someone else control of your competitive advantage. Saving cost won’t help you if you can’t make the daily innovations required to stay competitive.

Software Review 114

Software Review Technical Review Outsource Development Outsource 114

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

” Bill Gross, who is one of the Godfathers of the Internet, once told me, “ If you don’t design a product that is 10x better than the competition then you’ll never build anything truly big or amazing.” Tech Market Analysis Upfront Ventures makespace' 10x the experience. Full on burger flipping mode.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire Startup 380

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2014

I could have listened to her for hours as many of her lessons were ones I hadn’t heard before such as how she used online gaming when she was younger as a way of both teaching herself tech as well as learning to lead remote teams. Nanea Reeves has a storied career in senior leadership roles at technology companies.

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Blogging RSS Organization 315

socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2014

Michael Chasin: LawKick.com is essentially a marketplace that makes it easier than ever to find legal help. How the website works, is the client goes to the website, and indicates what they need help with. That''s how we ended up developing this technology, to take that initial step out of the process. What''s LawKick about?

Help 240

Help Startup CTO Hire Pricing 240

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Last week, the University of Southern California 's Viterbi School of Engineering announced that it had established a new, business plan competition, the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition ([link] specifically aimed at students in the engineering school. Why a business plan competition, and why in engineering school?

Competition 154

Competition Southern California Mentor USC 154

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

We thought today for our interview, that we'd get an update on the angel investment environment here in Southern California from Scott Sangster , the incoming President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Tech Coast Angels , the biggest angel investment group in Southern California. How is deal flow quality so far this year? Of course not.

Tech Coast Angels 182

Tech Coast Angels Technical Review Angel Southern California 182

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 26, 2010

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. Rather they should get a part-time Acting CTO who can help close the gap. Bottom line – if as you recognize this gap, then reach out to get a slice of a CTO who can help bridge the gap.

Fractional CTO 225

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach 225

TechCrunch LA

MAY 20, 2021

One startup that aims to help make the process simpler, cheaper and less stressful by helping people manage the home renovation process has raised $6 million to help it grow even faster. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar trillion-dollar industry.

Technical Review 185

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital Software Review 185

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

There’s an article making the rounds in tech circles titled “ Growth Hacking is Bull ” written by Muhammad Saleem. His early experience was at LogMeIn and then he went on to help Xobni, DropBox, LookOut and EventBrite to name a few companies I’m sure you’ve heard of. Success begets success.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review SEM SEO Marketing 384

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2016

What they don’t realize is that about half the investment deals fail to close at this stage, including mergers and acquisitions , during the due-diligence process. Remember that investors at this stage have heard primarily from the founder, and only reviewed written business plans and collateral. Skeletons in the closet.

Technical Review 55

Technical Review Help Innocal Startup 55

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

The “span of control” for a growing tech startup is probably 6-9 people. You help them prioritize their objectives and review the results. If you hire truly talented people you end up definitionally with a lot of competitive peers who will inevitably jockey for resources and control. You set direction.

Entrepreneur 385

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Sales 385

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

XPRIZE , the nonprofit organization which has been using large dollar prize competitions to spur innovation in a wide range of areas, has booted up a brand new, $2M prize around ocean health, the group said this week. xprize ocean health carbon dioxide emissions competition prize' The XPRIZE Foundation said that. READ MORE>>.

Southern California 204

Southern California Technical Review Competition Organization 204

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. By going on sales calls you pick up directly the feedback of what customers want and also what they’re telling you about competition.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

Testing is what helps determine whether you’re really on to something. It is often the fortuitous mixture of new technologies, customer awareness and then acceptance of the technology and then the slow adoption into our daily lives that leads to markets exploding. We technology leaders also make this mistake.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one. 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.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

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. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. If you like the quick summary notes, please check out Adam’s blog on tech, entrepreneurship & VC as a thank you. West Coast”).

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

leadership, mentorship, competitiveness, communications, relationship-building?—?and and of course a relentless pursuit of helping founders succeed. She took an operating role helping run Citysearch and Urbanspoon. Leadership is about recognizing your next generation of talent and helping lift them up.

Venture Capital 361

Venture Capital Startup Invest CitySearch 361

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2009

The venture backed startup--which has scored funding from the Tech Coast Angels and VantagePoint Venture Partners--appears to have significant overlap to Google's new Google Voice services. However, Alex Quilici, the firm's CEO, told socalTECH that he actually sees something good from the competition. READ MORE>>.

Google 100

Google Competition Tech Coast Angels Technical Review 100

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

If I’m interested I get to spend more time with them, if I’m not I don’t have to – A few companies per month come in that have fascinating business ideas that warrant my spending more time trying to understand their people, company, technology and market. So I spend much time with them and trying to help.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Tech.Co

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

From apps to hardware, to KickStarter successes and international startups, we’re inching closer to finding out who will take home the title of Startup of the Year competition at our annual Celebrate Conference in October. Among the dozens of participants that applied for the online competitions, only a few progressed into the semifinals.

Competition 110

Competition Mobile Startup Technical Review 110

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

AngelList 101 : As you know, AngelList is a platform where angels can invest in semi-screened tech deals. It should help some entrepreneurs to better access early-stage capital and should allow some angel investors better access to deal flow. Social proof can be helpful. They will have to help get the next round done.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 10, 2010

It’s an important film and the most important topic of our generation if we as a country want to remain competitive in a world that has globalized. Pouring more money into the system isn’t helping because THE SYSTEM is broken. I poured myself into planning and I won the class-wide competition.

Class 340

Class Education Technical Review Writing 340

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

Sometimes they rush to raise cash because they don’t have a well articulated product / market fit and they think having more money will help them have more time to prove the business. They see capital raising at the success validator. ” True. Like DeviantArt. With 30 million registered users on a global basis. why did they buy?

Startup 401

Startup Customer Custom Technical Review 401

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

Responding to Elizabeth Warren’s call to regulate and break up some of the nation’s largest technology companies, the venture capitalists that invest in technology companies are advising the presidential hopeful to move slowly and not break anything. This is not a new model, and it makes no sense,” says Narasin.

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

socalTECH

MARCH 22, 2019

Los Angeles-based XPRIZE , the nonprofit which runs competitions to encourage the development of new technology to solve some of the world's problems, has put its efforts behind forest health, saying it has put together an outline of potential breakthroughs required for healthier forest ecosystems. READ MORE>>.

Technical Review 133

Technical Review Competition Research Los Angeles 133

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 4, 2014

I think as a tech industry we have bred a culture that places more emphasis on product excellence than managing human behavior. But I would posit that in order to sustainably build great products in an intensely competitive industry with skills shortages – people management is one of the most critical soft skills organizations need.

Startup 340

Startup Technical Review Course Press 340

socalTECH

DECEMBER 12, 2013

DreamHost was doing around $30 million when I joined, and we''re now approaching $50 million in recurring revenue, due to hosting growth and cloud hosting growth. We wanted to give him that opportunity, and came up with a deal and structure which helped him but also added fuel to the fire for product and marketing and growth activity.

Software Review 238

Software Review Cloud Computing Technical Review Platform 238

socalTECH

OCTOBER 14, 2016

The XPRIZE Foundation , the group which has been organizing prize-based competitions to help advance critical areas of technology to benefit mankind, announced on Thursday that it has 32 teams from 22 countries who are competing for its $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE. READ MORE>>.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Competition Organization Technology 100

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

To say that the tech elite were cynical of Hulu’s launch would be an understatement , but by the time it launched just a few months later it was getting great reviews. Because they are anti-competitive most countries ban cartels. I have personally always felt a sort of cognitive dissonance regarding Hulu.

Hulu 292

Hulu Technical Review Content Advertising 292

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. While many tech startups do this intuitively (say, SnapChat thinking it would be much better if our photos out partying disappeared) it still happens. So they’ll have to look for other competitive advantages for distribution.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

I believe that it is part of the DNA of an entrepreneur – being so competitive that you’re practically sick when you lose. They’re competitive. They had a prominent NorCal investor already so I thought a SoCal lead would make sense – that I could help them in a more hands-on way. They had agreed!

Outsource Development 333

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 333

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

I believe that it is part of the DNA of an entrepreneur – being so competitive that you’re practically sick when you lose. They’re competitive. They had a prominent NorCal investor already so I thought a SoCal lead would make sense – that I could help them in a more hands-on way. They had agreed!

Outsource Development 328

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 328

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. Use competition to make sure you get a fair price. I acknowledged this in the article.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 15, 2012

There are many paths into the VC world, but they can generally be lumped into two categories: (i) serial entrepreneurship, and (ii) tech-oriented investment banking. This probably won't lead directly to a job as a VC, but it will help you execute the next task. Hang Out With VCs - VCs love free help.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Technical Review Invest RSS 242

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. If you have a market lead then raising capital and making investments now will help you as others enter the market. If you spent the 3 years perfecting some hugely differentiated technology IP that may also be different.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2022

In these days of global competition via multiple channels, you need continuous marketing to find more customers. Acknowledge every customer feedback and review. Don’t let that one negative stand out as the only review submitted. Entice advocates and influencers to help you. They won’t find you.

Technical Review 142

Technical Review Social Media Conference Customer 142