Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

There was no money train. Starting in 2009 I began writing checks consistently, year-in and year-out. I admit that my writing style back then was a bit more carefree, provocative and opinionated. It was a way to make it hard for your competition to compete. It was 1991. We still loved every moment.

Venture Capital 466

Venture Capital Startup Marketing Pricing 466

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

As a founder, when you’ve been dealing with these kinds of objections for a couple of years it becomes natural and you easily handle objections on price, product & competition without much thought. It is tacit knowledge. Some examples of common objections across many companies: 1.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

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 reality is that a journalist who’s writing a story about you – a relatively unknown entity – wants to hear directly from the founders and/or the CEO.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2020

I agree with Dr. Ardi’s writing, that most successful workplaces of the future need to adopt the following beta characteristics, and align themselves more with the beta leadership model: Do away with archaic command-and-control models. Become their sponsor – onboarding with training and tools is essential. These would never happen.

Organization 149

Organization Competition Entrepreneur Startup 149

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 15, 2022

Some entrepreneurs love to talk and produce videos, but hate to write anything down. From an investor perspective, understanding and acting early to establish a sustainable competitive advantage, and barrier to entry, is the best assurance of a financial return. Effective communication requires real listening, as well as talking.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Social Media Patents Mentor 111

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

The best of you train yourselves to show emotions sparingly and strategically, while the rest are convinced that emotions cannot be controlled , and are a function of culture and genetics. Write down your top 5 core values and review them often. Pressure and emotion in business is often an indication of core value conflicts.

Coach 137

Coach Training Satisfaction Mentor 137

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Crisis mode hires too often get done without due consideration for strategic fit, training requirements, and cultural considerations. I recommend a thirty to ninety-day trial period, defined in writing, where either party can terminate the relationship without recourse. Hiring before organizational structure is defined.

Organization 104

Organization Satisfaction Entrepreneur Screening 104

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage. For example, both need to provide exemplary customer service, build customer loyalty, and provide real value for a competitive price. You have no shelf life, so you can’t make money while you sleep.

Services 72

Services Startup Training Writing 72

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 13, 2020

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.

Outsource Development 122

Outsource Development Outsource Software Review Technical Review 122

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Usually that means writing something down, since it’s hard to maintain something, or track yourself against it, if it’s not written down. Do you believe that you have an idea for a company that you can implement better than anyone, and maintain a competitive advantage? Education and training roadblocks.

Startup 94

Startup Resource Training Ideas 94

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2020

Crisis mode hires too often get done without due consideration for strategic fit, training requirements, and cultural considerations. I recommend a thirty to ninety-day trial period, defined in writing, where either party can terminate the relationship without recourse. Hiring before organizational structure is defined.

Organization 135

Organization Satisfaction Entrepreneur Screening 135

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 27, 2014

With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage. For example, both need to provide exemplary customer service, build customer loyalty, and provide real value for a competitive price. You have no shelf life, so you can’t make money while you sleep.

Services 105

Services Startup Training Writing 105

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2020

Some entrepreneurs love to talk and produce videos, but hate to write anything down. From an investor perspective, understanding and acting early to establish a sustainable competitive advantage, and barrier to entry, is the best assurance of a financial return. Effective communication requires real listening, as well as talking.

Entrepreneur 126

Entrepreneur Social Media Patents Mentor 126

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

I think many board members (including VCs) were trained 10+ years ago when life was very different and their advice often comes from an outdated lens. I will add to this as I write more in the coming weeks on the topic. Journalists don’t often write stories that talk about, “This cool new company I met at a conference.”

Startup 355

Startup Funding News Press 355

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 17, 2016

With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage. For example, both need to provide exemplary customer service, build customer loyalty, and provide real value for a competitive price. You have no shelf life, so you can’t make money while you sleep.

Services 61

Services Startup Training Writing 61

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In addition, like an entrepreneur with a new business, you have to factor in all the indirect costs previously covered by employers, including training, health care, and time off for vacations. Here are some key strategies that I recommend to every worker today: Develop and highlight your competitive differentiation.

Startup 98

Startup Outsource Development Competition Social Media 98

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 1, 2015

Usually that means writing something down, since it’s hard to maintain something, or track yourself against it, if it’s not written down. Do you believe that you have an idea for a company that you can implement better than anyone, and maintain a competitive advantage? Education and training roadblocks.

Startup 109

Startup Resource Training Ideas 109

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

The fitness professional network develops business tools that make it easier for fitness professionals to run their businesses and keep their clients engaged between training sessions. We knew there’s a better personal training experience to be had, so we set out to create one. Any competition in LA? Who is on your team?

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

socalTECH

APRIL 30, 2009

Fonality, which is a venture-backed developer of PBX software used for replacing corporate phony systems, is in the midst of its own version of an employee morale-booster: training for the "Fonality Fight Club" and a competition refereed by martial arts expert Chris Reilly, who regularly trains fighters for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Culver City 140

Culver City Startup Training Class 140

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2017

Usually that means writing something down, since it’s hard to maintain something, or track yourself against it, if it’s not written down. Do you believe that you have an idea for a company that you can implement better than anyone, and maintain a competitive advantage? Education and training roadblocks.

Startup 57

Startup Resource Training Ideas 57

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2: As expected at least one person accused me of writing this post because I want to see lower valuations. As an early stage investor you’re often planning around 10x your investment at the time your write your first check so in this case you’d be going into your investment expecting an exit of $800 – $1.2

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Usually that means writing something down, since it’s hard to maintain something, or track yourself against it, if it’s not written down. Do you believe that you have an idea for a company that you can implement better than anyone, and maintain a competitive advantage? Education and training roadblocks.

Entrepreneur 97

Entrepreneur Startup Resource Training 97

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. I poured myself into planning and I won the class-wide competition. Lawrence) both helped me master the rules of writing and tap into my creativity. Please go see the film.

Class 340

Class Education Technical Review Writing 340

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2021

How I Shifted from Just Counting Calories to Supercharging My Fitness Workouts This is part of a weight loss and fitness improvement series that I’m writing to share how I went from 222 pounds and unable to bike more than 20 minutes on a Peloton to 153 pounds and running 8–12 miles / day in just 18 months. On May 31st the competition ended.

Startup 302

Startup Screening Competition Training 302

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Usually that means writing something down, since it’s hard to maintain something, or track yourself against it, if it’s not written down. Do you believe that you have an idea for a company that you can implement better than anyone, and maintain a competitive advantage? Education and training roadblocks.

Entrepreneur 106

Entrepreneur Startup Resource Training 106

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. At this stage, you should start recruiting, hiring, paying, and training others to help you run your business. Here you will likely need to train others to help you, so more detail may be required in this process.

Startup 107

Startup Outsource Development Training Outsource 107

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 11, 2018

I agree with Dr. Ardi’s writing, that most successful workplaces of the future need to adopt the following beta characteristics, and align themselves more with the beta leadership model: Do away with archaic command-and-control models. Become their sponsor – onboarding with training and tools is essential. These would never happen.

Organization 51

Organization Competition Entrepreneur Writing 51

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2016

On September 10th of this year I spent an entire day in California State Prison with people who had committed felonies and worked with them on business plans to help them create legal enterprise upon their release as part of Defy Ventures 6-month training program. I will write about that as soon as Caroline is ready. You can go.

Writing 150

Writing Startup Design Training 150

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. Are Android and iOS then your competition? It's all on the client side.

Platform 168

Platform Startup Examples Web 168

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Even when your startup is a one-man show, you will soon find that you are “out of control,” unless you start organizing and writing down how and when key things need to get done. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. But having no process does not make you more competitive.

Startup 102

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 102

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2016

I agree with Dr. Ardi’s writing, that most successful workplaces of the future need to adopt the following beta characteristics, and align themselves more with the beta leadership model: Do away with archaic command-and-control models. Become their sponsor – onboarding with training and tools is essential. These would never happen.

Startup 66

Startup Organization Competition Entrepreneur 66

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

I agree with Dr. Ardi’s writing, that most successful workplaces of the future need to adopt the following beta characteristics, and align themselves more with the beta leadership model: Do away with archaic command-and-control models. Become their sponsor – onboarding with training and tools is essential. These would never happen.

Organization 99

Organization Competition Entrepreneur Startup 99

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. I’ve started writing up some of those sales & marketing lessons and I plan to continue to build that section out over time. We focused together on improving our sales methodology, our training and our comp plans.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2014

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.

Outsource Development 95

Outsource Development Outsource Offshore Software Review 95

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2012

In all cases, don’t skip the basic training. then you can start writing a recipe. Follow the “how to” instructions above for combining the ingredients, combined with you own “special sauce” (competitive edge), and I’m sure you will deliver a tasty dish, on time and with a profit. For now, get cooking! Marty Zwilling.

Startup 96

Startup Writing Metrics Marketing 96

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2014

Some entrepreneurs love to talk and produce videos, but hate to write anything down. From an investor perspective, understanding and acting early to establish a sustainable competitive advantage, and barrier to entry, is the best assurance of a financial return. Effective communication requires real listening, as well as talking.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Angel Social Media Patents 107

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

A new group of investors have clustered around writing earlier-stage, smaller checks. I used an analogy I heard from Michael Dougherty (founder of Jelli) recounting what First Round Capital told him, “sometimes you’re on the local train and sometimes you’re on the express train. That’s awesome.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308