Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 13, 2011

For the next four days if you’re in the tech industry you’re going to hear a non-stop stream of information about SXSW. Many startups get caught up in the conference circuit. They have fun & meet tons of interesting people and they confuse this with the need to do be at every major tech event. Choose wisely.

Conference

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2014

I wrote a version of this post four years ago but given the hectic nature of today’s tech markets I thought it was worth revisiting and updating. As the day approached I noticed that there was a conference in LA that I wanted to attend. ” So I didn’t go to the conference. I wrote him the following email.

Conference

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

It influenced a generation of tech marketers. The book popularized the technology adoption lifecycle curve that originally came out of Iowa State University shown below. So the early part of a technology company is about finding your hard core group of early adopters and making them passionate about your products.

Marketing

SoCal Tech Calendar

MAY 1, 2010

Friday, May 7, 2010 -- California Clean Innovations Conference. The 4th annual California Clean Innovation (CACI) conference is a forum for investors, entrepreneurs, and managers to review the current clean technology trends and commercially viable innovations.

Conference

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

Some people do the conference circuit too much, get involved in lots of side projects and attend every entrepreneur dinner. When I go to conference I never sit in the meeting section – I always cruise the halls meeting people. We end up out a lot at events: dinners, cocktail parties, conferences. We travel together.

Venture Capital

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 11, 2011

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Interview former employers, more than the candidate.

Technical Review

SoCal Tech Calendar

APRIL 29, 2011

Thursday, May 5, 2011 -- 2011 California Clean Innovation Conference. The 5th annual California Clean Innovation (CACI) Conference is a forum for investors, entrepreneurs, managers, and students to review the current clean technology trends and commercially viable innovations.

Conference

SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 29, 2011

Friday, November 4, 2011 -- IEEE International Games Innovation Conference. The 2011 International Games Innovation Conference continues the tradition of focusing on the latest developments in game technology and developments that began in London in 2009 and continued in Hong Kong in 2010. See [link] (more)

Conference

SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 28, 2011

Thursday, November 3, 2011 -- IEEE International Games Innovation Conference. The 2011 International Games Innovation Conference continues the tradition of focusing on the latest developments in game technology and developments that began in London in 2009 and continued in Hong Kong in 2010. See [link] (more)

Conference

SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 27, 2011

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 -- IEEE International Games Innovation Conference. The 2011 International Games Innovation Conference continues the tradition of focusing on the latest developments in game technology and developments that began in London in 2009 and continued in Hong Kong in 2010. See [link] (more)

Conference

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 8, 2014

Industry reviews. So the “VC associate” is largely a launching pad job for exceedingly bright and hard-working young tech professionals. a really wide angle view of the tech industry since you see so many concepts / so many pitches and REAL data points on how startups perform financially. Deal screening.

Help

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

Two weeks after Brad’s post I was at the 140 Conference in LA and I held open office hours for any entrepreneur who wanted to spend 15 minutes talking with a VC about their business. In 2005 he was graduated and took a job in South Carolina working for technology company while he started his own web design company on the side.

Technical Review

Tech.Co

JULY 28, 2020

All the optimism in the world couldn't make an in-person CES 2021 happen, as the world's largest trade show has officially been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The cancelling of tech conferences was one of the first signs that the pandemic was going to be disruptive, and not in a fun, entrepreneurial way.

Technical Review

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

Philz opened an outpost in Santa Monica last year, due to the demand of Silicon Valley venture investors and executives who were spending an increasing amount of time in "Silicon Beach". Photo: Philz Coffee at last year''s Oasis Conference in Santa Monica READ MORE>>. expansion valley silicon coffee retail capital venture philz'

Santa Monica

socalTECH

MARCH 2, 2011

Jason Calacanis , the CEO of Santa Monica-based Mahalo.com , and organizer of the recent Launch conference, has dropped his lawsuit against TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington , according to Arrington himself in a news story. Photo: Calacanis and Arrington in happier times, courtesy Techcrunch50-2009 ).

Mahalo

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. Getting suppliers to accept terms that they said they never normally agree, getting accepted to speak on a panel when the conference organizer initially said “no,&# getting people to moonlight for you until you have the cash to bring them on board.

Entrepreneur

socalTECH

JANUARY 5, 2021

Every year, we feature the year end reflections of founders, CEOs, investors, sposors, and others in Southern California's high tech community. As you may recall the Alliance's mission is to elevate the region as a global leader in innovation, technology & entrepreneurship. We've been posting these throughout the next two weeks.

Southern California

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 19, 2014

A Futurist Conference, AI & The Singularity will be held this Saturday, September 20, from 9:30am-5:00pm at Piedmont Veterans Hall, 401 Highland Avenue, in Piedmont, California. The conference will discuss, debate and imagine potential scenarios that could develop due to advances in Aritifical Intelligence.

Artificial Inteligence

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2012

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Interview former employers, more than the candidate.

Technical Review

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 22, 2009

I know that advertising is important to inform consumers of offers – the same reason many tech companies use SEM. In-Stream rewards the content producer, Contextual just the technology provider – The funny thing about contextual search like that in Google is that it benefits the tech company and NOT the content producer at all.

Advertising

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

And of course the most successful technology companies: Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com [duh], Oracle, Microsoft all have loads of sales people. Referenceable means they are willing to be part of your sales collateral, willing to take calls from key leads, willing to speak at your conferences, etc. ” I worked at Salesforce.com.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

The frantic pace of technology cycles, the amount of tech news, the blogs, the conferences, the demo days, the announcements, the fundings, the IPOs. Invest influencers and tech people to salon’s to have discussions about topics of interest. It’s exhausting. Perhaps unsustainable. They are known.

Startup

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 12, 2014

The 17th Annual Milken Institute Global Conference wrapped up last month at the luxurious Beverly Hilton Hotel. Technology advocate and celebrity Will.I.Am. Technology advocate and celebrity Will.I.Am. He also briefly talked about a smart watch he was wearing that his team created which is due to launch this year.

Conference

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. Yet talk with people at Twitter these days and many seem to feel like they are part of a movement – and that doesn’t just come due to product success. Those are the easy cases.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2013

His message was that he realized he needed to move his girlfriend’s stuff into a storage facility due to apartment flooding. The first one out even won a major tech conference award. On my meeting he told me about the impact Hurricane Sandy had had on him and his loved ones. I felt bad. I enquired what he was going to do.

UCSD

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

I had a chance to discuss AngelList Syndicates with Naval at Michael Kim’s Cendana LP/VC conference on a panel with Naval, Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures) and Mike Brown, Jr. AngelList 101 : As you know, AngelList is a platform where angels can invest in semi-screened tech deals. Must be doing something right! Bowery Capital).

Venture Capital

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. You need to have passionate tech entrepreneurs who want to build businesses locally. The ingredients are all here.

Venture Capital

socalTECH

MARCH 1, 2017

Next week is the Montgomery Summit (www.montgomerysummit.com), one of the longest running technology conferences held in Los Angeles. The conference is run by Jamie Montgomery , one of the local industry's pioneers in venture capital and investment. First of all, what's new with your conference this year?

Technical Review

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

James (chairman of the Althea Foundation) and appointed Adam Sroka as Senior Vice President of Technology in a move to make business transactions simple and secure. . Jackson , “This financing round, coupled with hiring Adam Sroka as our head of technology, puts CapLinked in a position to further enhance our enterprise product offerings.”.

Technical Review

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There’s too much PR and too many tech blogs and too many newsletters and aggregators and Twitter summarizers to even try to catch everything that’s going on and equally there’s so much noise that it becomes harder to be heard. They simply said, with shrugged shoulders and without trying to make a big deal about it.

Software Review

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2022

Acknowledge every customer feedback and review. For those of you who are fearful of a spurious negative review, I recommend that you proactively ask every customer for a positive review, such that any negatives will be lost in a sea of positives. Don’t let that one negative stand out as the only review submitted.

Technical Review

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

In my opinion no amount of clever marketing or chest beating at conferences can create a market if you don’t have an amazing product to begin with. And finally there is the most modern spin on these concepts by two individuals who have built tech startups and have done an excellent job at describing the process. Like DeviantArt.

Startup

socalTECH

MAY 14, 2010

Clearly, 2009 was not a good year, from the perspective of the technology innovation ecosystem. Technology and innovation has historically been the thing that has pulled the economy out of recessions, and I think that is especially true right now. For OCTANe to be successful, we want to see our technology ecosystem grow.

OCTANE

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 12, 2011

Haven’t I learned by now that it’s better to be disciplined, focused in my office, at the computer, than “on the go” in a daze at a conference. It almost felt like I was there merely out of habit having gone to numerous amounts of conferences over the years being a business owner. That’s a conference worth going to.

Conference

socalTECH

APRIL 26, 2011

We're not talking publicly about that yet, but the idea is to get away from the annual review, away from the quarterly review, and give everyone within and outside a company the ability to recognize people, up and down the chain, for doing great things in the workplace. Beyond that, it's really about real time recognition.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

Professional investors and advisors, on the other hand, usually refuse to sign these agreements today due to the risk of litigation and administrative workload, and will walk away. The same is true for people who may approach you at networking events or industry conferences. How can you make this a win-win opportunity?

Ideas

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

I have never felt prouder of the team & product at awe.sm ( please visit to check out our latest & be ready for our next big product announcement due out in next month or so) and yet we just brought in a new CEO to the company, Fred McIntyre. ” We had inbound M&A requests from some of the biggest names in tech.

Startup