Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

One of the vivid memories I have from being a startup CEO is the feeling that most people in your company have a look in their eyes that like they can do your job as well as you. But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. You course correct. How hard could it be?

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

There’s a healthy balance between allowing a design team to dream up functional requirements, talk with customers, analyze competitors and for technical projects – research the latest cool-kid tools to play with. If you pull hard at the time end of the spectrum you end up shipping inferior product.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

Very few investors understand this and even fewer startups. When you’re an early-stage business every dollar matters and because many startup teams these days are very product & technology centric they often miscalculate the importance of PR. So does the enemy who is fighting for the customer to choose another vendor.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. The starting point of product IS marketing, which is what a lot of young entrepreneurs that never studied business don’t realize. The start of marketing is figuring out a market need and a way to solve that need better than anybody else.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2013

It is of course why immigrants power so many successful businesses in the US and why we need to embrace them. I was never into spicy foods growing up but after living in the UK for nearly a decade and having so much great Indian food around me all of the time I developed more of a taste for it. Having a strong sense of values.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Do you need a board when you first start you company? If you haven’t raised any money or if you raised a small round from angels or friends & family I would suggest you avoid setting up a formal board unless the people who would join your board are deeply experienced at sitting on startup boards.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” Great startups manage to continually improve the relationship through outstanding follow-on support and service.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2020

Maybe we haven’t seen the results yet, but there are thousands of startup opportunities to offer new alternatives and services, to replace those destroyed by the crisis. Of course, there are caveats to every opportunity. Some kind of natural or man-made disaster. That’s the great thing about being an entrepreneur.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

Of course passion isn’t enough. You need a great concept in which you will build something that is truly unique and that will be valued by your customers. I really want to start my journeys only with people with whom I want to work closely with for the next 5-7 years or more. But the two can of course go hand-in-hand.

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Venture Capital Startup Course Entrepreneur 373

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. As You Start to Mature. In the Early Days. Mentorship.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

For what ever reason we’re wired to have amnesia during the run up and prescient memories of how we ‘knew it all along’ as soon as the slide begins. Once you understand both sides of the cycle you start to recognize signs of behavior during each phase. It’s when the game slows. ROI studies were published.

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Marketing Case Study Metrics Sales 354

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2020

As a mentor to startups, I see more startups that are really an individual professional, marketing themselves as a consultant or freelancer in this new gig economy. Of course, entrepreneurs delivering services have existed for some time, including business consultant, independent contractor, and freelancer titles.

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Startup Social Media Course Entrepreneur 164

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

Creating awareness for your brand and products is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise. ” Here’s what I mean … Let’s start with what it takes for a journalist to want to write a story. I am a VC.

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Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2022

I’m sure you have all noticed how today’s customers have changed the way they shop, but I still find, as an advisor and consultant, that many of you aren’t sure how to deal with the new mode, or are still waiting for things to get back to the old normal. Convenience is in the eye of the customer, not your company.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

This is part of a series on a Board of Directors at a Startup. High Functioning Startup Boards High-functioning boards have a tight-knit relationship between all members based on mutual trust and admiration. They are able to divide responsibilities and work to gain consensus on tough decisions that every startup inevitably faces.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2022

We are living in a new generation of business, where customers drive the experience, and highly engaged employees are required to keep up with customer expectations. Of course, these are great, but they don’t happen without enlightened leadership coming first. True leaders are tenacious, determined, and self-starting.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 22, 2014

It’s a fantastic startup that has had a amazing impact on society. It’s not just about people like me who can (and do) turn up in nearly any city in the US and immediately book a ride. They were a little too fierce in their competitive practices against Lyft to sign up drivers. Is Uber evil? That’s silly.

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Press Journal Startup Training 418

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2021

If you are one of the many professionals still trapped between jobs by circumstances outside your control, or are about to dump the loser job you have now, you should be actively defining and starting your own business, in parallel with looking for that ideal job. Have startup efforts to highlight in job interviews.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We have global opportunities from these trends but of course also big challenges. Of course we can’t. I’m over-paying for every check I write into the VC ecosystem and valuations are being pushed up to absurd levels and many of these valuations and companies won’t hold in the long term. Hot, Flat & Crowded.” By definition?—?I’m

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Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I say this as somebody who has lived in 6 countries and worked in 9 — having lived abroad for 11 years of my work life.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

In my view, starting a new business has never been easier, and according to reports from the Kauffman Foundation , the numbers are here to show it. Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever.

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Tips Startup Social Media News 161

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

and of course a relentless pursuit of helping founders succeed. So mostly we just had to listen to customer feedback from founders, VCs and LPs. Kara said “no” because she wanted to start her own company, which she did and I backed. Leadership is about recognizing your next generation of talent and helping lift them up.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 11, 2020

Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers. It’s tough for an elephant to be agile.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

When you see startups like SpaceX and Pinterest grow from a low valuation to a billion dollars in just a few years, it’s easy to assume that if you just keep doing what you are doing, you can get there as well. Of course, that means a mindset willing to give up much more equity, and taking on a whole new level of risk.

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Startup Course Sales Entrepreneur 151

TechCrunch LA

MAY 3, 2022

” She grew up in Houston and went on to attend Stanford and major in engineering. The company Winters was working for sponsored her MBA to Harvard Business School, and it was there that she came up with the idea for Upgrade. “I One of Britney Winters’ goals is to “live a less tangled life.” The company, which raised $1.7

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TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Los Angeles-based Just says it uses telematics “to reward safe drivers and reduce insurer bias” by looking at factors such as how, when and where customers drive, rather than factors such as ZIP code or marital status as most traditional insurers do. Of course, Just is not the first company to offer personalized auto insurance.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Startups are hard. You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. We tell startup stories. Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup. Stuart was a co-founder at my first startup company and ended up running global operations.

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CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2019

Managing Your Startup Board?—?A My talk was about “ managing your startup board ” and the full deck is on that SlideShare link and embedded below. I also wrote an entire series on the topic of Startup Boards if you want to do any more reading that link has several articles you can dig into. Below is just the highlight points.

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socalTECH

APRIL 13, 2021

For today's interview, we spoke to Dave Eastman, the Director of the Viterbi Startup Garage, a startup incubator that is run by the University of Southern California, out of its location in Marina Del Rey. What is Viterbi Startup Garage? The Startup Garage is located physically in Marina Del Rey, in the twin tower on Admiralty.

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Marina Del Rey Startup USC Incubator 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

So why is online video such an attractive market to build a startup? These markets represent about $600 billion of total spend between them, leaving tons of opportunities for startups to disrupt and grow large. I’m not saying networks shouldn’t be talent friendly – of course they should. MSN & AOL.

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Company Companies Technical Review Content 339

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). When to start PR? In a startup this is a mistake.

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Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Of course I went through normal other channels of deal flow. I think my mentality to banker pitches was best summed up in this article about Y Combinator in which Paul Graham apparently made the following quotes. start-ups are overvalued. How good they were at follow up. I spent time on college campuses.

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Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Tech.Co

JANUARY 3, 2022

Well, another year has come and gone, and while we're yet to leave the pandemic behind, it has led to a record number of small businesses starting up. A startup for startups! Having built our own startups we know that startup models are usually wrong from day one. SoLo Funds. “We’ve been in your shoes.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2021

I’m fully convinced that both inspiration and perspiration are always required in a startup. Those at the other extreme don’t look up from the grindstone long enough to notice whether all their work is producing sweat equity or just sweat. Starting a business may be fun, but it’s not easy. Start even before the product is ready.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

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Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 136

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 7, 2021

The E-Myth (“Entrepreneurial Myth”) is the mistaken belief that most businesses are started by people with tangible business skills, when in fact most are started by “technicians” who know nothing about running a business. Perhaps an innate business savvy is no longer a requirement for starting a successful business.

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Technical Review Startup Social Media Satisfaction 136

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

He had joined a young startup in LA called HauteLook and was interested in getting to know the local tech community. He shared tons of information about how how they were using marketing to quantitatively make marketing decisions at HauteLook and acquire customers for prices that were far cheaper than similar companies. Approachable.

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Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup Invest 360