Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

And being persistent I believe is the most important attribute for success in an entrepreneur (assuming of course that you have all the other requisite skills). Of course at one end of the bucket are entrepreneurs who are persistent but just aren’t polite. You need to know how to write good & action oriented emails.

Venture Capital 389

Venture Capital Email Startup Conference 389

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

Define your customers, partners and other relevant people to your organization (e.g. That’s blogging to the echo chamber unless they’re your target customers. Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

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.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

.” Here’s what I mean … Let’s start with what it takes for a journalist to want to write a story. Do I have an “angle” from which to write the story (first company to do X, company does biggest X, consumer behavior is doing X)? ” Of course not. I am a VC. I hand out money.

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. Selling at smaller retailers will net you fewer customers and higher margins.

Networking 366

Networking Media Content Customer 366

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

Simply, this is identifying a customer need which has economic value to them if they can solve it. ” and if you can’t persuade enough potential customers they have some pain that needs fixing you probably should stick to your day job. Teams usually start with terminology that is very insular and less relevant to customers.

Sales 336

Sales Startup Competition Customer 336

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 5, 2020

As an advisor to entrepreneurs, I find that I often have to remind them that the world of customers has changed since they started their last business. Of course, part of the change is that Gen Z (born after 1996) now outnumbers the Millennials (born after 1981). Use analytics to see why customers are buying, as well as what.

Customer 133

Customer Custom Social Media Startup 133

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2014

I’ll try to get write-ups shortly but for now here is an overview of my interview with Nanea Reeves – President and COO of textPlus. In this short clip below, Nanea emphasizes this important point – if you create a product customers love, it will ultimately be a good business decision as well. Company Organization.

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Blogging RSS Organization 315

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

.&# When I talk to people about sales I often describe the sales process as a series of hurdles (objections) that are put up to avoid making a purchase and your responsibility is to work through these common objections with your customer. In the evangelical phase you’re working through these with customers on the fly.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

Berkonomics

JUNE 11, 2015

It’s good advice; the theory being that entrepreneurs can discover the flaws in their business models sooner, make course corrections and move in a more favorable direction. In my case as a young software entrepreneur, I had a different approach: Fail Locally, one customer at a time. And I would learn customer service.

Customer 120

Customer Custom Writing Southern California 120

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 13, 2011

With all these companies vying for attention & others just here to soak up the vibe I thought I’d write a much broader piece on how startups can make the most of their attendance at conferences & events. Feel good in knowing that while they’re at the latest conference, you can be back home stealing all their customers !

Conference 289

Conference Startup Technical Review Writing 289

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 11, 2011

We talked about a lot of great stuff in the video including how to do sales calls and a how a new “culture of writing&# is emerging as a critical skill set in business today. But of course we also focused on making content go viral. It’s called showing good service to your most loyal customers.

Buzzfeed 354

Buzzfeed Content Tips Blogging 354

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

We instructed customers about how eCommerce was going to change their future. It kind of reminds me a bit of how “social media experts&# are talking to customers today). Make sure you focus on what matters – your customers. Now is your moment to double up on your efforts to understand your customer base.

Startup 310

Startup Venture Capital Press Journal 310

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. The best way – of course – is to reference check. Connections?

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

They look at the following high level definition of Lean: and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build. Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers? Correct your course quickly. What's going to go wrong?

CTO Coach 219

CTO Coach Metrics Framework Software Development 219

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

So I know I’m getting myself into a bit of trouble by writing this. Of course they “need&# the title to convince customers, biz dev partners and VCs that they’re to be taken seriously. I had heads of sales, marketing, business development, product management, technology and customer service.

Startup 325

Startup Technical Review Sales Report 325

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

I want to understand how many units the company is selling, whether this is increasing over time and how well they’re doing at retaining the customers that they do acquire. The Nature of Revenue Matters Of course revenue alone won’t tell you enough. My first priority is to understand “growth drivers.”

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2011

But poly sci taught me critical thinking and writing skills that I didn’t get in my econ classes. Take lots of inputs but then let your internal compass set your course. Often it’s not the best course. He writes about the fabric of American life, often from the perspective of his Jewish, New Jersey roots. It globalizes.

Class 334

Class Writing Web 2.0 Offshore 334

socalTECH

AUGUST 6, 2012

But, they could not write, and did not know what to write from the travel perspective. Every one of those writers has a byline and a bio, and are paid twice a week at a pretty decent rate for that writing or assignment. They couldn't find enough people to write the content they needed, at the quality they need.

Demand 240

Demand Media eHow Content 240

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” If you had huge customer growth but just didn’t focus on revenue that’s a different story. One of them is profitability.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2017

Every new opportunity and every door opened is at the “top end of your funnel” meaning that may or may not come to fruition: A business development conversation, a first customer meeting, the first candidate in a recruiting process, the first time you talk with a journalist or the first meeting to consider your business strategy.

Activity 297

Activity Blogging Email Startup 297

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

I plan to write about it early next year when we’re all through. Throughout the course of last year I never had more than $8,000 in my account. . Sign up customers who are paying you money for a service you can’t 100% guarantee is going to be operational for the full period that they’re expecting. My employees.

Blogging 420

Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

You’re writing a freaking blog post! Customer support – After my pre-breakfast meeting I had my actual breakfast meeting. But it’s mostly customer service. I never get grumpy that people write. If you do randomly write me I have advice. “But WAIT !!! ” I never said that.

Email 314

Email Product Startup Writing 314

InfoChachkie

APRIL 16, 2012

The Lean Startup approach dictates that successful customer development is an iterative process. Eric (Ries) was a student in one of the very earliest customer development classes at Berkley. Large companies write business plans, why of course, that’s the organizing document for a startup. Preaching What You Live.

Startup 229

Startup Class Press Custom Development 229

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Of course not. Keep your customer in mind. Here’s a quick nod to the folks at Colour Graphics for urging me to write this insight. Why Is niche marketing important? This is easy. You can do that by creating a small subset of the niche, and testing that segment before expanding to even the niche you’ve selected. – Dave.

Marketing 266

Marketing Advertising Resource Social Media 266

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

You can ask them to come and watch your videos at your owned & operated websites (O&O) where you can make higher margins as well as ask directly for more meaningful customer information such as Facebook connections, Twitter oAuths, email addresses and the like. To produce content that people want to watch takes unique skills: Writing.

Company 339

Company Companies Technical Review Content 339

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

I’ve started writing up some of those sales & marketing lessons and I plan to continue to build that section out over time. Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. Customers buy solutions to solve their problems.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2013

The company--which is in the business of operating a content delivery network (CDN) to accelerate the delivery of web graphics, multimedia, applications, and more to end users-- recently disclosed it more than doubled its revenues in 2012, and has grown to over 230 employees--all due to a huge amount of demand for CDN services by its customers.

CTO Hire 248

CTO Hire Content Networking Web 248

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

If you’re an early investor like I am that often means writing the first $2-3 million check into a business that previously had either survived on fumes or on a $500,000 angel round. Of course I’m not preaching crazy, irrational spend or having Kid Rock at your next company party. You can do them all yourself, of course.

Startup 381

Startup Resource Venture Capital Activity 381

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

And my specific response that I recommended was to say, “I can send you our standard data pack but honestly I have too many other firms asking for customized data and we simply can’t send each person custom reports. Of course you have to be careful with this. This is part of a series I’ve been writing on fund raising.

Funding 217

Funding Newsletter Venture Capital Email 217

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

But like the company Kyriba, where we recently sold our position at above $1 billion, it took time until the revenue exceeded $100 million recurring and then the industry really competed to back this amazing company since it had scale, defensible technology and long-term, committed customers. VCs have different views and strategies on this.

Venture Capital 223

Venture Capital IP Startup Google 223

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2010

In writing anything positive about any of the companies I’m not suggesting that it means that I prefer them to any of their competitors. Also, some of the deals I write about I have actually seen as part of their fund raising process. They have done 3 startups in the customer support space and one that wasn’t.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Capital Email Blogging 265

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Oh, and if you didn’t guess, the title, “if you don’t have a discrete hypothesis you are incapable of failing” is, of course, an Eric Ries quote. 41:00 Transitioning from software to writing. 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand. And make sure to pick up a copy of his book.

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2010

Of course when they get there those individuals are no longer young and after years of mental and physical atrophy they lack the ambitions to get these things done. Want to take a year pursuing your dream to write a screenplay, travel through Asia, run a triathlon or start your own fashion line? And, of course, now Twitter.

Startup 295

Startup Email Technical Review Course 295

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2021

While I do agree that many attributes of a good entrepreneur, such as curiosity, confidence and determination, are largely determined by early-life experiences, a good education is critical in understanding the elements of creating a business and wooing customers. Practical business courses are better than an advanced degree or MBA.

Entrepreneur 149

Entrepreneur Tips Writing Coach 149

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 10, 2010

Unlike an unregistered copyright, which you gain automatically by expressing an idea in written form, you cannot gain intellectual property protection by simply being the first person to describe an idea in writing. As noted in Roping In The Legal Eagles , you have the responsibility to write the layman’s description of your patent claims.

IP 256

IP Patents Company Companies 256

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

But if there is nothing wrong with you then please don’t let early rejections alter your course. Let’s say you have built a SaaS company where a large part of the early revenue comes from a few big customers or a large part of the revenue is services based vs. software based. Let me give you an example. just don’t lead with them!

Funding 236

Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 236