Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 16, 2011

You send them update emails. Help them write other stories. One day they’ll write yours. Understanding customer requirement ? Whatever amount you’re getting out and talking with prospects, customers, employees, recruits, competitors, press, investors, potential investors … it’s never enough.

Startup 410

Startup Writing Press Venture Capital 410

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

Even in this age of videos and text messages, the quickest way to kill your startup dream with investors, business partners, or even customers, is embarrassingly poor writing. You have to be able to communicate effectively in all the common forms, including business writing, as well as talking, presenting, and producing videos.

Writing 109

Writing Entrepreneur Summary Email 109

TechEmpower

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Profile Blurbs and Writing Prompts Let’s look at our job matching site in more detail. So instead, we fill it with a completely custom blurb, written just for him: Hello! This gives Mark more control over the process, without requiring him to write much, and gives the LLM more to work with.

Generative AI 297

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence TechEmpower Tips 297

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Partly out of the fact that in 1 week I depart for England to speak at LeWeb, attend our DataSift board meeting and generally make myself available to the DataSift team to meet their customers, partners and employees. Email updates frequently. Key point – if your emails are as long as my blog posts you’re forked.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

Enterprise Sales – The very first thing a potential customer does when you email or call to set up a meeting is Google you. So does the enemy who is fighting for the customer to choose another vendor. Customer Acquisition - I left customer acquisition for last intentionally. Just like negative press hurts.

Press 415

Press Google Course Writing 415

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

JUNE 23, 2013

I’ve been writing a series on a simple methodology that we used at my first enterprise software company. Simply, this is identifying a customer need that has economic value to them if they can solve it. This solves the customer question, “Why Buy Anything?”. You can’t quantify the value of email yet everybody needs it!”.

Sales 328

Sales Customer Custom Examples 328

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 8, 2012

Five broad sources of independent, third-party validation are: Customers, Partners, Distributors, Industry Experts and other Stakeholders. For instance, validation that directly supports your company's underlying value proposition is more valuable than corroboration that indirectly suggests customers might ultimately adopt your solution.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital RSS Customer Custom 265

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2009

This post covers the first out of 10 that I’ll write about. The moderator asked the question, “if an entrepreneur writes an email to a VC and doesn’t hear back what should they do?&# This VC responded, “Move on. If you fold at the first un-returned email what hope to you have as an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneur 338

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Google 338

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Of the 225 customer reviews currently posted on Amazon, over 90% are highly positive. Guy, how would your 2004 book, Art Of The Start , differ, if you were writing it today? If I were writing the book today, there would be a whole chapter or two…about how to use Facebook and Twitter. That doesn’t work.”. I work very, very hard.

Santa Barbara 262

Santa Barbara Technical Review Social Media Startup 262

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 2, 2009

As noted in Pour and Stir Part I , the key to the successful execution of this strategy is managing the following equation: The cost to acquire a customer < lifetime value of a customer. Decreasing Your Customer Acquisition Costs. This is equivalent to being handed a free customer for every ten customers you acquire.

Customer 164

Customer Custom Advertising SEM 164

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

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 29, 2012

The stakes are high – you are asking an investor for money, a customer for an order, or another executive for a partnership. Badly written letters, long rambling or emotional emails, or an obvious lack of spell checking will brand you as a poor business risk before the message is even considered. Tailor writing to your audience.

Writing 89

Writing Email Tips Startup 89

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

The stakes are high – you are asking an investor for money, a customer for an order, or another executive for a partnership. Badly written letters, long rambling or emotional emails, or an obvious lack of spell checking will brand you as a poor business risk before the message is even considered. Tailor writing to your audience.

Writing 90

Writing Content Email Tips 90

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2019

What every entrepreneur needs more than anything else, after they have built an innovative new product or service, is visibility, credibility, and trust by customers, potential employees, and future business partners. It makes customers feel special, and gives you the opportunity to highlight your broad experience and credentials.

Writing 19

Writing Technical Review Entrepreneur Advertising 19

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

And even the best teams combined to create big innovations sometimes don’t time markets well, are surprised by unexpected technology breakthroughs by competitors or just don’t find the magic the leads to mass customer adoption. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails.

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. These are all creative processes.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

InfoChachkie

MARCH 4, 2013

Their deep understanding of their customers, an uncompromising drive to create a quality product and the courage to ignore the music industry's formulaic approach to producing hits resulted in the creation one of the top selling non-compilation albums of all time.

Startup 269

Startup Cloud Computing RSS Writing 269

Berkonomics

JULY 20, 2017

A product at the concept stage contains feature-functionality that customers may not want or be willing to pay for, or which just might not work well enough for release to the public. This is not to state that the customer tests a new product before we do internally, although many of us are surely guilty of that error.

Customer 256

Customer Custom Writing Product 256

Eric Greenspan

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

I’ve remained a skeptic about the BBB and as a result of an email I received a couple of weeks ago from them, I have raised the skepticism threat level. So here’s the email I received: Eric, My name is Chad Ratliffe emailing from the Better Business Bureau. That’s how we do business at Make It Work.

Santa Barbara 265

Santa Barbara Technical Advisors Email Technical Review 265

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

You can watch/listen to how John and Kyle turned their email newsletter into an international bestseller in the following 9-minute excerpt from John''s recent talk at UC Santa Barbara. an email) to about 35 people. If you want to be kept informed just send me an email and let me know that you''re in, and that was it.

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

. - 500 Hats , July 30, 2010 Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009 - Business of Software Blog , May 4, 2010 Customer Development Checklist for My Web Startup – Part 1 - Ash Maurya , February 16, 2010 How-to learn about angel/vc term sheets - Gabriel Weinberg , June 28, 2010 Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started - OnStartups (..)

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

Offer incentives to existing customers to stay, and for competitor’s customers to switch. To keep an existing customer, even if by offering discounts, is much less expensive than the cost of attracting a new one. Recognizing a longstanding customer with an appropriate gesture from the top is best of all. What should I do?

Marketing 199

Marketing Email Customer Custom 199

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2010

Want to take a year pursuing your dream to write a screenplay, travel through Asia, run a triathlon or start your own fashion line? I got to experience much of the local culture and customs. Getting Your Work Schedule on Your Terms – Many people in America sit at their desk much of the day and have email open.

Startup 295

Startup Email Technical Review Course 295

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2017

As executives we’re all seemingly accessible at any moment to anybody via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Text. It’s why sometimes I respond to emails in 5 minutes at other times I go dark for a week at a time. Recruiting, business development, shipping product, writing blog posts, networking … it’s all the same.

Activity 297

Activity Blogging Email Startup 297

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 2, 2009

Twitter is the new CRM (customer relationship management) channel. Twitter, by contrast, started as an open platform where people let anybody see what they were writing. People write their thoughts knowing that anybody else can see them. I’m now moving from the 101 basics into the business applications.

Social Network 235

Social Network Writing Tool Startup 235

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

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. Build Direct Relationships with Customers. Set design.

Company 339

Company Companies Technical Review Content 339

Berkonomics

JUNE 11, 2015

In my case as a young software entrepreneur, I had a different approach: Fail Locally, one customer at a time. I was fortunate that I could write software and doubly fortunate that my despair at working for ‘the Man’ – and feeling compelled to strike out on my own – coincided with the dawn of the personal computer era.

Customer 120

Customer Custom Writing Southern California 120

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. I’ll write a post on how to give feedback to employees and then I’ll get emails from people telling me they forwarded it to their whole team.

Buzzfeed 354

Buzzfeed Content Tips Blogging 354

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

You should start by getting out and talking directly with customers as Bieber did. To the extent that you’re initially &# marketing&# it is really just evangalizing yourself, meeting key influencers, meeting customers, taking feedback, refining your product and winning people over. And they have done hundreds of them.

Entrepreneur 398

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 398

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Traction can simply mean showing that you’re making progress with customers, product development, channel partners, initial revenue as a proof point, attracting well-known angel investors, winning industry awards / recognition. It’s marketing 101 for tech companies in terms of how you market to customers.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Guide Startup Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. &# If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here. I’m reluctant to put it into writing because people get so passionate about this issue and many disagree. Get customer input. Register a company.

Startup 365

Startup Technical Advisors IP Ideas 365

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2014

I wrote him the following email. Customers do come first. If you need to reschedule an in-person meeting do it a few days in advance - Whether you do your own scheduling or whether you have an assistant, a polite email to reschedule a meeting with a few days notice is usually acceptable. And that’s why he stood me up!

Conference 369

Conference Startup Century City Email 369

Berkonomics

JULY 3, 2024

Each new customer, each mention in the press or online adds to the feeling of early accomplishment. Email readers, continue here…] This moment is not to be spoiled by such mundane warnings from advisors or consultants to plan carefully, research the market and competition, and execute the plan with tenacity and enthusiasm.

Startup 156

Startup Hollywood Writing Press 156

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to read and write to file formats other than its own. Lesson: You dn’t want your customers to feel locked into using your software. It helps with sales cycles because customers know that they can switch away if they so choose. Defensibility in Software.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software Blogging Startup 285

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 16, 2010

Being the cheeky bugger that I am, this is the exact email I sent him ( courtesy of X1 – I never struggle to find old emails): “As an entrepreneur myself I COMPLETELY understand that you wouldn’t pass up on the impromptu and opportunistic chance to meet somebody so important to your business. Customers do come first.

Startup 346

Startup Conference Century City Email 346