Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Yet, according to many sources , over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it. In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. You need a prototype. You need specialized equipment.

Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 23, 2013

Yet, according to many sources , over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it. In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. You need a prototype. You need specialized equipment.

Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 15, 2023

Skip the background story and customer pitch, which every investor has heard all too often. Investors want to hear a quantified problem, a simple solution description, opportunity size, competition, traction, team qualifications, how much money you need, and what equity you are willing to give.

Entrepreneur

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2018

Love Goodly recently launched its own crowd equity funding campaign. We're a little different from the sample size products out there. We'll be spending it on building out our operations, also for customer acquisition, and focusing on a number of initiatives like our online shop, which is currently a smaller portion of our revenues.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Yet, according to many sources , over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it. In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. You need a prototype. You need specialized equipment.

Technical Review

socalTECH

APRIL 22, 2010

We had a chance to speak with Jerry Fitch , CEO of the firm, about the interest in the electric/smart metering market, his views on where the market is today, as well as a bit about the experience of operating as a private equity backed firm. How has your experience being owned by private equity been? Thanks for the time.

Equity

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2015

Skip the background story and customer pitch, which every investor has heard all too often. Investors want to hear a quantified problem, a simple solution description, opportunity size, competition, traction, team qualifications, how much money you need, and what equity you are willing to give.

Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan.

Technical Review

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2012

Here is how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Define the characteristics of the overall industry, market forces, market dynamics, and customer landscape. Explain how you will make money and who pays you (real customer). Describe your technology patents and “secret sauce”.

Slides

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2010

Here is how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Define the characteristics of the overall industry, market forces, market dynamics, and customer landscape. Explain how you will make money and who pays you (real customer). Describe your technology patents and “secret sauce”.

Slides

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2011

Here is how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Define the characteristics of the overall industry, market forces, market dynamics, and customer landscape. Explain how you will make money and who pays you (real customer). Describe your technology patents and “secret sauce”.

Slides

socalTECH

JANUARY 26, 2010

What that gives our customers, is a great edge in performance. What a customer wants is to just have much better Ethernet and UDP multicast. That's what customers are using in this environment. It's sampling and we have customers looking at LAN on motherboard. So there's no issue with competing with customers?

Networking

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

The cost of giving up more equity early is often more than offset by the increased flexibility to recover from mistakes. Pay people with equity or future revenue. There’s tremendous leverage in learning to use Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, and how to Google for sample contracts and the latest tax changes. Great strategy.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 28, 2011

The cost of giving up more equity early is often more than offset by the increased flexibility to recover from mistakes. Pay people with equity or future revenue. There’s tremendous leverage in learning to use Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, and how to Google for sample contracts and the latest tax changes. Great strategy.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2011

Here is just a sampling of the latest terminology and lingo that I gleaned from Dave, and from some additional research on the Internet, that I think every entrepreneur should know, who may be looking for funding now, or down the road: Micro-VCs. For VCs, early-stage means customer revenue is less than $10M. Early-stage startup.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2012

Here is just a sampling of the latest terminology and lingo that I gleaned from Dave, and from some additional research on the Internet, that I think every entrepreneur should know, who may be looking for funding now, or down the road: Micro-VCs. For VCs, early-stage means customer revenue is less than $10M. Early-stage startup.

Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 27, 2016

Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan.

Technical Review

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 11, 2016

Skip the background story and customer pitch, which every investor has heard all too often. Investors want to hear a quantified problem, a simple solution description, opportunity size, competition, traction, team qualifications, how much money you need, and what equity you are willing to give.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

The cost of giving up more equity early is often more than offset by the increased flexibility to recover from mistakes. Pay people with equity or future revenue. There’s tremendous leverage in learning to use Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, and how to Google for sample contracts and the latest tax changes. Great strategy.

Startup

SoCal CTO

APRIL 8, 2010

Death By Competitive Analysis - Steve Blank , March 1, 2010 Trading emails with a startup CEO building an iPhone app, I asked him why potential customers would buy his product. In response he sent me a competitive analysis. It looked like every competitive analysis I had done for 20 years, (ok maybe better.) And it made me sad.

Startup