Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Dipping: As a decision maker you rely on information being passed to you by the people who report to you. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. But as a CEO you can’t rely solely on this information.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

I will add to this as I write more in the coming weeks on the topic. The funding rounds will also build customer confidence and they’ll help journalists feel air cover in writing your more important pieces when you brag about customers, traction, revenue or whatever. But first you need to know about Reg D filings.

Startup 355

Startup Funding News Press 355

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

Obviously you should have somebody that helps you research journalists, gets you meetings, pitches stories, helps prep you for interviews & helps make sure your writing is cogent. You need somebody who is helping push out information on what is up-and-coming in the company. I write on my blog how I think in my head.

Startup 349

Startup Writing Press Blogging 349

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

In my experience, entrepreneurs who are overly paranoid or are information hoarders rarely do well. Marketing futures can be really good for enterprise software companies where the information is passed between sales rep and potential customer in terms of near-term roadmap. I think a great example right now is turntable.fm.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

socalTECH

JANUARY 18, 2011

What that did, is it helped us to expand the service to help publishers do the following: identify what content to write, how to distribute that content to various mediums, and how to monetize that content. Journalists are notorious for not wanting to write based on revenues or commercial intersts, or having anyone tell them what to write.

Marketing 232

Marketing Funding Content Writing 232

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. No one is born with business writing skills, and everyone can learn them. Before you start writing, it’s important to ask yourself what you intend the document to accomplish. Make it look good.

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. No one is born with business writing skills, and everyone can learn them. Before you start writing, it's important to ask yourself what you intend the document to accomplish. Make it look good.

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

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)? That chart has information on it. I am a VC. I hand out money.

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2013

The point of PUCCKA was to develop a common methodology to make sure our whole team approaches sales with the same mindset and to give us a language to talk with each other about our prospects, as in, “have you identified your customers pain point yet?”. The goal is to get the customer speaking about their organization.

Sales 367

Sales Slides Startup Custom 367

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

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. Pushing yourself on customers by touting features and price doesn’t work anymore. 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

JUNE 23, 2013

I’ve been writing a series on a simple methodology that we used at my first enterprise software company. It was useful because I was new to sales and as the CEO it gave me some comfort to feel more informed about how our leads where going and to know the likelihood of our hitting our quarterly goals. That always stuck with me.

Sales 328

Sales Custom Customer Examples 328

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

If you live somewhere where this is the case you’re better off discussing with your employer that you may from time-to-time work on private projects outside of work hours and you want their clearance in writing that this is OK. You can probably get loads of information on Legal Zoom also. Get customer input.

Startup 365

Startup Technical Advisors IP Ideas 365

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 2, 2009

Twitter is the new CRM (customer relationship management) channel. The volume of Tweets is enormous and growing at a rapid pace so tools are emerging to help brands manage this information. Twitter, by contrast, started as an open platform where people let anybody see what they were writing.

Social Network 235

Social Network Writing Tool Startup 235

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

MAY 12, 2010

If I were to re-write the original post I would have taken out the section on “how to get better intro’s from VC’s&# and made it it’s own post. Once I was done writing my post and had re-read it I started thinking more abstractly about decision making. Information is part of the feedback loop.

Startup 267

Startup Venture Capital Writing Entrepreneur 267

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. You may choose some where your customers aggregate, others where you hope to find biz dev partners & still others where you want to meet investors. Write them in advance and request meetings.

Conference 289

Conference Startup Technical Review Writing 289

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). In a startup this is a mistake.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2011

Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures wrote a great post the other day that reminded me I’ve been meaning to write about this topic. “My desire for this “Opposing Views Reader” is related to my concern about information cascades. Did they crawl through Craigslist spamming people to acquire customers more rapidly?

Startup 313

Startup Press Writing News 313

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. So naturally we’re pushing for him to drop critical information when their paths cross organically. Rob does it.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital Blogging 365

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 6, 2010

Over the years I’ve been in many meetings where a group of people that I was with wanted to extract information out of a group of people with whom we were meeting and failed to do so effectively. developing a product you might like to survey prospective customers without biasing their answers. Witnessing this can be frustrating.

Startup 311

Startup Invest Course Research 311

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 Custom 366

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

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 20, 2013

It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential employees, customers and VCs. So I thought I’d write a piece on how not to suck when you give a presentation. Show some energy!

Slides 399

Slides Startup Conference Writing 399

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

MARCH 15, 2012

One way to mitigate this is by using early money to create a prototype, to perform market research, to complete the first generation of the product, or to deliver the service to a satisfied customer. Second: Market risk. Are you ahead or behind the market with your product or service? And fifth: Competitive risk.

Outsource Development 200

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 200

Eric Greenspan

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

He told me this was a service the BBB provided to its customers since they saved so much money on the same service. Today, I received this email from the BBB: We’re writing to let you know that during the past month the Reliability Report that we publish on Make It Work was accessed 6 times. Our history is practically impeccable.

Santa Barbara 265

Santa Barbara Technical Advisors Email Technical Review 265

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2016

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 62

Writing Summary Email Ideas 62

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

Whenever you write your deck and send it out I think you should actually think to yourself, “my competitors are probably going to read this one day and this will be forwarded widely” and if your response isn’t “so what!” What should not be in your deck?

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

socalTECH

JUNE 23, 2011

One, is with cause marketing, engaging your customers around causes; second, is employee engagement around causes, and the last is corporate social responsibility, companies working with vendors or other folks they work with, and the public in general. Ryan Scott: We focus on a couple of things. We like to call ourselves a cause integrator.

Causecast 222

Causecast Startup Content Education 222

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

In that case, you must worry only about information and trade secrets taken from the previous company -any which are both certainly subject to protection by almost all laws and courts. As I write this in late 2024, legislation is being proposed at the national level to eliminate non-competes. Digital or analog!

Design 156

Design Writing News Email 156

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to. The ten companies selected for the programe are: • AccessDNA : – Think WebMD for genetic information. Watch this space.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2019

Image via Flickr by jardenberg Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. To get to the core of what’s relevant to customers, you need to know them well. The eye is just as important as the mind when it comes to customers.

Customer 93

Customer Custom Marketing Tips 93

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 9, 2023

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.

Tips 123

Tips Writing Startup Summary 123

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 16, 2011

I provided information for my customers to make their lives easier.&# Really understanding the business of your customer matters. A really good sales person can get people excited and get people to tell you information they won’t tell other people. I agree whole heartedly. “A lot of sales is innate.

Startup 311

Startup Sales Venture Capital Entrepreneur 311

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

I said, ''Hey, listen were going to start writing this newsletter and it''s going to highlight our trials and tribulations, our failures and our successes. If you want to be kept informed just send me an email and let me know that you''re in, and that was it. Saying, ''Hey, we want to pay you to write a book.’

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233