Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. People who believe the former believe that you should see the market demand before too many people know you’re “in market.”

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 23, 2020

There’s also a relatively modest request (of only $4 billion) for funding devoted to pilot projects, startup companies, and public clean technology investment initiatives (like LACI). The funding would include $20 billion for utility upgrades.

Southern California 261

Southern California Los Angeles Rosemead Incubator 261

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

As an advisor to many entrepreneurs, I still hear frequently the irrational exuberance that crowdfunding is the quick alternative for startups that are passed over by overly demanding angels or venture capital investors. In reality, crowdfunding has become a major startup funding vehicle, expected to reach $3.62

Startup 100

Startup Equity Entrepreneur Demand 100

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 28, 2018

It’s helpful to think of startups as proceeding through several stages, which I have defined some time ago from a funding perspective. The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Funding or rollout stage. Growth and exit stage.

Funding 94

Funding Startup Organization Incubator 94

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2020

As an advisor to many entrepreneurs, I still hear frequently the irrational exuberance that crowdfunding is the quick alternative for startups that are passed over by overly demanding angels or venture capital investors. He points out that the word crowd precedes funding in crowdfunding.

Startup 151

Startup Equity Funding Demand 151

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 26, 2022

Most business advisors I know will say that writing a business plan is the first step to starting your own business, but I believe that a better first step is to do a self-analysis of your real drivers, strengths, and assumptions before committing to this lifestyle. Assess your own resources as well as funding sources.

Social Media 105

Social Media Writing Ideas Resource 105

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Most of these scenarios involve attracting outside investors, strategic partners, or key team members: You are the team and you don’t need outside funding. In fact, they are probably in such a hurry to give you money that they don’t want you to waste time writing anything down and passing it along to new investors.

Technical Review 126

Technical Review Writing Entrepreneur Slides 126

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2020

It’s helpful to think of startups as proceeding through several stages, which I have defined a long time ago from a funding perspective. The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Funding or rollout stage. Growth and exit stage.

Resource 171

Resource Startup Organization Incubator 171

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2020

But in the past two weeks I’ve heard many cavalier comments about: cuts, renegotiations, changing terms, “the market environment dictates this” or “never waste a good crisis” or “you just need to cut 25% of your staff” because it seems everybody is doing it. He asked for a few more weeks to gather market signals before enacting change.

Demand 215

Demand Guide Custom Customer 215

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

One of the hardest things about the fund-raising process for entrepreneurs is that you’re trying to raise money from people who have “asymmetric information.” VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. Call this “price signaling.”

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

Quantify the market opportunity in business terms. For example, “Nielsen projects that the market for smart phones will double every year for the next five years.” Include marketing, sales, and customer rollout plans. Target income and expense by year, including funding. The answer is not “if we build it, they will come.”

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. As always a balanced perspective is in order.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2013

It’s helpful to think of startups as proceeding through several stages, which I have defined before from a funding perspective. The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Funding or rollout stage. Growth and exit stage. Marty Zwilling.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Funding Incubator Startup 102

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

I recently survey more than 150 VC friends from all stages and geographies what they thought about the market by asking “Which of the following statements best describes your mood heading into 2016?” Brad was openly writing about this and it felt like he was giving the VC playbook away for free!

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ringrevenue’s call performance marketing platform enables ad networks, agencies, advertisers & publishers to generate more inbound sales calls.”. In today’s market, so much focus is placed on transacting business online. Why aren’t there a half-dozen well-funded startups running up your tailpipe?

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

My view: “Spending any time or energy trying to game the ‘definition’ of your round of fund raising is a total waste. There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.).

Seed Funding 399

Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

socalTECH

DECEMBER 31, 2018

Amazon has razor thin profits compared to their revenue but Bezos doesn't care he just wants growth and world domination and has a market cap of $763B. The biggest news was the continued bullish market now coming on ten years even though historical cycles show markets don't usually last more than 7-8 years. On Demand).

Southern California 100

Southern California News Class Writing 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2013

a) doing what is effectively a down round preemptively when I don’t have to, by underpricing my current round in this market vs. b) accepting the market price along with some risk of taking a down round in the future, if I don’t hit my milestones, why would I ever choose b)?” ” (before fund raising).

Pricing 302

Pricing Seed Funding Invest Venture Capital 302

InfoChachkie

MARCH 4, 2013

. • Obtain Customer Feedback Before You Release Your Product - Musicians spend their entire youth writing songs and performing them in front of live audiences, which ensures that their initial album is validated by their fans before they enter the recording studio. Entrepreneurs should always err on the side of long-term gain. Pay To Play.

Startup 269

Startup Cloud Computing RSS Writing 269

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. I can’t control the market. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

socalTECH

AUGUST 27, 2014

In the Los Angeles startup world, there are lots of high profile, buzzy companies which have lots of attention and funding--but which haven''t earned a dime of revenue. Brett Rossman: ConsumerTrack is a performance-based, online marketing company. What is ConsumerTrack all about? What''s the story behind the company?

Startup 239

Startup El Segundo Marketing Media 239

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

To grow faster businesses need resources in today to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. They don’t want high burn rates but they will never fund slow growth. million to fund operations in their first year of operations. They raised $5 million in venture capital to fund growth.

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

They cite sources like the BusinessWeek story, “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ” and this Forbes article. Most of these scenarios involve attracting outside investors, strategic partners, or key team members: You are the team and you don’t need outside funding. On the other hand, your mother probably won’t read one.

Technical Review 109

Technical Review Writing Entrepreneur Slides 109

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 17, 2019

Harris writes: “The figures, dating back to 2016, paint a picture of a company desperate to meet over-ambitious autonomy targets and one that is willing to spend freely, even recklessly, to get there. .” Uber is in talks with Softbank Vision Fund and Toyota to raise $1 billion for its self-driving unit Uber ATG.

San Fernando 217

San Fernando Los Angeles Commerce News 217

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 27, 2016

It’s helpful to think of startups as proceeding through several stages, which I have defined some time ago from a funding perspective. The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Funding or rollout stage. Growth and exit stage.

Organization 93

Organization Startup Incubator Ideas 93

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

The company recently raised a round of funding from Santa Barbara-based ScOps Venture Capital. There's lots of noise in the on-demand tutoring space, especially connecting people virtually, however, in my experience, it's in the best interest of consumers to get in-person, local tutoring. What is HeyTutor? Here's the reason why.

Startup 113

Startup Venture Capital Beverly Hills Acquisition 113

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!” To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. Has it begun to mature or is it just better marketed than in was say 5 years ago? Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly.

Entrepreneur 376

Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

InfoChachkie

MARCH 18, 2013

In order to extract value beyond your Angel investors' cash, you must first assess three important parameters: (i) the relative strength of their personal brand, (ii) their ability to add operational value, and (iii) the amount of care and feeding they will demand from you.

Angel 217

Angel Technical Review RSS Entrepreneur 217

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

Some investors are team focused, others market focused, others seems to look for product / market fit. Only then can I even care about product, market or their nebulous “fit.&#. I’ll write that post one day – it is a very interesting story. VCs fund people all the time with no traction.

CTO Hire 363

CTO Hire Technical Review Startup Demand 363

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 25, 2016

If such write-downs only impacted the faux unicorns and their avaricious investors, there would be little need for alarm. Unfortunately, the coming market correction will reverberate to all stages of venture investing. Ultimately, a startup’s value is based on what the market will pay.

Startup 100

Startup Entrepreneur Invest Venture Capital 100

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. You also ran the risk that if you hired employees quickly and then demand wasn’t as strong as expected it was incredibility hard to fire people.

Startup 261

Startup Press Blogging .Net 261

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

We've created over a billion dollars in public market capital created by our investments here. We really believe in the market. A lot of people don't know it, but we also have an early growth fund, Redpoint Omega, which also gives us the flexibility to invest as little as $50,000 in a company, which we do quite often.

Redpoint 154

Redpoint Southern California Cornerstone OnDemand Invest 154

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Why you should set up a board at the seed round of funding I know these days with SAFE documents and rolling convertible notes many founders prefer not to set up a board early on. How does control start to change at the B-round of funding? The Limited Partners (LPs) who back funds don’t expect their dollars to be passive.

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

Most relevant to startups is the push to fund initiatives and technologies that can help prevent or protect against extreme wildfires; rising sea levels and hurricanes; new agriculture resource management; and “climate-smart” technologies.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229