Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2023

Design the full stack, not just a new software element. With a singular focus on building unicorns, very rapid growth has been a key metric. That requires a redefinition of startup and funding best practices and focus, including building new ecosystems, a focus on resilience, societal challenges, and diversity.

Capital 138

Capital Marketing Ideas Venture Capital 138

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff.

Pricing 150

Pricing Acquisition Custom Customer 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2020

Passionate reiteration of the idea won’t close funding. Managing marketing metrics and the sales pipeline. Effective marketing requires converting ideas to real content, creating programs to educate channels, and managing metrics to see what works and what needs to change. Detailed product specifications and prototypes.

Ideas 122

Ideas Entrepreneur Startup IBM 122

socalTECH

MAY 17, 2019

For today's interview, we sat down and spoke with David Loo , the founder and CEO of Perspectium (www.perspectium.com), a startup which is developing service management applications designed to help connect different, enterprise service management software products together. Perspectium recently raised a funding round from TVC Capital.

SaaS 113

SaaS Startup Custom Customer 113

socalTECH

AUGUST 28, 2017

They know that every photo will be linked back to the caterers, planners, design companies, and venues that produced the events. That is all gearing up for a Series A funding, which will happen in the summer of 2018. Don't be enamored with vanity metrics like for us, growth of photos.

Technical Advisors 100

Technical Advisors Technical Review Metrics Startup 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2020

Design the full stack, not just a new software element. With a singular focus on building unicorns, very rapid growth has been a key metric. That requires a redefinition of startup and funding best practices and focus, including building new ecosystems, a focus on resilience, societal challenges, and diversity.

Ideas 124

Ideas Venture Capital Software Review Technical Review 124

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 2, 2020

His challenge is to focus on one market, with a specific design, cost, and price. Create a written plan, with target milestones and metrics. For example, I have a friend with a Ph.D. in Physics who talks passionately about starting a business producing nuclear powered batteries. Yes, there are a lot of bridges to cross.

Ideas 126

Ideas Writing Examples Outsource 126

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

From the article: Mithril had its best moment yet last week when a portfolio company, Auris Health, sold to Johnson & Johnson for more than $3 billion — returning at least $500 million to the fund. Will “Diet CA-HSR” even get done as feds look to pull back California funding. Some more on metrics design and quantification.

Venture Capital 202

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Invest 202

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2015

Passionate reiteration of the idea won’t close funding. Managing marketing metrics and the sales pipeline. Effective marketing requires converting ideas to real content, creating programs to educate channels, and managing metrics to see what works and what needs to change. Detailed product specifications and prototypes.

Ideas 115

Ideas Startup IBM IBM 115

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 8, 2019

The keys to sustainable success require you to retain that sense of urgency, focus, and vigilance after the launch that you felt during the development and early funding stages. For a successful launch and scalable growth, they need to establish many checkpoints, with metrics to assess their progress and alignment with the vision.

Startup 88

Startup Demand Training Custom 88

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

Use a simple accounting tool like QuickBooks, get away from co-mingled funds, and you have the first business process you need. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process. entrepreneur funding hobby investors startup' Marty Zwilling.

Startup 107

Startup Outsource Development Training Outsource 107

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 26, 2010

Most often at the earliest point in the life of a startup, the dominant need is certainly to produce product to get something in the market, get funding, etc. Given likely market changes, how will we design and build so that the systems can respond to marketplace changes? What options do we have? How do we balance those options?

Fractional CTO 225

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach 225

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2016

The challenge is to do it by design like these guys, rather than by exception. You need to quantify measurable criteria for success, using business metrics. It’s time for the executive team and advisory board to commit the necessary funds and people resources to complete the plan. Clearly define and issue the challenge.

Startup 56

Startup Metrics Entrepreneur Resource 56

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

I know I must have pitched over 200 people trying to raise funding for the company, and although we had raised $1.7M in funding, we ultimately knew last year that the things we needed to prove investors was not going to happen in the time we had left. We had a lot of reasons we had to do a lot of things.

Software Review 100

Software Review Startup Metrics Content 100

SoCal CTO

MARCH 4, 2010

The short story is that he received 400+ responses and goes through how he categorized/vetted the responses: 300 Didn’t Fit – Outside expertise/interest, pushing for immediate funding assistance, too many ideas (not focused), looking for sales agents.

Technical Review 170

Technical Review Technical Advisors CTO Coach Startup 170

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

Luckily, I had always been a “hands-on” professional, and I had learned the pragmatics of people leadership, marketing, management tools, and funding. Simply defining yourself as a marketing specialist, designer, or project leader minimizes the stigma of the consultant role. Adopt a project-based revenue model with metrics.

Social Media 56

Social Media Software Review Custom Customer 56

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. You have to understand whether they’re likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2016

Passionate reiteration of the idea won’t close funding. Managing marketing metrics and the sales pipeline. Effective marketing requires converting ideas to real content, creating programs to educate channels, and managing metrics to see what works and what needs to change. Detailed product specifications and prototypes.

Ideas 53

Ideas Startup IBM IBM 53

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. We need people at all stages of the funding lifecycle and not just VCs. Others should swing for the fences - Some companies are designed to be big, industry changing plays.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

socalTECH

MAY 2, 2017

After refining their metrics even more, they doubled their performance, and then quadrupled it. How's the startup funded? He's the smartest guy, and not just book but also street smart, a superb designer and engineer, a great leader, and everyone loves him. We ran that for 90 days, and within 45 days, their performance doubled.

Sales 145

Sales Startup Email Tool 145

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 16, 2015

Why raise funds? This seems like an obvious question but you need to be clear why you’re looking to raise in order to come up with an effective game plan and determine your best funding option. And when it comes to timing, wait until you’ve come up with a working prototype and developed your product before you seek external funding.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Equity Funding 40

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2013

Use a simple accounting tool like QuickBooks, get away from co-mingled funds, and you have the first business process you need. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process. Develop your business plan. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Outsource Development 92

Outsource Development Training Outsource Metrics 92

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 10, 2011

Overall, the capacity-crowd consisted of plenty of different professional identities, all tuning in to hear lead presenter David Binetti, Co-Founder and Business Model Designer for Votizen. Metrics-Guided. The premise of the evening was simple and straight-forward. Lean Approach. Model-Focused.

Startup 86

Startup Santa Monica Los Angeles Custom Development 86

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO’s and VC’s) - Steve Blank , July 15, 2010 If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. Metrics availability. Not so bad. Performance.

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2015

Congress was clearly influenced by the well-funded retail lobby, which characterizes online sellers as "tax evaders," while describing brick and mortar stores as "mom and pop operations just trying to survive." That may sound like a lot, until you consider that the metric is gross revenue, not profit. Sadly, this is not the case.

Sales 100

Sales Custom Customer Metrics 100

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Use a simple accounting tool like QuickBooks, get away from co-mingled funds, and you have the first business process you need. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process. Develop your business plan. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 102

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 102

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2010

Use a simple accounting tool like QuickBooks, get away from co-mingled funds, and you have the first business process you need. Even if you are doing the work yourself, you need to document requirements, features, metrics, and milestones. Funding process. Develop your business plan. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 95

Startup Outsource Development Writing Training 95

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

He’d been working at a well-funded startup for about a year and had come to terms with the fact that the startup was really a pretty dumb idea. Klout Puts Metrics Into Social Media Management - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , May 21, 2010 I really like klout.com for three good reasons: 1.) I Be specific.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 8, 2014

A quick glance at Crowdfunder provides a peek into an impressively large portfolio of funded startups and small businesses; to the tune of ~8,800 companies, 45,000 investors, and over $66M in deal flow across Startups, Social Enterprise, and Small Business. Our goal is to design something that can help people craft their stories.”

Invest 83

Invest Platform Entrepreneur Paramount 83

socalTECH

JUNE 25, 2012

We wanted to bring the beauty of data visualization, of actionable insights to people in a very easy, very fast, very simple but very well designed way. We're working on how quickly we can provision servers, and what those metrics are, and it's been fantastic. We were even funded back in 2006 by Adobe, to move over to Flex.

Social Media 203

Social Media Startup Tool LAMP 203

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 30, 2012

We make it trivial to quickly aggregate and monitor your key metrics in real-time! He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology and of the Art Center College of Design. Tech Coast Angels is actively seeking great startups to fund. SuperDemo: Bill Gross. Bill received his B.S.

CalTech 91

CalTech Company Companies Idealab 91

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 9, 2014

Their solution is ingenius in its design. In seed stage funding, we’re often told that the investments are ultimately about the people/teams, and not necessarily the metrics. Ohmconnect - “AirBNB for energy” solves the ever-growing energy crisis by recruiting the help of everyday utility users.

Startup 111

Startup Mobile Commerce Education 111

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 14, 2014

Yet, I couldn’t duplicate what I had very easily, so I went back to the drawing board and came up with a new design and Cojoin is that new design. That portion we call data aggregation where you are looking at one metric across a lot of different data sources. The second problem is an attribution problem.

Startup 85

Startup Southern California Mobile Software 85

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Storage is what’s known as “highly fragmented,” meaning easier for a new entrant to get traction if it could design a better product / service / experience. The metrics were good but we wondered how much better they would be when we expanded our product. The top 5 players combined control less than 25% of the market.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 25, 2014

Alex Taub – Social Rank , Twitter metrics and engagement tool. Q Manning – Rocksauce Studios , mobile ap designers and developers. Sonny Vu – Misfit Wearables , developers of the world’s most wearable sensor products. Hermoione Way – Vibease , world’s first wearable smart vibrator.

Entertainment 99

Entertainment Google Entrepreneur Course 99