Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Sometime around 2003/04 my technology team turned me on to “Spolsky on Software&# a periodic newsletter served up blog style from Joel Spolsky of FogCreek Software, a maker of bug-tracking software. Blogs weren’t popularized yet so it was an oddity for me to read the founder of a software company spewing out advice.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software Blogging Startup 285

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capitalists) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Develop 70

Develop Development Product Startup 70

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies.

Startup 136

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 136

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

” The post talked about how to find the lowest acceptable price & terms in a deal through testing. You’ve got to have some wiggle room on price and on terms. Your IT Reviewer. She got you to drop price and include more licenses for free. But it’s not a reality in business. Wants their pound of flesh.

Development Team Review 293

Development Team Review Software Review Pricing Startup 293

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capitalists) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Tips 104

Tips Startup Technical Review Equity 104

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2021

I recommend a trial run with an experiment or MVP (minimum viable product), at full price and cost, before the big bang launch, risking your investment money and a major time commitment. I once met with an entrepreneur who had developed a new algae strain to cure world hunger and make him rich.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Case Study Mentor Software Review 131

InfoChachkie

MARCH 16, 2016

Even less time is spent on developing the aspects of a car that become evident long after the purchase is completed. I learned the hard way that during a startup’s early days, entrepreneurs should give slightly greater emphasis on developing buyer features, in order to reduce the friction of the sales cycle.

SaaS 100

SaaS Startup Software Review Development Team Review 100

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

He came to work in our offices at Upfront Ventures as an EIR and immediately began building software to improve how storage was picked up, photographed, scanned and routed to a warehouse. presented pricing challenges when compared to a whole new set of offline competitors we didn’t know well. were more distributed.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

profitable and companies like Amazon who chose to focus on growth > profitability were not losing money on each book sale (ie they were gross margin positive). If you acquire 10 customers a month at $100 per customer and this scales to 100 customers at the same price you may make assumptions about 1,000 customers that don’t hold.

Metrics 150

Metrics Startup SaaS Course 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2019

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies.

Startup 128

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 128

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Government customers abundantly waste both of these assets by negatively impacting a startup’s cash flows while causing it to spend unnecessary time participating in laborious approval processes and elongated sales cycles. This is nearly impossible to quickly determine when the sales process is rigidly defined by arbitrary rules.”

Startup 207

Startup Outsource Development Software Review Sales 207

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

Just recently, the firm appointed Mark Neff as the company’s new Head of North American Business Development. Mark has over 15 years of Global Business Development, Strategic Alliance Management and Strategic Sales experience and has worked in key positions at Qualcomm, Samsung, Networks In Motion and Slacker Personal Radio.

Services 74

Services Technical Review Software Review Examples 74

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

If you develop a strong set of KPIs for how you manage your business and then develop a regular pack that the board is used to seeing it shouldn’t require extra work to prep the quarterly board metrics pack. Some members probably want most of the board meeting to be a review of financial information.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capitalists) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Startup 87

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 87

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales.

Outsource Development 333

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales.

Outsource Development 328

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 328

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

But that doesn’t mean that people are paying rational prices as investors based on intrinsic value. Rational people can disagree and some may argue that today’s prices are rational and under-pinned by economic drivers. All of that might be true, but the 2006 price might still be over-valued. That’s fine.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 5, 2016

To increase the net income, management must raise prices, reduce expenses or use a combination of both. The process of selling one item could include its purchase from the manufacture, shipping to its point of sale, storage, keeping records for the item and other phases of the business transaction. The Bottom Line. Automation.

Software Review 40

Software Review Technical Review .Net Outsource Development 40

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Ditto for enterprise software companies. Usually in a tech / software startup 70-80% of your costs will be people. Do so at your peril.

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Xconomy

JULY 1, 2016

At the gathering, Biden took verbal shots at scofflaw cancer researchers and at drug prices, while the FDA said it would take a shot at restructuring the way it evaluates oncology products. Gilead Sciences has been a target of drug-price criticism for its hepatitis C treatments, but it dialed back the price of its new one.

Buzzfeed 59

Buzzfeed News Pricing IBM 59

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Entrepreneur 105

Entrepreneur Startup Technical Review Equity 105

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2018

These days, customers remember the total experience with a company longer than they remember the price they paid. This experience includes browsing your website, social media interactions, the sales process, as well as your support and follow-up. Problems in any of these areas will stall growth.

Examples 67

Examples Customer Custom Software Review 67

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The problem is that professional investors (Angels and Venture Capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Funding Startup Technical Review 113

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1. If you want to understand the details of why this is, I covered it in detail in this post, Understanding Changes in the Software Industry.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

While there have been some rather profound successes in the marketplace, there still exists enough uncertainty for many business owners and web developers to hesitate before making a decision on how best to optimize their sites. This is a great way to engage customers on a first visit and start working towards a sales follow-up. .

Sites 40

Sites Search Engine Optimization Technical Review Web Development 40

SoCal Delicious

OCTOBER 8, 2012

Developments Blog. CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=FB CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=GOOG CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=I/DRG CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=I/HOM CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=I/ISV CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=I/MED CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=M/TEC CODE=DJII-DJN SYMBOL=MDA.T Loading… Real Estate. » More. Real Estate.

Los Angeles 44

Los Angeles Software Review Technical Review Journal 44

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

It says that selling an airplane ticket for $500 and getting paid a $5 fees by the airlines (1% gross margin) is not the same thing as selling $500 of software that you built (>90% gross margin). billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. The US market is worth more than $25 billion and Europe is the same.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The problem is that professional investors (Angels and Venture Capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Startup 123

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies.

Startup 53

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 53

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2009

They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. I was working hand-in-hand with my close friend and associate Stuart Lander who was running our UK office and with one of our local sales reps. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales. we would support 6.0

Startup 151

Startup Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review 151

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 19, 2012

The industry had seen unprecedented growth in the past decade due to a combination of factors, one of which was the United States’ economic recession. Due to the combination of these factors, marketers began to more heavily fund digital platforms.

Mobile 85

Mobile Software Review Statistics Technical Review 85

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I’ll publish the final post in this series this week and then move on to my next series – sales & marketing. I’ll be covering my PUCCKA sales methodology. When I first met the team in San Diego they had only been working on their software for 5 months. It will be controversial – I know.

Entrepreneur 267

Entrepreneur Startup SaaS San Diego 267

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

We went through the euphoria of massive exposure at the time of our launch due to an article that ran in the Financial Times. Our software wasn’t fully baked. We had one of the largest US software companies talk about buying us. Our business development discussions took longer than planned. We were unprepared.

Startup 331

Startup Press Customer Custom 331

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 2, 2009

If you have the proper mechanisms to accurately calculate your Cost Per Customer / Lifetime Value Equation, you will happily purchase as many customers from affiliates as your cash flow constraints will allow, as long as the average acquisition price is less than the customers’ average lifetime value.

Customer 164

Customer Custom Advertising SEM 164

socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2018

We then allow you to use the print cloud, where we develop, print, and mail pieces very easily. The irony of that, is due to the success of the business, even though we raised that fund to reinvest in our bigger team faster, we still remain profitable today. We build on those audiences, and find others that look alike. We raised $3.5M

CTO Hire 100

CTO Hire Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Marketing 100