December, 2010

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How to Run Better Presentations & Improve Results

Both Sides of the Table

I sit through a lot of presentations. It’s usually people wanting to raise money and/or persuade me of something. Many of these are not as effective as they could be. 1. Understand Personality Types – One of the benefits of working for a big company (Accenture) was that we had lots of speakers come in and train us in topics like leadership, creativity, presentations, strategy, etc.

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Shop.com Acquired By Market America

socalTECH

Shop.com , an online comparison shopping website with operations in Pasadena, has been acquired. Market America , an Internet marketing firm based in Greensboro, N.C., announced the acquisition Wednesday, but did not reveal any financial terms. According to Market America, it will continue to maintain Shop.com's Pasadena offices, along with Shop.com's Monterey headquarters.

Marketing 269
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Optimistically Pessimistic: Entrepreneurs Fear Near-term Failure Yet Are Assured Of Their Long-term Success

InfoChachkie

A friend once told me about a soccer game in which the opposing team deployed a frustratingly effective strategy. Every time they scored, their Captain ran around the field yelling, “tied score, tied score!” He continued to do this, despite the fact that they were beating my friend’s team by several goals. The Captain’s message was clear, “Ignore the score and play as if we are tied.

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Stock options: Guard the Gold

Berkonomics

Use stock options and warrants to pay for service only rarely. Earlier, I stated that stock options are the currency of early stage business. This truth is obvious when a start-up has no cash. For this insight, we will assume a business is perhaps well beyond start-up and growing, but that cash is tight, used for growth and for working capital as earned.

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Can You Ask for Office Rent Relief? How to Manage Your Lease During COVID-19

Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.

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Innovative People Laugh and Have More Fun at Work

Startup Professionals Musings

I’m convinced that people who have fun at work are more innovative, as well as happier. I don’t have any big scientific studies to prove this, but in my considerable business experience, I haven’t seen many successes come out of a group of fearful pessimists or unhappy people. As I was looking through the literature, I did find evidence that many strong business leaders, like John D.

Ideas 99
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TechZulu Welcomes Chris Van Dusen To The Team!

Tech Zulu Event

So nice we had to do it twice! We are pleased to announce that Chris Van Dusen will be joining the TZ writing crew. With a knack for helping others understand what/how to use all things in the digital realm, and get down to how it can best fit you or your company, Chris is here to give you information on what you need know. Visit TechZulu for full story.

Writing 101

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Disney Hits 100 Million Facebook Fans

socalTECH

Think your company is popular on Facebook? Think again. Burbank-based Walt Disney reported Sunday that it has just surpassed one hundred million fans across its network of Facebook pages. According to Disney, those fans are spread across more than 200 official Disney brands, property, and character pages, which the firm has been creating on Facebook since August of 2009.

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Optimistically Pessimistic: Entrepreneurs Fear Near-term Failure Yet Are Assured Of Their Long-term Success

InfoChachkie

A friend once told me about a soccer game in which the opposing team deployed a frustratingly effective strategy. Every time they scored, their Captain ran around the field yelling, “tied score, tied score!” He continued to do this, despite the fact that they were beating my friend’s team by several goals. The Captain’s message was clear, “Ignore the score and play as if we are tied.

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Why You Should Make Your Competitors Your Frenemies

Both Sides of the Table

Yesterday I wrote about how to talk to investors about your competitors. In short, acknowledge they exist, be transparent about strengths & weaknesses and use your differences to talk about how you want to position yourself in the market. But forget talking about them, how should you actually treat your competitors? Conventional wisdom in most companies is that “the competition is the enemy&# – it’s the rallying cry to dig deeper, get more features out the door, issue pres

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Talking to a VC About Your Competitors

Both Sides of the Table

Competition. Unless you’re Microsoft selling an OS for a PC you probably have some. And even then Microsoft has substitute products as anyone who has taken Econ 101 will tell you. So if you’re raising money – from angels or VCs – you’re going to have to address the question of whom you’re competing against. And the reality is that if you have no competition it will likely be perceived as a negative, not positive.

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Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

Both Sides of the Table

This past October I was honored to be invited by Steve Blank to speak at Stanford for their Enterprise Thought Leader (ETL) series. The topic I chose to speak about was “lessons on starting a company&# but I created the sub-title in class “a Silicon Valley heresy&# since my goal was to slay many of the myths I believe exist right in the heart of Silicon Valley!

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Why it’s Critical That you Reference Check Your VC

Both Sides of the Table

I was recently speaking with some founders about their fund raising process. They had received a term sheet from a VC and were wondering whether to work with this firm. I personally had three separate data points from entrepreneurs who took money from the firm that said “never again.&# I really try to stay out of the middle of these things so I softly said to the team, “maybe you should contact these companies and see how their experience went?

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Social Networking (the Shorter Version) Past, Present, Future

Both Sides of the Table

This blog post originally appeared in serialized form here on TechCrunch. This version is the shorter, ADHD version. If you came here via a direct link you might want to check out the more detailed full version on my blog, which is here. Social Networks: Past, Present & Future. I recently spoke at Caltech at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking,&# the 30-minute video is here and the PowerPoint presentation is here on DocStoc ).

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Making Next Year’s Holiday Cards More Effective

Both Sides of the Table

Like many of you, for me this was the year of the unsolicited eCards from random people I barely knew. Let’s be honest, much of this has become spam. I’m not the Grinch. I’m not anti holiday spirit. But if you ARE going to get into it then you ought to do it right. Make it count. Like the team at First Round Capital always does.

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What Mattered in 2010: Greg Martin, Archer Venture Capital

socalTECH

All this week, we are sharing the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks. We last shared the thoughts of John Babcock at Rustic Canyon Partners.

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CampusExplorer Gets $5M

socalTECH

Santa Monica-based Campus Explorer , which provides an online resource on universities, colleges, student loans, housing, and more to students, has raised $5M in a Series C funding round, according to a source near the firm. The funding came from Vicente Capital Partners, OCA Venture Partners, and Origin Ventures. Klaus Koch led the investment for Vicente Capital.

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Melanoma Diagnostics Sells Genetic Marker Technology

socalTECH

Altadena-based Melanoma Diagnostics , a developer of technology for the diagnosis and prognosis of malignant melanoma using genetic markers, is in a deal to sell its technology to Myriad Genetics , a publicly traded provider of molecular diagnostics products. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.Myriad said it will gain the right to commercialize all tests derived from Melanoma Diagnostics' technology, in exchange for both upfront fees and contingent payments.

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ReachLocal Launches ReachCast

socalTECH

Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal , the provider of online marketing services for small and medium sized businesses, said today that it has launched a new product called ReachCast. According to the firm, the new product provides Web presence management to its customers, helping customers to drive their online search discovery, manage their reputation, and also manage social media marketing.

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Cramster Acquired By Chegg

socalTECH

Pasadena-based Cramster , the online homework help site started by Aaron Hawkey, Robert Angarita and Kaveh Golabi, has been acquired by Chegg , Chegg announced today. Financial terms of the buy were not disclosed. Chegg said the acquisition will add to Chegg's textbook rental and course planning services. Cramster is an online community of users interested in discussing homework; getting homework help; and practicing for tests.

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Internet Brands Acquisition Completes

socalTECH

El Segundo-based Internet Brands said Friday that the acquisition of the firm by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman has closed. The acquisition, which had originally been announced in September, was worth $640M. Internet Brands said that the firm will cease trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market at close of the market today. JMI Equity also invested in Internet Brands as part of the sale.

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Virgin Galactic Aims At Orbital Flights

socalTECH

Not satisfied with the firm's plans to provide suborbital space tourism flights, Mojave-based Virgin Galactic said Thursday that it is now supporting work by Sierra Nevada Space Systems and Orbital Sciences, on commercial space vehicles to support orbital flights. Virgin Galactic said it is hoping to allow fare-paying passengers to experience safe, orbital space flight.

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Amgen Gives $1.8M To Teach For America

socalTECH

Thousand Oaks-based Amgen , via its nonprofit foundation, the Amgen Foundation, said Friday that it is giving $1.8M to the Teach For America effort. According to the two, the funding will go towards increasing the number of math and science graduates who are joining Teach For America's teaching corps by 2013. Teach For America helps advance math and science in America's underserved public schools.

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GotCast Launches Casting For Mercedes-Benz

socalTECH

Santa Monica-based GotCast , the online casting site headed by Alec Shankman, said today that it has launched a new social media campaign with Mercedes-Benz. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mercedes-Benz posted the campaign today, saying it is looking for four teams of "Twitter-savvy" auto enthusiasts, who will race from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tampa to the Super Bowl in Dallas, to win a Mercedez Benz 2012 C-Class Coupe.

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Goodreads Sees Boost From Google eBooks

socalTECH

Santa Monica-based GoodReads , the online book discussion community run by Otis Chandler, is seeing a nice uptick in its traffic after the launch of Google's eBook store Monday. GoodReads is prominently featured on all of Google's eBook pages, with reviews from GoodReads users showing up under the various titles available under Google's bookstore. Google launched its eBook store Monday, offering up titles for electronic book readers, the iPhone and iPad, the Nook and Sony readers, as well as And

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Cooking.com Powers Marley Coffee

socalTECH

Marina Del Rey-based Cooking.com , the online e-commerce provider for cooking products, reported today that it has been chosen to rebuild and manage the web site for Marley Coffee. Marley Coffee is a coffee company run by Bob Marley's son. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to Cooking.com, it has revamped Marley Coffee's online website, and has created a "unique branded experience" for Marley Coffee.

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Gil Elbaz On Factual's New Warchest

socalTECH

Last night, Santa Monica-based Factual (www.factual.com), the data provider and data tools firm, announced a big, $25M funding round from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. The firm is headed by Gil Elbaz , who is known for co-founding Applied Semantics, the firm which invented Google's AdSense product. We caught up with Gil to hear more about the round and what he's hoping to do with the large amount of capital Factual has just raised, as well as how the firm's technology is being used by

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What Mattered In 2010: Scott Painter, TrueCar

socalTECH

Last week, we announced our end-of-the-year project, which was to collect and share the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks.

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Study Tallies High Tech Employment In Region

socalTECH

A recently released study by TechAmerica, an advocacy group for the high tech industry, finds that Los Angeles ranks sixth among the top 60 cities in the United States for high tech employment. The TechAmerica CyberCities report, which was released Wednesday, found that New York led the nation in high tech employment, with 316,971 workers, followed by Washington, DC. (292,969 workers), San Jose/Silicon Valey (225,575 workers), and Boston (219,798 workers).

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Demand Media Ups Article Count To 3 Million

socalTECH

Santa Monica-based Demand Media , the online publishing firm headed by Richard Rosenblatt, has updated its S-1 filing, saying it now has around 3 million articles in the firm's library of content. Demand Media has applied to list on the NYSE as DMD, but has not yet set an offering range or pricing on its IPO. Demand Media filed for an IPO in August.

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SpaceX Successfully Launches

socalTECH

Hawthorne-based SpaceX , the commercial rocket firm headed by technology mogul Elon Musk, has had a successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, according to NASA this morning. NASA said that the Falcon 9 successfully launched at 10:43 a.m. EST, from the Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. The flight is the first demonstration flight for the Falcon 9 for NASA, which is looking to use the Falcon and its corresponding Dragon capsule to resupply the International Space Station.

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SolarReserve Claims Progress On Power Projects

socalTECH

Santa Monica-based SolarReserve , the developer of utility scale solar power projects, claims today that it is proceeding with purchases of long-lead materials and equipment on its Crescent Dunes and Rice Solar Energy projects. The firm--which is still waiting on Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees--said the purchases are ahead of DOE-supported financing and are a "key milestone" in its construction of its power plants.

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What Mattered In 2010: David Cremin, DFJ Frontier

socalTECH

Last week, we announced our end-of-the-year project, which was to collect and share the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks.

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Broadcom Targets Android Market

socalTECH

Irvine-based semiconductor maker Broadcom said today, among a number of product announcements, that it has rolled out a new platform targeted at the Android smart phone market. Broadcom said it has announced a new, baseband platform providing HSDPA modem connectivity and Android application processing, specifically geared at developing affordable, 3G Android handsets.

Marketing 191
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CyberDefender Gets $5M Line Of Credit

socalTECH

Los Angeles-based CyberDefender , the developer of Internet security software headed by Gary Guseinov, said Monday afternoon that it has scored a $5M line of credit. According to the firm, the loan comes from GR Match, which is an affiliate of Guthy-Renker LLC. The firm said the funding will go towards growing and expanding its direct marketing efforts.

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IPO Market Surpasses 2008, 2009, According to Report

socalTECH

A new report today released by PwC finds that the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) has jumped significantly in 2010, with volumes exceeding both 2008 and 2009 levels. PwC tallied up 154 IPOs completed this year so far, raising $37.5 billion for companies, which is 123 percent increase in volume and a 49 percent increase in volume compared with numbers last year.

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Xfire Launches Game Wagering

socalTECH

Los Angeles-based Xfire , the online gaming site headed by John Maffei, said Wednesday that it has launched a beta of Xfire Arcade, the firm's virtual game wagering service today. Xfire--which is owned by Titan Gaming--said the Xfire Arcade will allow users to compete head to head in casual games, and wager virtual currency on match outcomes. Xfire said the new service awards prizes on a daily and weekly basis to users, and also allows users to use gWallet to earn virtual currency to enter tourn

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