Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2021

Every business I know is intimately familiar with outbound marketing, or pushing your message out to customers through email, newspaper, and television advertising. Only a few really understand the process and value of inbound marketing, for pulling customers to your brand. Pull marketing is less expensive than push marketing.

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Customer Custom Marketing Social Media 172

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

They get pissed off if a senior executive at Google doesn’t take a meeting with them, if people are late to their meetings or if they have emails that are unreturned. The 70% of entrepreneurs that simply can’t get past an un-responded-to email. You need to know how to write good & action oriented emails.

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Venture Capital Email Startup Conference 389

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Focus upon you as marketing genius. Let’s focus not upon the process of marketing and positioning, but on you. How should you become the best marketer you can be, even if you are a first-time entrepreneur or a seasoned CEO? The first rule of marketing and positioning is to listen to the marketplace. . Hire consultants.

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Marketing Metrics Education Resource 156

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. Email updates frequently. Key point – if your emails are as long as my blog posts you’re forked. Make your emails actionable.

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Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

First, let’s recall the four “P’s” of marketing. Marketing is a science devised to help drive customers to your door. There are lots of ways to define how to market well, including the four P’s of marketing (1): product, price, promotion and place. More we are taught in marketing classes.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 29, 2021

As a business consultant, I often have to remind small business owners that their marketing needs to be more interactive, versus the traditional “ push ” model, where you broadcast your message to as many people as possible. Marketing must be everyone’s top priority. Market solutions as an experience or an event.

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Customer Custom Marketing Social Media 168

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

The universal truth about projections And in my opinion, all those ten methods fail to take into account the universal truth about the early-stages of growth – that less than one in a thousand startups meet or exceed their projected revenues in the periods planned.

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Invest Startup Email Competition 306

TechCrunch LA

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

The platform is going after marketers with a Canva-style drag-and-drop interface. That’s because the startup is hoping to capture the wave of marketers who are warming up to AI tools to assist their job. “Videos are powerful — just imagine if marketers can send emails with talking human avatars instead of plain text.”

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Generative AI Marketing Artificial Inteligence Template 182

Berkonomics

MARCH 31, 2022

The obsolete marketing message. And both have become increasingly obsolete as new channels of reach have evolved, allowing direct and personal contact with our potential customers, and better yet, free and near–free forms of marketing just for the asking. Today’s marketing tools and methods. Revert to “old school” marketing.

Marketing 156

Marketing Customer Custom Tool 156

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. So I recommend a high-level “state of the company” email a couple of times a year but a message that you assume might get shown to others. The trends are well understood: more angels, more seed funds, more crowdsourcing and so forth.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 12, 2021

If you are a passionate technologist , it’s easy to forget that marketing is required to sell even the most compelling solution, to cut through the information overload everyone sees today on the internet. If marketing is not your thing, then you need to find a partner or outside expert to help you.

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Technical Advisors Tips Marketing Case Study 154

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

It is the bane of every startups existence because it takes up so much time, it is so competitive to sign people and it feels like unproductive time because it’s not moving the ball forward on product, engineering, sales, marketing, biz dev, fund raising. It consumes time and energy and the payoff doesn’t come for a long time.

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Press Startup Email Sales 341

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

I would be very, very nervous without testing the product in the market as early as possible, ready to make changes and enhancements before committing to production and release. Even with a perfect product, is the market ready for this? The post Is your product ready for your market? Do NOT rest until you test.

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Product Marketing Resource Email 120

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

I actually really enjoyed many of the points Muhammad made about marketing in general and I found myself nodding through the entirety of the article except for it’s core premise. It’s about looking out for and catching the next major marketing wave before others have grokked it. I laughed as I did at much of his rant.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review SEM SEO Marketing 384

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

I see it on email even more. ” In it he talked about how he gets daily emails asking for intros to Oprah (he does a lot of work with her) and his advice. Todd Gitlin is one of the best executive recruiters the technology & startup market in Los Angeles. It seems we live in an era of “ask.” Lots of asking.

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Venture Capital Press GRP Partners Blogging 407

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2012

They’ve been a long-term investor in our fund – GRP Partners – and it was important to me to spend time with them in their home market and meet the people with whom they deal locally. I met with Dave Knox whom I had previously met when he worked at P&G in marketing. Find out how local markets differ from yours. He said yes.

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Press Course Startup Email 364

Berkonomics

MAY 31, 2018

Tom almost always had ideas to contribute, particularly about marketing programs and opportunities. Email readers, continue here…] One day Tom came to me and said, “I want to transfer to marketing. Five years later, I received an email from Tom. An email to preserve and show. Hello again, Dave,” it began.

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Email Coach Invest Equity 226

Berkonomics

MARCH 20, 2014

First: You must address a big market, large enough to allow a new entrant to have a shot at making a dent with a great product or service, and growing to a size that will make the company valuable at the exit. Many, many businesses will never be able to obtain this kind of market size or share. Email readers, continue here.]

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TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 5, 2020

“The only success criteria of my startup career is whether GrubMarket can eventually make $100 billion of annual sales,” he said to me over both email and in a phone conversation. Its opportunity comes in the form of disruption and a gap in the market. ” I don’t doubt that he means it.

Technical Review 343

Technical Review Startup Marketing San Diego 343

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

As a market we seem to be incapable of temperance. And even the best teams combined to create big innovations sometimes don’t time markets well, are surprised by unexpected technology breakthroughs by competitors or just don’t find the magic the leads to mass customer adoption. It’s marketing. So which is it?

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

I reviewed an email from Kara Nortman, the CEO of Moonfrye who is working on putting together venture debt. I then traded emails with two former senior tech professionals in LA. Let’s say your a junior developer, marketer, product manager, biz dev person at a startup or well-established technology company.

Networking 366

Networking Startup CTO Coach Email 366

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

That’s a reason why some are quick to portend “a new bubble” but this post sets out to show that would be a misunderstanding of the market and in fact by historic levels this may be amongst the best times to invest in seed and early-stage funds. More on that later. If you look even more closely you’ll see just how skewed the data really is.

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Venture Capital Capital Startup Funding 292

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 23, 2021

Email readers, continue here…] We worry over projections and fix our budgets to match, and then we manage to the revenue and costs of the budget. Can we change our thought process, alter our marketing focus, take resources from other areas if needed, and double down to back up potential winners in the making?

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

Remember that the goal of an email to a VC or an introduction from a trusted mutual connection is simply to get you the meeting. You want to send just enough to get the meeting (and of course a great deck sells better than a long email) and not so long that you don’t leave a chance to wow the person in your actual meeting. Compelling.

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Venture Capital Slides Email Startup 261

TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 26, 2022

Glossier, the popular beauty brand led by former blogger Emily Weiss, let go of 80 of its corporate employees today, according to an internal email obtained by Modern Retail. The cuts, which amount to around one-third of Glossier’s corporate workforce, will primarily impact the company’s technology team. “[W]e

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CTO Hire Layoffs Commerce Email 197

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.” If a VC “ghosts you” (i.e.

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

Sometimes we get stuck in the muck with our marketing, product, management focus, and in keeping up with trends. Email readers, continue here…] Employees love progress and excitement when involved in something refreshing and new. The industry takes notice when you change up the same old marketing methods and message.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 12, 2025

Automobile companies are famous for making such bets on cars that won’t be on the market for 18 to 36 months from decision date, arriving at a time when gas prices and consumer preferences may have changed dramatically during that time.

Resource 156

Resource Pricing Email Design 156

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I started in 2007 with a thesis that my primary investment decision would be about the team (70%) and only afterward about the market opportunity (30%). Today we’re in a world where 10 accelerators are bombarding you with emails to meet their 10-15 companies. You have to decide where to lean in on follow-on rounds. Probably more.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 8, 2020

Key introductions in a networking meeting will be quickly lost, unless you take the next step of calling or emailing later to request a personal meeting. These days, winning in the crowded startup world is all about marketing. Unique and professional business cards are still well worth the investment.

Ideas 124

Ideas Tips Marketing Social Media 124

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

As VCs we’re inundated with emails from founders, friends, colleagues, angels, seed investors, VCs, law firms, venture banks, corporates and so forth with their favorite deals. What I’m saying is that you can’t spend all of your time in email working your inbox. ” What do I mean? It’s inbound.

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Startup Technical Review Venture Capital Email 317

Berkonomics

APRIL 27, 2017

You can express it in terms of money, market share, influence or other measure that reflects success. Email readers, continue here…] Once achieved, a goal is meant to be overwritten with a newer one, set to even higher standards. That is measurable.

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Satisfaction Email Examples Report 266

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know that you can use an email system with this to track my open rate, whether I forwarded the email, the IP address where I read it, whether I was on a mobile device or a wired computer and you can tell who else read the document. Competition isn’t won or lost by your marketing decks?—?it’s What should be in your deck?

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Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2012

They just need you to update your marketing materials. I know our product seems complex but we felt we needed to test lots of features to be sure we knew what would resonate with users … or … we aren’t committed to features x, y, z yet but we know our competitors are planning to so we wanted to be first to market.

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Resource Startup Product Ideas 415

TechEmpower

JULY 24, 2023

How will you be taking this to market? Often this ties to marketing support. Will you validate new members’ email addresses and/or phone numbers? How do we prioritize internationalization versus getting something to market? Do they generate emails or push notifications? What channels will you use (e.g.,

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Develop Development Technical Review SEO 520

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2014

I wrote a version of this post four years ago but given the hectic nature of today’s tech markets I thought it was worth revisiting and updating. I wrote him the following email. In this case it warrants a personal email (or better yet a phone call) from you and a Herculean effort to reschedule the meeting.

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Conference Startup Century City Email 369

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2017

Your first customers for any product or service form your reference base, the important group of allies that your marketing and sales people rely upon when attempting to create buzz and make a mass market for a new product. Capture every compliment and ask if you can use it for marketing purposes.

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Customer Custom Resource Sales 243