Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2011

I’m not omnipotent so I can’t use market power to influence your behavior. Even writing this could hurt me. I writing as a friend. I use you more than email now. I hate email, by the way. I use it because it was the best mobile client in the market for Blackberry devices. I don’t want that.

Writing 301

Writing Email Press Mobile 301

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.

Venture Capital 389

Venture Capital Email Startup Conference 389

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.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 16, 2011

A smart young marketing exec? You send them update emails. Help them write other stories. One day they’ll write yours. Talented brand sales people? If you wait until you need to fill somebody in a roll you’re losing valuable time as an entrepreneur. You invite them to cocktail parties. 50 coffee meetings.

Startup 410

Startup Writing Press Venture Capital 410

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I guess let’s file this under sales & marketing advice. Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. OK, well, actually the first thing I did is come up with a list of 50 posts that I wanted to write. I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

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. I started by writing 3-4 times / week.

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

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. We are doing what we do – writing larger checks and playing an active role at the company.

Venture Capital 352

Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2010

He stood up, grabbed the mic and gave a heartfelt overview of his experiences in experimenting with new technologies to build relationships with his audience, get feedback on his product quality and to market his music all the way to the top of iTunes. In his early career he realized the importance of email lists.

Entrepreneur 356

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Email 356

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2011

On this blog I’m often trying to combine lessons for entrepreneurs and market commentary. I have long wanted to write about FNAC (feature, not a company) because it’s part of my normal lexicon to push teams that present to me to think harder about where the economics in their industry is coming from. It lingered.

Email 270

Email Writing Blogging Competition 270

TechEmpower

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Profile Blurbs and Writing Prompts Let’s look at our job matching site in more detail. This gives Mark more control over the process, without requiring him to write much, and gives the LLM more to work with. The LLM didn’t just write a blurb for Mark, it wrote the blurb that Mark would have written, if only he’d had the words.

Generative AI 297

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence TechEmpower Tips 297

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. These are all creative processes.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2010

In writing anything positive about any of the companies I’m not suggesting that it means that I prefer them to any of their competitors. Also, some of the deals I write about I have actually seen as part of their fund raising process. This is the market that Wonga serves and they are killing it! Big market.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Capital Email Blogging 265

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. So they set out a grass route’s effort to go directly to the market. There has been all sorts of discussions about marketing on blogs lately.

Entrepreneur 398

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 398

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. They worry too much about missing out on a deal. I don’t.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to write it because I have mixed feelings about AngelList. I didn’t want to write it because the bloggosphere doesn’t always do nuance well. So why I am writing it then? As Shervin said, it’s just email. A few reasons.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

I CERTAINLY opened myself up to attack by writing my original blog post about job hoppers with some incendiary language and tone. I mostly get hammered on HN if I write about a controversial topic like criticizing Apple (in fact, what prompted me to write this post today was that I was asked on Twitter to write a post about Facebook.

News 258

News Tips Blogging Writing 258

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2019

In addition, the discipline of producing it, like writing a business plan, will help you immensely in understanding the key elements that drive you and your business. I often hear the excuse that writing a book takes precious time away from building and running your business, which you cannot afford.

Writing 19

Writing Technical Review Entrepreneur Advertising 19

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Guy, how would your 2004 book, Art Of The Start , differ, if you were writing it today? If I were writing the book today, there would be a whole chapter or two…about how to use Facebook and Twitter. In Art Of The Start , you encourage your readers to be responsive and to strive to return emails within 24-hours.

Santa Barbara 262

Santa Barbara Technical Review Social Media Startup 262

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

Enterprise Sales – The very first thing a potential customer does when you email or call to set up a meeting is Google you. Of course you need a new angle to get a journalist interested because they don’t simply want to write what everybody else has covered. Just like negative press hurts.

Press 415

Press Google Course Writing 415

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

I told him only 2 weeks ago when we were in London together that I wanted to write a blog post that has been in my head for 2 years. Dave is terrible with email. He’s so bad that his email auto-responder tells you he likely won’t email you back. He doesn’t email you. I’ve been told so. Not the Dave I know.

Startup 309

Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

You can watch/listen to how John and Kyle turned their email newsletter into an international bestseller in the following 9-minute excerpt from John''s recent talk at UC Santa Barbara. an email) to about 35 people. If you want to be kept informed just send me an email and let me know that you''re in, and that was it.

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 2, 2009

Twitter, by contrast, started as an open platform where people let anybody see what they were writing. People write their thoughts knowing that anybody else can see them. Capture the data – the currency of online direct marketing prior to Twitter was the email address. So why is this important for businesses?

Social Network 235

Social Network Writing Tool Startup 235

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

This is to drive marketing and any IT or infrastructure spend can be seen as such. He started by using email (send your eCard to a friend) and there he sees 3-4 clicks back per share action. The bigger aha was using the information from the social graph to drive marketing. Here’s the link. Why do a freemium model?

Startup 303

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Writing 303

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

The “more traction&# feedback is a very typical scenario is a down market economy like the one we’re in. It’s marketing 101 for tech companies in terms of how you market to customers. It’s marketing 101 for tech companies in terms of how you market to customers. VC’s are the same.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Guide Startup Technical Review 309

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 8, 2012

Evidence of validation manifests itself in many forms and is derived from a variety of market forces. As shown below, the most impactful form of traction is when your venture repeatedly convinces rational, third-party customers to happily part with their hard-earned cash, at a market price, in exchange for your solution.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital RSS Customer Custom 265

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - . - 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? First Principles.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2017

As executives we’re all seemingly accessible at any moment to anybody via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Text. Meeting a lot of candidates to find your head of marketing is all well and good but if 3 months later you still have no one in the role you’re still down a person. Get non-core things out of your way.

Activity 297

Activity Blogging Email Startup 297

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.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Capital Startup Funding 292

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

Well, aside from it showing discipline and intelligence – we always get flooded with emails when we recruit and when you have to manage volume you need to go for obvious filters. Plus, show my you can write! I’m already 2 weeks late in writing this blog post as my partners keep reminding me. What is the timeframe?

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

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. We write that into the calendar entry so that I (and any my partners) know this and would only reschedule if extremely urgent.

Conference 369

Conference Startup Century City Email 369

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Best damn marketing tool by an order of magnitude. Over the past 12 months, I've had roughly 284,000 people come visit that site and get exposed to things I write. Be interested in what they write. Plan out how you will interact with what they are writing. Separate Blogging from Marketing. It has changed my life.

Social Media 222

Social Media Services Media Blogging 222

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

So why is online video such an attractive market to build a startup? These markets represent about $600 billion of total spend between them, leaving tons of opportunities for startups to disrupt and grow large. But a market in which every network competes to sign up the largest talent by throwing rev share deals at them is also stupid.

Companies 339

Companies Company Technical Review Content 339

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. &# If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here. I’m reluctant to put it into writing because people get so passionate about this issue and many disagree. Research your market. Register a company.

Startup 365

Startup Technical Advisors IP Ideas 365

socalTECH

DECEMBER 17, 2008

Writers can log into our site, upload their project, and select from over 4,000 markets, and send their work out to the world physically with a single click. In their case, people write their scripts on a web site, and when they're done, they can submit them to contests with a single click.

Writing 209

Writing Hollywood Startup Sites 209

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

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. I thought I’d write a post about how to talk about valuation at a startup and give you some sense of what might be on the mind of the person considering funding you. After all?—?we

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

Berkonomics

JULY 20, 2017

You may recall that Microsoft planned a new file system for Vista, but pulled the file system from the product before release, and has not released the WinFS file system yet as of this writing, years later. It is interesting to note that not many of us even remember this “feature” let alone miss it.

Customer 256

Customer Custom Writing Product 256

Eric Greenspan

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

I’ve remained a skeptic about the BBB and as a result of an email I received a couple of weeks ago from them, I have raised the skepticism threat level. So here’s the email I received: Eric, My name is Chad Ratliffe emailing from the Better Business Bureau. That’s how we do business at Make It Work.

Santa Barbara 265

Santa Barbara Technical Advisors Email Technical Review 265