Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2013

I “second the message” that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “ Conquer the Chaos.” Once they see you have developed credible traction, they can grab your space with less cost (meaning lower price) than you had to put into developing it. Your income drops.

Entrepreneur 105

Entrepreneur Slides IP Technology 105

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2009

This involves a person who leads a PowerPoint presentation in which the presenter feels more comfortable racing through pre-practiced slides and rattling off charts & bullet points than having a discussion. The VC might have tried a few times to prompt a discussion and you didn’t take the queue but in stead reverted back to slides.

Venture Capital 275

Venture Capital Sales Slides Startup 275

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 10, 2021

In my work with many entrepreneurs and investors, I also see and support the strong movement to this business model, which can be characterized by the following attributes she outlines: Deliver value to the greater community, as well as customers and insiders. The days of mass production and commodity pricing as an asset are gone.

Custom 140

Custom Customer Slides Commerce 140

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

Thus, I’m more impressed with entrepreneurs who ask me to review their implementation plan, rather than listen again to their idea. Present at trade shows and network with your ten-slide pitch to build your following. Make the product or service come alive. Even a non-profit needs income to operate.

Ideas 94

Ideas Slides Technical Review Patents 94

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2011

I second the message that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “ Conquer the Chaos.” Once they see you have developed credible traction, they can grab your space with less cost (meaning lower price) than you had to put into developing it. Your income drops.

Entrepreneur 95

Entrepreneur Slides IP Technology 95

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

But in my experience as an entrepreneur and now spending my time amongst investors I can generalize that almost all VC investments in early stage technology & Internet investments come down to just four key factors. This post was prompted by an email exchange I had with a young entrepreneur. I was interested in learning more.

Startup 360

Startup Venture Capital Invest Slides 360

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 12, 2010

In the technology world there are a few websites that most startups track to keep up with the latest financings, acquisitions, product announcements and gossip: BusinessInsider, TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. Specifically we talked about Slide having gotten a $550 million valuation before being sold to Google for $182 million.

Venture Capital 232

Venture Capital Slides Seed Funding Google 232

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product. think his slides are great (and by far much easier on the eye then mine.). By doing the job.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

socalTECH

APRIL 26, 2017

One, is an upright, traditional looking microscopes, where you look at glass slides. We've created an alternative, a hybrid microscope for the price of one. What really separated us, was not the microscope, but how we very quickly sold out of our first three production runs of our microscope. Maybe that's even 99 percent.

Tech Coast Angels 124

Tech Coast Angels Startup Sales Slides 124

socalTECH

APRIL 26, 2017

One, is an upright, traditional looking microscopes, where you look at glass slides. We've created an alternative, a hybrid microscope for the price of one. What really separated us, was not the microscope, but how we very quickly sold out of our first three production runs of our microscope. Maybe that's even 99 percent.

Tech Coast Angels 100

Tech Coast Angels Startup Sales Slides 100

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 23, 2014

I “second the message” that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “ Conquer the Chaos.” Once they see you have developed credible traction, they can grab your space with less cost (meaning lower price) than you had to put into developing it. Your income drops.

Startup 100

Startup Slides Entrepreneur IP 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2014

In their passion and excitement about a new product or service, entrepreneurs tend to continually narrow the scope of potential competitors, and often claim to have no direct competitors. All of these are competitors in terms of speed, price, or luxury. Order-of-magnitude cost reduction or productivity increase.

Competition 93

Competition Startup Patents Slides 93

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. Over time I realized I was a bit of a bottleneck in pricing and I didn’t add significant value.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Custom 296

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

Many firms do it in a way that can be more detrimental to entrepreneurs. VentureHacks laid out the debate in a truly awesome interview & PowerPoint slides if you really want an in-depth understanding of the issue. How this works: I try to set a price that feels like a fair balance between GRP and the company.

Seed Funding 298

Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Entrepreneurs who are looking to attract investors need to develop and pitch a plan -- preferably written -- that answers every potential investor question about your startup before it is asked. Since investors are buying a part of your company (not your product), this is the most important question, and is one often not answered.

Invest 108

Invest Startup Slides Equity 108

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

As startup entrepreneurs we all want to work with them because having their name as reference clients makes it so much easier for marketing, PR, selling to other customers, fund raising and even recruiting. BigCo calls you to review your product and decides they want to use you. Have minimums but a sliding scale.

Startup 298

Startup Sales Slides Metrics 298

The Quigley Report

MARCH 4, 2008

VCs tend to put greater weight on the potential market size of the product being built, the reputations of the founders and the number of existing competitors than they do on swings (positive or negative) in the NASDAQ index. These firms most definitely do look at public stock market valuations as a measure of how to price a private company.

Startup 40

Startup Slides Marketing Clearstone 40

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

I mean, that''s what entrepreneurs do every day. When I went into work today, I didn''t realize that Monday morning we''re going to be pitching UPS on a big contract, on a product that, guess what, it doesn''t even exist. But that''s what entrepreneurs do everyday. I''m not hiding behind any slides. Why not just wing it?

Startup 223

Startup Yahoo Santa Barbara Slides 223

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding. Short answer: no.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

No amount of persuasion would work so I asked simply if I could be staffed on one of his projects to teach some of his MBA geniuses about computer networks since they were working on defining telecom product offerings for the Internet age. Send me in a corner to work on slides, graphs, spreadsheets and charts. 25, ISDN, T3s, etc.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

socalTECH

JUNE 16, 2010

My partner and I, Cliff Elion, have a patent pending neck technology, which enables the guitar to be made at a very accessible price point, and also have probably more functionality and connectivity than any device in history. What we found, in taking our product to the MTV awards, is our product is game changer.

Orange County 244

Orange County Startup Slides Paramount 244

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2015

In my work with many entrepreneurs and investors, I also see and support the strong movement to this new business model, which can be characterized by the following attributes she outlines: Deliver value to the greater community, as well as customers and insiders. The days of mass production and commodity pricing as an asset are gone.

Custom 55

Custom Customer Slides Commerce 55

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2010

I second the message from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “ Conquer the Chaos ” that chaos never subsides. Once they see you have developed credible traction, they can grab your space with less cost (meaning lower price) than you had to put into developing it. Your income drops.

Startup 57

Startup Slides Entrepreneur IP 57

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

I can’t tell you how many people have thanked me for this advice and say their productivity increased exponentially. It freed up Ophir to grow out our sales organization, to work more closely with agencies, to innovate on product and to raise capital. It’s the nature of most entrepreneurs, honestly.

Outsource Development 150

Outsource Development Metrics Startup Sales 150

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 26, 2016

By that time, I had figured out the cadence of pricing for hotel rooms, and had been traveling back and forth between LA and San Francisco for three or four days each week. Plus, prices were starting at $180. I got to live in Tel Aviv for four months with their product team, and I really got bit by the travel bug.

Startup 100

Startup Los Angeles Mobile Pricing 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2009

It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?) Time to start thinking about how to make it more productive. If your valuation is already too high then seek approval to let them invest at a price lower than the current value. This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice.

Startup 306

Startup Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 306

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

I was thumbing through Twitter messages on my Blackberry on Monday (I use Twitter as a “ mobile first, web second &# product) when I saw the following Tweet (see graphic). I thought Chris basically meant that investors know what most deals (not just their own) get done at so they have a pretty good sense how to price seed, A, B, etc.

Startup 294

Startup Sales Venture Capital Slides 294

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 16, 2015

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. These are usually the first sources entrepreneurs tap. This can be a great way to test your product and get customer feedback. Be careful how you price this. Crowdfunding.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Equity Funding 40

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 9, 2014

After the event, we caught up, Parker Thompson , Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) charged with leading Batch 8. Harnessing more energy from our grid by emphasizing efficiency, not increased factory and power production. To 500 Startups for being great hosts and putting a promising batch of entrepreneurs through their program.

Startup 111

Startup Mobile Commerce Education 111

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Fox bought MySpace for $580 million and then did a deal with Google worth more than the purchase price to serve up ads. MySpace would liked to have owned YouTube but didn’t have the public stock valuation to purchase them at the price that Google did. For a nanosecond Rupert Murdoch seemed like the smartest guy on the Internet.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Web 2.0 Startup 318