Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I would argue that this mostly consists of consumer Internet companies (although not exclusively) and it is predominantly early-stage people who are product gurus and have a mildly technical bend to them. I’m a product geek more than a spreadsheet ninja. I’m a product geek more than a spreadsheet ninja.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

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. Writing down key parameters will force you solidify the specifics, and mentally commit to them. Present at trade shows and network with your ten-slide pitch to build your following.

Ideas 94

Ideas Slides Technical Review Patents 94

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

After seeing Chamillionaire interact with several entrepreneurs both at events and as an investor I started introducing him to startups in an advisory capacity. And after one meeting they started asking for his advice about marketing, customer engagement, product design, monetization – whatever.

Conference 150

Conference Slides Social Media Summary 150

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2010

For extroverted people I recommend that entrepreneurs have an “executive summary&# slide up front that cuts to the chase. Don’t dwell on this slide for ever. If I have an hour with you I want to maximise the time we have a discussion so I want to get through the slides quickly. Most entrepreneurs are.

Slides 358

Slides Venture Capital Startup Summary 358

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 15, 2015

As a mentor to startups and new entrepreneurs, I continue to hear the refrain that business plans are no longer required for a new startup, since investors never read them anyway. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or if your last startup failed, it’s all about standing out above the crowd of others like you, and demonstrating your readiness.

Startup 104

Startup Writing Entrepreneur Slides 104

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

As a startup mentor and investor, I am approached regularly by aspiring entrepreneurs who assert that business plans are a waste of time. They cite sources like the BusinessWeek story, “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ” and this Forbes article. You need funding, and plan to get it from friends and family.

Technical Review 109

Technical Review Writing Entrepreneur Slides 109

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Unless you are a serial entrepreneur with a string of successes behind you, you need a business plan to convince investors that you can build a business out of the dream that has been driving your passion to change the world. Professional investors look for the right people, more than the right product. The details can be added later.

Startup 65

Startup Writing Patents Competition 65

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I started with the hosted version and then migrated to an installed version so I could use Google Analytics and some other products. I was an entrepreneur. 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.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. I decided to write about my experience and to be blunt. There was no viral social networking products back then like Twitter where people could easily discover your content. That changed very quickly. And covered we did.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 18, 2010

It’s as good as it gets in personal productivity / life reflection. I know that would be surprising to many readers since keeping a blog somehow convinces people that I’m a time management or productivity ninja. That’s why productivity wasn’t tough for me as a CEO. I’m not.

Slides 374

Slides Email Entrepreneur Startup 374

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2016

We take a really friendly, Shark Tank approach that promotes young entrepreneurs, and lets them pitch to a group of seasoned investors and venture capitalists on a panel, and where they not only get an actual investment, but also go through a retail challenge, to get consumer feedback. How did you get involved with angel investing, initially?

Startup 100

Startup Entrepreneur Invest Competition 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2018

As a mentor to startups and new entrepreneurs, I continue to hear the refrain that business plans are no longer required for a new startup, since investors never read them anyway. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or if your last startup failed, it’s all about standing out above the crowd of others like you, and demonstrating your readiness.

Startup 65

Startup Entrepreneur Slides Content 65

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

We then talked about our product roadmap. You put some update slides on things like key hires or biz dev deals being negotiated and you didn’t plan to talk about them. But they were in a slide and people asked you questions so it ended up chewing up 30 minutes. We started with our financial statements. Then competition.

Startup 331

Startup Slides Guide Writing 331

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

Any SoCal entrepreneur raising early-stage money should put Rincon on their short list. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while and was going to use AngelList by Nivi & Naval as the basis for my example and the perfect prompt came yesterday when I read Fred Wilson’s blog post on AngelList.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2013

I will outline here ten key principles and disciplines that every entrepreneur must understand and practice to minimize surprises and failures in this area: Failure to document cash flow projections is a disaster. The faster you grow, the more cash you need, to build product, facilities, staff, and service.

Startup 114

Startup Sales Layoffs Slides 114

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. My mom was an entrepreneur – she was kind of my inspiration for entrepreneurship. It was like nobody would give me any respect and they just saw me as the guy who goes and talks to senior people who does PowerPoint slides.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

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. I’ve done 4 seed investments in the past year and they are 100% referenceable. This is the nature of compromise.

Seed Funding 298

Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

As an advisor to new hardware entrepreneurs, I often hear the myth that a business plan is no longer required to find an investor, if your idea is good enough. What you don’t realize is these famous investors only deal with entrepreneurs who sold their last company for a $100M dollars or more. You need both to survive.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

This started as a post in which I was going to write out tips to personal branding and became in stead an essay of my own branding journey. Send me in a corner to work on slides, graphs, spreadsheets and charts. When I started my second company I was a serial entrepreneur. I introduced myself as a serial entrepreneur.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2016

In the new business world, many entrepreneurs are so excited with large initial orders that they don’t anticipate the cash flow challenges that can quickly kill their startup. Of course, you can’t predict everything, but writing down what you know will identify existing problems sooner, and allow other team members to help.

Startup 64

Startup Sales Layoffs Slides 64

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

I know because many entrepreneurs I spend time with I can tell are in their own brains when we’re meeting rather than trying to understand what my position is. You’re in sales mode. They are seldom productive. You have target customers, you have competitors and you have a product to sell.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314

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. The process in and of itself was pretty lengthy and at some point I’d like to write about it in more detail.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. but: Something is Still Missing.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 28, 2012

From LA Demo Day to Silicon Beach Fest to Crowdstart LA to hackathons to Startup Weekends, companies and entrepreneurs alike have joined forces to feed the startup ecosystem. THIRD TIME’S A CHARM: On Sunday we presented to a panel of judges consisting of entrepreneurs and a VC investor. I got the same response from everyone.

Startup 100

Startup Ideas San Diego Mentor 100

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

So I thought I’d write a piece on how to not suck when you give a presentation. The bring your product to life. Establish the persona of the person who would be using your products. Tell us what their life is like without your product – how they struggle. They had slides with moving images and music.

Startup 362

Startup Twiistup Slides Screening 362

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2019

In my work with new and aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that most struggle with putting together a written business plan, often pointing out that someone they know started a business without anything written down. You really need at least a prototype product or customer to make the video come alive. Make it light, but factual.

Ideas 126

Ideas Slides Sample Examples 126

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2017

Writing a business plan is hard work, so I get lots of pushback from prospective new venture founders that it’s just a waste of their valuable time in this rapidly changing environment. They all claim to have the plan in their head, and writing it down will only slow down their success.

Writing 71

Writing Startup Slides Entrepreneur 71

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. Every 1:1 meeting you’ve had to date has been collegiate and productive. tip: write it down when asked / parked). Let me write that down.&#. -

Venture Capital 318

Venture Capital Startup Sales Writing 318

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I have been writing a series on how startup boards get selected, who sits on them and what to avoid. I started this series in part to help entrepreneurs but also to help newer investors because I’ve know with so many new companies you have so many new board members and many people are trying to figure out there respective roles.

Startup 251

Startup Help Technical Review Writing 251

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.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

As I write these words I’m aware that I could practically change the words AOL and Facebook for much of this section and with a few factual tweaks it might not be noticeable to the reader which of the firms I was talking about. 18 months ago 25% of all pitches to me were ideas for how to build products around Twitter’s API.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Web 2.0 Startup 318

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My advice to entrepreneurs was and is “ when the hors d’oeuvres tray is being passed take two ” (e.g. It eventually closed at 11,204 in April ’10 before sliding back around 10,000 as I sit here and type. VCs have also gone back to writing checks because as an industry we can’t be seen as “sitting on the sidelines” for years at a time.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

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