Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. I’m writing this post to explain to entrepreneurs what you should be thinking about in terms of the VC’s you approach and the size and stage of their funds.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

These are industries where structural impediments to technology adoption have only recently been broken down by the advent of incredibly powerful mobile devices. As Fifth Wall’s newest partner Greg Smithies noted last year, there’s a massive opportunity in building retrofits and startup technologies to improve efficiency.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

He eventually founded and sold consumer health firm ViSalus to a public company and is now back making investments, in technology companies, as a venture capitalist here at Los Angeles-based HashtagOne (www.hashtagone.com). Ryan Blair: The theme around the fund is pretty simple. So where is the fund now?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2019

For example, I come from a software background, and back in the early PC days, it could easily cost half a million dollars for a team of professionals to produce a commercial product. Now, with powerful high-level tools and open source software, winning smartphone apps can be built by a good hacker for a few thousand dollars.

Startup 105

Startup Software Review Technical Review Social Media 105

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. What person hasn’t crouched at an airport to get 18% extra on one’s battery before boarding an airplane? . ” **.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

socalTECH

OCTOBER 31, 2011

One of Urbandig's co-founders, Mike Macadaan -- the former VP of User Experience at MySpace, and creator of the technology conference Twiistup--sat down to talk to us about the company. There are lots of knowledgeable people that we find to write these guides--people who grew up there, and who are experts in the area.

Guide 203

Guide Software Review Twiistup Technical Review 203

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. What's you believe is your biggest technology risk, if any? Or how are you funding the next few milestones? Can you help me get funding?

CTO Hire 264

CTO Hire Startup Technical Review Development Team Review 264

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. What's you believe is your biggest technology risk, if any? Or how are you funding the next few milestones? Can you help me get funding?

CTO Hire 259

CTO Hire Startup Technical Review Development Team Review 259

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2013

Define milestones for cost review and sign-off. The market changes, executives learn new things, customers demand changes, and technology changes. Change requests must be visibly reviewed by executives frequently. Remember that in new product development, as in writing, addition by subtraction is the Golden Rule.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review Startup Software Review High Tech 110

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Last week, Santa Monica-based Revolution Prep announced its first, institutional round of funding, worth $15M, from Kennet Partners. The company provides SAT, ACT, and other similar test preparation courses and related software. I had worked as a tutor for Princeton Review, and Jake for Kaplan. We started in 2000.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. It is code word for “I’m not ready to invest for whatever reason … I need more proof.&#. Fund raising is an ongoing process and not an event on a workplan.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Guide Startup Technical Review 309

socalTECH

JULY 22, 2016

Rufus Labs is one of a number of hardware startups which have started to proliferate in the community, due to low cost hardware, 3D printing, and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Gabe Grifoni: At Rufus Labs, we are focused heavily on building wearables and technology in a wearable platform for the enterprise.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Startup Software Review CTO Hire 100

InfoChachkie

JUNE 11, 2012

Steve Jobs – “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Bill Gates – “The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written.

Tips 279

Tips Startup Education Entrepreneur 279

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

For a high-volume seed fund that adds many portfolio companies every year (such as our friends at 500 Startups who invest in over 100 distinct companies annually), the cost of a bad affirmative decision (a false positive) is quite low, since it accounts for a relatively small portion of their total fund. Unicornless. billion).

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

socalTECH

OCTOBER 30, 2008

We're always interested in how technology is influencing the business of Hollywood, and recently ran across Los Angeles-based Scripped. to the business of script writing, and is looking to combine a free online tool for writing scripts with matching those scripts with content producers. What's Scripped?

Content 138

Content Writing Software Review Hollywood 138

socalTECH

APRIL 29, 2014

We were looking at it, and saw that if we could take all these off-the-shelf sensors, and put it all together, and write some code, and make a user interface, it''s basically done. They wanted to do 3-D X-rays, but at the time, there was not technology available to do that. How are you funding this project?

Startup 262

Startup Competition Software Review UCLA 262

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. It became a huge kerfuffle with many VC partners writing to thank me for the post, which exposed those that gave their industry a bad name.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

socalTECH

OCTOBER 28, 2010

How do you take a business you started as your own personal web site, and turn it into an online powerhouse, completely bootstrapped, from the little town of Ojai, California--not exactly known as a technology town? Lynda Weinman: With the downturn due to the dot com crash, our school business died on the vine. It was going crazy.

Startup 242

Startup Web Design Writing Web 242

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

And do I fit as a Part-Time CTO , Technology Advisor , CTO Founder , Acting CTO ? Most of the great software startups that I’ve been involved in have at least one technical co-founder (and many have more than one.) and if you can’t then you better start thinking of ways to raise enough funds to be able to pay them something.

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2010

Bill Gates once famously said that people tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the 1-year timeframe and underestimate its impact in the 10-year timeframe. But when I read thoughtful pieces on the future of technology I start to imagine where our lives will be in 10 years. My favorite new software tool is DailyBurn.

Technical Review 278

Technical Review Software Review Startup SoCal 278

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

People buy companies for 3 primary reasons: 1) they want the management team / talent 2) they want the technology or 3) they want the market traction (revenue, customer base, profits, etc). Mark Jeffrey - Q: “Is it more traditional to do your ESOP (employee stock option plan) before or after your angel or Series A funding?&#

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Capital Startup Pricing 282

socalTECH

DECEMBER 17, 2018

Richard Wolpert is a well known investor in the Los Angeles technology community, through his own fund, Chance Technologies; as a Venture Partner at Amplify.LA Steve was trying to show that the Mac was just as much or better software than Windows. It was a big deal.

Startup 147

Startup Technical Review Entrepreneur Software Review 147

socalTECH

MAY 18, 2010

Al Eisaian: IconApps is built around simplifying people's lives through mobile technology. As of the last four months, we've had about 200,000 plus downloads, a bunch of great write ups, and a lot of mom bloggers who have been reviewing the app and writing stories on it. Al Eisaian: It's been angel funded so far.

Mobile 168

Mobile .Net Pasadena Software Review 168

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 11, 2012

The multi-tiered platform allows for money to be transferred between Facebook friends, the ability to click and purchase any item that you see on Facebook and through the published API’s, developers can integrate and write their own applications on top of the ZunguZ platform. As we know, developers always give their product a code name.

Software Review 92

Software Review Social Network Platform Technical Review 92

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 19, 2012

The industry had seen unprecedented growth in the past decade due to a combination of factors, one of which was the United States’ economic recession. Due to the combination of these factors, marketers began to more heavily fund digital platforms. Resolving Mobile Couponing’s Redemption Pitfalls.

Mobile 85

Mobile Software Review Statistics Technical Review 85

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. – you’re very well positioned as a fund. This post originally ran on TechCrunch. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

We've basically taken advantage of all the new technology out there--especially, the web-based service model. For parents, if you're interested in how your kids are doing, you can find out what their schedule is like, what homework is due when, what their grades are, and how they are progressing, plus you can communicate with their teachers.

Education 124

Education Startup Course Tool 124

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 27, 2009

We didn't wanted to create new project management software--everyone uses Microsoft Project--but we wanted to make it more collaborative. So, our software takes a Microsoft.mpp file, and allows a whole team to manipulate it. Every company that did try it or buy it gave rave reviews, and said that this was what they wanted.

Startup 100

Startup Software Review Technical Review Software 100

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

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

My firm GRP Partners recently funded a young LA based company named Ad.Ly so compelling (other than the fact that the CEO Sean Rad is a great young technology leader and his advisers – Brian Norgard , Dan Gould and Evan Rifkin - are some of the guys I respect most in the LA tech market.). Image courtesy of Bernhardt Haussner.

Ideas 286

Ideas Advertising Google Technical Review 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one. Chris Devore & Andy Sack have created Founder’s Coop with the goal of funding, incubating & launching more early-stage ventures in Seattle. As I gear up to give a keynote at the annual Seattle 2.0

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Many people will write the history on why Ring became an enormously successful company and why it became a real-world unicorn in a world when many startups are anointed that merely on paper. We funded the seed round, the A round, the B round, C round, D round and E round. we were sold on the concept immediately.

Startup 247

Startup Pricing Product Marketing 247

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

No rule is ever absolute no matter how it sounds when one writes a blog. But in these years I learned how to sell software – necessity is the mother of all invention. But in our first year of sales (and those were really shitty years to be selling software) we sold $2.1 They come in the form of personal references.

Startup 285

Startup Venture Capital Sales Software Review 285

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Sometime around 2003/04 my technology team turned me on to “Spolsky on Software&# a periodic newsletter served up blog style from Joel Spolsky of FogCreek Software, a maker of bug-tracking software. After leaving Juno, he founded his own software company, Fog Creek Software. Defensibility in Software.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software Blogging Startup 285

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 11, 2010 I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. How to raise money with no lead - Venture Hacks , July 31, 2010 Paul Graham says “The future [of funding] is no fixed amount, no fixed closing date, and no lead.”

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217