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. In my post “ Measure twice, cut once ” I’ve outlined how to plan before you start raising. You can short-hand this as “engagement.”

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

I grew up believing that human behavior was 20% nature, 80% nurture. There have been many studies done on the topic including looking at twins raised in separate families. There have been studies of adopted children to their natural parents versus the parents that raised them. I have also seen studies on “birth order.&#.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

Yesterday I wrote a post about top-down versus bottom-up thinking. So they create a task list of all the marketing activities an organization can do: press releases, web site updates, customer case studies, blog posts, daily Tweets, Facebook fan page, attending conferences, etc. Tags: Start-up Advice.

Startup

socalTECH

MAY 4, 2015

Size of the funding was not disclosed. The startup is led by Dr. Philip Low, who founded NeuroVigil based on research he did as a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The company raised its seed funding round in 2008 as part of the DFJ Venture Challenge. READ MORE>>.

Draper

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

I live in LA and fund startups. So you can imagine that I see a lot of video startups. I’ve written before about why I believe most Hollywood online video startups don’t get the future (and why most Silicon Valley startups don’t get online video ). Most will fail. Here is an example.

Company

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 20, 2014

According to a recent Forbes article , UC Santa Barbara''s Technology Management Program offers students a superior startup education over the University of Pennsylvania (home of Wharton), as well Harvard, Northwestern and even its acclaimed southern neighbor, the University of Southern California. Techpreneurs.

Santa Barbara

socalTECH

MAY 11, 2011

Earlier this week, Los Angeles-based Anti-AgingGames (www.Anti-AgingGames.com), a new online game startup, announced a new service to help users improve their memory and concentration, as well as improve brain function. How did you end up starting the site? I ended up managing that project. This is my third company.

Study

InfoChachkie

JUNE 11, 2012

Although it may be comfortable to start a company with your friends, it is a mistake, unless your friend(s) happens to be ideally suited to their role in your venture. 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?

Tips

socalTECH

DECEMBER 9, 2011

A new study compiled by the University of Southern California tallies up $380M raised in capital by USC spinouts in the last three years, and a 15 year total of $800M raised by 39 startups with roots at the school. READ MORE>>.

USC

socalTECH

APRIL 12, 2013

There''s been a lot of activity over the past two years in the Southern California accelerator/incubator market, with numerous groups (Amplify, EvoNexus, K5, LaunchpadLA, MediaCamp, Science, StartEngine, and many, many others) looking to help entrepreneurs start and fund their companies. where we totalled up $33.85M in funding.

Southern California

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Santa Monica-based venture investor March Capital Partners (www.marchcp.com) announced last week that it has raised a second fund, worth $300M. To learn about the new fund, we sat down with Jamie Montgomery , one of the fund's co-founders, to hear about March Capital's strategy and the new fund.

Funding

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

Let me start with Professor Christensen’s definition: “An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.&#. Let’s start with the incumbents position in a market.

Startup

L.A. Business Journal

OCTOBER 27, 2017

CAA launches tech startup studio with $12 million in funding, SpaceX details satellite constellation plans to Congress and AirBnB to generate nearly $1 billion in L.A. County activity, study says.

SpaceX

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

The book is a layman’s guide to understanding how we as humans make decisions and is underpinned by data-oriented studies to prove his claims. First, no matter what anybody tells you (people don’t want to believe that we’re influenced by the crowd), social proof is hugely important in fund raising. You should, too.

Guide

socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2012

Recently, an interesting project popped up on the site--a a 2D to 3D conversion project , from the inventor of the original, LCD projector, Gene Dolgoff. Since Dolgoff is raising money for his 2D-to-3D startup via Fundable, we thought it would be interesting to hear about the project, and how he ended up turning to Fundable.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2015

Let me start the post with three statements. Many people with ADD don’t work well in corporations & with bureaucracy, people with ADD have a bias towards action, people with ADD often speak up & take action and have strong bursts of creativity. My wife is a saint for putting up with me. As are my work colleagues.

Startup

socalTECH

JANUARY 6, 2022

in its Series A funding. The funding was led by Acorn Bioventures and ALSHC, plus Cormorant Asset Management. The startup says it is developing optimally engineered natural killer (NK) cell therapies. San Diego- and Galway, Ireland-based ONK Therapeutics announced today that it has raised $21.5M

San Diego

socalTECH

MARCH 29, 2016

Los Angeles-based Memorang , the developer of a flash-card based, study tool to help people study for such things as the MCAT, GRE, NBME, and a host of other tests, has raised $500,000 in a funding round, the company is announcing this morning. READ MORE>>.

Study

socalTECH

JUNE 21, 2013

Instead of equity, the company is aimed at profiting profitable small businesses with business debt funding from investors, to help those businesses grow and get to the next level. I studied finance, and worked on Wall Street as a credit analyst, so I understand debt better. How''d you come up with the idea for the site?

Startup

socalTECH

JANUARY 24, 2011

For this morning's company profile, we thought we'd connect with ShareSquare (www.getsharesquare.com), a newly funded Los Angeles startup focused on QR barcodes -- 3D barcodes -- focused on musicians and entertainers. We caught up with Matthias Galica , the firm's founder, to hear more about the company.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. My starting salary was $27,000. I have published many of these PR Tips before. “But you’re in the business group!?!”

Technical Advisors

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 19, 2012

What was the most practical advice Jonathan learned during his fund raising? As a startup you need to understand this. And you need to have a channel strategy as a startup. Study channel strategies. But it made it very difficult to fund raise when awe.sm Now people are starting to grok the difference.

Yahoo

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

I have started thinking about what the future might look like and I’ve started imagining what I call, “MMOV” or massive multiplayer online video. Maker’s talent started commenting on it and sharing it. In fact, that’s how Maker Studios got started in the first place. Why would it?

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

When the masses start all running one way without questioning “why?&# – and when it defies any logic I can figure out in my head – I call bullshit. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. “ Question Authority.&#.

Invest

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

Entrepreneur

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

Raising capital for a female-led startup can be very diffiult--which is what Justine Lassoff and Melinda Moore found out when they started their own company, LovingEco, in Los Angeles. We actually started the organization in 2013. What is TuesdayNights? It really allows them to expand their network in a positive way.

Help

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

We talked with Noah about how the company grew out of a business plan competition at the University of Southern California, his recent funding from the Maverick Angels, as well as how the firm hopes to stand out among a crowded list of comparison shopping sites. How did the company start? Noah Auerhahn: We got started right out of USC.

USC

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. When you look at how much median valuations were driven up in the past 5 years alone it’s bananas. Please follow him & welcome him to Upfront!! <== And reset they must.

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. How did you start blogging? “My In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. was starting. You still need the presentation to back that up. Brad’s start in Venture Capital. Or, as always, summary notes available below.

Venture Capital

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

That's the idea behind Focus@Will (www.focusatwill.com), a new Los Angeles music startup headed by Will Henshall. We caught up with Will to learn more about the company and how it hopes its service and music can help people improve their concentration. And how did the company start? Explain what Focus@will is all about?

Help

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

Although the carriers made a lot of money initially by selling dial-up Internet services, customers never took their software because, well, it sucked. So the value on the Internet went “up the stack” to portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, MSN and eventually Google.

Outsource Development

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 17, 2009

He’s done several startups and is a board member of the Technology Council of Southern California (which is where I met him originally). A typical day starts with email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Yammer checks/updates. What's keeping you up at night? I recently posted about SEO for Startups. Great stuff!

Acquisition

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Today Upfront Ventures is announcing that we’ve backed Rebecca Kantar ’s startup Imbellus , a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. I speak a lot on college campuses and entrepreneur events and amongst the most common things I’m asked to talk about are: What do VCs fund?

Design

socalTECH

MARCH 28, 2019

San Diego-based biotech startup Biolinq , which is developing wireless-enabled biosensor patches for continuous monitoring of biomarkers, has raised $4.75M additional Series A funding, the company said this morning. The funding came from JDRF T1D Fund, Aphelion Capital and LifeSci Venture Partners. READ MORE>>.

Marketing

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

Bockerstette, Main Street Venture Fund As I outlined last week, trophy angel investors are always looking for trophy entrepreneurs. The result is that the Main Street Venture Fund consistently has more money available than good opportunities for investment. Tags: entrepreneur investor angel successful funding business.

Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 20, 2014

But I continue to learn that there are a host of other factors, maybe not even related to you or your business, that could keep you from getting the funding that you need. The good news is that both of these are looking up these days. Almost 80% of the funding handed out in the US consistently comes from these three locations.

Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 23, 2021

Thus, in my role as mentor to young entrepreneurs, I always recommend that you first take a hard look at your own values and priorities, before jumping into any new startup, as the founder, or even as a side hustle. Timing is critical for every startup. Of course, if you wait for the perfect time, you may never start.

Startup