Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2019

In my experience as a business advisor, one of the best ways to get all of these, is to publish a book on the technology, the journey, or some relevant lessons learned. 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.

Writing 19

Writing Technical Review Entrepreneur Advertising 19

socalTECH

AUGUST 6, 2012

Santa Monica-based Demand Media (www.demandmedia.com) has seen its share of ups and downs as one of the highest visibility technology and media companies to come out of Southern California's technology ecosystem in recent years. But, they could not write, and did not know what to write from the travel perspective.

Demand 240

Demand Media eHow Content 240

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Let me start with the obvious baseline that most people probably know instinctively: Los Angeles is the 3rd largest technology startup ecosystem in the US. billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. Yes, Google won. Google’s Ad Sense did, too.

Entrepreneur 376

Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

socalTECH

DECEMBER 31, 2018

Editor's note: As we head into the new year, we've been featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. We do, as of the writing of this in early December, seem to be seeing a correction at this time. The massive explosion of the Smart Speaker.

Southern California 100

Southern California News Class Writing 100

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 2, 2014

Now, you’re handling payroll and doing writing as well. You may even discover that you enjoy writing more than crunching numbers. Piaw Na, who spent over six years at Google, writes on Quora that she recommends fresh grads to join a startup instead of big companies. Startups also usually have no playbook yet.

Startup 102

Startup Social Media Writing Google 102

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 28, 2018

While we all know a few good entrepreneurs who dropped out of school, the Internet is full of stories on many more who capitalized on at least four years of college, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Chad Hurley of YouTube and Bob Parsons of GoDaddy. Don’t forget business writing and communication.

Startup 97

Startup Writing Coach Incubator 97

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. Put simply – if you invested early in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They often create the biggest tensions between investors who are investing at different stages in the business.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 13, 2019

Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly always require an investment, sometimes large, in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time. Communication and writing skills are required. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free.

Social Media 79

Social Media Media Invest Platform 79

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” Are you beating up every Silicon Valley VC that didn’t do Facebook or Google or Uber early? Mostly kidding.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

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. Would Google have become today’s juggernaut without Yahoo!

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

In my opinion it’s the most natural fit and it would give Netflix a very strong presence in Los Angeles and in TV (obviously subject to getting the right writes from the studios). But the real threat comes from the change in technologies that rule the old business obsolete. Indeed for many this is already the case.

Netflix 329

Netflix Evite Pricing Hulu 329

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 15, 2016

While we all know a few good entrepreneurs who dropped out of school, the Internet is full of stories on many more who capitalized on at least four years of college, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Chad Hurley of YouTube and Bob Parsons of GoDaddy. Don’t forget business writing and communication.

Entrepreneur 98

Entrepreneur Tips Writing Coach 98

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. SEO / SEM are promotional techniques for marketing through the Google distribution channel, which have yielded huge benefits to many companies – Yelp being a prime example. Simply write a great book? It’s worth a quick read.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

And any even casual follower of the tech industry knows that Google Plus has been criticized for cracking down on anybody who wasn’t a “real person.” And my eyes really lit up today when I had a great chat over tea with Dmitry Shapiro , one of the better & more philosophical thinkers about technology that I know.

Social Network 329

Social Network Startup Blogging Venture Capital 329

socalTECH

DECEMBER 17, 2008

Our submission technology is what powers Scripped.com, who you interviewed earlier. 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. What kind of writing and writers are you targeting? We thought--why isn't there something like this exist?

Writing 209

Writing Hollywood Startup Sites 209

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

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.). Google’s AdSense) or some other form of ad. So what do we mean by in-stream advertising? So did the media.

Ideas 286

Ideas Advertising Google Technical Review 286

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

The chosen candidate will probably have worked for a very reputable firm that is either in technology, consulting, investment banking, media or a startup. If you worked for firms like McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman Sachs, Google and the like you’re probably more likely to rise to the top of the stack. Plus, show my you can write!

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Yet, the ways that enterprises and businesses are monetizing that user interaction is sort of archaic, compared to the evolution of the technology. So when I say stay at the Marriott Del Mar, our technology turns that into a link that points to one of those travel partners, based on some proprietary algorithms.

San Diego 159

San Diego Social Media Commerce Snapchat 159

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 15, 2014

While we all know a few good entrepreneurs who dropped out of school, the Internet is full of stories on many more who capitalized on at least four years of college, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Chad Hurley of YouTube and Bob Parsons of GoDaddy. Don’t forget business writing and communication.

Writing 111

Writing Coach Incubator Entrepreneur 111

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2017

Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly always require an investment, sometimes large, in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time. Communication and writing skills are required. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free.

Social Media 66

Social Media Media Tips Platform 66

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

We all have one-click purchase power (Apple, Google, Amazon, eBay). Just 3 years ago there was talk of institutional investors “not being able to write small enough checks.” Many pension funds are simply too large to write small checks and favor the ability to write $50-100 million checks to funds.

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

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. Take action – Obviously when Michael Arrington is writing something scathing about your product you want to pay attention and take action.

Social Network 235

Social Network Writing Tool Startup 235

socalTECH

DECEMBER 9, 2010

The firm is headed by Gil Elbaz , who is known for co-founding Applied Semantics, the firm which invented Google's AdSense product. That require lots of cleaning an de-duping technology in order to use those billions of source records, and put them into a nice place database. Gil, thanks for the time today. In the case of the U.S.,

Artificial Inteligence 203

Artificial Inteligence Century City Web Santa Monica 203

socalTECH

MARCH 16, 2017

Earlier this week, Derek Norton , a long time advisor to the media, Internet, and technology industry in Los Angeles, announced a brand new venture capital fund called Watertower Ventures (www.watertowerventures.com). We'll continue to write checks into our companies, whether that is from our fund or SBDs from our LP base.

Invest 145

Invest Funding Capital Startup 145

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

Back to regular writing this week so check back in. Google Ad Sense was just getting going. They had a great team and interesting technologies. Do you think the impact of social media is effecting Google’s search business? Do you think the impact of social media is effecting Google’s search business? (42:00

Capital 265

Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time. Communication and writing skills are required. Get familiar with current social media tools, such as Google Analytics, SproutSocial, and HootSuite analytics.

Social Media 101

Social Media Media Entrepreneur Metrics 101

socalTECH

MARCH 2, 2020

The other nice thing about that, is as things are happening on the same computer, there is no server code to write. It's really simple to write an application, compared to the complexity of an application that is multi-user. If you have a bunch of bouncing balls, they all bounce identically, and you don't have to exchange information.

Platform 168

Platform Startup Examples Web 168

socalTECH

AUGUST 27, 2014

We started looking at the landscape, and as I was getting my MBA at the time, ended up writing the business plan for ConsumerTrack. There''s lots of technology development behind what you do - can you talk about that? The world here is constantly changing -- particularly with shifts to mobile, Google algorithms, etc. -

Startup 239

Startup El Segundo Marketing Media 239

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. As you may know Google recently restructured so that Larry could spend more time on big innovations – on “moonshots.”

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. At the time he granted me permission to write about his story. Felipe grew up in Brazil. But I have some.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 8, 2017

Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment to be hard hitting – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time. Use strong communication and writing skills. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free. Find the right tools to analyze the ROI.

Social Media 58

Social Media Media Platform Tool 58

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2010

They taught us to write down questions when they came up and batch them together in point sheets. OK, before you all tell me about Google Voice, let me say the following. PhoneTag uses a combination of technology and human translation and thus has a much better accuracy rate. I was a Google Desktop user for years.

Product 280

Product Startup Email Technical Review 280

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2012

Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time. Communication and writing skills are required. Get familiar with current social media tools, such as Google Analytics, Omniture, and HootSuite analytics.

Social Media 95

Social Media Media Startup Platform 95

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

We had scrambled to get a product to market, built our first website, rapidly hired a technology team, raised our seed round of capital ($1.5 They get paid to say, “Company X is the new FriendFeed&# just 2 days after Google acquires FriendFeed. Just don’t believe what they write about you. That grabs headlines.

Startup 310

Startup Venture Capital Press Journal 310

socalTECH

DECEMBER 15, 2010

That means that publishers can integrate our technology with other components in the enterprise stack, for example, their financial system or sales force management system, or CRM system. Yahoo made the decision that they could not, or would not be able to make the level of investment required to keep up with Google.

OpenX 242

OpenX Advertising Yahoo Pasadena 242

Xconomy

AUGUST 10, 2016

Just about anything you’ve heard [about] at Google that sounds interesting and new is based on machine learning,” Jurvetson said at the time. Everywhere, technology is starting to percolate into an otherwise prosaic, non-tech industry—apply big data, apply machine learning—and revolutionize it.”.

Artificial Inteligence 40

Artificial Inteligence San Diego Framework Venture Capital 40

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 3, 2012

Seth Epstein, Founder and CEO SocialStay , former Founder and CEO of FUEL (acquired by Razorfish) and Emmy Award winner for his work on the X-Games, recently spoke at UC Santa Barbara as part of the Technology Management Program’s Distinguished Lecture Series. The more you play around with ideas and you write them down, the better.

Ideas 266

Ideas Guide Startup Santa Barbara 266