Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 2, 2018

It’s a growing challenge, since we now have four generations of workers together – Matures, Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials (Gen Y), all with different ideas of how an owner should act. The remainder are actively disengaged, and passively block or actively sabotage forward progress.

Mentor

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2015

These are young, urban dwellers who don’t have the time, means or inclination to schlep stuff to an awful location on the outskirts of their city and pile their goods into a 6×6 box where 60 days later they’ll have no idea what they put in there and no easy means of getting it returned.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 17, 2020

In my experience, consummate entrepreneurs tend come up with more startup ideas than they can ever implement, and some of the ideas may not even make business sense. But how does any entrepreneur know which ideas to implement, and which ones are best left behind? Separate nice-to-have ideas from ones solving painful problems.

Technical Review

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

Every entrepreneur wishes that he could predict whether his idea could be the “next big thing,” before he spent his life savings and years of energy on it. I define these products and services as “solutions” (customers buy solutions to a problem), but Guy Kawasaki more generically calls them causes, meaning any new idea, company, or service.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 18, 2022

A popular approach for aspiring entrepreneurs these days seems to be to corner anyone who will listen, with a pitch on their current “million dollar idea.” In my opinion, ideas are a commodity, and are really not worth much, outside the context of a visionary leader who can execute. Positive inspirational communication.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2022

Potential startup founders are always looking for ideas to implement, when they should be looking for problems to solve. Customers pay for solutions, but there is no market for ideas. I’m often approached by people with a “million dollar idea,” but I haven’t seen anyone pay that for one yet. Marty Zwilling.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 3, 2023

His research supports what I have always believed, that anyone with a practical and common- sense mindset, grounded in reality, with the proper training, can deliver creative and innovative new ideas, projects, processes, and programs. This myth arises from the fact that new ideas can sometimes seem to appear as a flash of insight.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 11, 2023

Savvy entrepreneurs start testing their ideas on potential customers even before the concept is fully cooked. They have enough confidence in their ability to deliver that they don’t worry about someone stealing the idea to get there first, and they don’t forget to listen carefully to critical feedback.

Ideas

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2016

Many first-time founders seek advice when thinking about what ideas would be great for a startup company and receive the wrong advice that you need to focus on a billion-dollar idea. There are very few ideas that are obviously a billion-dollar idea from the start. So what should you do?

Venture Capital

L.A. Business Journal

MAY 3, 2021

said the idea for the company came to her after working with a real estate agent to sell her first home. Lindsay McLean, founder and chief executive of Home-Lister Inc.,

Company

L.A. Business Journal

JULY 13, 2020

The idea of artificial intelligence may conjure up images of robots and mechanical automation, but for businesses, the technology’s applications are much more wide-ranging.

Artificial Inteligence

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2015

Because even in 2015 I still see people riffing on ideas and working on business plans, product flows or coding on projects without first forming a company, signing contracts that assign intellectual property to that company and trusting that “friends” would never sue you. Most ideas are fungible.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

When Fred Wilson funded Twitter I guarantee you it wasn’t obvious that it was a billion dollar idea. When the early teams: angels, lowercase capital & first round capital funded Uber they had no idea it would be one of the most revolutionary ideas of our time. Far from it. It was an early and smart bet.

Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2023

Here are some key drivers that will likely lead you to a fundable idea: A business crisis. So why do I see some many funding requests for products along these lines? As an alternative, if you are an entrepreneur looking for the next big thing, where should you look?

Ideas

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

So we discussed his moving to LA for a while and working in our offices and developing his ideas and we decided to formalize it. In a perfect world they would just hang out in our offices, work on tech ideas, help us evaluate opportunities, attend our investment meetings and be thoughtful advising tech companies that come to meet us.

Conference

Berkonomics

JANUARY 11, 2018

Or the important one: “Is this idea on mission?” Some ideas sound unbelievably creative – and may be that. But sometimes there is a barrier, an impossibly high cost not considered, a social backlash never thought of, or competition already covering the idea that is unknown to the originator. Is this idea sustainable?”

Company

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Most entrepreneur that fail are quick to offer a litany of constraints that caused their demise – not enough money, time, customers, or support from the right players.

Resource

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

Today’s $24 billion storage market in the US has these same key disadvantages and that was the genesis of Sam Rosen’s initial idea for MakeSpace , which I initially funded 15 months ago. He had an idea to make it better. We then riffed on the idea of, “That’s interesting.

Technical Review

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 1, 2018

Peter Thiel’s vague idea to do something about Gawker, the site that had outed him as gay in 2007, was concretized into conspiracy on April 6, 2011. This is an excerpt from Ryan Holiday’s new book Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, available now. It began unremarkably, when Thiel traveled […].

Ideas

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 9, 2020

“I had an app idea but no real idea how to executive it. “If customers can describe their idea in one, clear sentence then it can be made in our builder and it can be made quickly,” Redman wrote. I’m non-technical, meaning I can’t code. ” Image Credits: Chris Ede / Getty Images. .”

Mobile

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

In our industry we always talk about funding big ideas or funding things with more meaning. We loved the idea. They’ll just tell us it was their idea and roll their eyes.). It’s something Yves Sisteron & I have been talking about for years at Upfront Ventures. With conviction. Ok, probably not. Happy growing.

Technical Review

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Meredith Perry came up with the idea for uBeam while still in college at University of Pennsylvania and like many great inventors won her school’s business plan competition. It turns out that while she had the right idea the materials needed some reworking to come in at the cost structure required to build a business at scale.

Technical Review

Berkonomics

JULY 7, 2022

First, visionary leadership: By far the most enjoyable for most of us is visionary leadership – the time we spend thinking ahead, creating new ideas for products or services, focusing on the big picture and how we can change the world with our creation. Visionary leadership is not performed in a vacuum. Email readers, continue here…].

Metrics

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

But I would make the observation that if you stumble on to a really important idea that has the potential to be really valuable know that others will enter into the market precisely because markets are competitive and a lot of money and prestige is at stake. I know it sounds cliché. But I would ask you this.

Competition

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Who in the auto industry believed Tesla, a totally electric car, was a good idea? of Elon’s ideas to come to fruition and let him fail on the rest. If there is something holding these big ideas back, it is not a shortage of money or even the barrier of insurmountable technical hurdles. Now they are partners. Working on it.

Technical Review

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 18, 2014

In person and in 1-on-1 meetings I’m a broken record on the topic and even though I’m very on-the-record that 70% of my investment decision is the quality of the entrepreneur more than the idea – I simply won’t fund if I don’t believe the entrepreneur is authentic and passionate about the problem he or she is solving.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 28, 2023

In business, and in your personal life, the ability to anticipate and overcome criticism is one of the biggest differentiators between leaders, who make things happen, and followers, who may have great ideas but never seem to get things to go their way. The reality is that good ideas are always challenged, so you need to expect it.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 30, 2023

Over my many years of mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals, I often hear a desire to start a new business, with a big hesitation while waiting for that perfect idea and perfect alignment of the stars. So don’t wait for that “idea of the century” that no one has ever thought of before.

Technical Review

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 24, 2020

We throw away 80% of our content ideas, and you should too. Choosing the right content idea. Amanda Milligan is the marketing director at Fractl , a prominent growth marketing agency that’s helped Fortune 500 companies and boutique businesses alike earn quality media coverage, backlinks, awareness and authority.

Content

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 10, 2021

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe their initial idea and inspiration requires the most important creative thinking. Experienced entrepreneurs will tell you that the initial idea is the easy part, and it’s the later implementation, and the competitive business marketing that are the real creative challenges. Marty Zwilling.

Ideas

Berkonomics

JANUARY 20, 2022

even if your hair is on fire and the idea is worth billions. Even if we don’t seem to get your brilliant idea and buy into its value, we may be comparing it to previous lost investments or industry experiences far beyond yours. Don’t talk yourself into a high valuation for the first round of financing for any reason….

Startup

TechEmpower

JULY 2, 2013

Take a look at the list of test ideas we have collected to date. We look forward to hearing from Revel and Go experts with explanations and pull requests to apply for Round 7. If you''ve enjoyed this project so far, we''d like your opinion on what test to include next.

Framework

Berkonomics

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Some businesses are built around a single idea. . And sometimes that idea is just too small a slice of the big picture to be interesting to investors. There was a recent investor event where I was keynote speaker, on stage only after several panels of experts had wowed the audience with their predictions and observations.

Product

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

To start: “new source of energy” and “new ideas.”. When a new CEO or manager is hired into a company, for a while lots of energy flows from the top and new ideas seem to be generated daily. We recall the enthusiasm we had for the job earlier, how we couldn’t wait to get to work, or initiate a new plan, or share a new idea.

Ideas

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Entrepreneurs are supposed to have insights that others don’t have and we’re supposed to be good judges about which entrepreneurs and executives have both the most clever ideas and the right skill sets to do transformational things against all odds. I don’t think this is the job. So I tell people we’re fundamentally in the people business.

Venture Capital

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 1, 2022

Every entrepreneur I know is dismayed by the number of friends who approach them with a line such as “I have an even better idea that will change the world, and one of these days I’m going to get around to starting my own business.” There must be something deeper that slows people down.

Entrepreneur

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 8, 2020

Watt began talking to investors in 2018 about the idea and spent the bulk of 2019 trying to build out its first few companies. “ We run a lot of experiments, we generate a lot of ideas,” Watt says. The company has ten people on staff to help build its first slate of companies. ”

Company