Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I guess let’s file this under sales & marketing advice. 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. I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

The other worthwhile exercise is to write down what your competitors uses as its USPs – even ones that you don’t think are really valuable to customers. So now you’ve got your key USPs written down and you’ve worked them into slide format to get them across to your prospects. But that instant product / market fit is rare.

Sales 336

Sales Startup Competition Customer 336

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - . - 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? First Principles.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

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. I have a few slides later that address that.&# (obviously if you say that you need to come back to the question either later or after the meeting. Congratulations.

Venture Capital 318

Venture Capital Startup Sales Writing 318

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. Has it begun to mature or is it just better marketed than in was say 5 years ago? Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly.

Entrepreneur 376

Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

That’s a reason why some are quick to portend “a new bubble” but this post sets out to show that would be a misunderstanding of the market and in fact by historic levels this may be amongst the best times to invest in seed and early-stage funds. More on that later. If you look even more closely you’ll see just how skewed the data really is.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Capital Startup Funding 292

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

Initially that means a creative, collaborative toolset for visual communications, allowing users to develop really compelling slides, print materials or social media posts that are more visually compelling and easier-to-build for those who aren’t naturally gifted as visual story tellers. We know that apps are fully moving to the cloud.

Startup 191

Startup Social Media Slides Design 191

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

If you’re an early investor like I am that often means writing the first $2-3 million check into a business that previously had either survived on fumes or on a $500,000 angel round. What they do with the money is add more engineers and maybe hiring a marketing person. Act your stage. Objection Handling training.

Startup 381

Startup Resource Venture Capital Activity 381

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 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

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. No cookies for guessing which reason they use to market to us.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. Your pitch deck should really be your best marketing tool Your pitch deck shouldn’t contain your deepest, darkest secrets and plans. What should be in your deck?

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

Because they’re street smart, most great entrepreneurs tend to prefer getting out and talking with real customers rather than sitting in a cubicle all day doing beautiful PowerPoint slides. He told me that when the markets soured they were no longer hot. He was at a startup that was in a super hot sector. I’m sorry.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Startup Outsource Development Customer 306

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 discussed in the video why they don’t price this money but give it as convertible debt) they don’t make announcements to the market. They also avoid Reg D.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

The deck itself was produced by a committee of functional team lead who were asked to do 5–7 slides each for an update. Each section head reads his / her 5–7 slides. If you put up 5 slides on “what should we order for lunch today” the board will spend 30 minutes debating that. There are too many pages. It passes the weight test.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

You should be actively listening the whole time (actively listening as in listening, writing important things down and asking relevant questions as they talk about their problems). Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Sales & Marketing Advice Start-up Advice Startup Advice. VC’s have a crocodile aversion as much as the next guy.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We both felt that the critical reasoning skills and writing skills were critical to our career development. BookRenter – plus a discussion about Chegg … what is going on in the university book market? We talked about the analogies between what NetFlix achieved in movies and whether this is relevant to the book market.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

And after one meeting they started asking for his advice about marketing, customer engagement, product design, monetization – whatever. Chamillionaire has a way more refined sense of what customer behavior is like than most ivy league graduates with nice Powerpoint slides that I meet.

Conference 150

Conference Slides Social Media Summary 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

Quantify the market opportunity in business terms. For example, “Nielsen projects that the market for smart phones will double every year for the next five years.” Include marketing, sales, and customer rollout plans. This summary if often extracted as marketing collateral, with text and graphics for pitch handouts.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 23, 2019

Even if it’s only a few PowerPoint slides or typed paragraphs, writing something down is the first step toward making it real. Always write in the future tense, what you will do, and name yourself as the key person responsible. The result was a product that was bloated and late to market.

Ideas 99

Ideas Slides Writing Startup 99

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

Small groups of consultants have now become groups of specialists – CFO Services, Marketing Services, or Management Services. Results” these days are not PowerPoint slides, or theories and recommendations. Speak to people, rather than write a document every time you want a change. Specialist versus consultant. Produce results.

Startup 150

Startup Slides Email Customer 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

The size of the document should be based on your style, but 10-20 pages or slides are usually more than adequate to outline even a complex business. In fact, they are probably in such a hurry to give you money that they don’t want you to waste time writing anything down and passing it along to new investors.

Technical Review 126

Technical Review Writing Entrepreneur Slides 126

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

One of the most obvious places where you see this is in sales & marketing. So he hired an intern plus a junior marketing person and tasked them with mechanising responses. Each sales person tends to slot in their own slides to win deals or to position things in their own words or style in order to win deals.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

They cite sources like the BusinessWeek story, “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ” and this Forbes article. The size of the document should be based on your style, but 10-20 pages or slides are usually more than adequate to outline even a complex business. Writing it down promotes both understanding and commitment.

Technical Review 109

Technical Review Writing Entrepreneur Slides 109

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. Was it massively better software, better companies, better markets? It was mostly timing.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Web 2.0 Startup 318

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 14, 2013

They cite sources like a recent BusinessWeek story, “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ” and this NY Times article. Of course there are scenarios where a written business plan is not critical, but I haven’t seen one yet where a well-written 15-page document, or at least a 10-slide pitch, is a negative.

Entrepreneur 100

Entrepreneur Technical Review Writing Slides 100

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. If I see tons of “update slides” and know that we don’t have an important board decision I might just bite my tongue. I’m sure it’s true but consider writing yourself a note and telling them after the meeting. The thing is?—?no

Startup 251

Startup Help Technical Review Writing 251

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2019

It’s no secret that the rate of failure of new business startups may be a high as ninety percent , so we all need all the help we can get, validating the opportunity, clearly positioning against competitors, projecting financials, and planning all the necessary marketing and operating activities.

Ideas 126

Ideas Slides Sample Examples 126

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

Writing down key parameters will force you solidify the specifics, and mentally commit to them. Prepare your marketing story for customers and investors. Present at trade shows and network with your ten-slide pitch to build your following. Most investors will not even look at you until you have a defensible solution to offer.

Ideas 94

Ideas Slides Technical Review Patents 94

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2012

Business Writing for Email. Writing in business is not the same as in an academic environment. The challenge is to communicate your idea in one page, and close the deal quickly without a big slide presentation. In school, you're taught to stretch weak ideas to reach your document page limit. Touch-Typing for Dummies.

Course 97

Course Writing Slides Email 97

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2013

Business Writing for Email. Writing in business is not the same as in an academic environment. The challenge is to communicate your idea in one page, and close the deal quickly without a big slide presentation. In school, you''re taught to stretch weak ideas to reach your document page limit. Touch-Typing for Dummies.

Class 93

Class Course Writing Slides 93

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2014

Small groups of consultants have now become groups of specialists – CFO Services, Marketing Services, or Management Services. Results” these days are not PowerPoint slides, or theories and recommendations. Speak to people, rather than write a document every time you want a change. Specialist versus consultant. Produce results.

Startup 102

Startup Slides Email Customer 102

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

Tech.Co

JULY 25, 2017

But if you want to level things up, you can use a platform like OptinMonster to create popup forms, sliding forms, floating bars, and sidebars. After focusing on your site, it’s time to use an email marketing platform and move on to lead nurturing. Everything can be done via the drag-and-drop interface. GetResponse.

Tool 37

Tool Customer Custom Sites 37

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2010

Small groups of consultants have now become groups of specialists – CFO Services, Marketing Services, or Management Services. Results” these days are not Powerpoint slides, or theories and recommendations. Speak to people, rather than write a document every time you want a change. Specialist versus consultant. Produce results.

Startup 90

Startup Slides Email Customer 90

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Let me be quick to say that a plan doesn’t have be a book, and probably should start as a “pitch deck” of maybe a dozen slides which cover all the right bases. The market scope for your solution should be quantified in non-technical terms, with data sourced from professionals in the industry, rather than your own opinion.

Startup 65

Startup Writing Patents Competition 65

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 12, 2012

Small groups of consultants have now become groups of specialists – CFO Services, Marketing Services, or Management Services. Results” these days are not PowerPoint slides, or theories and recommendations. Speak to people, rather than write a document every time you want a change. Specialist versus consultant. Produce results.

Startup 85

Startup Slides Email Customer 85

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2016

If you provide these slides in advance you give board members a chance to reflect and come prepared for a real discussion. Do you think it would be a good idea to expand to more markets this year or are you feeling more cautious?” The mistake most founders make is sending out last-minute board packs. These are tactics — not strategy.

Guide 196

Guide Startup Metrics Conference 196