Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2013

It’s a reminder that unless your prospect has a need to solve a problem they are not going to buy a product. Too many sales reps walk into customer meetings with their pre-canned sales decks and proudly squawk through 30 of their favorite slides without engaging the customer in a discussion. It’s just human nature.

Sales 367

Sales Slides Startup Custom 367

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 9, 2021

A perfect size is ten slides, with the right content, that can be covered in ten minutes. Pitch your company, not your product. Disciplining yourself to write down the plan is actually the best way to make sure you actually understand it yourself. Investor and strategic partner pitch. Written business plan. Financial model.

Entrepreneur 156

Entrepreneur Tips Funding Startup 156

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

I love good causes and social entrepreneurs, but a recent pitch to me about eliminating world hunger with a new product (harvesting algae at low cost) seemed to forget that really hungry people don’t have any money. Writing down key parameters will force you solidify the specifics, and mentally commit to them.

Ideas 94

Ideas Slides Technical Review Patents 94

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2010

For extroverted people I recommend that entrepreneurs have an “executive summary&# slide up front that cuts to the chase. Don’t dwell on this slide for ever. If I have an hour with you I want to maximise the time we have a discussion so I want to get through the slides quickly. It’s in their personality type.

Slides 358

Slides Venture Capital Startup Summary 358

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

The reason for this is that the executives who founded the company have so much tacit knowledge of how to position their product relative to the competition that they can easily win campaigns when they’re involved. 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.

Sales 336

Sales Startup Competition Custom 336

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. There was no viral social networking products back then like Twitter where people could easily discover your content. That changed very quickly. And covered we did.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I started with the hosted version and then migrated to an installed version so I could use Google Analytics and some other products. 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. You then need a URL.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

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

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

These have the benefit to VCs of not cross-collateralizing returns and to LPs of being able to know the underlying asset before they write the check. Here are some simple slides that outline the point: a. Some of the earliest-stage funds have set up SPVs because they are at times easier and faster to raise than new funds.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Capital Startup Funding 292

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. Providing your product or service free to customers may sound attractive in marketing materials, but you need revenue sources to survive. The details can be added later.

Startup 65

Startup Writing Patents Competition 65

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

AUGUST 18, 2010

It’s as good as it gets in personal productivity / life reflection. I know that would be surprising to many readers since keeping a blog somehow convinces people that I’m a time management or productivity ninja. That’s why productivity wasn’t tough for me as a CEO. I’m not.

Slides 374

Slides Email Entrepreneur Startup 374

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 15, 2015

People cite sources like this BusinessWeek story a while back “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ,” or even my own article on this subject, “ 10 Reasons Not To Write A Business Plan First.” A perfect size is ten slides, with the right content, that can be covered in ten minutes. Pitch your company, not your product.

Startup 104

Startup Writing Entrepreneur Slides 104

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2014

People cite sources like this BusinessWeek story last year “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ,” or even my own article a while back, “ 10 Reasons Not To Write A Business Plan First.” A perfect size is ten slides, with the right content, that can be covered in ten minutes. Pitch your company, not your product.

Entrepreneur 108

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Slides 108

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 12, 2010

We then talked about our product roadmap. You put some update slides on things like key hires or biz dev deals being negotiated and you didn’t plan to talk about them. But they were in a slide and people asked you questions so it ended up chewing up 30 minutes. We started with our financial statements. Then competition.

Startup 331

Startup Slides Guide Writing 331

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. The best ones bring in more executive leadership so you can appropriate allocate resources across sales, marketing, product, engineering and support.

Startup 381

Startup Resource Venture Capital Activity 381

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. Obviously I’m assuming that you have a great product and/or strategy.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2016

For the first half of our show, we actually set up a store front on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, and put their product in a retail setting, and let consumers and investors run through the gamut, allowing them to interact in real time, and get feedback on their packaging and products, and even recommend it to their friends.

Startup 100

Startup Entrepreneur Invest Competition 100

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

I promised I would write this post with some thoughts and ideas on the topic. I'm focusing on the sourcing ("lead gen" on her slide) aspect. Hire a Product Design Lead First Nailing that elusive technical co-founder I've recently received several emails from people looking for a technical cofounder for their startup.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire CTO Coach Startup Equity 211

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

For the rest of us, we need a business plan, as well as a product plan. Some of you may be convinced that your product specification communicates the product message even better than a business plan, so why be redundant? Professional investors and even customers invest in people, rather than just a product.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

They spot opportunities that aren’t being met and the design products to meet these needs. 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. We committed to product features.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Startup Outsource Development Custom 306

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2018

A perfect size is ten slides, with the right content, that can be covered in ten minutes. Pitch your company, not your product. Disciplining yourself to write down the plan is actually the best way to make sure you actually understand it yourself. Investor and strategic partner pitch. Written business plan. Financial model.

Startup 65

Startup Entrepreneur Slides Content 65

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2013

Of course, you can’t predict everything, but writing down what you know will identify existing problems sooner, and allow other team members to help. The faster you grow, the more cash you need, to build product, facilities, staff, and service. They pay just the smallest bills and let the rest slide.

Startup 114

Startup Sales Layoffs Slides 114

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

VentureHacks laid out the debate in a truly awesome interview & PowerPoint slides if you really want an in-depth understanding of the issue. The fact that I invest less just means the company is earlier stage and needed/wanted less or without a product/market fit we weren’t yet prepared to invest more heavily.

Seed Funding 298

Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2016

Of course, you can’t predict everything, but writing down what you know will identify existing problems sooner, and allow other team members to help. The faster you grow, the more cash you need, to build product, facilities, staff, and service. They pay just the smallest bills and let the rest slide.

Startup 64

Startup Sales Layoffs Slides 64

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2016

If you have board members you respect you owe it to yourself to run more productive sessions where board members contribute. If you provide these slides in advance you give board members a chance to reflect and come prepared for a real discussion. So here’s a short guide to achieving that. These are tactics — not strategy.

Guide 196

Guide Startup Metrics Conference 196

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). They are seldom productive. You have target customers, you have competitors and you have a product to sell. Beware of Crocodile Sales.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. The process in and of itself was pretty lengthy and at some point I’d like to write about it in more detail.

Pricing 296

Pricing Sales Startup Customer 296

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

This started as a post in which I was going to write out tips to personal branding and became in stead an essay of my own branding journey. Send me in a corner to work on slides, graphs, spreadsheets and charts. I told her I wasn’t yet convinced that she’d make a good: product manager, designer, sales person, leader, CEO.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. It was like nobody would give me any respect and they just saw me as the guy who goes and talks to senior people who does PowerPoint slides. If I write $2 million and we hit a bump in the road, I can write another $2 million.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

If you buy into the argument that a strong board can actually help you then this post will lay out how to help you have more productive meetings by preparing properly in advance. The deck itself was produced by a committee of functional team lead who were asked to do 5–7 slides each for an update. There are too many pages.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

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

JANUARY 17, 2011

So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The need for creativity extends well beyond product design. The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. Many people are visual thinkers.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

We had met previously when Trevor was a product manager at YouTube and Upfront had funded the largest video producer on YouTube, Maker Studios. They had worked together as senior product manager and senior engineering leads at Twitter and identified a problem they saw in visual communication of information.

Startup 191

Startup Social Media Slides Design 191

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

So I thought I’d write a piece on how to not suck when you give a presentation. The bring your product to life. Establish the persona of the person who would be using your products. Tell us what their life is like without your product – how they struggle. They had slides with moving images and music.

Startup 362

Startup Twiistup Slides Screening 362

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 28, 2012

Because we are still in idea stage, it is in the best interest of the company to keep only a few key people to work on executing the product. When I was creating the slide to introduce the team, he asked to be listed as an iOS developer instead of a designer as he was registered. I got the same response from everyone.

Startup 100

Startup Ideas San Diego Mentor 100