Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

deliver profitable revenue that while on gross margins of 50% vs. software at 85-95% it is still profits to help you cover fixed costs. You don’t want to run the risk that having a PS business that takes your eye of off the ball of growing a large software business. That is the software business. rollout support.

Software Review 321

Software Review Software Services Company 321

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

Lots of discussion these days about the changes in the VC industry. The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion.

Venture Capital 311

Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding Rustic Canyon 311

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

He eventually founded and sold consumer health firm ViSalus to a public company and is now back making investments, in technology companies, as a venture capitalist here at Los Angeles-based HashtagOne (www.hashtagone.com). I'm a bit of an anti-VC, as you know. My CIO had been ex-CIO at Herbalife, and was an EVP of Software for Disney.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2021

As a business advisor, I have to recommend even to established companies that they review and revamp their competitive strategy now, even if it appears to be working today. The old approaches of controlling distribution channels, saturating retail, and methodically scaling your brand awareness don’t protect you anymore.

Competition 142

Competition Software Review Social Media Customer 142

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 13, 2021

Fast forward to almost exactly one year later, and a lot has changed for the payments and software startup. Since its 2017 inception, SpotOn has been focused on providing software and payments technology to SMBs with an emphasis on restaurants and retail businesses. Image Credits: SpotOn.

Technical Review 296

Technical Review Software Review Invest Acquisition 296

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

You race back to the office to tell everybody how well it went and you wait for the follow-up call to have a partners’ meeting or talk about term sheets or at least dip into due diligence. This is a very common scenario when entrepreneurs pitch VCs and frankly is a very common scenario when VCs try to raise money from LPs.

Software Review 381

Software Review Startup Email Conference 381

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

This is why investors really like SaaS software companies where you have recurring revenue and your largest customer accounts for < 5% of your revenue and your renewals rates are > 90%. Many software companies have > 80% gross margins which is why they are more valuable than say traditional retailers or consumer product companies.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. But the “no sales people” mantra isn’t what I’m here to take on.

Startup 403

Startup Sales Software Review Technical Review 403

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. Reviewing financial & operational performance. In the Early Days.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Startup 136

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 136

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you. .

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. They are, in fact, great news for traditional venture capitalists. This article originally ran on PEHub.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2018

This is true of any buying process where a customer has to make a large investment decision on your software or when an investor must decide whether to give you $5 million. Maybe this is reverse “hanging around the rim” where if you keep you VC process going long enough you’ll eventually get to “yes?” Do they have authority to invest?

Funding 189

Funding Software Review Entrepreneur Venture Capital 189

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. That died with waterfall software development. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners.

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

Our interview today is with Andrew Schydlowsky , the CEO and founder of Santa Barbara-based TrackStreet (www.trackstreet.com), a startup which is backed by Okapi Capital, The Cove Fund, Early Light Ventures, SaaS Venture Capital, and Stage Venture Partners. What is TrackStreet? How are you able to do all this?

Artificial Inteligence 140

Artificial Inteligence Startup Commerce Sales 140

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

An external consultant helping the procurement team overturned the decision and got the company to select a small software company owned by the consultancy. 5 years or so later I still revisit that sales campaign and relive many of the steps. In every sales campaign of any substance (e.g. That is, until I lost.

Startup 247

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Writing 247

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2019

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Startup 128

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 128

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 27, 2012

But it’s kind of hard to say “don’t plant near the big trees” when you just completed a big sale to Microsoft building an app that they should have created and dominated. We once thought Microsoft was a monopoly on the Internet due to IE. Where I Might Expand the Argument. As I point out in my video.

Technical Review 299

Technical Review Venture Capital Yammer Google 299

socalTECH

OCTOBER 2, 2012

Southern California's technology community--despite all of the recent excitement around Silicon Beach--continues to be underserved in terms of capital, with a lack of venture capital funds (with money), and other private technology investors. to $10M in revenues and are tracking towards profitability.

Acquisition 168

Acquisition Software Review Technical Review Equity 168

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Joint venture with distributor or beneficiary.

Tips 104

Tips Startup Technical Review Equity 104

socalTECH

JULY 31, 2013

We also operate the network software than runs and manages the entire network layer, from access point to end point. It''s very resistant to interference, due to the way the technology was designed. This last round is a significant amount of capital, why the new funding? Kevin Hell: Hardware companies do require more capital.

Technical Review 213

Technical Review Software Review Networking Technology 213

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

On Losing in VC. I know I won’t win every deal I want to in VC. There are other great VC’s in SoCal and there is always the allure of the NorCal guys flying down and talking about how they invested in Google, Facebook, Yahoo! I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales. The one that you thought you had.

Outsource Development 333

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

On Losing in VC. I know I won’t win every deal I want to in VC. There are other great VC’s in SoCal and there is always the allure of the NorCal guys flying down and talking about how they invested in Google, Facebook, Yahoo! I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales. The one that you thought you had.

Outsource Development 328

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 328

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

West Hills-based Peloton Document Solutions , a company developing software which helps investment bankers, private equity investors, and companies to communicate financial information via interactive documents, has scored a strategic investment from R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Invest 100

Invest Software Review Equity Sales 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

profitable and companies like Amazon who chose to focus on growth > profitability were not losing money on each book sale (ie they were gross margin positive). But often this doesn’t tell the whole story because often companies are also spending money on PR and other marketing activities in order to support the sales process.

Metrics 150

Metrics Startup SaaS Course 150

socalTECH

JANUARY 16, 2013

Robison reports that the company now has over 400 employees, spread across seven building in a Carpinteria campus, in addition to a web development branch in Calabasas, and sales offices in the UK and Australia. The business saw a dramatic growth when--due to the downturn of the dot com crash--the company started to post its video online.

Funding 178

Funding Santa Barbara ReachLocal Southern California 178

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

I believe that over capitalizing companies too early often favors the VC. Talking about whether to raise more money or not, their VC allegedly said to them: “If you had more capital, could you get to the future faster? I had my sales teams telling me we needed certain features to be competitive. He was tech.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

Tech.Co

MARCH 8, 2018

He has over a decade of portfolio management in capital markets. Felicia is the cofounder of Black Tech Week, Code Fever, Tribe Cowork and Urban Innovation. Siggi is a principal at Samsung NEXT in San Francisco, where she focuses on early-stage investment in frontier tech software companies.

Technical Review 70

Technical Review Startup Software Review Entrepreneur 70

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. I’m a software guy so I’m sure there are cases where building isn’t feasible. They might be as hard as raising VC. And just like with VC’s – it is as much the partner your working wit as the group more broadly. But for most businesses it is.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

Kind of like a law firm (or VC firm) with four partners but shortened to just two, people dropped off his second two words. They are more likely to be the “bottom end of the sales funnel” or in other words close to “point of purchase.” Try writing long reviews of a restaurant. They do both well.

Web 334

Web Mobile Startup Software Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As a startup in this phase you often raise capital, get press, hire staff and everything feels possible. As an early-stage VC I love this phase. He came to work in our offices at Upfront Ventures as an EIR and immediately began building software to improve how storage was picked up, photographed, scanned and routed to a warehouse.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Joint venture with distributor or beneficiary.

Startup 87

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 87

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

According to a Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with 90% of new ventures that don't attract investors failing within the first three years. This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies.

Startup 123

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

According to a classic Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with a majority of new ventures that don't attract investors failing within the first three years. This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies.

Entrepreneur 105

Entrepreneur Startup Technical Review Equity 105

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

According to a Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with a majority of new ventures that don''t attract investors failing within the first three years. This source is a major focus these days, due to government initiatives to incent research and development on alternative energy and other technologies.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Funding Startup Technical Review 113

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2009

I was working hand-in-hand with my close friend and associate Stuart Lander who was running our UK office and with one of our local sales reps. Winning the contract meant that we would hit our quarterly revenue figure and be in good position for our annual sales target. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales.

Startup 151

Startup Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review 151