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Most technologystartups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. My first startup was no different. Sales people: Are motivated by cash.
A while back I wrote a bunch of posts on Sales & Marketing and have been meaning to get back to that theme for a while. Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development. You learn by asking.
One of the questions I’m most often asked by CEOs is how to hire sales people. I’ve written a lot about recruiting and hiring at startups including my controversial post on whom not to hire and my rapid response to the flame war. We will have to build (or buy) technology in this area.”
It’s very common for startup companies to have COO’s. But … Startups don’t need – shouldn’t have – COOs. I have this conversation with every startup that comes to see me and has a CEO & a COO. I think usually a COO title at a startup is an ego thing. CEO’s run things.
For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. This is the mysterious and dreaded duediligence process, which can kill the whole deal.
Most technologystartups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. My first startup was no different. Sales people: Are motivated by cash.
We all like to think of startups as “non hierarchic&# organizations and to some extent that should be true. I see two common mistakes in companies (not just in startups, in fact). You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on.
I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. One of them is profitability. Operating Costs.
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.
This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.
Most technologystartups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). Very few of them are started, in my experience, by sales people and very few early stage companies really understand sales. Here’s mine: Let me start with a few biases.
Put simply – you need enough users in a segment who care about what you’re doing to dictate investing further in the product or in sales & marketing resources. Shallow and superficial and racing from segment to segment in search of some take up has never been a strong strategic plan for me. LEAN STARTUP MOVEMENT.
If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded duediligence process. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the duediligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.
I’ve worked with 30+ early-stage companies in all sorts of capacities (and spoken to many, many more), so I thought it might be worthwhile trying to classify the various ways that I’ve engaged in different technology roles in startups. Later he posted about his experience in Challenges of Startups.
It’s a very important concept for me because in a startup you are constantly under pressure and have way too many distractions. Commitment & urgency are key drivers of success in startup businesses. I was recently talking with a startup company who wanted me to try their product. You already know it from your personal lives.
One of the vivid memories I have from being a startup CEO is the feeling that most people in your company have a look in their eyes that like they can do your job as well as you. But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. They review competitors offerings and analyst reports.
Who are the top tech companies to work for in Los Angeles? popped up consistently in an informal (and highly non-scientific poll) of a number of readers, executive recruiters, and others in the Los Angeles area, who cited growth, brand, profitability, and other factors in their suggestions to us of the top companies. Demand Media.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. What''s your background and how did you end up at YP? Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Talk about the technology behind your operations here?
For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. This is the mysterious and dreaded duediligence process, which can kill the whole deal.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP (www.yp.com) -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. What''s your background and how did you end up at YP.com? Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Louis and Atlanta.
This is part of my Startup Advice series. So I was surprised at the sheer volumes of decisions that had to be made when I became a startup CEO. The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. You need to decide whether or not to launch at TechCrunch50.
I’m a very big proponent of the “lean startup movement&# as espoused by Steve Blank & Eric Ries. In the late 90′s I saw a dangerous trend creeping into the startup world, which was that companies were suddenly raising huge amounts of money too early in their existence. This post originally appeared on TechCrunch.
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. As You Start to Mature.
All parties need to perform duediligence to ensure that the assumptions are correct, that neither partner has financial issues which could affect the partnership, and that the opposite partner has the skills to contribute to the partnership. Access to new technologies. Review financial statements – up to 3 years if available.
I filled up with 20 people pretty quickly and realized this schedule was masochistic. TWTFelipe and I ended up speaking for nearly 30 minutes and we talked mostly about why his company was based in Canada and not the US. Felipe grew up in Brazil. So he decided to start his company in Canada. But I have some.
I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. Given customers & sales are the lifeblood of any organization you’d imagine everybody would respect their customers. Starting with a positive. You’d be very wrong.
2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. I acknowledged this in the article.
When the masses start all running one way without questioning “why?&# – and when it defies any logic I can figure out in my head – I call bullshit. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. “ Question Authority.&#.
But VC is an “illiquid asset&# so funds didn’t disappear quickly - In 2000/01 the stock market quickly adjusted punishing investors in the NASDAQ and in individual public technology stocks. Many funds have not performed and will start to disappear. PEHub followed up their analysis with this. Think about the math.
Companies that have leveraged technology to make the procurement and delivery of food more accessible to more people have been seeing a big surge of business this year, as millions of consumers are encouraged (or outright mandated, due to Covid-19) to socially distance or want to avoid the crowds of physical shopping and eating excursions.
Nearly every successful techstartup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. Innovate In the early years of a startup there is a lot of kinetic energy of enthusiastic innovators looking to launch a product that changes how an industry works.
For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. This is the mysterious and dreaded duediligence process, which can kill the whole deal.
If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded duediligence process. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the duediligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.
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. Or on a sales campaign you’ve finally gotten your project sponsor to take you to the “executive committee&# where decisions are made and budgets are agreed.
Yesterday I wrote a post about “ the politics of startups ” in which I asserted that all companies have politics, which in its purest sense is just about understanding human psychology. I think as a tech industry we have bred a culture that places more emphasis on product excellence than managing human behavior.
This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. The world has changed much since I started my first company in 1999. Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.)
The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility. That is the definition of Disruptive Technology.
seems like an unlikely place to grow one of the next billion-dollar startups in the booming Los Angeles tech ecosystem. But it’s here in the (other) Valley’s southernmost edge that investors have found a startup they consider to be the next potential billion-dollar “unicorn” that will come out of Los Angeles.
Under the heading, “The Book On Bezos,” the callout lists ten actionable and impactful nuggets of startup advice. I review these tenets with my entrepreneurial students at UC Santa Barbara at the beginning of each quarter to reinforce many of the key topics we will cover in the following weeks. “We We don’t give up on things easily.
If you’re not familiar with the term it’s basically trying to help all of us who are deluged with technology to find ways to cope with the masses of information without having it ruin our lives. Let me start by saying I’m a huge business book cynic. You’re on the DS (deferred startup) plan.
This is part of my ongoing series, “ Start-up Lessons.&#. My starting line with every entrepreneur is that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned from F’ing it up on my first business. I even put that in the the preamble to my Start-up Lessons outline.
Many startups fail before reaching that magic “cash-flow positive” position they have been striving for, despite seemingly reasonable financial projections. A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. A startup must ensure that the payments are collected per agreed terms.
I recently wrote a blog post in which I pointed out that many investors & advisors discourage enterprise startups from having a professional services (PS) business and I think this is a big mistake. I think it’s important for enterprise startups to layer in professional services into your revenue stream. rollout support.
I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. The number of startups being created has increased by an order of magnitude. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin! Today’s Normalization.
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