Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 5, 2023

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Startup 122

Startup Funding Organization Incubator 122

Berkonomics

MARCH 14, 2019

One way to mitigate this is by using early money to create a prototype, to perform market research, to complete the first generation of the product, or to deliver the service to a satisfied customer. Second: Market risk. . Email readers, continue here…] Are you ahead or behind the market with your product or service?

Outsource Development 120

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2020

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Resource 171

Resource Startup Organization Incubator 171

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. I thought I’d write a post about how to talk about valuation at a startup and give you some sense of what might be on the mind of the person considering funding you. After all?—?we

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ringrevenue’s call performance marketing platform enables ad networks, agencies, advertisers & publishers to generate more inbound sales calls.”. In today’s market, so much focus is placed on transacting business online. 10) Rob, why does the world need RingRevenue? . “In

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. Prorata investments rights given investors the right to invest in your future fund-raising rounds and maintain their ownership % in your company as your company grows and raises more capital.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2018

This is especially true because incumbents now know how much is at stake when they let a startup get a huge head start in a market. Also if you do need to compromise to accommodate somebody you think is acting inappropriately it’s very tempting to fold your cards but then swipe back by saying or writing things you’ll regret.

Startup 199

Startup Writing Demand Equity 199

Berkonomics

MARCH 15, 2012

One way to mitigate this is by using early money to create a prototype, to perform market research, to complete the first generation of the product, or to deliver the service to a satisfied customer. Second: Market risk. Are you ahead or behind the market with your product or service? Third: Management risk.

Outsource Development 200

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 200

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2013

” In the article I discussed the downside of raising capital at a too high of a price and referred people to a previous article I had written encouraging founders to raise “ At the Top end of Normal ” as opposed to stratospheric prices. And no amount of explanations, “we raised in a frothy market. We know that.

Pricing 302

Pricing Seed Funding Invest Venture Capital 302

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.). So VCs started writing some smaller A-rounds. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5

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Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

Venture capital isn’t right for many business but if you do want to raise from a VC at some point you need to understand that often investors care more about growth than profits. They raised $5 million in venture capital to fund growth. They hired a marketing team to promote their products more broadly.

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

socalTECH

AUGUST 27, 2014

We spoke with one of those companies-- El Segundo-based ConsumerTrack (www.consumertrack.com)--which is a $30M, bootstrapped an online marketing company which is driving millions of customers to big name, financial customers. Brett Rossman: ConsumerTrack is a performance-based, online marketing company. What is ConsumerTrack all about?

Startup 239

Startup El Segundo Marketing Media 239

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

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. I can’t control the market. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

seed and they are writing $1.25m of it you can expect them to require a board seat) The competitive landscape (If you have several sources of capital you can likely politely decline the board request or can grant them a seat but ask for it to be “common appointed” and those revokable if you need in the future). But it’s quite rare.

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

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.

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Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

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!” Have easy access to capital by investors who are committed to building businesses at Interent scale. One of them is profitability.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 28, 2018

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Funding 94

Funding Startup Organization Incubator 94

Berkonomics

JUNE 11, 2015

I was fortunate that I could write software and doubly fortunate that my despair at working for ‘the Man’ – and feeling compelled to strike out on my own – coincided with the dawn of the personal computer era. For me I had few alternatives; working for someone else had proved to be a frustrating experience.

Custom 120

Custom Customer Writing Southern California 120

InfoChachkie

MARCH 18, 2013

In order to extract value beyond your Angel investors' cash, you must first assess three important parameters: (i) the relative strength of their personal brand, (ii) their ability to add operational value, and (iii) the amount of care and feeding they will demand from you. If the pitch sounds good, they are "in."

Angel 217

Angel Technical Review RSS Entrepreneur 217

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. SEO marketing vs. social marketing. And so is venture capital. and I realized that without years of experience it is tough to answer this question. Most VCs are book smart. Think of web vs. mobile. Commitment.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

In London when founders failed they were ostracized in the press and culturally I believe it became harder to raise capital. You also ran the risk that if you hired employees quickly and then demand wasn’t as strong as expected it was incredibility hard to fire people.

Startup 261

Startup Press Blogging .Net 261

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets. Was there consumer demand? No brainer. Could we produce this at cost? Did anybody hold patents that would prevent us from using this technology?

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. these are simply guidelines. I think there’s some truth in this.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. Market Size. MakeSpace provides physical storage.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2010

He stood up, grabbed the mic and gave a heartfelt overview of his experiences in experimenting with new technologies to build relationships with his audience, get feedback on his product quality and to market his music all the way to the top of iTunes. To stay the crowed was “wowed&# was an understatement.

Entrepreneur 356

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Email 356

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 25, 2016

If such write-downs only impacted the faux unicorns and their avaricious investors, there would be little need for alarm. Unfortunately, the coming market correction will reverberate to all stages of venture investing. Ultimately, a startup’s value is based on what the market will pay.

Startup 100

Startup Entrepreneur Invest Venture Capital 100

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 27, 2016

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Organization 93

Organization Startup Incubator Ideas 93

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

Finally for startups there’s a $31 billion available for programs that give small businesses access to credit, venture capital, and R&D dollars. The sad fact is that water infrastructure in America has largely failed to keep up in large swaths of the country, necessitating this kind of massive capital infusion.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2013

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Funding Incubator Startup 102

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. Those options need to come from somewhere.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2012

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Resource 94

Resource Startup Organization Incubator 94

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2011

It came about, because we saw a gap in the market around entertainment news written for the 18-34 consumer segment. We thought it was a real opportunity to bring in some taste-maker editors, who could write specifically for that audience, and break news. We're going after a large and fast growing market. Everyone knows this.

News 173

News Entertainment Startup Bertelsmann 173

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2011

The first step toward a business with any idea is to write it down, and build a business plan around it. Once you have some traction, you can approach venture capital organizations , with funding amounts of $1-10 million for the real rollout, often referred to as the “A-round,” or first institutional funding. Funding or rollout stage.

Startup 92

Startup Organization Incubator Ideas 92

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 11, 2013

I spent more time organizing my tax forms, keeping them safe, getting invoices together, getting invoice templates, then getting them out there and tracking down my payment for writing the article. The article can take 10 hours to write a good article and the paperwork can take five hours. We expect to be a huge growth market.

Journal 90

Journal Startup Writing Media 90

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. Once you’ve been around for a few years, attracted some great people, landed real, paying customers and raised venture capital you’ve likely got a talented team around you. Both are basically people businesses.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

Shell’s plan to roll out 500,000 electric charging station in just four years is the latest sign of an EV charging infrastructure boom that has prompted investors to pour cash into the industry and inspired a few companies to become public companies in search of the capital needed to meet demand.

Companies 363

Companies Company Acquisition Equity 363

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

The company recently raised a round of funding from Santa Barbara-based ScOps Venture Capital. There's lots of noise in the on-demand tutoring space, especially connecting people virtually, however, in my experience, it's in the best interest of consumers to get in-person, local tutoring. What is HeyTutor? Here's the reason why.

Startup 113

Startup Venture Capital Beverly Hills Acquisition 113