Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2021

The ultimate compliment that any entrepreneur can get is that they can “see around corners.” This is a statement that they are willing and able (and successful) at projecting market and technology turns, not just straight-line innovations. They have the courage to make bold decisions, often contrary to conventional market research.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2023

Entrepreneurs have always believed that their product or service must show real value to customers, but today the smart ones are even able to make their marketing valuable. The days are gone when marketing was all “pushing product.” by the so-called godfather of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2022

Here are some key insights that I and others have collected for mature company leaders, as well as serial entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, in this new age of rapid market change and harder-to-satisfy customers, you can’t assume that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow. You and your friends are not the market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

According to most definitions, an entrepreneur is one who envisions a new and different business, meaning one that is not a copy of an existing business model. Many entrepreneurs have a passion and an idea, or even invent a new product, but are never able to execute to the point of creating a startup. Startup and development stage.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2023

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. This fallacy, often called historical myopia, essentially involves extrapolating only from recent positive events, and ignoring the reality that markets saturate or evaporate. Failing to adapt to tectonic shifts in the market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2022

With the cost of entry at an all-time low, and the odds of success equally low, more and more entrepreneurs are starting multiple companies concurrently. Other prolific entrepreneurs, like Richard Branson and Elon Musk , simply have several startups on the table at any given moment. Optimize your advisers and investors.

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socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

Raising capital for a female-led startup can be very diffiult--which is what Justine Lassoff and Melinda Moore found out when they started their own company, LovingEco, in Los Angeles. After we sold that company, we look at each other, and decided to become part of the solution. Goop is the lifestyle brand founded by Gwyneth Paltrow.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 5, 2023

Technology is so key to every business these days that experienced business-smart but non-tech entrepreneurs are feeling deeper and deeper in the hole. Only one component of running a business is managing technology, but it is a critical component, so no entrepreneur can afford to ignore it or totally delegate it.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2021

In my role as mentor to business professionals, I often get the question about your potential of going out on your own as an entrepreneur, versus your current role of working for a boss at an established company. Believe in the need for marketing and selling. Able to marshal people and other support resources.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2021

Yet every business and every entrepreneur I know struggles with this challenge, focused on hiring the right people and implementing the right process. I was happy to see my own view reinforced in the classic book, “ Innovation Thinking Methods for the Modern Entrepreneur ,” by long-time entrepreneur and innovation expert Osama A.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 5, 2021

Startups are the corporations of the future, so I have long believed that entrepreneurs who study existing corporate models, rather than ignoring them with disdain, will likely profit from the exercise. These are all huge challenges, as well as huge opportunities, for entrepreneurs. Economic instability. Stakeholder power.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2021

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined.

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Entrepreneur Search Engine Optimization Satisfaction Social Media 174

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2020

With the availability of high-speed Internet and social media access around the world, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to assume that the world is just one big homogeneous market, and project their business will scale accordingly. The most common mistake is overestimating a particular market’s potential, based on your domestic context.

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Marketing Outsource Development Social Media Entrepreneur 134

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Do they bet on the entrepreneur (jockey) or the business idea and plan (the horse)? A more complex answer My answer always varies as I examine each deal, sometimes deferring and passing on an investment because of an uneasy feeling about the entrepreneur, even if the business plan seems able to capture the market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2021

Sometimes entrepreneurs are so focused on making change happen for customers that they forget that continually changing themselves and their company is equally important. Everyone and every company needs to continually learn from their experience and adapt to a changing world to thrive. “If Ignore the voices of dissent again.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

It’s a special mix of entrepreneur and company, regular in every respect except for having the courage and foresight to make an idea happen that was supposed to be impossible. As an entrepreneur in a startup, how do you know if you have this potential, and what are the steps to get from an innovation to a revolution?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2020

Every entrepreneur knows that good demand generation marketing is the key to growth these days, but very few have the discipline or know-how to measure return in a world of a thousand tools and techniques. In fact, we now live in a buyer-led digital age, where the traditional media push-marketing efforts just don’t work.

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TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

But LA-based performance marketing agency MuteSix didn’t wait that long to build its business around scaling DTC brands. If you have growth marketing agencies or freelancers to recommend, please fill out our survey !). At the time, it was doing Facebook media buying for e-commerce companies.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 17, 2023

I know that dates me a good bit, but it also shows that I have been hanging around startups and big companies for a long time. In retrospect, however, Bill Gates did a lot of things right as a startup that I still look for today in aspiring entrepreneurs and their companies: Build a strong team. That’s real viral marketing.

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SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 12, 2020

Thursday, October 15, 2020 -- Pepperdine Most Fundable Companies Showcase 2020. Now in its third year, the Most Fundable Companies competition has grown to over 4,500 companies, and for the first time attracted startups from all 50 U.S. Learn more during the event.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2023

The common reason given is that this prevents any competitor from stealing their idea and beating them to market. Entrepreneurs talk to customers and competitors talk to each other about the new trends and technologies they see. If there really are no competitors, then there is likely no market opportunity, or you haven’t looked yet.

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Marketing Startup Search Engine Optimization Ideas 105

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2023

Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. His professional background includes having held marketing-executive roles at big companies as well as startups. Email marketing. Direct mail marketing.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 24, 2020

As a frequent advisor to new entrepreneurs and startups, I often hear your frustration with being treated differently from other startups by investors, on expectations for valuation , traction, and market size. On the other hand, if the market is super-hot, many will be willing to jump in to make your case.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2020

Traditional marketing may be adequate for linear growth, but it likely won’t catapult you to Amazon’s unicorn status , or make waves in the business world. For example, I usually hear about an aggressive marketing budget, with a plan to penetrate a few big retail chains, and some videos to catch your attention on YouTube.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2022

As a mentor for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs, I talk to a fair number who may have a great vision and a strong engineering background, but have a negative interest in the role of public speaking in business. As an investor, I sometimes see CEOs who negotiate to send their VP of Marketing to talk.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2020

Entrepreneurs have always believed that their product or service must show real value to customers, but today the smart ones are even able to make their marketing valuable. The days are gone when marketing was all “pushing product.” by the so-called godfather of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi.

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Customer Custom Marketing Content 127

socalTECH

AUGUST 26, 2014

Los Angeles-based The Honest Company , the online, family products retailer led by serial entrepreneur Brian Lee, and which was co-founded by Jessica Alba, has raised $70M in a funding round, according to the company Tuesday. The funding brings the company''s total raised to $122M. READ MORE>>.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2020

Many entrepreneurs are so enamored with their product vision that they believe their own hype, and are convinced that the market for their solution is so huge that no one will ask them for independent market research data. Peruse company reports from your business domain. Conduct your own customized market research.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

Creating awareness for your brand and products is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise. Ever notice how some companies tend to be in the press all the time and your big new product launch struggled for inches?

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2020

In my role as a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that most have the technical challenges well understood, but many are a bit short on some basic street smarts , or basic business realities. Although Elon Musk doesn’t talk about it very much, he owns over 350 patents through Tesla, just one of his many companies.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 23, 2020

Entrepreneurs who experience success with their first startup are often amazed to realize that the risks and fears of doing it right the second time go up, rather than down. Encores are tough, especially in the high-risk world of startups, yet every entrepreneur I know can’t wait to start over and do it again. Eat your own dog food.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.). The truth is – there isn’t a “right&# answer so for your company.

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TechCrunch LA

MARCH 17, 2021

The Los Angeles-based company has a new residential solar plus energy storage program for homeowners in Queens that’s going to be rolled out in partnership with ConEd. Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 12, 2021

If you are a passionate technologist , it’s easy to forget that marketing is required to sell even the most compelling solution, to cut through the information overload everyone sees today on the internet. If marketing is not your thing, then you need to find a partner or outside expert to help you.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

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. Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. Startup life.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 17, 2023

Preparing for the game… If you have been following our recent insights, you’ll be up to speed knowing that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 31, 2020

Most technical entrepreneurs I know demand the discipline of a product specification or plan, and then assume that their great product will drive a great business. Is it any wonder why so few entrepreneurs ever find the professional investors they seek? Executives, marketing & sales, financial projections, and funding.

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