Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Most aspiring entrepreneurs look to their alma mater, or any university, as a source of classes that can help them, but neglect to think outside the box or take advantage of all the other resources to be found there. Get help with grant funding and incubator resources. Access to entrepreneurs-in-residence, business mentors.

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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

JANUARY 7, 2023

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. If you ask them for a reason, most will insist that they couldn’t get funding, or they ran out of money too early. It’s tempting to believe that one more new platform will win for crowd funding or video games, like Indiegogo and Wii.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. Of course, there are thousands of other companies that don’t achieve their minimum goal, requiring all contributions to be returned. Donation good-cause model.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

I am so proud and humbled to be able to formally announce that Upfront Ventures has raised its 6th venture capital fund in the past 21 years. Upfront VI is our latest core fund and is $400 million to invest in early stage entrepreneurs. This brings our combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 11, 2022

The simple reason is that it’s impossible to make money for investors when the goal of the company is to not make money. A nonprofit organization is generally defined as an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Government grants.

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socalTECH

MARCH 29, 2019

MiLA Capital , the venture capital firm that is behind the Make In LA hardware accelerator, says it has raised its first official venture capital fund, officially closing its first fundraise. Size of the fund was not announced. Source of the funding for the new venture capital fund was not announced.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 11, 2022

New entrepreneurs are always looking for a shortcut in getting their venture story and plan across to investors, and closing on the funding they need. The canvas is a visual chart with elements describing your value proposition, structure, finances, and customers, to help companies identify and align business activities.

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Berkonomics

MARCH 18, 2021

Even using one of the strategies just mentioned, the risks of having enough cash to fund daily operations or growth can be daunting. Here’s the ultimate thing about entrepreneurism. The post Entrepreneurism is all about personal risk. But the risks don’t stop there. The same is true about marketing.

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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

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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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 7, 2022

One of the big questions that every entrepreneur struggles with is how much funding they should request from investors in the first round. Can you justify your use of funds to this investor? If you ask for more money than your company is now worth, no investor will bite. Be prepared to explain your business model.

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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. Funding and rollout stage.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 28, 2021

Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). I still don’t see it happening any time soon. Neither does David S.

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socalTECH

JUNE 22, 2021

A new, Los Angeles-based startup, Donut, said today that it has raised $2M in a funding round. The funding came from Redalpine, Inventures, angel Robert Leshner (Compound), Entrepreneur First, and theowners of the Washington Nationals baseball team. According to the company, the new round brings its total raised to $3.8M.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2023

On the other hand, if you are a new entrepreneur, still in the idea stage, professional investors will only tell you to come back later when you have traction (customers and revenue). Thus your startup maturity and growth stage is the primary key to success with potential funding sources. Marty Zwilling

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2014

I was at a dinner recently in Chicago and the table discussion was about building great companies outside of Silicon Valley. I then got my MBA at University of Chicago so I secretly pull for local entrepreneurs as long as they don’t make me visit in the Winter any more. I went to see several LP funds in Boston.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

Fund raising. But it’s critical for your business, for you as a leader and people who excel at fund raising have an extreme advantage over those who do not. The best entrepreneurs in our industry focus on it year-round as opposed to just once every 18 months. It definitely has a “d” in it, as in it’s really not fun, raising.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 23, 2019

The Los Angeles ecosystem is $76 million stronger today as Fika Ventures , a seed-stage venture capital firm, announces its sophomore investment fund. Fika invests roughly half of its capital exclusively in startups headquartered in LA, with a particular fondness for B2B, enterprise and fintech companies.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. Wait, didn’t you just raise a fund? Was it hard to raise the fund?

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 17, 2024

More than ever, the banks and lenders today require personal guarantees from entrepreneurs, and even from CEO’s of funded businesses. Starting and running a small or growing business can be a challenge to the most confident and optimistic entrepreneur. All entrepreneurs assume risk when starting and growing a business.

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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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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2022

One of the myths I often hear as an advisor to many entrepreneurs is that their lifestyle would somehow be better if they could more easily find other people’s money to build their startup. In fact, Michael Dell privatized his company again in 2013 for a few years, in his words to “unleash again the passion of our team members.”

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 29, 2020

One of the most frequent questions I get as a mentor to entrepreneurs is “How do I find the money to start my business?” If you have the urge to be an entrepreneur, I encourage you to think seriously about each of these, before you zero-in on one or two, and get totally discouraged if those don’t work for you.

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SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 13, 2011

Thursday, June 16, 2011 -- Financing Lessons from Entrepreneurs Who Funded Their Early-Stage Companies. If you're planning to grow faster than your company is generating returns-and what early stage company isn't-your company will need outside funding.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 11, 2021

As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. If the entrepreneur wants total control of their own venture, with no one looking over their shoulder, they should work within the limits of their own resources, a process called bootstrapping.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 28, 2023

As a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, and having graduated from a big company myself, I talk to many people who have spent years struggling up the corporate ladder who dream of jumping ship and becoming an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs must be the model of personal empowerment in their new venture. Marty Zwilling

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2021

Some aspiring entrepreneurs are so desperate for funding, or naïve, that they ignore the obvious signs of scams and rip-offs on the Internet, praying for a windfall. No real investor or venture capital firm asks for money from the company they are intending to invest in. Phantom fund investors. Marty Zwilling.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

And she didn’t start her company in Northern California. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. She drove her company to profitability before paying herself a modest salary. She actually IS the prototypical entrepreneur. She put all of her savings into her company. More on that later.

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Berkonomics

MARCH 30, 2012

Sara focuses upon another side of small business financing not typically considered in the angel and venture world, financing from sources for companies that will probably never be attractive to those niches. . You have enough in savings to get started, but how and where do you go to find additional funding sources?

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

One of the biggest myths I have found in the entrepreneur community is that every startup needs one or more outside investors for credibility and success, and perhaps is even entitled to at least one. Searching LinkedIn, for example, is a must for contemporary entrepreneurs. But don’t wait for them to contact you.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2020

Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. Of course, there are thousands of other companies that don’t achieve their minimum goal, requiring all contributions to be returned. Donation good-cause model.

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Entrepreneur Outsource Development Satisfaction Equity 129

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Los Angeles-based TenOnTen Ventures, the venture capital investment fund run by David Waxman, Gil Elbaz, and Minnie Ingersoll, has kicked off efforts to raise a third fund, TenOneTen Ventures III, with a goal of raising $60M in the fund, per recent regulatory filings by the firm.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 13, 2021

Many years ago, John Hamm published some definitive work on this subject in " Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale " in the Harvard Business Review. This is generally a required quality for a successful entrepreneur, but it can turn into an unhealthy stubbornness during the scaling stage. Investors don’t want to fund your stumbles.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

A continuing question I hear from young entrepreneurs is whether a university degree is important to startup success, or just a distraction in achieving their purpose in the world. Both provide entrepreneurial “head start” programs for aspiring entrepreneurs, free legal guidance, and access to experienced staff members.

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Entrepreneur Mentor Class Resource 157

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2018

This morning, Moonshots Capital (www.moonshotscapital.com), led by Kelly Perdew and Craig Cummings , announced its first formal fund, a $19M seed stage fund. What we would do, is we would round up ten other angel investors, get $25,000 from each of them, and then roll up our sleeves and help that entrepreneur find venture capital.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2018

The benefits you will receive from doing even some basic planning before you hit the fund raising trail are enormous. Many points will seem obvious but since I observe many fund-raising processes as a VC I can tell you that most people get even the basics wrong. Let’s say the C list is probably your “safety schools”?—?not

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