Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 17, 2023

Most entrepreneurs spend far too much time thinking negatively about competitors, and can’t resist making derogatory statements to their own team, to investors, and even to customers. As an investor, I always listen carefully to what an entrepreneur says, and does not say, about competition.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

leadership, mentorship, competitiveness, communications, relationship-building?—?and and of course a relentless pursuit of helping founders succeed. She took an operating role helping run Citysearch and Urbanspoon. Leadership is about recognizing your next generation of talent and helping lift them up. I’m only 52!

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TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 26, 2020

The Los Angeles startup community is joining the rest of the world in mourning the death of NBA superstar, entrepreneur and investor Kobe Bryant who was killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., Bryant launched his venture career with partner and serial entrepreneur Jeff Stibel back in 2013, according to Crunchbase.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

It should help some entrepreneurs to better access early-stage capital and should allow some angel investors better access to deal flow. Social proof can be helpful. AngelList Syndicate leads don’t take any fees on the investment, which should help with returns. They will have to help get the next round done.

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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. Every school recognizes the power of “hands-on” work to help you develop your own ideas into a business. Write a business plan and pitch deck for learning.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2021

Yet there is no standardized testing or certification required or available anywhere to help you decide if you are a good fit for entrepreneurship, or founding a business is right for you. It helps to work in a similar company before you start your own. Examine the marketplace and your competition. Take stock of whom you know.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2013

Competitive sportswoman. She was everything I was looking for in an entrepreneur to back. Kara on one side of the table showing me market sizes, competitive dynamics, product roadmaps, pricing plans for physical products with COGS and gross margins. She helps write press releases. So, Mark, enough entrepreneur love.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

Every entrepreneur believes that their product or service is memorable, and that every customer will quickly see the advantage over competitors. Differentiation is still a key requirement for a successful startup rollout, and but it must be sustainable to keep ahead of new competition. Marty Zwilling.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2020

Many entrepreneurs still believe they need a traditional multi-level organization to handle growth and scaling, so they start hiring career managers to populate it. Freelancers and consultants have to demonstrate results, without training and mentoring, so they can help you more quickly and probably at a lower total cost.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

And there is so much money around being thrown at so many entrepreneurs that many firms don’t even care about board seats, governance rights or heaven forbid doing work with the company because that would eat into the VCs time needed to chase 5 more deals. And the truth is that several entrepreneurs prefer it this way.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

I have no incentive to do so other than to help those reading the WSJ piece better understand how I believe most insiders think. As an entrepreneur I never really knew what to make of VC return data. Here’s what I know: Most entrepreneurs I know would love to work with A16Z. Do they win competitive deals? Absolutely.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2013

It’s only 12 minutes long and if you’re a first-time entrepreneur (or second time, frankly) I encourage you to watch it if for nothing else than to get a sense that your struggles are universal. This naive optimism is why I believe younger entrepreneurs are more likely to produce insanely big outcomes. A second act.

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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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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2020

His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs. His top eight required skill set elements for sales don’t even mention product skills, and match my view of the right skill set for successful entrepreneurs, with only a few priority changes: Creating and sharing a vision. Negotiating and creating win-win deals.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 27, 2020

As a startup advisor, I see many aspiring entrepreneurs whose primary motivation seems to be to work part time, or get rich quick, or avoid anyone else telling them what to do. Yet, for those with more realistic expectations and the right motivation, the entrepreneur lifestyle can be the dream life you envisioned.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

The part of the movement that resonates the most with me (in my words) is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a large market for what they do. This benefits you, the entrepreneur. It takes options off of the table.

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Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

Berkonomics

MARCH 16, 2017

That reality is a tough one for the professional investor, almost as tough as for those entrepreneurs who lose their businesses. None of this is to say that an inexperienced entrepreneur cannot lead a great new business.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

He had an idea for a startup that would help consumers better book service jobs and would take on Service Magic, which he believed had a business model that could be disrupted. In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. ” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. Nice sweep!

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2021

You can’t survive as an entrepreneur without resilience, because you are going to fail at least once, maybe multiple times. If you need more evidence that great entrepreneurs survived through resilience, just look into the backgrounds of more recent entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. Then they get it done.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

He can’t help himself: He’s Dave. Many through history became entrepreneurs precisely because they were unemployable. How to help his companies. He had a philosophy that the future competition for startups would be design led and based on data analysis. My pal Dave has blogger Tourette’s. My pal Dave has problems.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

Even though I’m a big proponent of becoming an entrepreneur, it is definitely not for everyone. In my view, entrepreneur roles need to be planned carefully rather than made on the spur of the moment. Adopt the Silicon Valley entrepreneur family model. Test your entrepreneur instincts through crowdfunding.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2020

Although most people believe that being a successful entrepreneur is all about having the right idea, I’m convinced from my years of experience as a startup advisor and investor that’s it’s more about you as a person. The best entrepreneurs are not just dreamers of the next big thing – they have to be great facilitators and problem solvers.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

As I like to say when asked, “For entrepreneurs you generally need to go to 2-3 cities max and probably pitch 5-15 investors. Whereas the first two funds I was involved in helping raise each took more than a year this fund was less than 6 months. Just like with entrepreneurs – you know that raising money is just the start.

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InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. Some of the products I’ve helped validate and launch include GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting and AppFolio. I have always worked on early stage products.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2021

Anyone who works with entrepreneurs will tell you that all are different. These are the ultimate chess players in the game of business, always looking to be two or three moves ahead of the competition. The Opportunist is the speculative part of the entrepreneur in all of us. But none have any lock on success. Opportunist.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 19, 2022

As a startup advisor, I see many aspiring entrepreneurs whose primary motivation seems to be to work part time, or get rich quick, or avoid anyone else telling them what to do. Yet, for those with more realistic expectations and the right motivation, the entrepreneur lifestyle can be the dream life you envisioned.

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Entrepreneur Organization Custom Customer 110

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 4, 2016

It’s human nature to try and be helpful to others. In many instances this help is genuine, well-meaning and productive. Most of us like to help create connections between people for whom an introduction, we believe, would be mutually beneficial. I find over-introducers are often motivated by their own self currency.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

And I am often approached by entrepreneurs in cities which don’t have a vibrant VC community. And it is significantly easier to help when you are local. Thus, a desire to invest more locally where I think I have a competitive advantage. It’s a goal to help you understand the life of a VC. Take me for example.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 14, 2021

In their passion and excitement about a new product or service, entrepreneurs tend to continually narrow the scope of potential competitors, and often claim to have no direct competitors. A narrow scope doesn’t help your case either. Prior recognition and visibility in the target market is invaluable from a competitive perspective.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

. ” Sean is somebody widely respected in Silicon Valley (although he now lives in SoCal) for having helped many early-stage companies go through major growth periods by quantitatively testing features with audiences to help diagnose what led to growth. Well, you have to do that, too. I endorse the growth hacking culture on teams.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2021

It seems like everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and get rich these days. Find out if something very similar is already selling, and who your competition would be if you proceed. Be wary of crafty shysters who will flood your mailbox with official-looking mail offering to help for a fee, or demanding fees you forgot to pay.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2014

I think startup communities being simple cheerleaders doesn’t help anyone. 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. People often say, “Great entrepreneurs will build a community and the capital will follow.”

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 19, 2018

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based Catalog (www.catalog.cc), a startup developing artificial intelligence software to help independent visual artists scale their content production efforts, announced it raised $1.5M One, is it helps our customers get that content instantaneously, when they need it. in a seed funding round.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

The starting point of product IS marketing, which is what a lot of young entrepreneurs that never studied business don’t realize. Of course once submitted you could send out links to your friends and ask them to upvote your content and that would help. Of course reciprocity matters so they would all leap into action.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

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. And for some strange reason entrepreneurs didn’t share this information. I’ve started from day one trying to build total transparency into my process with entrepreneurs.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

I believe, though, that they need to be taught more in the context of helping people develop meaningful careers that position them to succeed financially in the changing world in which we live. We talked about how business school historically hasn’t positioned entrepreneurs well for success.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2022

After many years of working with angel investors seriously trying to find new ventures worthy of their hard-earned money, I find their frustration often exceeds that of entrepreneurs sincerely looking for financial help. Smart entrepreneurs pre-disclose any possible due diligence issues, with full and open explanations and no excuses.

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