TechCrunch LA

MAY 3, 2022

She worked on Wall Street as an investment banker for a few years in New York before returning to Houston with a job in energy. Upgrade’s e-commerce marketplace has two sides: one that enables consumers to choose a vetted stylist and have their wig colored or customized based on their desired look. The company, which raised $1.7

Tool 179

Tool Custom Customer Marketing 179

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 14, 2023

Investors don’t invest in services startups. Here are some pragmatic tips on how to make your startup more scalable and investable: If you need investors, start with a scalable idea. These are more likely scalable and investable. Just because all your buddies think an idea is cool, that doesn’t mean it is scalable.

Tips 135

Tips Invest Startup Outsource 135

socalTECH

OCTOBER 5, 2020

Pasadena-based online vitamin seller iHerb says it plans to invest $100M in Russia, as a part of an effort to serve the Russian community. The company says it serves customers in 188 countries and territories. The company, which sells vitamins and supplements online, did not say what percentage of its business is in that country.

Invest 124

Invest Pasadena Customer Custom 124

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2022

I’m sure you have all noticed how today’s customers have changed the way they shop, but I still find, as an advisor and consultant, that many of you aren’t sure how to deal with the new mode, or are still waiting for things to get back to the old normal. Convenience is in the eye of the customer, not your company.

Demand 126

Demand Customer Custom Startup 126

Berkonomics

OCTOBER 31, 2024

Professional investors will probe these five risk areas and make the decision to invest based upon comfort with each. 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.

Outsource Development 268

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 268

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2021

As I talk to many of you in my role as business advisor, I still often hear the concern for maximum return to the business and stakeholders, more than a passion for sustainably enriching the lives of your customers and team. This applies to your own team, as well as customers. Make every customer experience memorable.

Customer 114

Customer Custom Satisfaction Metrics 114

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. Display ads on mobile devices, including video and audio, also offer a new opportunity to reach target customers. One of these experts, David T. Display advertising. Email marketing. Cold calling.

Marketing 114

Marketing Invest Social Media SEM 114

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2021

Every business I know is intimately familiar with outbound marketing, or pushing your message out to customers through email, newspaper, and television advertising. Only a few really understand the process and value of inbound marketing, for pulling customers to your brand. Don’t just monitor – engage customers.

Customer 172

Customer Custom Marketing Social Media 172

socalTECH

AUGUST 19, 2020

Los Angeles-based real estate loan marketplace PeerStreet announced on Wednesday morning that it is launching a new fund, called the Peer Street Credit Opportunity Fund LP , which will provide another way for its customers to diversify, expand, and customize their real estate debt portfolios.

Invest 113

Invest Funding Los Angeles Customer 113

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 2, 2022

Many entrepreneurs think that adapting to the new technologies, like smart phones and Internet commerce, are the key to attracting new customers. High-technology product startups, without customers, don’t make a business. Solis outlines the heuristics of social psychology that are key to building positive customer experiences today.

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Customer Custom Social Media Technical Review 122

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2020

Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. Display ads on mobile devices, including video and audio, also offer a new opportunity to reach target customers. One of these experts, David T. Display advertising. Email marketing. Cold calling.

Customer 146

Customer Custom Marketing Startup 146

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 24, 2023

Investors invest in people, not ideas. Customers buy from people, not companies. That means relationships with team members, investors, customers, and vendors. Entrepreneurs who like to be argumentative, complaining, or disagreeable, will have a hard time closing a contract, investment, or a customer contract.

Custom 90

Custom Customer Outsource Development Entrepreneur 90

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 26, 2020

The name “investment bank” somehow always sounded like a place where I could deposit my investments, and maybe even earn a little interest. Then I learned that these banks really negotiate investments and collect fees on the transactions, sort of like commercial banks do with loans to businesses. Very confusing.

Invest 144

Invest Entrepreneur Venture Capital Funding 144

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2022

As a business consultant and angel investor, I often ask for your own assessment of marketing ROI , or customer acquisition cost (CAC). Are you making the proper investment, and is it paying off? I assure you of the need to really listen to customer feedback, both proactively in market studies, as well as after-the-sale reviews.

Customer 100

Customer Custom Acquisition Technical Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2023

Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. Huge investments are also required to ramp up manufacturing, build a distribution network, and provide the support infrastructure. If you have deep pockets, these ultimately can be very lucrative.

Invest 98

Invest Sites Technical Review Social Media 98

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2019

Santa Barbara-based Impact , which develops software used for partnership automation, said this morning that it has raised $75M in an investment round. Impact ays its customers include Cabela's, Fanatics, Getty Images, Lenovo, Levi's, Shutterstock, Techstyle and Ticketmaster, and that it now has over 400 employees across ten offices.

Invest 113

Invest Ticketmaster Santa Barbara Equity 113

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

San Diego-based private equity investor JMI Equity is the lead investor in Lytics , a developer of marketing personalization software, in a $35M, Series C investment announced by Lytics on Thursday. The company said the funding will go towards strategic growth initiatives in the product development and "customer success" areas.

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Equity Invest San Diego Customer 113

socalTECH

OCTOBER 16, 2019

TDK Ventures , the venture investment arm of TDK Corporation , has made an investment in Los Angeles-based Wheels , the last-mile, on-demand, electric bicycle company led by Josh Viner. According to TDK Ventures, the investment came as part of the recently announced funding round led by DBL Partners.

Invest 113

Invest Demand Los Angeles Funding 113

socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2018

As part of our sponsor relationship with the conference, we're running a series of interviews with speakers from the conference about their experience in the area of recurring revenues, customer service, and similar topics. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about retaining and keeping your customers using the subscription model?

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Customer Custom Conference Social Media 166

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2020

They forget that adapting their company and themselves as their customers evolve is the key to long-term survival. Think of Blockbuster and Toys ‘R’ Us , both of whom missed customer changes and the move to online. Create an overt strategy to react to emerging customer trends. Remember when you were a startup?

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Customer Custom Examples IBM 143

TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 25, 2022

The startup has received €50 million (just under $57 million at today’s rates) from the European Investment Bank, the funding arm of the European Union. It is not disclosing its valuation with this investment, but Alastair Westgarth said that this doesn’t rule out raising further funding from investors.

Invest 233

Invest Technology Startup Los Angeles 233

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2020

Attracting the right customers is the key to success in business, whether you have a new startup or a mature enterprise. For example, Xerox tried to broaden the use of "xerox" as the standard term for "photocopying" to extend their existing customer segment into office automation and all kinds of computing.

Customer 123

Customer Custom Technical Review Examples 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2020

Hidalgo recommends a focus on engagement stage indicators including customers by channel, conversion ratio, and cost per revenue. You need to track what content is resonating with your prospective customers, through metrics including submit rate by content offer, elasticity, velocity, cost, and ultimately revenue by content program.

Marketing 174

Marketing Invest Demand Metrics 174

socalTECH

MARCH 11, 2019

Los Angeles-based private equity investor K1 Investment Management has acquired Digital Pharmacist , a software development firm which helps pharmacists manage refill reminders and other marketing. The deal was worth $125M. READ MORE>>.

Invest 113

Invest Newsletter Social Media Equity 113

socalTECH

JANUARY 16, 2020

Los Angeles-based March Capital Partners is the lead investor in a big, $32M funding round for ActionIQ , a startup which provides personalization software to enterprise customers. Finn led March Capital's investment in ActionIQ. The company's software provides large scale personalization software for enterprise customers.

Capital 100

Capital Invest Software Los Angeles 100

socalTECH

MAY 28, 2014

Los Angeles-based online and mobile advertising technology provider OpenX announced this morning that it has named Tish Whitcraft as the company''s new Chief Customer Officer. OpenX said that Whitcraft will head up OpenX''s partner services team, which includes support, sales engineering, and customer operations. READ MORE>>.

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OpenX Customer Custom Yahoo 138

socalTECH

APRIL 24, 2020

Carey tells us a bit about what OC4 is doing, how it invests and works with companies, and also gives startups some advice about how to approach moving forward in light of the pandemic. Carey Ransom: The way I think about it, is it is really the culmination of almost two decades of software and technology company building and investing.

Invest 124

Invest Startup Ideas Examples 124

socalTECH

OCTOBER 9, 2019

There's a new opportunity in clean technology investments, according to venture capitalist Aaron Fyke , the head of a new, Pasadena-based venture capital investment fund, Thin Line Capital (www.thinlinecapital.com). Aaron Fyke: I believe we're in a second wave of clean tech investing. Talk about the new firm and the new fund?

Invest 113

Invest Capital Venture Capital Idealab 113

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In normal times investors will look for “traction&# before investing. You’ll be able to give them an update on key hires, pilot customers, key tech innovations – whatever. I spoke about this more in depth in these two posts: 4 things I look for in an investment & how to manage VC relationships.

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

Los Angeles-based youth transportatoin service HopSkipDrive announced this morning that it will invest $2M in free ride credits, to help solve a school bus driver shortage. According to the company, it will provide those $2M in ride credits to existing education partners in CA, CO, WI, and WA as part of its Opportunity for All Community Fund.

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Customer Custom Education Los Angeles 113

socalTECH

MARCH 1, 2018

As part of the lead in to the conference, and as a part of our sponsor relationship with the conference, we're running a series of interviews with speakers from the conference about their experience in the area of recurring revenues, customer service, and similar topics. The second, was investing in relationship management and support.

Customer 113

Customer Custom Services Conference 113

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2021

Photo by Vanna Phon on Unsplash Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of many startups from e-commerce to gaming to marketplace companies, among others. that’s where the customers are. But if you ask anyone in the ecosystem of customer acquisition?—?founders, Why Did I Invest in Trust? no surprise?—?that’s

Product 424

Product Platform Advertising Acquisition 424

SoCal Tech Calendar

MAY 2, 2019

Wednesday, May 8, 2019 -- Customer Discovery and Product Market Fit with Eric P. This talk will cover the preliminary market research work of Customer Discovery, that is to discover who would most value your proposed new product. Rose, NPDP, MBA. Precellerator. See [link] (more)

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Custom Customer Product Marketing 100

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Rialto, California-based Plant Prefab , a manufacturer of custom, prefabricated homes, has raised $6.7M in a Series A investment, according to the company. The Inland Empire company said the funding came from Obvious Ventures and the Amazon Alexa Fund. Obvious Ventures is the venture fund co-founded by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams.

Custom 113

Custom Customer Sites Funding 113

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2013

You know exactly when you want to sell to this customer and presumably it’s this quarter! And when I say this I’m assuming that you’re already identified the customer pain and talked about how you’re uniquely qualified to solve their business problems. .” Which customers to target: Elephants, Deer or Rabbits ?

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Custom Customer Marketing Newsletter 324

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2019

Is your marketing focus product-centric or customer-centric ? With a wealth of products now available, customers look for the most memorable experience , not just the best product. Amazon is very customer-centric, but it can make all the difference in retail as well as online. Status factors are more important than demographics.

Customer 85

Customer Custom Product Metrics 85

socalTECH

JULY 11, 2018

La Jolla-based private equity investor JMI Equity has made a $35M strategic growth investment in Cosential , a developer of customer relationship management (CRM) and proposal automation software for the architecture and engineering market.

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Equity Invest Software Funding 100