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I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. And the back-end is something that a non-technical founder can manage. It had a passionate group of 50 people attending.
I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. From these meetings you can really tell the leaders that care deeply about their customers and those the look down on them. You’d be very wrong. Contrast that with a VC conversation I had.
You need to do the duediligence to make that decision before you sign away your equity. As a former startup investor, I was often involved with duediligence on founders, and I felt that founders should do the same on co-founders, as well as investors. The same benefits also apply to a joint venture.
As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features.
I recently wrote a blog post in which I pointed out that many investors & advisors discourage enterprise startups from having a professional services (PS) business and I think this is a big mistake. I think it’s important for enterprise startups to layer in professional services into your revenue stream. rollout support.
The second is that the retailers were constrained by their high costs of local real estate and service staff relative to the costs of centralized warehouses where goods could be stacked high, sorted by robots, managed by RFIDs and then shipped via overnight to eager, cost-conscious customers across the US. 10x the experience.
Leading edge technology software and manufacturing require constant course corrections and iterative restarts. Look at internal services versus external services. Customer-facing services, like call centers, should rarely be outsourced. Don’t count on contracts and non-disclosure agreements to save you.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Talk about the technology behind your operations here? What''s your background and how did you end up at YP?
Part I of this series describes the 360-review that I conducted at a growing, dynamic SaaS business which has recently graduated from the startup stage and entered the early-growth phase. One of the most compelling conclusions I drew from the reviews is that both Founders need delegate more of their day-to-day tasks.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP (www.yp.com) -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Talk about the technology behind your operations here? Louis and Atlanta.
As a newfound Dad Blogger and experienced marketer, I’ve begun offering a great new service that has been greeted by the Mommy Blogger community with great interest and the manufacturers of great products have responded equally well. I will demand and police honest and ethical reviews, whether good or bad. Win win win.
I could have listened to her for hours as many of her lessons were ones I hadn’t heard before such as how she used online gaming when she was younger as a way of both teaching herself tech as well as learning to lead remote teams. Nanea Reeves has a storied career in senior leadership roles at technology companies.
And of course the most successful technology companies: Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com [duh], Oracle, Microsoft all have loads of sales people. Many young startups are being advised not to have a professional services business and in my opinion this is a big mistake. How do you get referenceable customers? System Integrations.
Many times they also pick up product and tech, too. Often times you find the CEO who really just likes to do product or tech. Similarly I talk to CEOs who can’t do a sales pipeline review with me. I once did duediligence on a potential investment where the CEO was projecting $9 million in sales for his next 12 months.
Los Angeles-based technology deals provider StackSocial has stacked up another technology publisher in its pile of customers, saying today that it has added tech publisher iPhoneinCanada.ca. StackSocial said it will provide apps, gadgates, and other tech-related products at a new store on the technology news site.
Companies that have leveraged technology to make the procurement and delivery of food more accessible to more people have been seeing a big surge of business this year, as millions of consumers are encouraged (or outright mandated, due to Covid-19) to socially distance or want to avoid the crowds of physical shopping and eating excursions.
If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded duediligence process. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the duediligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.
Irvine-based cybersecurity software developer CrowdStrike said Monday that it has rolled out a new set of customer support and services options, to support the deployment of its CrowdStrike Falcon software. Pricing on its new services offerings were not announced. READ MORE>>.
All parties need to perform duediligence to ensure that the assumptions are correct, that neither partner has financial issues which could affect the partnership, and that the opposite partner has the skills to contribute to the partnership. Addition of new services or product lines. Access to new technologies.
You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. By going on sales calls you pick up directly the feedback of what customers want and also what they’re telling you about competition.
Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance. For example, I commonly see metrics to keep track of revenue per employee, overtime, and absenteeism, but I don’t often see measures of overall customer satisfaction with individual employees.
Los Angeles-based TheBouqs (www.thebouqs.com) thinks so, with its new, cut-to-order online flower delivery service for the iPad generation. The second big part of this, is the user experience, the brand, and the customers. It''s all about being very simple, very honest, and very straightforward in how you treat the customer.
So how did a company that provides storage grow so fast (we’ll exit 2017 with 10’s of millions in recurring revenue), why is it so defensible and is it really a tech startup? If you buy that Amazon is a tech startup then essentially you’ve already answered the question. In short — how the hell did we raise $30 million?
the online business credit company headed by serial tech entrepreneur Jeff Stibel, is looking to make its technology avialable to traditional publishers looking to go online, the firm said last week. Los Angeles-based Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. , Pricing and details on the new platform were not announced. READ MORE>>.
I was sitting with the financing guy who was trying to upsell me everything from pre-paying service to prepaying dent repair coverage, etc. It got me thinking about the tech industry. Work on budgets, submit RFPs, answer customers support calls, work the bug-tracking software, and trying to meet the next sprint release schedule.
Playa Vista-based point-of-sale equipment and software provider Appetize says that its recent move to offer up "self-service" kiosks to its customers, has resulted in its customers seeing more spending and demand.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Of course, I provide part-time CTO services. Who's the customer? What's you believe is your biggest technology risk, if any?
A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. Don’t forget to add all pesky “overhead” costs, with fixed elements, like rent, insurance, and administration, and variable elements, like delivery, customer support, and commissions. This difference will kill your profit margin.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Of course, I provide part-time CTO services. Who's the customer? What's you believe is your biggest technology risk, if any?
seems like an unlikely place to grow one of the next billion-dollar startups in the booming Los Angeles tech ecosystem. More specifically, it’s the contractors that service equipment like the heating, ventilation and cooling systems at commercial and residential properties across the U.S. The city of Glendale, Calif.
David encourages entrepreneurs to stay away from the big tech firms (such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) because they are hard to compete with. I believe there needs to be more focus on reinventing eduction, healthcare, energy and even less noble industries such as television, telephony and financial services. Laughable now.
Every one of you business owners I know periodically introduces new products and services to sustain growth, fight off competitors, or take advantage of new technologies. Customers won’t buy what they can’t find or don’t understand. Customers need supporting approvals to fully benefit. Incent these early.
If I’m interested I get to spend more time with them, if I’m not I don’t have to – A few companies per month come in that have fascinating business ideas that warrant my spending more time trying to understand their people, company, technology and market. I was always in a “service&# industry.
At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. After all, that’s what tech innovation is all about. Who are the customers? Do you have a custom algorithm or other technology? For customerservice?
Selling services has always been about relationships, but the challenges of building relationships with services clients have exploded. In addition, as every business becomes instantly global via the Internet, it’s virtually impossible for you to touch every customer personally. Relationships are a function of customer culture.
Irvine-based technology distributor Ingram Micro says it is looking to help the many U.S. and Canadian small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) it serves, who are facing a cash crunch due to the ongoing COVID-19 disease outbreak. of the total purchase price. READ MORE>>.
The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. There’s a guy in Los Angeles that I met at several tech networking events. He was a really nice and personable guy who had deep domain knowledge in an industry that he’d worked in for 10 years that is in need of technological advancement.
We use a SaaS model, and we work with hospitality companies, such as hotels, restaurants, food service, and we help track employee performance in real time. It''s too cumbersome, and most of the products are 360 reviews, corporate management type products, which are too expensive. Who is your ideal customer? READ MORE>>.
ReachLocal (www.reachlocal.com) was born in the age of Internet search marketing, and helped define Internet marketing from local service providers--letting people know about your local business via the Internet. We're taking all of those leads, and creating the tools to convert them to customers. In a sense, it completes the funnel.
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.
Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. If you like the quick summary notes, please check out Adam’s blog on tech, entrepreneurship & VC as a thank you. West Coast”).
According to DogVacay--which already has more than 50 employees--it is hiring customerservice representatives for the startup, looking for technologically proficient dog lovers to help with its customerservice team.
Currently, we have over a thousand customers, with customers ranging from anywhere from 100 employees to clients with more than a 100,000. Most of the top 100 cities and counties in the country are our customers, and twenty out of fifty states run all their recruiting and HR through our system.
Quality of your technical and business teams. Back in the early days of the personal computer, Bill Gates and Microsoft were widely recognized and having the strongest technical culture, as well as a commanding marketing presence. Just be aware that building your customer base first requires deep pockets, or many investors.
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