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Overnight success. It’s one of the biggest myths in the tech industry. It’s a ongoing struggle to overcome this bias. I say “struggle to overcome&# because I care about young people entering our industry with a set of realistic expectations about what “normal&# is. If you take a snapshot during an extraordinary surge in valuations, M&A activity, IPOs and thus wealth creation you’d echo John Doerr’s famous quote from 1999 that, “The Internet is the gr
Branchout , often called LinkedIn meets Facebook, has done a lot in their application to provide users motivation and opportunity to spread the word about the service. The purpose of Branchout is helping people to network their way to jobs. However, funny enough, I don't see the job search and showing you who you know at the company as being particularly well done.
Last night, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill which taxes Internet retailers if they have California affiliates, a move which looks to have major impact on local companies who use Internet affiliate marketing. As part of that, Amazon.com, Overstock.com, and a large number of e-commerce retailers have cut off their California affiliates, saying that they will immediately stop paying them for referrals due to the move.
Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ranker is a social site/platform for ranking anything, powered by semantic technology that aggregates opinions into ‘wisdom of crowds’ rankings”. Clark Benson is the Founder and CEO of Ranker.com. Prior to Ranker, Clark founded four other successful companies, including eCrush, which he sold to the Hearst Corporation in 2007.
Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.
You may be an architect or doctor or other professional managing your business, knowing that the end game value of your client or patient list is small and not easily transferred to any buyer without attrition. In such a case, there is little advice here unless you think outside of your day-to-day profession and create a valuable leave-behind encasing your knowledge and experience that can be replicated and scaled to a large business – even if by others.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 -- Meet The Angels. The San Diego Tech Coast Angels is pleased to invite entrepreneurs and startups to meet influential angel investors in an informal social setting. Join us for an evening of food, drink, and conversation. Learn how angel investors evaulate deals; try out your elevator pitch, and get informal feedback on the spot!
I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “ good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. “ We need to learn from doing, by trial-and-error. If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory.
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I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “ good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. “ We need to learn from doing, by trial-and-error. If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory.
We had an interesting presentation at the LA CTO Forum by the CTO of a startup who chose Groovy / Grails as the framework for their startup. t prompted a good discussion around how CTOs go about choosing the programming language and framework for their startup. Some common themes from the discussion: Know Where You Are Going Before you can possibly make a choice around language and framework you need to ask all the important questions that are talked about in Startup Software Development – Do Yo
In the rush toward the daily deals space, it seems like there is at least one, new, daily deals site created every day. It's an incredibly crowded industry, which not only includes giants like Groupon and LivingSocial, but countless smaller sites, newspapers, and others all looking for a piece of the action. However, San Diego-based Deal Current (www.dealcurrent.com) appears to have found a sustainable niche in the industry--not providing daily deals, but powering those multiplying deal sites, i
Value Prop Twitter Style : Ad.ly helps brands start conversations with target audiences on Twitter. Our celebrity influencers drive awareness and inspire engagement. You can watch the video below or on YouTube here: [link]. What follows is a summary which paraphrases Arnie’s responses. For exact quotes, watch the videos. If you haven’t already subscribed yet, subscribe now for. free weekly Infochachkie articles!
And d oing both well usually wins the day. This is one of those arguable insights, where both sides win. Dell is a great example of emphasis upon fast, creating a customized computer in 48 hours or less, bringing in assemblies and components just-in-time to make the assembly line. However, if Dell quality were poor and returns high, the company surely would not have survived on speed of response alone.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 -- Government Funding for Your Business. Learn how to gain a competitive edge in winning Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding through our workshop series.
This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. 2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. I acknowledged this in the article. You can be pissed off, but I don’t set prices.
Branchout , often called LinkedIn meets Facebook, has done a lot in their application to provide users motivation and opportunity to spread the word about the service. The purpose of Branchout is helping people to network their way to jobs. However, funny enough, I don't see the job search and showing you who you know at the company as being particularly well done.
Los Angeles-based BLANKSPACES , the coworking space run by Jerome Chang, is getting set to open up a second location in Santa Monica in the next week, along 2nd street. The coworking operator said it will have over 20 offices and 65 workstations in its new location near the 3rd Street Promenade, located in an area populated by a number of early stage startups, venture capitalists, and others in the high tech business.
“If I had to, I could clean out my desk in five minutes… and nobody would ever know I’d ever been here. And I’d forget too.”. Ryan Howard, the fictional Intern on the TV comedy, The Office. Michael Scott, the fictional head of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton office, hires an Intern for all the wrong reasons. Driven by low self-esteem, the hapless Mr.
This insight addresses the amount of risk you and your company are willing and able to tolerate over time. Most people believe that early stage companies should take risks aggressively because there is less to lose and much more to gain with each risky bet or decision. Common thinking goes on to address large, public corporations by expressing that the relative tolerance to risk is decreased, in favor of protecting the brand or financial health of the enterprise.
Monday, June 27, 2011 -- Win an SBIR/STTR Award. Learn how to gain a competitive edge in winning Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding through our workshop series. Morning Session: Learn How to Make a Successful Proposal Topics covered during this session include: Submitting proposals to the appropriate agency Confidently identifying technologies the government is interested in Preparing your proposal Planning for your firms succ
In this three-part series I will explore the ways that the Venture Capital industry has changed over the past 5 years that I would argue are a direct result of changes in the software industry, not the other way around. Specifically, Amazon has changed our entire industry in profound ways often not attributed strongly enough to them. I believe the changes to the industry will be lasting rather than temporal change.
Back in 2006, I posted about the Promise of Web 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic and pointed out that Visual Basic was a huge innovation that allowed many new developers to build applications. We've been using Google Apps as the basis for developing some very interesting online applications. The announcement today Building UI in Apps Script just got a whole lot easier that shows how you can use a drag and drop - Visual Basic like.
Have you ever wondered what to do with that last generation iPhone you have in the closet, or those shoes you bought and never wore, or other unwanted items you might have--but didn't want to bother selling on Craiglist, because it just wasn't worth it for the money you would earn? Well, Los Angeles-based KarmaGoat (www.karmagoat.com) has figured out a way to help people get rid of those unwanted items they have--and provide those proceeds to charity.
Messenger : Benjamin Satterfield , Co-Founder & CEO TestFlight , Founder Rootdown and Twiddla. Value Prop Twitter Style : TestFlight helps developers build better apps. You can watch the videos below or on YouTube here: PART I and PART II: What follows is a summary which paraphrases Ben’s responses. For his exact quotes, watch the videos. If you haven’t already subscribed yet, subscribe now for. free weekly Infochachkie articles!
At many board meetings, I can be counted upon to ask, “Where’s the bottleneck this month?” Senior management is usually prepared with an answer, and a good discussion of resource availability and application follows. Sometimes, the bottleneck is not so visible to the CEO. In those instances, I follow with: “Do you notice people waiting at your door, telling you that they were waiting for your response or decision, even if you were unaware of this?
Monday, June 20, 2011 -- How to Make Money And Do Good. Tech Coast Angels. Join Barbara and Rafe Furst - entrepreneur, angel investor and Unreasonable Institute mentor - as they delve into and learn about and creative ways to build effective, internationally scalable solutions for the greatest challenges of our time.
An edited version of this post originally ran on TechCrunch. This version has some additional details on a portfolio company I’ve invested in, which are disclosed below. WWDC. The annual Apple event where no real hints about what products they plan to release are floated in the public domain in advance. No private head nods are given to small startup companies to help them prepare.
Several people have been asking me to weigh in publicly on the “20 under 20″ initiative announced by Peter Thiel in which he will award up to $100,000 to 20 people under the age of 20 who agree immediately to pursue entrepreneurship (the implication of which is that they’d drop out of university to do so). Thiel and friends will also agree to mentor these young entrepreneurs.
This post originally ran on TechCrunch. I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. I asked what the audience most needed to hear. He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs.
I had the privilege of keynoting at the Founder Showcase tonight in San Francisco. Adeo asked me to speak about fund raising. I generally don’t like to speak about fund raising in a frothy market. If you’re bullish you seem like a Cramer-esque cheerleader and if you’re bearish you sound like a party pooper. But Adeo asked so I obliged.
Twitter is an ephemeral service. It’s what I love about Twitter. When I’m in the mood to consume what my world is telling me right now I can “tune in&# to Twitter and digest the rapid stream. I don’t really worry about missing stuff. If somebody wanted me to see something they’d @ message me, which I always read. And as I’ve written about in the past, I truly believe that Twitter networks are significantly different from other social networks.
This is the final part of a 3-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software & the venture capital industries. The series started here if you want to read from the start. Or the Cliff Note’s version: Open Source & Cloud Computing (led by Amazon) drove down tech startup costs by 90%. The result was a massive increase in startups & a whole group of new funding sources: both angels & “micro VCs&#.
Online retail giant Amazon.com is threatening to pull its California affiliates, as efforts to tax online purchases in the state gains steam. In an email to Amazon Associates who are located in California, Amazon said that it will terminate the associates program for California-based participants, as of the date of any law on the issue becomes effective.
A report this week from the IEEE , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, says that photovoltaic power has the potential to become the most, economical form of generating electricity, compared to even traditional, fossil fuels, within the next 10 years. According to the industry group, the cost parity will come from improved efficiency of solar PV cell technologies, and economies of scale in manufacturing.
Proving that the market for the right domain name continues to be strong, Moniker and SnapNames , the domain name auction sites owned by Los Angeles-based Oversee.net , reported that they sold the domain Data.com for more than $1.5M on Friday. The firm said it sold the domain for an amount that "significantly exceeds" the $1.5M reserve that had been placed on the domain.
Santa Monica-based W4 , an online advertising marketplace founded by former Hydra Network executives, said this morning that it has raised $10M in debt funding. The firm said the funding came from Silicon Valley Bank. W4 is headed by Jason Durant Walker. W4's co-founders include three former Hydra Network founders. READ MORE>>.
Those visitors you see wandering around the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles with their smartphones? They might not checking Facebook or surfing the web--they might be just be getting a smart phone tour of the art. Google said Monday afternoon that the museum has just gone high tech with its displays, with a new link to Google's "Google Goggles" mobile app.
Southern California is already establishing a reputation as the home of one of the biggest online publishers, Demand Media. However, what will Southern California's next big, online publishing empire be? Based on events in recent days, it might be Los Angeles-based Breitbart.com , the controversial online publishing venture of Andrew Brietbart. Breitbart.com runs the site Big Government , which broke the story of U.S.
One trend in the Southern California high tech startup market has been an increasing number of startups--and executives--who have been looking to combine their interests in business with their enthusiasm for giving back through nonprofits and causes. One of the firms which has been active in that area is Los Angeles-based CauseCast (www.causecast.com), run by Ryan Scott , who talked us about the company's relationship with the Huffington Post, its new efforts to provide its technology to compani
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