Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 16, 2010
I sit through a lot of presentations. It’s usually people wanting to raise money and/or persuade me of something. Many of these are not as effective as they could be. 1. Understand Personality Types – One of the benefits of working for a big company (Accenture) was that we had lots of speakers come in and train us in topics like leadership, creativity, presentations, strategy, etc.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 16, 2010
Shop.com , an online comparison shopping website with operations in Pasadena, has been acquired. Market America , an Internet marketing firm based in Greensboro, N.C., announced the acquisition Wednesday, but did not reveal any financial terms. According to Market America, it will continue to maintain Shop.com's Pasadena offices, along with Shop.com's Monterey headquarters.
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InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 29, 2010
A friend once told me about a soccer game in which the opposing team deployed a frustratingly effective strategy. Every time they scored, their Captain ran around the field yelling, “tied score, tied score!” He continued to do this, despite the fact that they were beating my friend’s team by several goals. The Captain’s message was clear, “Ignore the score and play as if we are tied.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 6, 2010
Use stock options and warrants to pay for service only rarely. Earlier, I stated that stock options are the currency of early stage business. This truth is obvious when a start-up has no cash. For this insight, we will assume a business is perhaps well beyond start-up and growing, but that cash is tight, used for growth and for working capital as earned.
Advertiser: Aggregage
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.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 4, 2010
I’m convinced that people who have fun at work are more innovative, as well as happier. I don’t have any big scientific studies to prove this, but in my considerable business experience, I haven’t seen many successes come out of a group of fearful pessimists or unhappy people. As I was looking through the literature, I did find evidence that many strong business leaders, like John D.
Tech Zulu Event
DECEMBER 18, 2010
So nice we had to do it twice! We are pleased to announce that Chris Van Dusen will be joining the TZ writing crew. With a knack for helping others understand what/how to use all things in the digital realm, and get down to how it can best fit you or your company, Chris is here to give you information on what you need know. Visit TechZulu for full story.
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 6, 2010
Think your company is popular on Facebook? Think again. Burbank-based Walt Disney reported Sunday that it has just surpassed one hundred million fans across its network of Facebook pages. According to Disney, those fans are spread across more than 200 official Disney brands, property, and character pages, which the firm has been creating on Facebook since August of 2009.
InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Community Organizer Saul Alinsky categorized people into three classes; (i) the Haves, (ii) the Have A Little, Want Mores and, the (iii) Have Nots. He wrote Rules For Radicals to instruct, “…the Have Nots on how to take it away” from the Haves. Mr. Alinsky preached that wealth was relatively static. In Alinskyland, if you were a Have Not, your only alternative to attain wealth was to take it away from a Have, preferably with the assistance of Government-sanctioned coercion.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 20, 2010
It surprises me how many really smart people I meet still doubt the power of Twitter. It seems the urge to be a naysayer of Twitter is really strong for some. I think some of this stems from the early days of Twitter when it was presumed that it was a technology to tell people what you ate for lunch. Twitter never seemed to really take the offense in PR and marketing.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 27, 2010
Yesterday I wrote about how to talk to investors about your competitors. In short, acknowledge they exist, be transparent about strengths & weaknesses and use your differences to talk about how you want to position yourself in the market. But forget talking about them, how should you actually treat your competitors? Conventional wisdom in most companies is that “the competition is the enemy&# – it’s the rallying cry to dig deeper, get more features out the door, issue pres
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 5, 2010
This blog post originally appeared in serialized form here on TechCrunch. This post has a bit more than the serialized version, but if you prefer an even shorter version I created the ADAH version , which is < 50% the length. I recently spoke at Caltech at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking,&# the 30-minute video is here and the PowerPoint presentation is here on DocStoc ).
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 26, 2010
Competition. Unless you’re Microsoft selling an OS for a PC you probably have some. And even then Microsoft has substitute products as anyone who has taken Econ 101 will tell you. So if you’re raising money – from angels or VCs – you’re going to have to address the question of whom you’re competing against. And the reality is that if you have no competition it will likely be perceived as a negative, not positive.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 6, 2010
This past October I was honored to be invited by Steve Blank to speak at Stanford for their Enterprise Thought Leader (ETL) series. The topic I chose to speak about was “lessons on starting a company&# but I created the sub-title in class “a Silicon Valley heresy&# since my goal was to slay many of the myths I believe exist right in the heart of Silicon Valley!
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 13, 2010
One of the wisest people I worked with in my career was Ameet Shah. Ameet always had the quietly reflective view of “why things were&# that always came from a unique angle that I hadn’t considered. He taught me, amongst other things, the benefit of “ top down thinking &# that changed the way I analyzed markets, companies and people.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 14, 2010
I was recently speaking with some founders about their fund raising process. They had received a term sheet from a VC and were wondering whether to work with this firm. I personally had three separate data points from entrepreneurs who took money from the firm that said “never again.&# I really try to stay out of the middle of these things so I softly said to the team, “maybe you should contact these companies and see how their experience went?
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 5, 2010
This blog post originally appeared in serialized form here on TechCrunch. This version is the shorter, ADHD version. If you came here via a direct link you might want to check out the more detailed full version on my blog, which is here. Social Networks: Past, Present & Future. I recently spoke at Caltech at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking,&# the 30-minute video is here and the PowerPoint presentation is here on DocStoc ).
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 24, 2010
Like many of you, for me this was the year of the unsolicited eCards from random people I barely knew. Let’s be honest, much of this has become spam. I’m not the Grinch. I’m not anti holiday spirit. But if you ARE going to get into it then you ought to do it right. Make it count. Like the team at First Round Capital always does.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 15, 2010
Among one of the fastest growing industries--despite what has been a stagnant economy--is Internet advertising, which has continued to grow strongly over the past two years. One of the firms poised to take advantage of that growth is Pasadena-based OpenX (www.openx.org), which develops one of the most widely used ad serving solutions available. For today's interview, we spoke with Tim Cadogan , CEO of OpenX, to hear more about the firm's growth on the strength of Internet advertising, and what t
socalTECH
DECEMBER 30, 2010
All this week, we are sharing the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks. We last shared the thoughts of John Babcock at Rustic Canyon Partners.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 16, 2010
Santa Monica-based Campus Explorer , which provides an online resource on universities, colleges, student loans, housing, and more to students, has raised $5M in a Series C funding round, according to a source near the firm. The funding came from Vicente Capital Partners, OCA Venture Partners, and Origin Ventures. Klaus Koch led the investment for Vicente Capital.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Altadena-based Melanoma Diagnostics , a developer of technology for the diagnosis and prognosis of malignant melanoma using genetic markers, is in a deal to sell its technology to Myriad Genetics , a publicly traded provider of molecular diagnostics products. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.Myriad said it will gain the right to commercialize all tests derived from Melanoma Diagnostics' technology, in exchange for both upfront fees and contingent payments.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 16, 2010
Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal , the provider of online marketing services for small and medium sized businesses, said today that it has launched a new product called ReachCast. According to the firm, the new product provides Web presence management to its customers, helping customers to drive their online search discovery, manage their reputation, and also manage social media marketing.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 8, 2010
Pasadena-based Cramster , the online homework help site started by Aaron Hawkey, Robert Angarita and Kaveh Golabi, has been acquired by Chegg , Chegg announced today. Financial terms of the buy were not disclosed. Chegg said the acquisition will add to Chegg's textbook rental and course planning services. Cramster is an online community of users interested in discussing homework; getting homework help; and practicing for tests.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 17, 2010
El Segundo-based Internet Brands said Friday that the acquisition of the firm by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman has closed. The acquisition, which had originally been announced in September, was worth $640M. Internet Brands said that the firm will cease trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market at close of the market today. JMI Equity also invested in Internet Brands as part of the sale.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 16, 2010
Not satisfied with the firm's plans to provide suborbital space tourism flights, Mojave-based Virgin Galactic said Thursday that it is now supporting work by Sierra Nevada Space Systems and Orbital Sciences, on commercial space vehicles to support orbital flights. Virgin Galactic said it is hoping to allow fare-paying passengers to experience safe, orbital space flight.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 17, 2010
Thousand Oaks-based Amgen , via its nonprofit foundation, the Amgen Foundation, said Friday that it is giving $1.8M to the Teach For America effort. According to the two, the funding will go towards increasing the number of math and science graduates who are joining Teach For America's teaching corps by 2013. Teach For America helps advance math and science in America's underserved public schools.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 16, 2010
Santa Monica-based GotCast , the online casting site headed by Alec Shankman, said today that it has launched a new social media campaign with Mercedes-Benz. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mercedes-Benz posted the campaign today, saying it is looking for four teams of "Twitter-savvy" auto enthusiasts, who will race from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tampa to the Super Bowl in Dallas, to win a Mercedez Benz 2012 C-Class Coupe.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 10, 2010
Santa Monica-based GoodReads , the online book discussion community run by Otis Chandler, is seeing a nice uptick in its traffic after the launch of Google's eBook store Monday. GoodReads is prominently featured on all of Google's eBook pages, with reviews from GoodReads users showing up under the various titles available under Google's bookstore. Google launched its eBook store Monday, offering up titles for electronic book readers, the iPhone and iPad, the Nook and Sony readers, as well as And
socalTECH
DECEMBER 2, 2010
Marina Del Rey-based Cooking.com , the online e-commerce provider for cooking products, reported today that it has been chosen to rebuild and manage the web site for Marley Coffee. Marley Coffee is a coffee company run by Bob Marley's son. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to Cooking.com, it has revamped Marley Coffee's online website, and has created a "unique branded experience" for Marley Coffee.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Last night, Santa Monica-based Factual (www.factual.com), the data provider and data tools firm, announced a big, $25M funding round from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. The firm is headed by Gil Elbaz , who is known for co-founding Applied Semantics, the firm which invented Google's AdSense product. We caught up with Gil to hear more about the round and what he's hoping to do with the large amount of capital Factual has just raised, as well as how the firm's technology is being used by
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Last week, we announced our end-of-the-year project, which was to collect and share the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 9, 2010
A recently released study by TechAmerica, an advocacy group for the high tech industry, finds that Los Angeles ranks sixth among the top 60 cities in the United States for high tech employment. The TechAmerica CyberCities report, which was released Wednesday, found that New York led the nation in high tech employment, with 316,971 workers, followed by Washington, DC. (292,969 workers), San Jose/Silicon Valey (225,575 workers), and Boston (219,798 workers).
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Santa Monica-based Demand Media , the online publishing firm headed by Richard Rosenblatt, has updated its S-1 filing, saying it now has around 3 million articles in the firm's library of content. Demand Media has applied to list on the NYSE as DMD, but has not yet set an offering range or pricing on its IPO. Demand Media filed for an IPO in August.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 8, 2010
Hawthorne-based SpaceX , the commercial rocket firm headed by technology mogul Elon Musk, has had a successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, according to NASA this morning. NASA said that the Falcon 9 successfully launched at 10:43 a.m. EST, from the Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. The flight is the first demonstration flight for the Falcon 9 for NASA, which is looking to use the Falcon and its corresponding Dragon capsule to resupply the International Space Station.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 6, 2010
Santa Monica-based SolarReserve , the developer of utility scale solar power projects, claims today that it is proceeding with purchases of long-lead materials and equipment on its Crescent Dunes and Rice Solar Energy projects. The firm--which is still waiting on Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees--said the purchases are ahead of DOE-supported financing and are a "key milestone" in its construction of its power plants.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Last week, we announced our end-of-the-year project, which was to collect and share the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks.
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