Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
This article originally appeared on Silicon Alley Insider. A few months ago I wrote a post called “ Invest in Lines, Not Dots.&# It was my investment philosophy that observing teams’ performance over time was far more insightful than reacting to how good of a product demo they do, how good they present Powerpoint slides or how great tech blogs say they are.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners was nice enough to compile some data on Start CTO Salary and Equity at Venture Backed Companies for the LA CTO Forum and present last year. He agreed to make this data public which is awesome. Todd is a go to resource for people looking for talent in startups. He was a great presenter to our group. I highly recommend getting to know him.
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socalTECH
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
Jason Nazar is CEO of Santa Monica-based Docstoc (www.docstoc.com), the online document sharing site, and a fixture at Los Angeles technology events. Nazar--who moderated a panel on the venture capital industry in Los Angeles at Twiistup 8 yesterday, and who is considered by many to be one of the key "super connectors" in the LA technology community--took a few minutes with us to give his advice to startup entrepreneurs.
InfoChachkie
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
I recently replied to a Quora entry which asked, “What are the best business-related books?” I shared my humble opinion that entrepreneurs should spend less time reading and more time experiencing reality. I concluded by including a link to an entry I wrote entitled, The Author’s Dilemma – Why Business Books Suck. The person asking the question subsequently replied that I was “ignorant” and missing out on a great learning opportunity by not reading.
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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.
Berkonomics
FEBRUARY 21, 2011
This is one of those “My dad used to say” homilies. You’ve probably heard the accompanying “It takes just as much effort to sell a small deal as a big one” over the years. The truth of this is more nuanced. Some businesses will prosper in the shadow of larger competitors by specializing in those smaller accounts that are just not attractive to those with higher overheads and larger aspirations.
SoCal Tech Calendar
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011 -- TechBrew Mega Mixer. The Premier Networking Event for High Technology Professionals, Cutting Edge Entrepreneurs and Innovators, Business and Community Leaders and related Non-Profits.
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners was nice enough to compile some data on CTO Equity and Compensation at Venture Backed Companies for the LA CTO Forum and present last year. He agreed to make this data public which is awesome. Todd is a go to resource for people looking for talent in startups. He was a great presenter to our group. I highly recommend getting to know him.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 24, 2011
Agoura Hills-based videogame maker THQ said today along with Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products that they are releasing a new set of games based on the recent RIO movie. RIO is set to debut on April 15th. THQ said it will ship the RIO video game on the Xbox 360 video game, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Nintendo DS. Business details of the arrangement between THQ and Twentieth Century Fox were not announced.
InfoChachkie
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
On September 8, 1965, baseball player Dagoberto Campaneris Blanco became the first major leaguer to play all nine positions in a nine-inning game. Technically, he filled ten roles, as he pitched left handed when facing right-handed batters and right handed with lefties at the plate. Despite his status as an all-star shortstop, Bert proved himself to be a selfless utility player.
Berkonomics
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
Money in the bank is like oil in the car. This is such an obvious observation that you should think that it does not rise to the level of an “insight”. Yet, there is sage advice behind this statement that I could not ignore placing it right in the middle of these insights. As an executive, you have many ways you are pulled every day, both tactical and strategic.
SoCal Tech Calendar
FEBRUARY 25, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011 -- Shark Tank II. SDSIC Entrepreneur's Forum. Following on the popularity of last year's sold-out event, The Entrepreneur's Forum will be hosting the second annual Shark Tank event. You'll see four real companies pitch their firms to our esteemed panel of entrepreneurs and investors in a fast-paced, structured format. The format of the event is modeled after the television show "Shark Tank" but is not affiliated with the show.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
This post originally ran on TechCrunch. Lately I have seen a number of deals announced on TechCrunch in which 5 or more different VCs were participating in the deal. This always makes me chuckle because in my first company we had 5 investors in our first round and we picked up 5 more before we finally sold the company. In my second company I had only 1 investor.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 2, 2011
A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Because of this, I've always tried to stay up-to-speed on how early-stage investors look at valuation of companies. What are they really looking for?
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 17, 2011
Earlier this week, Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal (www.reachlocal.com), which helps small and medium sized businesses place online ads, announced a deal to buy daily deals site DealOn.com. The buy puts ReachLocal squarely into the fast growing area of daily deals, but also potentially into competition with such companies as Groupon and LivingSocial.
InfoChachkie
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
In Why Most Business Books (Still) Suck , I discuss why entrepreneurship is best learned experientially. If experiences are the best tools to foster entrepreneurial edification, a natural corollary question is, “How can you get the most out of your startup experiences?”. If you haven’t already subscribed yet, subscribe now for. free weekly Infochachkie articles!
Berkonomics
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
We have discussed why never to run out of cash. This insight delves into how never to run out of cash. There are four basic ways to increase the cash position of a company: inject cash through borrowing or investment, decrease spending or payments on debt, increase efficiency of operations, and increase revenues or advance payments from customers.
SoCal Tech Calendar
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011 -- S.O.A.R. like an Eagle. TriTech SBDC. Success equals Opportunity, plus Attitude, plus Readiness. How can strategically planned and executed communications help you win business battles? Former Navy war hero and Battleship Commander, JK Sapp takes his successes at sea and shows business owners how to skillfully navigate organizational change from a position of power.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 15, 2011
This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Last year I was on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley meeting with one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the country. We were talking about a company, Factual (disclosure my firm is an investor), which was founded by one of LA’s most talented Internet entrepreneurs, Gil Elbaz , who as co-founder of Applied Semantics (purchased by pre-IPO Google for $102 million and now Google AdSense) is responsible for a large portion of the Inte
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 17, 2011
There's an old adage in software development that I refer to all the time: The first 90% of development takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10%, takes the other 90% of the time. I used this when I taught software engineering. And I use it all the time now when I get the kind of message that I received: I'm looking for a web developer to continue work on my website.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 3, 2011
Los Angeles-based Geni.com , the online family tree site, hinted this morning that it is about to release an iPhone application for the service. In a post on its blog, Geni said it was working on the "Next Stage of Genealogy" and showed a brief YouTube video with what appeared to be a Geni application running on an iPhone. No details on the app or release have been otherwise announced by the company.
InfoChachkie
FEBRUARY 17, 2011
Messenger : Thorsten von Eicken , RightScale’s Co-Founder and CTO, Chief Architect at Citrix Online (formerly Expertcity) and Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University and UC Santa Barbara. If you haven’t already subscribed yet, subscribe now for. free weekly Infochachkie articles! 10) Thorsten, why does the world need RightScale? .
Berkonomics
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Place your cash bets behind proven demand. The term, “demand pull – cost push” was created by the great economist, John Maynard Keynes, to describe the two primary drivers of economic inflation. Demand pull: too much demand for a product or service and not enough supply cause a competition for the product that drives prices higher without increasing the intrinsic value of the product.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 24, 2011
This is a post I’ve been dying to write for 18 months. I invested in LA-based Gogii , one of the fastest growing, most exciting mobile social networking companies you’ve never heard of and maker of a product called textPlus. I know this because you’re not a young teenager. And if you are – what on earth are you reading such a boring blog as this?!?
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 1, 2011
Recommendation Slicing. The Internet has a problem. It’s one you know well. The signal-to-noise ratio is getting out of hand. In non-geek speak this means that there is so much information out there now it’s hard to separate the good stuff from the rest. We all now visit UGC sites to learn about products & services before we use them.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 17, 2011
A year ago I blogged about one of my most common mantras that applies to sales, biz dev & fund raising alike: “ Time is the Enemy of all Deals.&#. When times are really good for fund raising many teams delay to maximize their valuation. Sometimes this pays off, other times it doesn’t. So how should you decide what to do? I thought I’d try to offer a framework for thinking about the topic.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 3, 2011
As many of you know I run a weekly webcast called This Week in VC that’s getting between 25-35,000 weekly views across ThisWeekIn.com, YouTube & mostly iTunes. Yesterday’s show floored me. I consider Gregg Spiridellis a good friend. We’ve hung out periodically over the past few years and I have enjoyed debating many startup topics.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. “But Mark, isn’t it one big time suck?&#. Oh, yeah.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 13, 2011
The venture capital industry is so heavily skewed to Northern California, which the remains spilled over Boston, New York & Southern California. There are of course other outposts like Austin and Seattle. So it was wonderful to hear from a leading venture capital firm based in Washington DC. Revolution is a “stage agnostic&# fund (means they invest early or late) funded entirely by Steve Case , the founder of AOL and co-founded by two other individuals, Tige Savage (yes, pronounced lik
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. I attempted to do a fair balance job of an increasingly important service – AngelList – started by a friend of mine – Nivi with the feelings of a colleague who I respect – Bryce – who has opted out of the service. I hope I straddled people’s points of view well enough not to have offended anybody while adding a framework for how I think about the service.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 10, 2011
Hamilton Chan is founder of Los Angeles-based PaperLinks (www.paperlinks.com), a new startup which is developing mobile applications which take advantage of QR codes--the 3D barcodes which are cropping up everywhere--to help users marketers go beyond just linking those codes to web pages, but also to power social applications. The firm has a native, iPhone application which uses QR codes to drive user friendly, social modules for events, pulling up information, and much more natively in iOS.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
Since the Tech Coast Angels (www.techcoastangels.com), the largest angel investment group in Southern California, is holding one of its several Fast Pitch competitions next week in Los Angeles (www.pitchtheangels.com), we thought it might be a good time to catch up with Mike Napoli , incoming President of the Tech Coast Angels, to hear the his thoughts on the angel investing environment in Southern California from the angels' perspective.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
A nationwide offer from FTD , the flower delivery service owned by Woodland Hills-based United online , with daily deals phenomenon Groupon has gone south, after consumers complained that the price presented to Groupon users was more than the price a user would get by going directly to FTD's web site. Group had offered up $10 for $20 worth of flowers at FTD Thursday in one of their national, daily promotions.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
Los Angeles-based MyShape , the online personalized fashion and women's clothing firm, has shut down. According to a message on the firm's site, it is "temporarily suspending its retail operations" and is no longer offering products. According to sources near the firm, the firm has sold off its inventory and is now hoping to find a buyer for the company via an assignment for the benefit of creditors.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 23, 2011
Pasadena-based Foodme (www.foodme.com) is one of the first, external startups funded out of Idealab's New Venture Group, and is looking to help connect restaurants with customers using a CPA model. The firm so far has signed up a number of restaurants in the Pasadena area. We caught up with founder John Delacruz to hear more about what the company hopes to do as it expands beyond Pasadena.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 8, 2011
Pasadena-based OpenX , the Internet ad server developer, said today that it has launched a new version of its OpenX Enterprise software. The firm said that the new platform is being used by customers such as Groupon, Orange-France Telecom Group, and Excite Japan. OpenX said the updated software includes such features as real-time ad bidding, more control by publishers over ad quality and pricing, new APIs, and other features.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
In the world of online conversations, one of the oldest is that of community forums. As part of those forums, users are now regularly posting links, videos, and other information to others. To try to take advantage of those links, Los Angeles-based AutoStream (www.autostream.com) has developed software which makes those links to videos interactive, embedding an inline video player to keep users engaged on those forums.
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