Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 4, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series. I often have career discussions with entrepreneurs – both young and more mature – whether they should join company “X&# or not. I usually pull the old trick of answering a question with a question. My reply is usually, “is it time for you to earn or to learn?&#. Let’s face it.
SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 9, 2009
I just had an all-too common conversation with the founder of a startup who had spent more than a year working with a software development company who had produced a mess. The mess really comes from a developer who was willing to get started on a product that was not fully thought out. I always take a very different approach in early conversations. If I’m being asked to do startup software development, I’m going to push fairly hard on key questions that the startup needs to have answered before
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socalTECH
DECEMBER 14, 2009
Santa Monica-based LIVESTRONG.COM , the online health site run by Demand Media in conjunction with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, announced this morning that it has launched a new online tool it is calling MyPlate D, for online nutrition tracking. The site is targeted at people with diabetes, to help them control the disease. According to the site, the new product allows users to track calories, fat, protein, and carbohydrates for more than 625,000 food items.
Eric Greenspan
DECEMBER 5, 2009
I’ve been engaged with social networking for some time now, starting with Myspace and Facebook and just recently (within the last 30 days), Twitter. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon, big time! I have vanity urls setup at just about every site on the web. I love Namechk.com for this. It’s been an amazing experience so far, but the best part are the relationships I’ve built since getting started.
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.
InfoChachkie
SEPTEMBER 15, 2009
This is a reposting of a ‘classic’ popular post. A Fortune 500 CEO once told me that I was a Bank Robber. Initially, I was offended. However, once he explained what he meant, I was flattered. A Bank Robber is someone who craves the thrill of the chase. They love planning the heist and experiencing the adrenaline rush that goes along with taking down a bank.
Daradiction
DECEMBER 31, 2009
Folks over estimate what they can do in a year and under estimate what they can do in ten. No doubt you’d agree how quickly this past decade has flown by. My one regret is that I wasn’t nearly as intentional about the effects I wanted to create. I didn’t find my North Star (community empowerment) until quite recently. As I reflect upon the past decade and get clear about my vision for my life by 2020 there are a few stories that I would like to share with you: Petunia Pickle
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Frank Addante
MAY 11, 2009
I decided to try doing a video blog post. Here is a tour that I did of the Rubicon Project headquarters and all of the thought that we have put into things like culture, communication, efficiency, team development (and a little fun). We have woven these things into our environment and I thought I'd share our thinking with you.Some highlights to look out for:Furnished on a low budget (IKEA.
Alon Schwartz
MARCH 15, 2009
Prefix. This post is for everyone, married, singles, with children and without. I tried to focus on a few, non common, lessons I’ve learned along the way. If you don’t have children but plan on having some in the future, please continue at your own risk. If you do have children, please sit down…. A starting Point. You really though it will be easier, didn’t you.
Tech Zulu Event
NOVEMBER 3, 2009
We will be live streaming this Thursday 7-9pm PST ( click here to watch live ) from BlankSpaces. ZexSports and PacSun are putting an amazing panel together to discuss the value of key social influencer's, where they are on your social network, and how targeting these potential brand evangelists will have a positive influence on your social media network and ROI.
CEO Flow
JUNE 8, 2009
Are we working harder, under more pressure, but running in place? The internet has changed business – in helpful and challenging ways: * We have more information and metrics – and more confusion from all the clutter. * We can develop and deploy products faster – far beyond our clients’ ability to absorb them. * We can find prospects more easily – but they’re less interested in talking with us. * We have more forecasting tools – but less predictability. *
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series. I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. You are constantly faced with decisions and there is always incomplete information.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 6, 2009
Great post by John Shiple. He talks about a bunch of the different networking events that occur in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. In his post, he mentions the following events / event organizers, and you should visit his post for a bit more on each of them. LA CTO Forum Dealmaker Media Digital Family Reunion Startups Uncensored Social Media Club, LA Twiistup Mindshare LA LA Hadoop Meetup Dorkbot Geek Dinners LA Cloud Computing LA Web Application Developers LA PHP Developers
socalTECH
DECEMBER 14, 2009
Hollywood-based Friendgiftr , an angel funded startup developing Facebook applications, said today that it has launched a new Facebook application which allows users to send real gift cards to friends, family, and others. The startup said it is now offering over 120 U.S. merchants through its app, which allows users to send both physical and digital gift cards via the popular Facebook social networking site.
Eric Greenspan
NOVEMBER 16, 2009
Remember Band Aid? Feed the World? One of my all time favorite songs. Well, it’s that time of the year so I thought I’d share the lyrics and I found the list of participants as well. Have fun with this. It’s Christmastime. There’s no need to be afraid. At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade. And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy.
InfoChachkie
DECEMBER 2, 2009
“I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.” John Wanamaker. If Mr. Wanamaker had access to the Internet, his oft-repeated quote, would have never been uttered. In the “good old days”, pre- 1999, advertising dollars were largely gambled away. As noted in Pour and Stir Part I , the key to the successful execution of this strategy is managing the following equation: The cost to acquire a customer < lifetime value of a customer.
Daradiction
DECEMBER 30, 2009
Written by Jolie O’Dell. By the way, our RoadTwip panel just got selected by SxSW Interactive. Ever since two friends and I staged a two-week jaunt around the Midwest to attend a great new conference earlier this year, I’ve been more and more aware of a growing trend: the social media road trip. While on the road this year, I’ve come upon long-term social media road warriors such as Mark Simonds of the Twitter Road Trip , brand ambassadors such as Sara Lopez and conference-hopp
Jason Nazar
SEPTEMBER 9, 2009
This month’s “Startups Uncensored” will be on “Building an E-commerce Business”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation talking about the strategies, tactics, and challenges of building and growing online properties through E-commerce. We are joined this month by Wil Schroter the former CEO of SwapaLease and founder of the GoBig Network.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 16, 2009
This post is part of my series “ Startup Lessons &#. Elephants, Deer and Rabbits – Some thoughts on start-up segmentation. Nearly all of the mistakes I made at my first company I fixed by the time of my second company. This is the only mistake I repeated twice and it is a mistake that I see many, many companies make. I know that this advice won’t apply to every possible startup – but I think it applies to many.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 17, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “Start-up Lessons.&# If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here. In the Beginning … This is a very important post to me because I find myself giving this advice all the time and if you don’t follow [.]. Tags: Start-up Advice startup.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 17, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. &# If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here. In the Beginning … This is a very important post to me because I find myself giving this advice all the time and if you don’t follow the basic advice here you can cause yourself much heartache down the line – even if your company ultimately becomes über successful.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 14, 2009
This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I wanted to also post the series here to have it as a resource on my blog for future entrepreneurs who stop by. I wanted to get the conversation going in the comments section around each topic because I think as much value comes from the comments section as comes from the original p
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 8, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons.&#. I was reading Chris Dixon’s blog tonight. He writes with a great perspective and is well worth reading. I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I had to laugh a bit reading it.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 3, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 craze. There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0 wares. Ajax was the new buzzword and many companies went overboard.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 5, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series of posts. I heard Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark Capital say these words at a conference in London nearly 10 years ago. I jotted the words down (I normally pay little attention to anything said at conferences. Most of it is BS) and thought about them much over the years. I later learned that the quote was taken from somewhere else ( perhaps as early as the 13th century!
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 28, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Lessons Building companies is hard work. I started my first company in 1999 in London at the height of the dot com craze. We also had facilities in Dublin, Ireland where our company was initially founded. We went through the euphoria of massive exposure at the time of our [.]. Tags: Start-up Advice.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 28, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Lessons. Building companies is hard work. I started my first company in 1999 in London at the height of the dot com craze. We also had facilities in Dublin, Ireland where our company was initially founded. We went through the euphoria of massive exposure at the time of our launch due to an article that ran in the Financial Times.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 2, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice &# but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.&#. If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. It’s that simple.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 22, 2009
Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class. This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find. I’m not one of those. I believe that you should always hire people are are looking to “punch above their weight class,&# which means to hire people who want to be one league above where they are today.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 16, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series. Before I started my first company in 1999 I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). One of the things I noticed was that when really talented people – The “A players&# – wanted to quit, the firm would quickly scramble to try and keep that person from resigning. Suddenly it was star treatment and all sorts of promises about the future.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 7, 2009
Business Etiquette Tips for dealing with VCs and Corporates at Conferences. This is part of my ongoing series with Startup Advice. With the LeWeb conference about to start in Paris I thought the timing of this post would be appropriate. Right after Techcrunch50 Michael Arrington wrote this great post on how to interact at business events and conferences.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 4, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Many entrepreneurs who start technology companies are product people, technologists or savvy business people who worked previously for a larger company. Most start-up entrepreneurs have little or no sales experience. I know I didn’t. But through nearly a decade of startups I learned that sales comes down to three essential elements: 1.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 8, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks. Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to [.]. Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capital.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 13, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “Start-up Lessons”. Tonight I was reading a good blog post ( here ) from Sean Powers with Alistair Croll on preparing yourself for the TC50 “bump” – the rise in traffic that a company gets from presenting at TechCrunch 50. Worth a read on how to maximize the traffic that comes to you site since much of it will be fleeting.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 8, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks. Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to invest. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 11, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Many startup companies hire advisory boards. It’s very tempting. It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?) prominent industry luminaries to be closely associated with the company. It’s done partly in hopes of gaining their wisdom but it’s also done to portray the company in a positive light through association.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 16, 2009
This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute: Tenacity. 2. Street Smarts - OK, so you’re a tenacious person – you never give up.
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