Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Most of the time, I’m all about providing encouragement and inspiration to entrepreneurs. They need it and they deserve it, because entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of our economy. The reality of marketing. Everybody wants to do the fun stuff: shuck and jive with the beautiful people, and create fun marketing campaigns.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2021

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 24, 2020

As a frequent advisor to new entrepreneurs and startups, I often hear your frustration with being treated differently from other startups by investors, on expectations for valuation , traction, and market size. On the other hand, if the market is super-hot, many will be willing to jump in to make your case.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2021

In my role as mentor to business professionals, I often get the question about your potential of going out on your own as an entrepreneur, versus your current role of working for a boss at an established company. Believe in the need for marketing and selling. Able to marshal people and other support resources.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2021

Yet every business and every entrepreneur I know struggles with this challenge, focused on hiring the right people and implementing the right process. I was happy to see my own view reinforced in the classic book, “ Innovation Thinking Methods for the Modern Entrepreneur ,” by long-time entrepreneur and innovation expert Osama A.

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TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

But LA-based performance marketing agency MuteSix didn’t wait that long to build its business around scaling DTC brands. If you have growth marketing agencies or freelancers to recommend, please fill out our survey !). Why do you think that performance marketing is the right fit for DTC?

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 1, 2022

Every entrepreneur I know is dismayed by the number of friends who approach them with a line such as “I have an even better idea that will change the world, and one of these days I’m going to get around to starting my own business.” In today’s rapidly changing market, perfection is a fleeting and impractical objective.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2020

In my role as a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that most have the technical challenges well understood, but many are a bit short on some basic street smarts , or basic business realities. In addition to locking in his leadership position in electric vehicles, he has also used his patents to negotiate faster growth in his market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2022

Here are some key insights that I and others have collected for mature company leaders, as well as serial entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, in this new age of rapid market change and harder-to-satisfy customers, you can’t assume that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow. You and your friends are not the market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2022

Marketing is everything these days. Yet I see many technology entrepreneurs that focus on the basics of marketing too little and too late. I like the guidance from marketing coach David Newman’s classic book “ Do It! Don’t fall into the marketing-speak trap. Good marketing is not rocket science.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

Until the recession a decade ago, market research indicated that as many as 90 percent of the roughly 20 million American small business owners were motivated more by lifestyle than growth and money. Being called a lifestyle entrepreneur should be a point of pride, not an insult. It seems that more people are focused on money today.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 31, 2020

In retrospect, however, Bill Gates did a lot of things right as a startup that I still look for today in aspiring entrepreneurs and their companies: Build a strong team. Bill Gates ran the technical show, but Steve Ballmer never let him forget the marketing and business side of the equation. Market vision, focus, and opportunity.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2022

With the cost of entry at an all-time low, and the odds of success equally low, more and more entrepreneurs are starting multiple companies concurrently. Other prolific entrepreneurs, like Richard Branson and Elon Musk , simply have several startups on the table at any given moment. Many entrepreneurs love investing in other startups.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

With the appearance of do-it-yourself services on the Internet, entrepreneur curriculums at every university, and a wealth of new books on the subject, the need for expensive consultants and business advisors has also been mitigated. Social media facilitates marketing and sales. Savings here can easily reach another $10K per month.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2021

Some people even believe that entrepreneurs must be born with the right genes, and no element of education is relevant. In my view, the most effective entrepreneurs are those with a background of an array of real-life experiences, both positive and negative, as well as good academic and coaching activities.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2023

From my consulting with entrepreneurs in Europe and other countries, I’m convinced that we all could benefit from adapting to meet their environments. I second his list of top innovation challenges and strategies to capitalize on untapped global startup opportunities: Create new markets rather than disrupt existing ones.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2013

It’s only 12 minutes long and if you’re a first-time entrepreneur (or second time, frankly) I encourage you to watch it if for nothing else than to get a sense that your struggles are universal. This naive optimism is why I believe younger entrepreneurs are more likely to produce insanely big outcomes.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

One of the hardest things for most entrepreneurs to know is how hard to push in situations where people tell you “no.” ” But then again most entrepreneurs fail. I’d say less than 20% of of entrepreneurs fit into that bucket. ’ “ In fact, NO is the one word that no entrepreneur should accept.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2021

The recent pandemic was a strong signal for change, and I see most of you entrepreneurs and business owners responding to the business changes required and new opportunities presented. I have found that today new entrepreneurs are much more likely to respond to changes in the marketplace, especially weak ones.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. Entrepreneurs started demanding that VCs call their first-round financings “seed” rounds even if they were $3 million. Why the latter? and there''s always a but]. I saw this myself a few times in a row.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

When second place isn’t good enough because we live in winner-take-most markets. So if you’re going to raise venture capital and compete in large, growing, winner-take-most markets you had better be prepared for other people to want to knock you off your stool, steal your limelight, grab your customers and muck you up.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 17, 2023

A personal story as an investor … [Email readers, continue here…] My very first investment as a professional angel was in a small startup where the entrepreneur’s vision fueled my imagination in the audio market niche where I had run a business in an earlier life. Trust works both ways.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 10, 2022

By most definitions of the term, an entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business, incorporating innovative changes to existing products, services, business models, and creating new markets. One way of identifying the right characteristics and approaches is to take a hard look at entrepreneurs who have done it.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 4, 2022

As a startup advisor and investor, I’ve met many aspiring entrepreneurs, and I often get asked the question, “I have a great idea for a startup – do you agree that it real potential?” If you are dreaming of an opportunity to get rich quick, the entrepreneur route is not for you. You enjoy building relationships as well as products.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. People who believe the former believe that you should see the market demand before too many people know you’re “in market.”

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Berkonomics

JULY 6, 2017

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. Well, here is one of those, and it deals with market research first and foremost. Here’s where some intelligent market research might have saved the company and my investment. Surprisingly, many entrepreneurs immediately respond. Back to 1996.

Competition 266

Competition Research Summary Pricing 266

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Launched by Karen Rodgers O’Neil, a longtime marketing executive, and Daniel Perrone, a serial entrepreneur and technology executive whose previous company, BroadMap, was acquired by Apple; The Shed hopes to take the rental model that Home Depot has turned into a billion dollar business line and take it to the masses.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. Here I make the case that entrepreneurs must stay focused on the prize, not the doubters. Entrepreneurs. ” **. It can be one of the strongest motivators.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. Here’s what they did: They blasted the market with emails describing how they “co-lead” this deal with us (they did not) and how they are planning to lead the next round with a $10 million+ check (which apparently they don’t have). You betcha.

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TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 21, 2018

High-profile entrepreneurs and investors, Peter Thiel, for example , have left. “It’s hard to make a difference in San Francisco as a single entrepreneur,” said J.D. “It’s not as a hard to make a difference as a successful entrepreneur in Columbus, Ohio.” ” J.D. Here's why.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2021

In my view, the increasing consumer demand for personal marketing and personal assistants will soon overcome paranoia, and reasonable boundaries will emerge. I believe the current major drive to mobile devices and apps has slowed the progress toward this new semantic environment, but it’s coming.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

Upfront VI is our latest core fund and is $400 million to invest in early stage entrepreneurs. Increasingly local entrepreneurs are finding they don’t have to “take the trip up North” quite as often because on a weekly basis venture firms are down in LA — it’s only an hour’s flight.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 25, 2021

Every entrepreneur with a new technology tells me that his innovation will be industry-disrupting, meaning that it will render the existing technology obsolete, and create a new market. I suspect that several of these will surprise most entrepreneurs as being counter-intuitive to their thinking.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. At Upfront we’re totally fine funding entrepreneurs who have done multiple businesses in the past – in fact we like it. Tech Market Analysis Upfront Ventures' Watch this space. (as

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TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 16, 2020

The initial M13 Launchpad program will leverage PepsiCo executives and advisors to take entrepreneurs-in-residence on a 12-week long program in ideating and launching a health and wellness-focused startup.

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Tech.Co

MAY 16, 2024

However, despite growing optimism, the path to success for Black entrepreneurs is still paved with systematic barriers in 2024. Power Forward Small Business Grant Black Founder Startup Grant Powershift Entrepreneurs Grant NAACP and Lelsie’s Certification Boost Grant U.S. Deadline: Rolling Learn more and apply today 2.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2023

The rate of new entrepreneurs increased between 2013 and 2021, from 280 to 360 out of 100,000 of the adult population. Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever.

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