Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. Write out the topic and maybe even the blog title. I wanted to write about the top 10 attributes of an entrepreneur.

Blogging 373

Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

It’s not hard to find people willing to write the narrative that “venture capital is not an asset class” or “venture capital has performed terribly.” I hope to publish that deck and a full write up in the next 10 days in partnership with Dan Primack at Fortune (if my write up doesn’t suck, I guess ;-)).

Venture Capital 362

Venture Capital Capital Startup Writing 362

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

Last week, we talked about about the “de-stonkifying” of the market. The company’s stock tanked by more than 26 percent, representing a $230 billion reduction in market cap and a $31 billion drop in Zuckerberg’s personal net worth. Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review ! Image Credits: TechCrunch.

Marketing 246

Marketing Newsletter Technical Review News 246

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

When second place isn’t good enough because we live in winner-take-most markets. This blog started from a series of conversations I found myself having over and over again with founders and eventually decided I should just start writing them.It Leadership Tech Market Analysis' In fact, think about it. Larry / Sergey.

Competition 394

Competition Startup Writing Marketing 394

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

The momentum from an old decision that took lots of effort to implement is worth something to a marketing professional. Pull out a piece of stationery that had been sitting unused for over a decade and write in longhand? And that’s a lesson for all of us in marketing. I was in such shock, I did not respond in kind.

Marketing 199

Marketing Email Customer Custom 199

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Yves Sisteron , Stuart Lander & I (depicted in the photo below) have worked together for more than 22 years now and that has taken us through many cycles of market enthusiasm & panic. Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures A question I often hear is “how is Upfront changing given the current market?” The answer is: not much.

Startup 408

Startup Venture Capital Writing Invest 408

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. It turns out it actually takes time to build a high-growth business with differentiated intellectual property and roll out large, enterprise-class marketing solutions. 5 years ago. 5 years ago. The monkey on my back.

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

PR isn’t something that can be delegated – The other thing that tech execs often want to do is to delegate the PR to their marketing person. Obviously you should have somebody that helps you research journalists, gets you meetings, pitches stories, helps prep you for interviews & helps make sure your writing is cogent.

Startup 349

Startup Writing Press Blogging 349

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

Shots on Goal Being great as a startup technology investor of course requires a lot of things to come together: You need to have strong insights into where technology markets are heading and where value in the future will be created and sustained You need be perfect with your market timing. I’ve definitely been wrong on market value.

Funding 294

Funding Startup Writing Invest 294

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

I will add to this as I write more in the coming weeks on the topic. The funding rounds will also build customer confidence and they’ll help journalists feel air cover in writing your more important pieces when you brag about customers, traction, revenue or whatever. This is true on all of the major tech blogs. Funding is news.

Startup 355

Startup Funding News Press 355

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. These are all creative processes.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 16, 2011

A smart young marketing exec? Help them write other stories. One day they’ll write yours. Imagine the human progress you could make with 250 short, relationship-focused meetings. Here’s why it’s critical: 1. Recruiting. Are you looking for great engineers? Talented brand sales people? 50 coffee meetings.

Startup 410

Startup Writing Press Venture Capital 410

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. So they set out a grass route’s effort to go directly to the market. There has been all sorts of discussions about marketing on blogs lately.

Entrepreneur 398

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 398

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

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 can’t control the market. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

I will write way more details about this in the coming months but I thought I’d give you a sneak peak at my presentation for today. I will be giving a speech today on The Future of Television at the PaidContent conference in LA. Future of TV.

Writing 298

Writing Conference Ideas Marketing 298

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. For starters some funds are small and thus while they put $750k into your company to own 10% of your company they might not be able to write another $2 million if you then raise a $20 million round (10%).

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

It’s a killer CEO, great product, market ripe for disruption, experienced product team and great CMO who has relevant experience from her former life. Given a few more data points I would have liked to have invested but given the market speed it looks unlikely. Investors are writing checks for dots. Dots produce bubbles.

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

It’s why in this article I advise that people “market today not futures” because you don’t want your playbook in the hands of the competition. The other thing that tech execs often want to do is to delegate the PR to their marketing person. I wrote about how to build relationships with journalists in this post.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I started in 2007 with a thesis that my primary investment decision would be about the team (70%) and only afterward about the market opportunity (30%). I know I can’t be in every deal and I know that the easy part of being a VC is writing the first check in a deal. They worry too much about missing out on a deal. I don’t.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

As a market we seem to be incapable of temperance. And even the best teams combined to create big innovations sometimes don’t time markets well, are surprised by unexpected technology breakthroughs by competitors or just don’t find the magic the leads to mass customer adoption. I started by writing 3-4 times / week.

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture. In this post I set out to explain why the seed market emerged as its own category in the first place and why it’s declined as of late. ( The “A Round” of my startup in 1999 was $16.5

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Invest Seed Funding Startup 328

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

I wrote my version here and Scott wrote an excellent write-up of his views here. The only point we didn’t seem totally aligned on was what we happening to the “middle of the VC market.” We are 5 years into a bull market and all economic markets run in cycles.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital SaaS Writing Funding 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. I suspect those days will end soon, and 61% of LPs polled said they felt VCs were coming back to market too quickly.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital Marketing Seed Funding 150

TechEmpower

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Profile Blurbs and Writing Prompts Let’s look at our job matching site in more detail. This gives Mark more control over the process, without requiring him to write much, and gives the LLM more to work with. The LLM didn’t just write a blurb for Mark, it wrote the blurb that Mark would have written, if only he’d had the words.

Generative AI 297

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence TechEmpower Tips 297

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

Los Angeles-based digital marketing agency Wpromote said on Monday that it has launched a new set of scholsrships, which will go to students interested in digital marketing. According to Wpromote, the new scholarships--which will be awarded bi-annually--will total $3,000, with the first award in December of this year. READ MORE>>.

Marketing 100

Marketing Blogging Writing Los Angeles 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

Of course you need a new angle to get a journalist interested because they don’t simply want to write what everybody else has covered. In the write up of our success I was quoted as saying, “If I had $1 dollar left to spend on marketing I would put it to PR.” Not for startups – for any business.

Press 415

Press Google Course Writing 415

socalTECH

JANUARY 8, 2020

Los Angeles-based Luxury Presence , a new startup which provides websites and digital marketing services to real estate agents, has raised $5.4M Luxury Presence says it also offers up services for lead generation, managed SEO, managed Instagram, copy writing, and video production. in a funding round, according to the company.

Services 100

Services Marketing SEO Writing 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2011

Are you cynical about their chances in the market just because they seem to be hot in the press and that bugs you? Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures wrote a great post the other day that reminded me I’ve been meaning to write about this topic. It’s just a fad propped up by the Silicon Valley elite marketing machine.”

Startup 313

Startup Press Writing News 313

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

For those who still don’t know the origins, the Harlem Shake started as a small skit from a YouTuber named Filthy Frank (10 million views as of this writing) on January 30, 2013. As of this writing nearly 50,000 versions have been created and uploaded and watched by some 200,000,000 people. I repeat – free marketing.

Startup 380

Startup Media Content Platform 380

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2024

Apex builds satellite buses quicker and more affordably than ever before, allowing companies to rapidly expand critical satellite deployment. Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Ian on This Week in Startups.

CalTech 237

CalTech USC UCLA Los Angeles 237

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

I’m writing this post to make sure you’re all on that same playing field. One of our core tasks was “market analysis,&# which consistent of: market sizing, market forecasts, competitive analysis and then instructing customers on which direction to take. And then they market the F out of that result.

Statistics 415

Statistics Startup Report Research 415

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 18, 2014

We’ve gotten to the point where after the film The Social Network and now with our own ironic HBO drama “Silicon Valley,” (makes it sound like writing a algorithm can easily net you $10 million without trying) one might think starting a company is a bit like the gold rush where riches flow to you with ease.

Startup 419

Startup Entrepreneur Design Funding 419

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 9, 2021

Users don’t need to walk through the mechanics of setting up a wallet or writing down a seed phrase either. “With any new market like [NFTs], it goes through all these different cycles,” Mythical Games CEO John Linden tells TechCrunch. “We think this will actually change gaming for the long haul.

Platform 308

Platform Framework Los Angeles Design 308

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2011

I sometimes feel that the Silicon Valley culture and we as technologists more broadly can breed monoculture in our approach to entrepreneurship, problem solving, market analysis and technology solutions. But poly sci taught me critical thinking and writing skills that I didn’t get in my econ classes. Challenge conventional wisdom.

Class 334

Class Writing Web 2.0 Offshore 334

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. I thought I’d write a post about how to talk about valuation at a startup and give you some sense of what might be on the mind of the person considering funding you. After all?—?we

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” If you have a market lead then raising capital and making investments now will help you as others enter the market.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

But then you can springboard from there to your next gig and you’ll be an experienced startup employee with functional experience at sales, marketing, product or whatever roles you played.” Before you start writing your friends checks for their startups, get out your checkbook and bet on you. It’s gonna suck, I know.

Startup 409

Startup Invest Venture Capital Writing 409