Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

41:00 Transitioning from software to writing. 48:30 Vanity metrics. 52:00 Actionable metrics. 48:30 Vanity metrics. 52:00 Actionable metrics. 40:05 What happened after Imvu. 42:20 Did agile development influence you? 43:20 The inception of Lean Startup. 46:18 iOS Vs. Android. 46:50 Engines of Growth.

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

It’s a hard topic to write about because it’s almost an accepted norm that total transparency is good. They told you, “Yeah, man, I’ll gladly write the first $250,000. I believe in company metrics that are publicized and can be used as company motivation and creating a unified sense of purpose.

Startup 417

Startup Course Venture Capital Writing 417

TechEmpower

JUNE 6, 2018

Not just in measured results per second (several metric crap tonne), but in number of tests measured (~1830), number of framework permutations tested (~464), number of languages included (26), and total execution time of the test suite (67 hours, or 241 billion microseconds to make that sound properly enormous). It's lost in the noise.

Framework 378

Framework TechEmpower Platform Metrics 378

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2016

I answered in the same way I always do so I thought I’d just write it publicly. “I I think I’m better at the product stage of a business and helping with strategy, marketing, pricing, feature sets and so forth than I am at evaluating later-stage businesses based on financial results and business metrics and priced accordingly.

Invest 254

Invest Writing Pricing Metrics 254

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

The other thing that struck me, is because it is only men, they tend to write with lots of testosterone. Their writing style, even for a mainstream publication, is they write with lots of testosterone. They write about the transmission, the brakes, and the suspension, and that creeps into all of their evaluations of cars.

Truecar 204

Truecar Writing Edmunds Sites 204

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We both felt that the critical reasoning skills and writing skills were critical to our career development. Company grew by more than “400% each year” for past few years [assume growth metric = revenues]. Metrics: 2.5mm members, 1,000 brands, 2,500 sale events to-date. Mo’s other degree was English, mine was Political Science.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

As a company you need to invest in ROI calculators (spreadsheets) that are easy for sales reps to plug in basic customer metrics and pop out with an expected benefit. And the only way to do that is to help them calculate the ROI (return on investment) of using your product.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

In a funding round with 1 or 2 VCs and 15-20 angels or 4-6 seed funds if you gave every investor you financial information and performance metrics your proprietary information would increase in its probability of leaking out. We are doing what we do – writing larger checks and playing an active role at the company.

Venture Capital 352

Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2014

I’ve seen you write a $10 million check before. He called me 15 months later excited to show me his metrics and wanted to talk about his A round. But why am I so lucky that you’ll let me in? Of course I ask more politely that than. But I always ask. “I don’t understand. You have a big fund. Is it plausible?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Email 333

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

In many ways I think general purpose writing & thinking skills are as valuable as math skills. He believes that one of the financial metrics taught at business schools and reinforced by Wall Street has accelerated offshoring of industries. It’s not that I don’t believe in liberal arts, humanities and the like.

Venture Capital 403

Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2: As expected at least one person accused me of writing this post because I want to see lower valuations. As an early stage investor you’re often planning around 10x your investment at the time your write your first check so in this case you’d be going into your investment expecting an exit of $800 – $1.2

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

The minute you try to monetize now they have metrics with which to beat you up and say you’re business has limitations.” Should I write off my $2.5 ” Case in point: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, SnapChat. This is certainly one Path you can take if you have the right background. As an investor that’s a no brainer.

Venture Capital 412

Venture Capital Startup Funding Snapchat 412

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 21, 2021

But Sarandos doubled down on his defense of the special, writing an internal email that “content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.” The leaked information in question appears to be some internal metrics on “The Closer” that appeared in a story by Bloomberg , which reported that Netflix spent $24.1

Netflix 300

Netflix Demand Content Hollywood 300

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Often board members themselves don’t do the work to say “what metrics would we like to see.” Any great board member should tell you, “please don’t create any performance metrics or materials that analyze the business that you’re not already creating for your own management’s use.” Sometimes they don’t even know.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He did it yesterday, “Mark, I’m going to write a blog post following on from your VC’s aren’t dumb. He is very pleasant when he calls and writes. By being so metrics driven we can have a lot more quantifiable and objective discussions at board meetings and at mid-point reviews. . Rob does it.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Innovation and Geography I ran across a post in Read/Write Web - Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? that talked about a recent NY Times article When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

You are writing about the essentials of business. Any thoughts on my recent post Startup Metrics ? The Startup Metrics post is a good example of what I call “holocognics.” Startup Metrics discusses what a Startup needs to consider before “going live.” And how it relates to what you are talking about in [link] ?

Startup 150

Startup SEO Pepperdine Blogging 150

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Communication and writing skills are required. In additional to strong journalistic writing and storytelling, you need business acumen, strategic thinking and planning, and the ability to do the right research. Return-On-Investment metrics are not new, but the tools are different. Find the right tools to analyze the ROI.

Social Media 101

Social Media Media Entrepreneur Metrics 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2022

Communication and writing skills are required. In additional to strong journalistic writing and storytelling, you need business acumen, strategic thinking and planning, and the ability to do the right research. Return-On-Investment metrics are not new, but the tools are different. Find the right tools to analyze the ROI.

Social Media 126

Social Media Media Startup Platform 126

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

Whenever you write your deck and send it out I think you should actually think to yourself, “my competitors are probably going to read this one day and this will be forwarded widely” and if your response isn’t “so what!”

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Berkonomics

JANUARY 16, 2014

Clarify operation responsibilities and metrics used to measure performance. All agreements should be in writing and signed by all parties involved. Define each partner’s title and position. Define management responsibilities and job descriptions. Detail authority limits for each partner. Determine compensation for each partner.

Technical Review 204

Technical Review Startup Examples Metrics 204

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

I’m normally too cool to write posts like this. I prefer to write the December 2010 post about what a great year I had. Based on experience I know I can do this much more rapidly but I care more about that longer term goal of maintenance. Somehow this is more honest.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2021

Noom worked really well initially because it dealt with the psychology of why people make bad food choices and forced me to write down what some of my bad behaviors actually were. In my first post I talked about Noom, a paid app you can download to create a plan to lose weight. I did this for years.

Coach 538

Coach Startup Guide Journal 538

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2011

I know it’s easier to write “horse race&# stories about who’s signing up more users, raising more funding or who’s “hot&# lately. In a world where it’s easier to judge the immediate value of a business, I know that metrics like “time on site&# matter. That’s what AOL was.

Social Media 274

Social Media Google Media Startup 274

TechEmpower

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

Focusing on the metrics that ultimately drive the business, often the bottom line, has provided a reality check, a counter-weight to the desire to consume all new technologies. You're in the thick of it and about to write a small chunk of server-side code. but getting work done requires shutting down the news feed and writing code.

Web 200

Web Platform Technology JavaScript 200

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 14, 2013

They cite sources like a recent BusinessWeek story, “ Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans ” and this NY Times article. In fact, they are probably in such a hurry to give you money that they don’t want you to waste time writing anything down and passing it along to new investors. Clemson University professor William B.

Entrepreneur 100

Entrepreneur Technical Review Writing Slides 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 2, 2020

Create a written plan, with target milestones and metrics. I have found that the process of writing down your idea, with a plan for implementation, and reviewing that plan with a business advisor, will force you to learn and acknowledge the real requirements for implementation.

Ideas 126

Ideas Writing Examples Outsource 126

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!” There are certain topics that even some of the best journalists can’t fully grok. One of them is profitability. Investors value growth.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2021

Yet from my own years of experience in the startup community, here are ten common steps that have worked for other entrepreneurs: Write a "job description" for that ideal partner. Take a hard look at your own business strengths and weaknesses, and write down what partner skills and experiences would best complement yours.

Startup 126

Startup High Tech Entrepreneur Writing 126

TechEmpower

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

If you write a lot of Java code, then you should read that book and follow its advice. The iterable.spliterator() method is critical when it comes to stream performance, but writing a custom Spliterator from scratch is a non-trivial task. Write a benchmark afterwards to confirm your assumptions. forEachRemaining(.).

Java 330

Java Class Ideas Writing 330

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

seed and they are writing $1.25m of it you can expect them to require a board seat) The competitive landscape (If you have several sources of capital you can likely politely decline the board request or can grant them a seat but ask for it to be “common appointed” and those revokable if you need in the future). But it’s quite rare.

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 23, 2019

Even if it’s only a few PowerPoint slides or typed paragraphs, writing something down is the first step toward making it real. Always write in the future tense, what you will do, and name yourself as the key person responsible. Set target date milestones and metrics to gauge progress.

Ideas 99

Ideas Slides Writing Startup 99

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I still think it’s best to take money from Dave when you’re also partnered with a more focused, hands-on seed-stage VC who brings different things to the table – like more ability to write larger checks in a downturn (for one) or solving a deep crisis that involves super hands-on involvement.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. They’re easily impressed when you’re selected for TechCrunch50 but not easily engaged in a detailed discussion about your conversion metrics. Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings).

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Entrepreneur 297

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

A new group of investors have clustered around writing earlier-stage, smaller checks. If you do a $1 million angel round at $6 million pre-money and hope to do a Series A round for $2-3 million that’s fine as long as you’re doing awesome against your metric goals and the market continues to be frothy. That’s awesome.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

We spent a lot of time talking about what type of company we wanted to create, how many employees we’d eventually have, whether we would take funding, our lifestyle, and a dozen other things that had nothing to do with writing software. Semick: We’re a very metrics driven company, and we have been from the beginning.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

socalTECH

JUNE 13, 2011

Jonathan Lehmann: What is great about Anderson, is it has so many programs to help you streamline your ideas, come up with viable idea, and articulate the vision and asses the market, write out business plan, learn how to pitch, how to do a long investor pitch, how to do fast pitch, and learn effective, entrepreneurial specific networking.

UCLA 256

UCLA Startup Ideas Help 256