TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Kevin Novak, the architect of Uber’s dynamic pricing technology and the head of its data team, has joined the Los Angeles-based financial services startup Tala as its new head of data. Read More.

Los Angeles 268

Los Angeles Startup Pricing Services 268

socalTECH

MARCH 5, 2021

Long Beach-based free conference calling service FreeConferenceCall.com says it is launching itself into the video conferencing market, with a new service called Huddle. According to the company, it will allow the first 10,000 customers of the service to pick their own price for whatever they think the service is worth.

Services 113

Services Long Beach Pricing Conference 113

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 21, 2019

A traveler pays Sun Country one fixed price to get them from the bus pick-up point to their final destination. Postmates, the popular food delivery service, raised another $225 million at a valuation of $2.4 Online personal shopping service Lookiero gets $19M. The financing brings Postmates’ total funding to nearly $1 billion.

Services 207

Services Startup Venture Capital Redpoint 207

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2014

TrueCar is the first ever Internet service that tells you exactly how much other people in your area paid for the car you want to buy. You enter your make, model, trim & year and out pops a price curve of purchases in your area and in most states you will then be offered a fixed price to purchase that car.

Truecar 338

Truecar Startup Hulu Pricing 338

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

On the other hand, the biggest winners will turn out to be much larger than the prices people paid for them and this will happen faster than at any time in human history. However, to be a great VC you have to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. dot-com bonanza. just to name a few!

Venture Capital 471

Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 27, 2021

Who knew building a vertical software as a service toolkit focused on home heating and cooling could be worth $8.3 Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, and ICONIQ Growth. The market for home services employs more than 5 million workers in the US and represents a trillion dollar global market. Based in Glendale, Calif.,

SaaS 292

SaaS Glendale Statistics Los Angeles 292

Berkonomics

APRIL 13, 2017

If your vision is for a product or service that fills a need in a mature industry, you may be flying against the prevailing winds as a market shrinks over time, taking your business with it. Some great ideas just cannot be made into a product at a reasonable enough price to attract customers. Where in industry life cycle?

Patents 291

Patents Pricing Ideas Marketing 291

Berkonomics

JUNE 22, 2023

If your vision is for a product or service that fills a need in a mature industry, you may be flying against the prevailing winds as a market shrinks over time, taking your business with it. Some great ideas just cannot be made into a product at a reasonable enough price to attract customers. Where in industry life cycle?

Patents 286

Patents Pricing Ideas Marketing 286

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

He had an idea for a startup that would help consumers better book service jobs and would take on Service Magic, which he believed had a business model that could be disrupted. .” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. When Ethan was considering leaving Google we talked about it.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 3, 2019

Tesla said that to achieve this lower price it will shift all sales globally to online only, meaning the company will be closing many of its stores over the next few months. Musk later said they would be hiring more service technicians. The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 has arrived — but it comes with a price.

Design 272

Design Layoffs Pricing Los Angeles 272

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 16, 2021

Rowe Price Associates, Inc. The online website creation and hosting service — which has now expanded into e-commerce by hosting online stores — then raised another $40 million round in 2014. Squarespace has raised $300 million in a round of funding that values the company at a staggering $10 billion valuation.

SEM 340

SEM Commerce Los Angeles Funding 340

TechCrunch LA

MAY 2, 2018

The massage-on-demand service Soothe seems to be rubbing investors the right way with the close of a new $31 million round of funding. The Series C round from late stage and growth capital investment firm, The Riverside Company , caps a busy first quarter for the massage service.

Demand 274

Demand Company Companies Riverside 274

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 10, 2019

ProducePay’s pitch to farmers is the company’s centralized marketplace, which the company says offers growers higher pricing and certain payment from distributors along with better pricing for supplies and services like seed, equipment and logistics services.

Pricing 192

Pricing Los Angeles Equity Services 192

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 26, 2023

Every one of you business owners I know periodically introduces new products and services to sustain growth, fight off competitors, or take advantage of new technologies. Target audience may be limited or new due to price. Also fears can be mitigated by warranties provided, complementary service options, or money back guarantees.

Product 141

Product Services Technical Review Artificial Inteligence 141

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2023

Customer service has traditionally been focused on the resolution of complaints , primarily after a transaction. You must know or react to the expectations of individual customers, and personalize their treatment to gain their remembrance of exceptional service. Great customer service now must be proactive, rather than reactive.

Competition 109

Competition Services Customer Custom 109

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 9, 2013

As I outlined in my talk, I believe the greatest Internet companies created over the past 15 years have been “deflationary” meaning they are driving down the prices or goods & services. Declining prices & margins in a small market is much less interesting. Prices down. Network Up. But what else?

Marketing 361

Marketing Course Pricing Networking 361

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 28, 2020

And despite the collapse in fossil fuel energy prices, Shao said that Amply’s value proposition still makes sense. “Raw electric energy is half the price on average as fossil fuels,” Shao said. The lowest price of extracting a barrel of oil right now is $20… and then you need to add processing and distilling.”

Funding 267

Funding Pricing Los Angeles Customer 267

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

Upgrading ParkMobile’s license plate-based service with a computer vision based system that recognizes cars as they enter and leave garages has been Metropolis’ mission since founder and chief executive Alex Israel first formed the business back in 2017. His last company, ParkMe, was sold to Inrix back in 2015.

Artificial Inteligence 249

Artificial Inteligence Los Angeles Mobile Pricing 249

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 21, 2021

So in its first years of existence, Welcome Tech has focused on building out a platform that provides educational resources, information and services that “they need to thrive in a new country.” In particular, Hemmat and co-founder Raul Lomeli-Azoubel recognized that access to financial services was crucial to immigrants’ success.

Platform 299

Platform Resource Services Capital 299

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 27, 2018

” The initiative, which Bird is encouraging other scooter-sharing services like LimeBike, Mobike, Ofo and Spin to join, includes a commitment to collect vehicles every night; reposition them to meet demand in the mornings; provide regular maintenance; and only add capacity when every vehicle in a fleet is used three times per day.

Santa Monica 262

Santa Monica Southern California San Diego Los Angeles 262

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

I researched the pricing of the car at TrueCar – not because we’re an investor – but because it gives you complete price transparency over what other people in your area paid for a car. “Invoice price” is an equally meaningless marketing tool. As many air bags as possible. But I digress.

Conference 398

Conference Technical Review Truecar Software Review 398

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Young entrepreneurs and startups, in particular, often remain naively unfocused, despite their passion, of what it takes to provide the high-quality service expected. Train and coach continuously.

Competition 99

Competition Services Startup Training 99

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 2, 2021

As video commerce becomes the norm and entertainers, brands, businesses, and franchises of all sizes and stripes look to cut out the middle man, the array of services on offer from Maestro may be the scissors these entities need to cut the cord. The one thing that Maestro won’t do is discovery or search services, Evans said.

Tool 315

Tool Commerce .Net Entertainment 315

Berkonomics

MARCH 8, 2018

Give one percent equity to each outside board member vesting over four years of service. Pay early stage board members of companies that are not lifestyle businesses one percent of the fully diluted equity in the form of an option that vests over four years of service. Here is my best advice, based upon many boards and many years.

Venture Capital 256

Venture Capital Equity Sales Invest 256

Berkonomics

JULY 13, 2017

So, you have a great new product or service that you and your associates love. Have you developed a prototype, alternate pricing schemes, even a PowerPoint mock-up to show to potential buyers? Early adopters should climb all over each other for a look.

Resource 256

Resource Pricing Organization Product 256

Berkonomics

JULY 6, 2017

That year, some of you will recall, the first digital cell phones were released to the market, smaller, cheaper and priced with roaming plans that made it no premium cost to carry these digital phones to cities far from home. Back to 1996. In this case, the competition was not from a company but a new technology.

Competition 266

Competition Research Summary Pricing 266

socalTECH

JUNE 28, 2019

Ingram Micro--which provides cloud services among its offerings--said its Azure Accelerate program is aimed at helping companies trying to beat Microsoft's end of support date in July for SQL Server and Windows Server 2008. Pricing on the new offering was not announced.

Pricing 157

Pricing Services Help Product 157

Berkonomics

MAY 23, 2024

Give one percent equity to each outside board member vesting over two to four years of service. Pay early-stage board members of companies that are not lifestyle businesses one percent of the fully diluted equity in the form of an option that vests over two to four years of service. How do you set the option price?

Venture Capital 156

Venture Capital Pricing Equity Invest 156

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

” The only thing the manufacturer provides is the products and some servicing starter kit so that The Shed and its employees can manage and maintain the product. LA’s consumer goods rental service, Joymode, sells to the NYC retail investment firm, XRC Labs. The Shed founders Karen Rodgers O’Neil and Daniel Perrone.

Startup 285

Startup Product Demand Los Angeles 285

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

The second is that the retailers were constrained by their high costs of local real estate and service staff relative to the costs of centralized warehouses where goods could be stacked high, sorted by robots, managed by RFIDs and then shipped via overnight to eager, cost-conscious customers across the US.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire Startup 380

Berkonomics

JULY 26, 2018

Is your product or service one that responds to a customer need, real or perceived? In general, there are three types of products or services: those a customer needs, those a customer wants, an d those a customer believes he does not want or need. Can you, your sales people and your marketing staff answer this succinctly?

Sales 226

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 226

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2016

I love businesses that aim to massively reduce the costs of products or services in a way that makes a product or service vastly more accessibility and in which incumbents would have a hard time competing. The other is driven by the need to increase privacy in providing its service relative to competitors using cameras.

Invest 254

Invest Writing Pricing Metrics 254

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

Who else can provide context if your portfolio isn’t growing as quickly as your peer group, if they believe you paid too high a price on a deal, if they question your due diligence in a given situation or whatever critique they might offer? and you’ll need to invest heavily in self-service support tools.

Customer 341

Customer Custom Venture Capital Software Review 341

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

We both agree that the later-stage valuations are being driven up to a point that feels irrationally priced [he uses b-round SaaS valuations as an example and I am willing to be even more broad based]. Scott spoke about the a16z ethos to put more of the fees investors pay into “services” rather than partner pockets.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital SaaS Writing Funding 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2021

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Young entrepreneurs and startups, in particular, often remain naively unfocused, despite their passion, of what it takes to provide the high-quality service expected. Train and coach continuously.

Startup 154

Startup Training Customer Custom 154

Berkonomics

AUGUST 17, 2023

A liquidity event opportunity Several years later, with the approval of the board and entrepreneur, I was able to engage a very well-known potential acquirer of the business who offered an attractive price for the still young but successful enterprise.

Invest 296

Invest Capital Startup Entrepreneur 296

Berkonomics

JULY 19, 2018

Or one of the instant auto service companies where an oil change is fast and inexpensive, but the number of inspection points far fewer than at a dealer location. We pay for the quality of product and service, happily defining our own tolerance for cost versus quality and speed. Think of McDonalds. Speed above quality.

Competition 226

Competition Examples Customer Custom 226