Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). We feature a prominent speaker at every event.

Venture Capital 241

Venture Capital Technical Review Southern California Companies 241

Berkonomics

JUNE 19, 2014

In others, if you cannot find such a champion after initial presentations to a subset of the entire group, you will not be permitted to move from initial application to the next stages of due diligence and final funding. Together we fund, maybe, twenty-five of these.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Tech Coast Angels Summary Email 207

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2013

We will have to build (or buy) technology in this area.” The thing is … what I see many sales execs do is burn up countless hours on mid-level campaigns that get torpedoed when the go up the organization due to lack of budget, a desire to own that core IP or other more pressing organization priorities.

Sales 375

Sales Technical Review Organization Case Study 375

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2023

This is the mysterious and dreaded due diligence process, which can kill the whole deal. Some entrepreneurs do very little to prepare for due diligence, assuming all the talking has already been done, and the business plan and results to-date tell the right story. My best advice is to stick to the middle ground.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Invest 118

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 18, 2021

If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded due diligence process. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the due diligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Summary 152

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. I think you’ll really enjoy this video , but as always I have summary notes for those with less time.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

Let’s review all of our existing investments. tl;dr summary. If you want a comprehensive summary of the industry in this era it’s worth a read: VC Ice Age Part 1 – What Happens When a Market Comes to a Standstill? Summary version? My year-over-year summary sounds very similar upon re-reading them.

Marketing 305

Marketing Venture Capital Funding Technical Review 305

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Periodically we do portfolio reviews to evaluate whether we have enough diversified risk across the fund. One such theme was “water conservation” and we morphed it into a broader theme of agriculture technology or “ag tech” for short. We look at stage, geography and of course sector. 6SensorLabs.

Funding 362

Funding Technical Review Ideas Startup 362

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. This overview (executive summary) needs to include: Product and Business What is the product? What Is This? Who's the customer?

CTO Hire 264

CTO Hire Startup Technical Review Development Team Review 264

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2015

Few investors these days have the time or patience to read a full business plan, so a better way to catch their eye is with a tightly written and well formatted two-page executive summary. I see too many executive summaries that are simply heavy-duty customer pitches, or lightweight visions of the future.

Summary 101

Summary Patents Technical Review Competition 101

socalTECH

JANUARY 7, 2013

Southern California's Most Popular Tech Stories. LaunchpadLA Opens Up Spring Applications. In our features section: Interview with Blair Harrison of Frequency. 9 Ways socalTECH Can Help You With Your New Year's Resolutions. How to find a startup mentor.

Southern California 168

Southern California Technical Review SoCal San Diego 168

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. This overview (executive summary) needs to include: Product and Business What is the product? What Is This? Who's the customer?

CTO Hire 259

CTO Hire Startup Technical Review Development Team Review 259

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. Similarly I liked to keep myself apprised of the technical decisions we were making. I then did a pipeline review with the VP of Sales.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2021

A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. I found a good summary of the most common mistakes in a classic book by Kelly Clifford, “ Profit Rocket ,” written primarily to help you on the other side of the equation – skyrocket your profits. Wasting money unnecessarily.

Technical Review 151

Technical Review Startup Summary Pricing 151

Berkonomics

JANUARY 14, 2021

In others, if you cannot find such a champion after initial presentations to a subset of the entire group, you will not be permitted to move from initial application to the next stages of due diligence and final funding. How to waste your fundraising effort. Together we fund, maybe, twenty-five of these.

Technical Review 156

Technical Review Tech Coast Angels Summary Email 156

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 16, 2012

Peter Pham, of Los Angeles technology studio/incubator Science Inc., Los Angeles MiniTime debuted its service this week to help families find reviews and information for their family vacation. SpaceX tests its Grasshoppper, vertical takeoff and landing technology earlier this month. with Mario Andretti. SpaceX Grasshopper.

Technical Review 157

Technical Review Santa Barbara Software Review Activision 157

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

The reality is that as a result of two major trends the costs of starting a technology startup went down massively. So What Impact Did the Drop in Tech Founding Costs Have on VC? As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Invest Seed Funding Startup 328

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Or, as always, summary notes available below. My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

The frantic pace of technology cycles, the amount of tech news, the blogs, the conferences, the demo days, the announcements, the fundings, the IPOs. Anybody who has worked in venture can tell you that if you took every intro that came your way you’d simply spend all of your time in meetings reviewing new deals sent to you.

Startup 317

Startup Technical Review Venture Capital Email 317

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

I think you'll enjoy hearing him, but if you're in a rush check out the summary notes below. In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies. 100 get serious due diligence where the entrepreneur meets with several people from the firm. and Half.com.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 11, 2011

I recommend you first review Dharmesh’s article and then listen to Naval’s thoughts. What follows is a summary which paraphrases Naval’s responses. Other disqualifiers include) not enough technical people on the team…if you are completely out of market…pre-launch companies tend to not do well…teams that have no credibility.

Startup 273

Startup Software Review Summary Technical Review 273

SoCal Tech Calendar

DECEMBER 7, 2012

Two keys communication tools are the Executive Summary and the PowerPoint Presentation (Pitch Deck). This forum will help you understand how these tools are used to generate a face-to-face meeting, make a persuasive and memorable presentation, and then follow through with the details needed for investors to begin their due diligence process.

TCVN 100

TCVN Summary Tool Resource 100

TechEmpower

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Are specific technologies or platforms involved in your project? Do they have experience with the technologies involved in your project? What are the review periods and your responsibility in the process? Or is your project a clean slate? Are there complexities revolving around algorithms or databases?

Software Development 297

Software Development Software Review Develop Development 297

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 20, 2012

A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. I found a good summary of the most common mistakes in a new book by Kelly Clifford, “ Profit Rocket ,” written primarily to help you on the other side of the equation – skyrocket your profits. Wasting money unnecessarily.

Technical Review 109

Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur Summary 109

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” He or she has worked at some very successful big technology or media companies and went to a great school. I saved my main point for last.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This is a long post, so I put an executive summary here if you want to get the point without reading all the detail. If you plan to read the post you can skip the summary if you want. I want to know how many people, their level of tech sophistication, their age and their interests.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2013

A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. I found a good summary of the most common mistakes in a recent book by Kelly Clifford, “ Profit Rocket ,” written primarily to help you on the other side of the equation – skyrocket your profits. Wasting money unnecessarily.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Entrepreneur Summary Pricing 100

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. If you spent the 3 years perfecting some hugely differentiated technology IP that may also be different. Fast early growth in a market is often eroded when competition gets fierce and prices are forced down due to competition.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

He listened intently through every presentation, asked questions and did a great summary of what he felt he had learned over the two days. The Greycroft event was a 10 out of 10 so I’ve diligently taken notes. My action item – I will soon announce the GRP Partners CEO Summit.

Startup 279

Startup Venture Capital Tips Custom Development 279

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

Reviewing financial & operational performance. By now you have many smart people around your board but probably people who don’t totally understand the nuances of your employees, customers, sales reps, marketing messages, technology challenges, competitors and strategic choices. Mentorship. As You Start to Mature.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2012

It’s best if you send a deck so that the investor can review it for a fit before the introduction takes place. The tech world is filled with these kinds of intros. In Summary. If I get a plan I find interesting from somebody I trust I am always hugely appreciative. “Hey, I know a guy at Zynga. These drive me bonkers.

Email 359

Email Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 359

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2013

I had a business class seat due to status of flying a lot and my family was in economy. Hold interviews with tech people, marking people, ops people, finance people – whatever. ” In summary, I recommend some honesty with yourself. ” I was on a flight last year from DC to LAX. Very few people do.

Sales 416

Sales Class Training Technical Review 416

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2022

He found that the return was far greater than the cost of donated shoes, and his team became intensely loyal, due to the opportunity to travel and deliver shoes in other countries. Challenge yourself to delivering a technical innovation. Driven to reduce personal hardship and suffering.

Technical Review 143

Technical Review Coach Mentor Customer 143

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. Link has a summary of his argument plus a great video). While many tech startups do this intuitively (say, SnapChat thinking it would be much better if our photos out partying disappeared) it still happens. It’s worth a quick read.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 6, 2011

DueToDos, is a full featured web based utility where users can also assign and track tasks, manage users on their team, receive web notifications, and daily activity summaries. The real question is whether or not it’s really that simple to use. After I received my invite and log in I try it out.

Email 102

Email Platform Web Summary 102

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Nearly every successful tech startup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. So it makes me laugh to this day when I talk with a journalist or potential investor in the company and they ask flippantly, “How is MakeSpace a technology company?”

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Custom Customer 286

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 8, 2013

Partially due to the economy, but also due to longer, healthier lives and changes in job tenure, 60% of working Boomers are now expected to stay in the labor force, with real power and influence, for at least seven more years, to 2020.

Entrepreneur 118

Entrepreneur Technical Review Startup Technical Support 118