Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

The most interesting thing I’ve learned by being an investor and sitting on boards & seeing so many company pitches is how different reality of what is going on at companies is from what you’re reading about them in the press. Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis VC Industry. Part three will be published shortly.

angel investing 288

angel investing investing investment advice 288

Entrepreneur's Handbook

APRIL 24, 2021

Founders from outside a tech-ecosystem are surrounded by bad advice, since building a startup is different from other kinds of businesses. 1) Don’t hoard your idea, share it freely The 2010 drama, the Social Network , depicted every entrepreneur’s worst fears. The universe must have been tired of hearing my pitch.

startup 106

startup entrepreneurship advice pitching 106

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice &# but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.&#. We could do more in 2010 with more VC investment; the doubling assumes only ratable increase in marketing spend to achieve profitability. It’s that simple. >50% of our revenue in now viral.

founder 329

founder VC advice pitching 329

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

I stopped doing conferences, traveling or pitching to VCs. So no prizes for guessing my New Year’s resolution for 2010. I plan to be 25 pounds lighter by December 31st, 2010. I prefer to write the December 2010 post about what a great year I had. Tags: Start-up Advice Startup Advice. You can do it.

entrepreneurs 308

entrepreneurs advice real estate venture capital 308

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2011

So as I get around the country speaking at college campus in 2010 & 2011 I have been preaching the same theme. They pitch me features, not value. It doesn’t strike me as a “social network&# in the way we’ve come to define them. I play with features. I’m a tech junkie as much as the next guy.

transportation 309

transportation VC networking energy 309

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

This is an updated post from my ongoing series on Startup Advice that I learned from founding two companies. . I decided to put both of those issues to bed in 2010. We assumed they would take our advice and upgrade. Tags: Start-up Advice Startup Advice. I HATE LOSING. I hate it. It chaps my hide.

consulting 328

consulting advice collaboration VC 328

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2018

I once had a potential LP back in 2010 (when fund-raising as a VC was harder for me) tell me that he thought he was a better fit to look at our next fund rather than this one. This is part of a series on fund-raising advice for entrepreneurs and VCs. But often if they don’t say ‘no’ you’ve just got yourself a commitment to re-engage.”

peer-to-peer 189

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs VC investing 189

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

I can't think of a single time when a white man came to pitch me and I told him his fundraising plans weren't aggressive enough. Yet, for some reason, the goals for her pitch were incremental--despite being in an extremely hot space. When Chantel asked investors for $3mm for her seed round back in 2010, people stood up and took notice.

advice 414

advice founder pitching VC 414

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

This is an updated post from my ongoing series on Startup Advice that I learned from founding two companies. . I decided to put both of those issues to bed in 2010. We assumed they would take our advice and upgrade. Tags: Startup Advice. I HATE LOSING. I hate it. I really, really, really hate it. It chaps my hide.

consulting 333

consulting advice collaboration VC 333

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Yes, social networks of 2010 have much better usability, have better developed 3rd-party platforms and many more people are connected. 18 months ago 25% of all pitches to me were ideas for how to build products around Twitter’s API. I know in 2010 this doesn’t seem obvious to everybody but it’s my judgment.

networking 318

networking mix-use innovation development 318

Entrepreneurs' Organization

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Against everyone’s advice, I decided to seek out a business partner. ME/ “When we started out in 2010, we were the definition of bootstrapping entrepreneurs. Above all, we only pitch people on the companies we would personally interview for.”. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, exactly, but I knew I wanted to work for myself.

culture 130

culture entrepreneurship peer-to-peer energy 130

Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Just two years later, in 2009, we worked out a deal to create the Techstars Seattle program, with our first program running in 2010. What did we owe our sponsors, and did that put us in conflict with our commitments to give founders the best possible advice, and to never waste their time?

startup ecosystem 195

startup ecosystem accelerator communities support 195

David Teten VC

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

When we launched in 2010, I saw a white space: a burgeoning NY tech ecosystem, but only one angel group regularly writing checks. We organized a series of HBS Angels pitch nights, joint with a range of affinity groups for HBS Alumni: HBS African-American, HBS Healthcare, HBS LBGT, and HBS Latino. Realistic projections.

venture capital 52

venture capital VC capital ventures 52

Angel Capital Association

MARCH 22, 2023

When we discover a founder who has something that's of real value, and they turn out to be willing to listen to the advice from mentors, that's a deal you want to invest in. The learning curve was how to determine when they were ready to listen and then be prepared to stand in and provide that advice.

collaboration 98

collaboration angel investing opportunity board 98

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

This is part of my series on Startup Advice. They’re pitching to you. Too many people are racing through the pitch, pitch, pitch that they don’t realize it’s polite to let the “opposing team&# talk and do intro’s also. When I worked in London there were a ton of Aussies.

advice 314

advice pitching VC support 314

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

Fred Wilson wrote two posts in 2010 that were very influential with the startup community. I know that they really impacted an entire cohort of startups because every company that was coming to pitch me businesses was (is) saying, “I’m a ‘mobile first’ company.” The titles were: Mobile First, Web Second.

real estate 334

real estate strategy development enablement 334

David Teten VC

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

When we launched in 2010, I saw a white space: a burgeoning NY tech ecosystem, but only one angel group regularly writing checks. We organized a series of HBS Angels pitch nights, joint with a range of affinity groups for HBS Alumni: HBS African-American, HBS Healthcare, HBS LBGT, and HBS Latino. Realistic projections.

venture capital 40

venture capital VC capital ventures 40

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2013

Take for example the years 2010-2012 where every brand out there seemed to be buying Facebook “Likes.” Often if a customer has heard similar problems described in other customers (not hearing your solution pitched at them but a real business discussion about the pain point) then they will start to open up and have a discussion.

advice 367

advice leadership energy pitching 367

TechCrunch

MAY 16, 2023

At least, that sales pitch from Hippocratic AI , which emerged from stealth today with a whopping $50 million in seed financing behind it and a valuation in the “triple digit millions.” The dietary advice use case gave me pause, I must say, in light of the poor diet-related suggestions AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT provides.

hospitality 112

hospitality health mix-use advice 112

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 11, 2016

Over the weekend, Rent the Runway held an event for its Project Entrepreneur initiative, which brought together over 100 female entrepreneurs looking to get education and advice on how to take their businesses to the next step. Yes, straight white males are getting most of the funding, but they're also most of the pitches.

pitching 285

pitching financing finance entrepreneurship 285

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

“We did hear that and I think it’s very poor advice,” he says. Pitch perfect, you might think. ” Europe’s startup ecosystem was still immature and what now seems like aloofness was probably nothing more than a crude way to deter cold pitches from non-venture type businesses. .

investing 143

investing investment mix-use media 143

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

“We did hear that and I think it’s very poor advice,” he says. Pitch perfect, you might think. ” Europe’s startup ecosystem was still immature and what now seems like aloofness was probably nothing more than a crude way to deter cold pitches from non-venture type businesses. .

investing 82

investing investment mix-use media 82