Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

At the highest level we’re looking for somebody really intelligent, digitally native, financially numerate and interested in startups. If this isn’t you, we’d probably still have a look if you did something truly exception – probably at startup or tech firm. Tags: VC Industry. Are we elitist?

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NOVEMBER 4, 2010

It should affect how you think if you are an incumbent but also if you’re a startup. So the startups tend to focus on totally new customers. Often the startups are actually serving a slightly different kind of customer or a slightly different market need. Tags: Tech Market Analysis. Sony, the iPod.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I always try hard to make this blog a place where you can learn lessons rather than an advertisement for portfolio companies. I learned that he was originally with William Morris as a junior talent rep but wanted to be more in the business of helping digital startups. We started uploading images of ourselves to our blogs.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 19, 2010

This comment and blog post prompted me to write a post that has been in my queue for a long time. Tags: Startup Advice. That means most of us are getting derailed from our work four times each hour, maybe more if you work in a high email traffic office.&#. Of even if you don't have a team I'll bet you have a boss.

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MARCH 6, 2010

Since I answer this all the time anyway I thought it might make an interesting blog post. When I was running startups I felt like a horse with blinders on because I was super focused on the content management market and ignored many other markets. Then I spent many years as a startup CEO. That’s true.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 11, 2010

I haven’t written a blog post in a week. And for the last few evenings I decided to get through email rather than blog. It was interesting for me to read Fred Wilson’s email bankruptcy blog post this morning. Blog comments. Why don’t you just blog less or not respond to everyone’s comments?

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advice VC entrepreneurs creativity 265

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2010

Finally, a lot of people asking me about typos on my blog. In addition to the P2P deals covered below, on the show we also talked about some of my favorite financing startups ( Wonga in the UK run by Errol Damelin , who is a superstar) and Affordit.com run by serial (and I mean serial!) Blogging has gone through many iterations.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

Paul Graham and the folks over at YCombinator have done much to reenergize early-stage entrepreneurship and encourage the creation of many new and innovative startups including DropBox, Posterous, Loopt, Justin.TV, Scribd and many others. But the comments on my own blog were so much more balanced with people taking both sides of the debate.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2009

Arnold Waldstein , who stops by periodically on my blog and always leaves relevant comments, made the observation that, “if I want to connect with you, I’ll engage with you on this blog …from there, a follow on Twitter, a link on LinkedIn are closing the loop of connection rather that opening a cold door.&# This is so true.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

To understand this in great detail see this very important blog post by Henry Blodget on the unemployment rate in the US and its impact on the recovery. If you’re a startup, in bad times there is less over-funding of your competitors and therefore less pressure to give everything away for free.

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VC startup advice innovation 269

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 8, 2010

I had a phonecall/meeting with a student who wants to come to New York and work in startups. In another situation, I chat on IM with a junior editor for a tech blog on a regular basis. Tags: First Round Capital Venture Capital & Technology nextNY. Two were the same exact situation.

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networking venture capital advice entrepreneurship 250

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

I recently read a post over on VentureHacks titled, “ Top Ten Reasons Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers &# written by Scott Walker (who blogs on legal issues for entrepreneurs ). I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. Most lawyers that work with startups are willing to work on a deferred payment schedule.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I wanted to also post the series here to have it as a resource on my blog for future entrepreneurs who stop by. If you’re already running a startup you know all this. “Yes, but you don’t have any startups on the stage. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Start-up Advice Startup Advice.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 19, 2009

Some readers of this blog also pointed out that “pivoting&# can be disruptive on the employees of an organization. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Start-up Advice Startup Advice. Some “kick it up a gear&# and react how Toby did. They get a sixth sense that you’re going to pull this thing off. And in life.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Tags: Startup Advice This Week in Venture Capital. Now that I do they’re willing to accommodate? Gee, if they treat me like this in good times I wonder how they’d treat me in bad times!&#. We spend a lot of time on them in the video but frankly we could have done a 3-hour session.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Fred Wilson said as much on his blog also. That is true of all my blog posts. It is what I love the most about debates and one of the things I love most about blogging. I suspect Mr. Wadhwa used hyperbole in his TechCrunch blog post to get more readers to look at his work. So it is with entrepreneurship.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

This includes seed funding Automattic (who produce WordPress, the blog I use for this website) and investing in formspring.me, stickybits, Thing Labs (producer of Brizzly), KissMetrics and many others including Quantcast. Example of publishers include: moviefone, Fandango, Jingle, SayNow, and voice blogs. Total raised: $19mm.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 10, 2010

Content recommendation for years has been a startup graveyard. In the case of Techmeme, half the job is done when you curate the list of which tech blogs you should be paying attention to. Tags: First Round Capital Venture Capital & Technology. And that’s actually a much easier task—finding people for me to pay attention to.

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venture capital entrepreneurship networking capital 267

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 25, 2010

Chris Dixon wrote a blog post last week titled, “ Techies and Normals &# in which he defined “Techies&# as people who are not just “early adopters&# but also have more of a geeky, technical, product bent. Anyway, Chris’s blog got me thinking about Techies and Normals. He is both.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. That is the reason I am so supportive of the Startup Visa movement that has been so successfully championed by Brad Feld, Dave McClure, Eric Ries, Shervin Pishevar and many others. Tags: Tech Market Analysis. Irony, hey?). Her response?

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education creativity innovation entrepreneurs 282

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. . It’s one of my favorite blog posts. I had planned to blog about it at the time but I waited 2 days and the whole world blogged about it so I didn’t pile on. Tags: Startup Advice.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2010

Ask me something very narrow that I can answer without typing a whole blog post length response. Fred Wilson nailed this in his “double opt in&# blog post. Tags: Startup Advice. If I AM an investor, mentor, friend or advisor I accept the email being longer.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 28, 2010

Recently I wrote a blog post about how I hated losing, but I embrace it as a way to learn, improve and increase my win rates. Tags: Startup Advice. One of the things I learned from my “post-game analysis&# is that you’re most vulnerable right after you’ve won the deal. I won, that is, until I lost.

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consulting advice VC support 309

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

Nevertheless, if you share too much in your funding process or meet too many VCs expect a certain amount of your ideas to spread around the startup community. The following was available: “I kept hearing about startups that raised VC funding, but which hadn’t filed Form Ds (nor issued a press release). Tags: Start-up Advice.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2010

Here’s my best attempt to shed some light on the most common misconceptions about building a company here in NYC: Misconception #1: There’s no money in NYC for startups… and the money that’s here isn’t smart or experienced money. Should they work on your “real time” web startup or write code that processes a million trades a minute?

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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. . It’s one of my favorite blog posts. I had planned to blog about it at the time but I waited 2 days and the whole world blogged about it so I didn’t pile on. I HATE LOSING. I hate it.

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consulting advice collaboration VC 328

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 15, 2010

He wrote an excellent blog post on this topic. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Pitching VCs Start-up Advice Startup Advice VC Industry. Jason started the Open Angel Forum in response to his frustration that entrepreneurs were being charged by some angel organizations to present at their events. They deserve more credit.

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advice angel investing entrepreneurs pitching 254

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

I recently read a book I’d highly recommend to every reader of this blog called “ Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive &# by Robert B. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice. Cialdini who is also author of a very well received book called “ Influence &# (which I plan to read).

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SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

We all know media companies are suffering as CPMs (the amount they can charge per thousand visitors) are falling, available inventory is climbing, free content and blogs are proliferating, user attention is being divided with social networks and the core media business cash cows like classified ads have been disrupted by companies like CraigsList.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

I wrote a blog post about being hands on where I argued that startup founders need to be hands-on or in my words, “you can’t run a burger chain if you’ve never flipped burgers.&#. I once had a startup team pitch me for an investment where the President of the company led the first call with me on his own.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 1, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series on Startup Advice. If you’ve read my blog for a while you’ll know that I’m a fan of starting businesses in a non-traditional way. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Startup Advice. I recommend that you start a company by yourself and own 100% of it. Take your inventory.

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startup advice entrepreneurs creativity 289

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NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Justyn Howard, founder of Sprout Social has a blog post that he’s written about his experiences of migrating from scrappy tools to more efficient ones (i.e. Startups often make this mistake. Like everything, I screwed this up in my first startup. I was too much Accenture, not enough Startup. I Love Scrappy.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

It costs less money to start companies so the world should have way more startups.&# I’ve heard the “world is different&# argument in every bubble I’ve ever seen. That would mean that the increased number of new business startups will lead to a “funding gap&# of deals that can’t get financed.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 5, 2010

Then let’s hope both startups can build national practices. It’s always great to meet somebody in person that you’ve interacted with on blogs and on Twitter. Tags: Tech Market Analysis VC Industry. I’d be SHOCKED if they weren’t funded pretty quickly. Watch this space. Team Pip.io

education 254

education pitching VC media 254

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

I know some people think the whole market has been disrupted and startups and funding work differently these days. Deep pockets – In the previous posts I’ve compared tech startup investing with poker taking analogies of The Big Short & Delivering Happiness. This is actually the norm. And these are people with deep pockets.

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angel investing investing investment disruption 283

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

Unfortunately, that’s really not the case for most startups. When you see all these seed stage investors debating on Twitter and blogs what structures they support, take it for what it is—a marketing exercise. They may have unlimited tolerance for pricing, but you don’t have unlimited resources as a startup. Not at all.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Keeping a blog has been great because so many entrepreneurs have written me with questions about their companies and I’ve gotten to know many of you personally through the process. Tags: Start-up Advice. I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully.

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