Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 25, 2014
'Tom Perkins is one of the founding members of the venerable venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins. He just had his Mitt Romney moment and his name will forever be etched in the collective consciousness of the tech community for this terribly insensitive and tone deaf letter to the Wall Street Journal. The headline of Mr. Perkins letter to the WSJ?
This is going to be BIG.
JANUARY 22, 2014
'I''m announcing two things today. First, I''ve finished raising the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures fund--tallying $8.3 million. This is what I set out to do just about two years ago when I first broke out on my own and started raising, so I''m thrilled to say that it has finally happened. I''m not going to do too much of a victory lap, though, because it bugs me a little when startups do it, and I''m a startup, too.
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Gust
JANUARY 19, 2014
'Image via Flickr (Creative Commons). Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. On the average, the entrepreneurs I know are living on Ramen noodles. But one thing they all seem to have in common is a love for learning and change. They rush in with a passion to better the world, and money is just an indication of their progress.
Derek Sivers
JANUARY 18, 2014
This essay is adapted from an excerpt of the great book “ A Geek in Japan ” by Héctor Garcia. It is the first chapter of my new Japan 2014 book. If three Japanese people are talking together, and a fourth one joins the conversation, he will apologize upon approach for breaking the harmony of the group. Why? In Japan, everything looks like it works to perfection.
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Tomasz Tunguz
JANUARY 28, 2014
Aside from a startup’s internal considerations about the right time to raise money, founders should weigh the seasonality of the fund raising market when planning their raise. There’s a rule of thumb batted around the valley that the worst times to raise capital are in the dog-days of summer and after Thanksgiving. As it turns out, this aphorism is only a half-truth.
Startup Catalyst Brief brings together the best content for the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 12, 2014
'Yesterday I wrote a post about “ growth hacking ” and why I thought it was wrong that people were hating on the term unnecessarily. It’s worth a quick read. My argument is pretty simple. If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. But being best-in-class at online marketing is also a sine qua non to standout from your peer group.
This is going to be BIG.
JANUARY 8, 2014
'Stick around long enough in a big tech community and you''ll see your share of big company evangelists come and go. They''re always hired with the best of intentions--someone meant to be the eyes and ears on the ground for a company trying to turn today''s future stars into tomorrow''s big customers. They support entreprenership because they see the ROI: Be helpful to a startup now, be there when they''re high on promise and low on cash, and you could be the platform that the next Facebook runs
Gust
JANUARY 22, 2014
'This is obviously a softball question that I’ve been Asked to Answer, as I’m the Founder/CEO of Gust. The answer, of course, is Gust —because that’s exactly the purpose behind the platform! Gust is the infrastructure that underlies much of the professional world of early stage finance. It is used by hundreds of thousands of companies in 195 countries to organize all of their investor relations material; it is used by over a thousand angel investor networks, venture capital
Derek Sivers
JANUARY 20, 2014
This essay is by Jeremy Wellard, who is based in Hanoi. This is the first chapter of my new Vietnam 2014 book. The only thing most people know of Vietnam is the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, they call it the American War, and it’s just old history. There is so much more to this youthful, thriving country. Vietnam has long been considered the cultural and artistic heart of Asia, and the Vietnamese are the “Italians of Asia”.
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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.
Tomasz Tunguz
JANUARY 26, 2014
Last week, I spent some time at HeavyBit , the community for developer focused companies in SoMa, chatting with a few companies reaching scale. Across a handful of meetings, a recurring theme surfaced for these B2D (business-to-developer companies). How should their sales and marketing apparatuses be built? Do the field sales models of infrastructure companies or the inside sales models of software companies apply when the initial user is a developer?
Berkonomics
JANUARY 2, 2014
'My dad was a smart businessman, even if not formally trained. He occasionally gave me advice that turned out to be more than wise, looking back at subsequent experience and events. His personal teaching event was a typical experience, as I reflect now upon the tens of partnerships I have counseled over the years. Most often, one partner remained active as another partner drifted away from the business, no longer carrying the weight anticipated at start-up.
Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 8, 2014
'Happy official New Year’s, all. It’s that time of year where we think about new beginnings. And there’s none that makes me happier than to announce that Jordan Hudson has been promoted to a Principal at Upfront Ventures. Please help me congratulate him by Re/Tweeting this post (and following him if you don’t already). What is a principal at a VC firm and how does it work at Upfront Ventures?
This is going to be BIG.
JANUARY 13, 2014
'Someone dropped the phrase "Rollover App" to me the other day--referring to the first app you open up when you wake up. It was funny and true.and kind of sad. I realized the other day that the very first thing in the morning that I do is check various things on the internet--and it''s because my phone is my alarm. That alarm clock is the trojan horse that the internet uses to sneak into my day.
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Gust
JANUARY 25, 2014
'There are actually no angel investing ‘journals’ per se, because there simply are not enough active, professional angel investors to make a market. There are, however, quite a few blog posts on the subject, although most are written for an entrepreneurial audience, rather than angels themselves. And there is one really excellent weekly podcast to keep you up to speed.
Derek Sivers
JANUARY 20, 2014
This is the first chapter of my new Singapore 2014 book. When I tell people I live in Singapore, the most common misunderstandings I hear are: “How can you live in that sterile squeaky-clean police state?”. “Isn’t that where they cane people for chewing gum?”. “Disneyland with a death penalty! Haha!”. “What part of China is that in?”. I’m not surprised when people misunderstand Singapore, because it requires a little explanation.
Tomasz Tunguz
JANUARY 29, 2014
Given all the momentum of the NoSQL movement, it would be easy to write off SQL-based technologies as forgotten, or simply standing still. But there’s a tremendous amount of innovation occurring in SQL databases. Amazon’s Redshift, an elastic data-warehousing solution launched in late 2012 is the most salient example. Redshift’s ability to process huge volumes of data is breathtaking.
Berkonomics
JANUARY 30, 2014
'You’ve surely heard the variations on this theme. “Ready, fire aim” was popular in the 1990’s, accredited to any of several authors. I used the term to describe my efforts in the artificial intelligence field, experimenting with new devices, the lisp programming language, and our first trial installations. It seemed an ideal way to describe a scrappy, entrepreneurial activity.
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Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 22, 2014
'Picking a VC is hard. You don’t really have much to go on to decide who would make a good fit. Reputation of firm? Of partner? Deals done in your industry? It’s a bit of all of these. I had an enjoyable conversation this morning with a young team straight out of college this morning and they were calling to ask advice on how to approach fund raising (angels vs.
This is going to be BIG.
JANUARY 27, 2014
'I was talking to a female engineer turned product manager last week about her experience as one of the few women at a hackathon. While she didn''t experience anything particularly negative, she still didn''t feel particularly welcome. When you''re one of only a few people who look like you in a place, if the event is a free-for-all, it''s tough to break into new groups and connect with strangers.
Gust
JANUARY 12, 2014
'Image via CEOAfterLife.com. Too many entrepreneurs confuse actions with momentum and results. We all know someone who repeatedly tells us how “busy” they are, when it’s hard to see what they get done. Momentum is moving things forward (mass x velocity). Founders or employees in constant motion, but with no momentum, will never get off the ground. It is true that motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all.
Derek Sivers
JANUARY 15, 2014
I had just moved to Singapore when I met the brilliant Benjamin Joffe. He’s a startup consultant and investor from France, who has spent the last 13 years living around Asia — a few years each in Korea , China , and Japan. I asked him if he could tell me the most important thing he learned from living in these different countries. He said, “ Even though we are all using English as a common language, the same word can mean very different things in different places.”.
Speaker: Wayne Spivak - President and Chief Financial Officer of SBA * Consulting LTD, Industry Writer, and Public Speaker
The old adages that "cash is king" and "you can’t spend profits" still hold true today. But however well-known these sayings might be, it requires a change in mindset to properly implement a cash flow management system that predicts your business's runaway as accurately as possible. Key to this new mindset is understanding the difference between the Statement of Cash Flows, a historical look at the source and uses of cash, and the Cash Flow Statement, which uses transaction history and forward-l
Tomasz Tunguz
JANUARY 20, 2014
As recently as six months ago, it was easy to disregard the Internet of Things (IoT) as just a theoretical market that Cisco measured in the trillions , but whose potential never seemed to materialize. That’s all changing. The past year ushered in a new era for the Internet of Things for three reasons. First, venture capitalists invested nearly $1B of capital in the IoT in 2013, more than 3% of all VC investments by dollars.
Berkonomics
JANUARY 23, 2014
'Some businesses are built around a single idea. And sometimes that idea is just too small a slice of the big picture to be interesting to investors. There was a recent investor event where I was keynote speaker, on stage only after several panels of experts had wowed the audience with their predictions and observations. One of the panelists made a point that resonated with me.
Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 14, 2014
'If you follow the tech media you would be subject to a lot of narrative biases that are completely off base – and this includes the value of email and phone calls. TL;DR. Tech news keeps proclaiming “phone calls are dead,” which is useful except that the data suggests the exact opposite. Calls are changing but not dying. All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey).
This is going to be BIG.
JANUARY 2, 2014
'Storytelling is one of the most important skills you can have as a founder. You tell stories to investors, customers, potential new hires, the press and partners. The key to telling a good story, and what I find most often lacking, is the ability to put yourself in someone else''s shoes. Who is this person and what about this story are they going to care about?
Speaker: P. Andrew Sjogren, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Very Good Security, Matt Doka, Co-Founder and CTO of Fivestars, and Steve Andrews, President & CEO of the Western Bankers Association
PCI compliance can feel challenging and sometimes the result feels like you are optimizing more for security and compliance than you are for business outcomes. The key is to take the right strategy to PCI compliance that gets you both. In this webinar, we have a great set of panelists who will take you through how Zero Data strategies can be used as part of a well-rounded compliance and security approach, and get you to market much sooner by also allowing for payment optimization.
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