This is going to be BIG.

JULY 8, 2013

'I probably get around a dozen e-mails a week asking me how to get into venture capital. On top of that, anytime I talk to anyone who wants to get involved in startups but isn''t sure what they want to do, inevitably, I hear, "And then I was thinking maybe I should look into venture capital, too.". I usually direct people to this post --still hanging atop the search rankings for " How to be a VC analyst" years later.

venture capital 417

venture capital VC advice capital 417

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

'I work with a lot of startups. I start to notice when bad behavior creeps into the system as a whole. I have seen much of that behavior over the past 2 years get worse. Nobody seems to want to make money any more. I remember just a decade ago in 2003 when we all laughed at how dumb people in the 90′s were talking about the race to “capture as many eyeballs as possible” before your competition.

VC 412

VC advice strategy accelerator 412

Berkonomics

JULY 18, 2013

'Substitute the word “money” for “water” and we have an explanation for most all of the reasons why successful products move from concept through early adopters through mass market. Money flows to the cheapest effective solution to a problem. Fighting this fact will just extend the misery of accepting a product or marketing failure in the marketplace.

technology 71

technology investing investment 71

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 16, 2013

Earlier this week, I met an experienced head of sales. During our meeting, the candidate shared a simple way of thinking about a startup’s sales process that resonated with me. A startup’s sales evolution contains three phases: beta, reference customer, ROI calculator. Beta : A founder of the startup develops relationships with a handful of customers who will work in tandem with the company to design, tune and improve the product.

startup 48

startup frameworks development support 48

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technology

abovethecrowd.com

JULY 17, 2013

'“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” — Freewill, Rush. If you happen to be a sports fan (I am), one of the coolest features to emerge in our lifetime is the ability to program your DVR remotely. The game is about to start, and you forgot to record it. No problem — you can simply talk to your DVR remotely. It’s like magic.

incumbents 96

incumbents real estate disruption development 96

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2013

'This is final part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA – the overall methodology is described here. Pain. Unique Selling Proposition. Compelling Event. Champion. Key Players such as enemies, sages and blockers.

peer-to-peer 324

peer-to-peer advice technology innovation 324

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 14, 2013

'The other day, I was out at MCU Park in Coney Island, where the Brooklyn Cyclones play. I was chatting with the GM of the team up on the party deck. We turned away from the game to face Brooklyn, and look down at the streetscape below. There were a lot of empty lots and buildings in need of renovation. For as much as Coney Island had been "cleaned up" in recent years, it''s been slow to thrive and become more than just a beach destination during the summer.

communities 296

communities coworking spaces economic development funders 296

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 24, 2013

'At accelerators like Techstars, the "Office Hours" is a standard part of the program. A mentor comes in and a whole slate of companies are scheduled to meet with them for around 20 minutes or so. It''s more than an elevator pitch, but not enough time for a full pitch. So what are you supposed to get accomplished in that time? First of all, get it out of your head that Office Hours is time to pitch.

accelerator 288

accelerator pitching venture capital technology 288

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 1, 2013

'I am going to be wrong over the course of my career--many times. I understand and accept that because I know that if I do not take risk, I will not make a return. On top of that, I am building a portfolio--and I plan to be a long term investor in the asset class. If you are trying to prove to yourself that any one particular deal will be successful, either a) you''ll never get there or b) you''re convincing yourself that you know more than you really do.

venture capital 281

venture capital pitching board investing 281

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development

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 22, 2013

'Congratulations New York Metro area. Not that VC dollars are the be all and end all, but it''s one important measure of the health of a startup community, and NYC''s latest quarterly numbers from the PWC Moneytree report are continuing a positive trend--not only relative to the Valley, but in the aggregate. We''re up 11.5% year over year this quarter, while Silicon Valley is down a whopping 21.8%.

VC 256

VC venture capital health communities 256

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 31, 2013

'I first met Chris Quinn in person three years ago. She came to a Startup Weekend and gave a speech about how New York wasn''t doing such a great job supporting tech entrepreneurship. It was frustrating, because we had come such a long way, and having a public figure deride our progress and tell the world we''re not doing a good job wasn''t going to help the situation.

support 251

support entrepreneurship economic growth communities 251

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 3, 2013

'In baseball, wins are built on a lot of small moves over the course of a game--a hit that just misses the foul pole, being safe by an inch to break up a double play, or bunting. The other day, a friend that wasn''t familar with the game asked me why anyone would bunt and give yourself up. Doesn''t it cost you an out? Any fan knows the answer: Bunting moves the runners over.

venture capital 236

venture capital advice capital ventures 236

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

'I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. It’s why it’s important to establish a brand, know what your key messages are and communicate them often and simply. I have published many of these PR Tips before.

consulting 385

consulting VC networking strategy 385

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opportunity

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 18, 2013

'Pitching to a VC can be like trying to have a conversation with a three year old. We''re constantly distracted, off on tangents, difficult to keep focused. We also get bored really easily. That''s why you need to start off every pitch--be it in an elevator or in a meeting--with a hook. A hook captures the audience''s attention and gets them leaning in.

pitching 361

pitching venture capital VC technology 361

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 4, 2013

'This is part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA – the overall methodology is described here. Pain. Unique Selling Proposition. Champion. Compelling Event. This post talks about the “K” or Key Players involved in a buying decision.

advice 321

advice leadership SaaS technology 321

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 28, 2013

'Sometimes, you sit and stare at your computer--overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff you need to do. How are you ever going to get it done? Well, you know what? You won''t. As soon as you get this stuff done more stuff will follow. In fact, the more you do, the more people will give to you to do--or that you''ll notice can get done. So what do you do?

health 272

health support 272

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 30, 2013

How should a successful marketing initiative for a startup operate? It’s possible to jump right into performance marketing immediately after launch, optimizing conversion funnels and squeezing every cent out of ad spend. But I think there’s an important step that precedes performance marketing: community development. . Yesterday, I met with an entrepreneur who was researching how best to build a marketing team for her business.

communities 40

communities SaaS education support 40

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B2B marketing

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 28, 2013

From time to time, entrepreneurs ask one investor for referrals to other investors. After all, investors network frequently, work together and have long term relationships with each other so a referral should go a long way. But not all introductions are equal. The most successful investor-to-investor referrals are those where the referring investor is investing in the business and is seeking to fill out the round with complementary capital.

networking 40

networking investing investment opportunity 40

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 25, 2013

In 2005, I started as a customer support rep in the AdSense team at Google. Over the next few months, I was trained in the art of handling hundreds of emails per day. My training focused on using a customer service tool called Trakken that Google had acquired and heavily modified to enable AdWords and AdSense teams to manage the torrent of inbound support emails from customers.

support 40

support collaboration enablement 40

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 21, 2013

Atul Gawande, the American surgeon known for his book “ Better ”, wrote an article in this week’s New Yorker called “ Slow Ideas: Some innovations spread fast. How do you speed the ones that don’t? ” He describes the challenges faced by healthcare institutions all over the world: despite the advances in research, the most difficult part of improving care isn’t availing doctors and nurses to these breakthroughs, but changing their behavior.

frameworks 40

frameworks startup innovation technology 40

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 17, 2013

This week, I visited a startup whose office had a very unusual feature: a usability lab. There I was in a soundproofed room with a table in the center flanked by two chairs, one for a user and one product manager or UX researcher. On the table, a constellation of web cams record a user’s facial expressions and interactions with a mobile phone or laptop while a microphone captures the user’s voice.

incubation 40

incubation entrepreneurs development startup 40

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

financing

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 14, 2013

With more than 80% of venture capital investments occurring in enterprise and with the public markets disproportionately rewarding SaaS companies with huge enterprise value-to-revenue multiples ( median is 7.6 ), it’s no surprise that interest Software-as-a-Service is booming. After meeting quite a few SaaS companies, I’ve compiled a list of my ideal characteristics for a SaaS business below.

SaaS 40

SaaS leadership financing finance 40

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 1, 2013

It is easy to write off content marketing as a waste of time. Effectiveness is difficult to measure; it is time consuming and the payback period on the investment is uncertain. But unlike most forms of paid marketing, content marketing has a cumulative and compounding return. Each of the posts of a blog continues to attract traffic from SEO and social channels long after it has been published.

sustainability 40

sustainability media networking support 40

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2013

'Last year I wrote a blog post on entrepreneurs with a chip on their shoulders. I think it’s an important read. A chip on one’s shoulder as in, “F**k the system, it’s broken and I want to fix it” is exactly the energy I look for in entrepreneurs. My internal compass says that “country-club” entrepreneurs struggle to make as big of an impact because it’s really hard to totally change a system that you’re part of and have a vested interest in.

energy 371

energy entrepreneurs advice startup 371

Berkonomics

JULY 4, 2013

'This is one of those “My dad used to say” homilies. You’ve probably heard the accompanying “It takes just as much effort to sell a small deal as a big one,” over the years. The truth of this is more nuanced. Some businesses will prosper in the shadow of larger competitors by specializing in those smaller accounts that are just not attractive to those with higher overheads and larger aspirations.

board 94

board development 94

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.

strategy