Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series. I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. You are constantly faced with decisions and there is always incomplete information.
Berkonomics
DECEMBER 9, 2009
There’s a big difference between your vision for your company, your mission and your goal. Your vision tells the world what you want to be as you contemplate in advance how you will change the world for the better. Your mission merely states who you are and what you do. It is used to limit and sift your opportunities to keep you from using resources for projects outside of your core, your mission.
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abovethecrowd.com
JUNE 2, 2009
Today’s New York Times has half page article on a billion dollar (US$) public Korean company named Megastudy. My partner Peter Fenton and I had the luxury of meeting with this company a few years back, and I always had hoped to find the U.S. equivalent. Truth be told, Business Week profiled the company two [.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 8, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons.&#. I was reading Chris Dixon’s blog tonight. He writes with a great perspective and is well worth reading. I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I had to laugh a bit reading it.
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Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 29, 2009
Advertising has driven the majority of Internet innovation. My firm GRP Partners recently funded a young LA based company named Ad.Ly that is an “in-stream advertising&# company currently focused on monetizing Twitter. This has prompted many people to question whether advertising “in stream&# and on Twitter is a good thing or a bad thing.
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
NOVEMBER 4, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series. I often have career discussions with entrepreneurs – both young and more mature – whether they should join company “X&# or not. I usually pull the old trick of answering a question with a question. My reply is usually, “is it time for you to earn or to learn?&#. Let’s face it.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 25, 2009
Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage. If you pick the wrong spouse at least you can get divorced.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 17, 2009
This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute: Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts. 3. Ability to Pivot – I don’t like to invest in people that I’ve never met before who come through my office wanting to have a term sheet within 30
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 19, 2009
This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts , Ability to Pivot and Resiliency.
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Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 19, 2009
On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. My blog was wiped out. I am very grateful to my friend Zoli Erdos for finding this retro posting for me at web.archive.org.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 1, 2009
In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. In the second post I argued that as of September 2009 the pace of VC investments has increased rapidly (at least for software / Internet investments – the only sector on which I’m competent to comment), but only for those remaining VCs who have new enough funds and aren’t plagued by “the triage problem.&# This is a direct result of innovat
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 20, 2009
This has been a year where people got mad in mass at financial institutions. It’s hard not to when you think about the amount of money that flowed into their coffers and the size of expected bonuses this year – of all years. Frankly, it disgusts me. But I’m not one to take on the big investment banks – I’ll save that for somebody else.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 1, 2009
In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising. This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this.
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Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 5, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series of posts. I heard Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark Capital say these words at a conference in London nearly 10 years ago. I jotted the words down (I normally pay little attention to anything said at conferences. Most of it is BS) and thought about them much over the years. I later learned that the quote was taken from somewhere else ( perhaps as early as the 13th century!
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 28, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Lessons. Building companies is hard work. I started my first company in 1999 in London at the height of the dot com craze. We also had facilities in Dublin, Ireland where our company was initially founded. We went through the euphoria of massive exposure at the time of our launch due to an article that ran in the Financial Times.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 4, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Many entrepreneurs who start technology companies are product people, technologists or savvy business people who worked previously for a larger company. Most start-up entrepreneurs have little or no sales experience. I know I didn’t. But through nearly a decade of startups I learned that sales comes down to three essential elements: 1.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 8, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks. Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to invest. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue.
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Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 11, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Many startup companies hire advisory boards. It’s very tempting. It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?) prominent industry luminaries to be closely associated with the company. It’s done partly in hopes of gaining their wisdom but it’s also done to portray the company in a positive light through association.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 16, 2009
This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute: Tenacity. 2. Street Smarts - OK, so you’re a tenacious person – you never give up.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 14, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. Last night I attended a DealMaker Media (whom I love because they always host such great discussions) panel on raising angel money moderated by Dan Gould and with panelists Rob Hayes (First Round Capital, more seed or A round than angel), Scot Sangster (with OrganicStartup and the best spokesperson for Tech Coast Angels that I have met to date), Tom McInerney (TGM) and Jarl Mohn (who invests on his own “account&# and whose track record is tr
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 21, 2009
This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts , Ability to Pivot , Resiliency and Inspiration.
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
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 1, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series on Startup Advice. I was reading one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs, VentureHacks, this weekend and noticed that they are running a long piece on how to pick a co-founder. 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. I recommend that you start a company by yourself and own 100% of it.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 9, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&#. I recently wrote a blog post here in which I argued that the best VC meetings are discussions and not sales pitches. Many people agreed and added that even the best sales meetings are also discussions and not pitches. A few weeks ago I sat through two very contrasting presentations and wrote this blog post right afterward.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 3, 2009
This is part of my ongoing Raising Venture Capital (VC) series. Yesterday I had lunch with a really interesting and capable serial entrepreneur who is raising his A round. The topic of &# strategic&# investors came up. It felt like Groundhog Day because I have this conversation again and again – literally dozens of times each year. And I had 2 “strategic&# investors in my first company.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 20, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&# Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough. Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC. This post covers the day after. I spoke about the topic on Fox Business News yesterday in a great session with TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon and will post it along with my other VC Videos when Fox puts it on their website.
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 AssociationÂ
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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