Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 5, 2011
This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. My first startup was no different.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners was nice enough to compile some data on Start CTO Salary and Equity at Venture Backed Companies for the LA CTO Forum and present last year. He agreed to make this data public which is awesome. Todd is a go to resource for people looking for talent in startups. He was a great presenter to our group. I highly recommend getting to know him.
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Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 13, 2011
If your startup is looking for an angel investor, it makes sense to present your plan to flocks of angels, and assume that at least one will swoop down and scoop you up. Or does it? Actually numbers and locations are just the beginning. The challenge is to find the right angel for your, and for your situation. Here are some basic principles: Angels invest in people, more often than they invest in ideas.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
A quote from Chapter 1 of my book “Steve Jobs is explaining one major reason for the iPhone ’ s success —Apple ’ s ability to integrate hardware and software engineering: “ We realized that almost all — maybe all.
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
Feld Thoughts
FEBRUARY 1, 2011
On Monday I was at the White House to help announce the Startup America Partnership. As part of this, TechStars announced the TechStars Network , an affiliation of TechStars-like programs across the country along with our commitment to the Startup America Partnership to help 5000 experienced mentors work with 6000 entrepreneurs to create 25,000 new jobs by 2015.
Startup Lessons Learned
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
Lean Startup Machine is the brainchild of Trevor Owens, Josh Horn, and Ben Fisher, a hackathon-style competition where teams come together on a Friday evening and build a brand new startup – by Sunday. It’s an impossibly short amount of time. To make it more difficult, unlike your standard issue hackathon, the judging on Sunday is not just about who can make a cool-looking prototype.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners was nice enough to compile some data on CTO Equity and Compensation at Venture Backed Companies for the LA CTO Forum and present last year. He agreed to make this data public which is awesome. Todd is a go to resource for people looking for talent in startups. He was a great presenter to our group. I highly recommend getting to know him.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 8, 2011
Contrary to what most of you might guess, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity over the last few years is not Gen-Y young upstarts, but Baby Boomers in the 55-64 year age group. In fact, according to a study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, these Boomers are actually driving a new entrepreneurship boom. Some people are calling entrepreneurship the ‘new mid-life crisis’ for the 76 million-strong demographic once thought to be over the hill.
Genuine VC
FEBRUARY 9, 2011
Evaluating a startup as a prospective employee is tough, especially when you compare to VCs. Venture capitalists have an information advantage – startups are required to be fully transparent about everything before a VC invests in it during weeks if not months of diligence, but prospective employees are limited to just a few questions they ask during a series of interviews with only a few people at the company.
ReadWriteStart
FEBRUARY 15, 2011
Just as the Human Genome Project aimed to crack the human code, the Startup Genome Project hopes to be able to drill down into some of the details of what it's calling the "innovation code.". The project has launched a survey to investigate "the science of startups," lessons from which it plans to incorporate into blackbox, a new seed accelerator that was created with the merger of techVenture, Cofounder Network, Founders First and Startup School.
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
We hear all the time about the importance of hiring the right people and the expanding universe of advice can be overwhelming; hire slow and fire fast, only hire the “right&# candidate; ask probing questions; check all references; blah blah blah. For a small business with constantly-strained capacity it can be incredibly difficult to post a job, sort through the resumes, vet the candidates, check those references, negotiate salary and benefits packages, execute the employment agreement, an
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. “But Mark, isn’t it one big time suck?&#. Oh, yeah.
This is going to be BIG.
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
It is easier to start something now than ever before. The ability of social media to help you get escape velocity is great, but it cuts both ways. A strong value proposition carried at the speed of Twitter and Facebook to the right audience could crush your company just as fast as it grew if you can’t scale. Despite advances in cloud infrastructure, many businesses still have fleshy parts—soft underbellies where a human hand is required to keep quality control, stuff something into a
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 24, 2011
Every startup lucky enough to get some traction gets to the point where they decide to hire some “regular employees” for sales, marketing, and administrative tasks. Then they are surprised to see productivity and creativity take a big dip. What they should be doing is hiring only “entrepreneurs,” meaning people who think and act as if this is their own business.
Cracking the Code
FEBRUARY 23, 2011
Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Wednesday, February 23, 2011. SaaS Multiples: Recovery or Bubble? With companies like Saleforce and SuccessFactors trading north of 8 times 2011 revenues, SaaS valuations are just back to the 2007 peak, but what is remarkable however, is that, after a period of strong correlation in 2008/2009, SaaS companies (represented by the SaaS 13 Index) have massively outperf
Feld Thoughts
FEBRUARY 20, 2011
Periodically I get backlogged with “stuff I want to blog&# that I never get to along with a handful of “links from today that are great.&# So – today you get a bunch of things that I’m involved in and turn me out. Click through to whatever interests you. Jilted in the U.S., a Site Finds Love in India : Ignighter was in the TechStars Boulder 2008 class.
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
Many entrepreneurs and small business owners argue that you should always listen to your customers. In fact, the popular lean startup principles advocate listening to your customers and iterating early and often. But listening to customers – and responding to your customers’ suggestions by implementing all or many of them – are not the same thing.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. I attempted to do a fair balance job of an increasingly important service – AngelList – started by a friend of mine – Nivi with the feelings of a colleague who I respect – Bryce – who has opted out of the service. I hope I straddled people’s points of view well enough not to have offended anybody while adding a framework for how I think about the service.
OnlyOnce
FEBRUARY 6, 2011
The Three Functions of a Management Team. After my quarterly Return Path exec team offsite last week, my team and I were rehashing the day’s conversation over dinner. Was it a good day or a bad day? An upper or a downer? We concluded that the day was as it should have been – a good mix of what I will now articulate as the three main functions of a management team.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 5, 2011
After struggling to create your business plan for months, every entrepreneur likes to think that their document is inspirational and will reach someone who is smart enough to see the brilliance of the idea, intuitive enough to recognize their business acumen, and enthusiastic enough to offer the money required to make it happen. Every serious investor, on the other hand, has a stack of these in their in-basket (email or real plastic) awaiting review, and is looking for the flaw or less-capable e
ReadWriteStart
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
Early stage education technology startups can now apply for Startl 's second annual accelerator program. The program offers ed-tech startups a three-month residency in New York City and an opportunity to work with the social venture Startl and the tech accelerator DreamIt Ventures. The program involves mentorship from marketing, business development, brand building, and customer acquisition experts, all with a special emphasis on the education technology industry.
Life Beyond Code
FEBRUARY 18, 2011
I am a been a huge fan of Brad Feld for a number of reasons (work, life, his philosophy etc.). So, I jumped on his new book (that he co-authored with David Cohen) immediately. I was blown away by the super high signal-to-noise ratio in the book. Do More Faster is one of the most highlighted books in my library today. It has been highlighted almost the same number of times as one of my all-time favorite books “ Leading the Revolution &# by Gary Hamel.
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 16, 2011
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
VC Cafe
FEBRUARY 6, 2011
VC investors rely heavily on referrals, but what should a non US startup do when looking to raise funding in Silicon Valley? I found a question on Quora that relates to European startups, but found that some of the advice may be very relevant to Israeli startups as well. How best can European startups land VC funding in the US / Sillicon Valley? Jussi Laakkonen , CEO & founder of Applifie, summarized it well: We recently raised our seed round at Applifier and it was led by a silicon valley s
Occam's Razor
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
After 416,350 words in posts and 845,128 words in comments on this blog, thus far, there is always more to explore, illuminate and share. Hence every once in a while I flip the tables and ask you for challenges you are facing. It is a great way to stay connected to what's most important to you (and keep the blog and its content relevant!). This past Monday I asked for your questions and you were kind enough to share some awesome questions.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 4, 2011
If you are a startup founder or major investor, how do you find that CEO for your “ Dream Team ” to close on funding and kick start your company? It makes logical sense to scour the job boards, engage an executive recruiter, or scan the networking sites like LinkedIn for a good array of candidates, and then interview the ones with the best resumes. If that’s as far as you go, you haven’t done the whole job.
ReadWriteStart
FEBRUARY 3, 2011
For this week's One Million by One Million roundtable, we partnered with the Indian Angel Network (IAN). India, as you all know, is a rising power in the entrepreneurship firmament, and the country's entrepreneurs are making a long-awaited switch from pure outsourcing and labor arbitrage to now venturing into building Internet companies, cloud businesses, and, as you will see in today's presenters, some very cool hybrid businesses that leverage India's cheap labor pool and, when combined with so
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
FEBRUARY 20, 2011
In my last article, How To Turn Your Life Experience Into A Business , I looked at opportunities to create a business from life experience with Mark “Hammer&# Dixon and his book, Bash for Cash , as the example. Once you have a book, you need to have a successful launch to get the word out there. Creating an author platform provides those opportunities.
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 23, 2011
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
VC Cafe
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
by Tomer Tzach, CEO, Zoara.com. As a VC turned CEO of start-up, I’ve had the privilege of being exposed to both sides of the coin. So when our company recently decided that we were ready to initiate VC talks, ready to get some funding to take us to the next level, I was surprised by some of the reactions we were receiving. While some VCs that I met seemed to be rightfully bullish about everything that had to do with eCommerce, some seemed to be missing the point.
Austin Startup
FEBRUARY 21, 2011
Interested in being part of the entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem in Austin? Here are two awesome-sounding jobs that will remain posted till Wednesday, so please check them out promptly. The Austin Technology Incubator is hiring for these positions, so make sure to apply now. ATI has served the entrepreneur community for over twenty years and focuses on the IT, Wireless, Clean Energy and Bioscience verticals.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
This article originally appeared on Silicon Alley Insider. A few months ago I wrote a post called “ Invest in Lines, Not Dots.&# It was my investment philosophy that observing teams’ performance over time was far more insightful than reacting to how good of a product demo they do, how good they present Powerpoint slides or how great tech blogs say they are.
Ben's Blog
FEBRUARY 25, 2011
Let me put you on the game. —The Game, Put You On The Game. Today we announced a new investment in TinyCo, a new mobile games company. We further announced that my partner Marc would be joining their board of directors. Here are the three reasons: 1. A Big Frackin’ Market. IDC estimates that there will be 1 billion mobile Internet users by 2013 and that estimate may very well be low.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
In my previous post, Why Leave A Six Figure Salaried Career For Online Entrepreneurship , I wrote about the various business ventures I have tried and tested over the years. One of those ventures was the creation, establishment, growth and sale of an e-commerce business. In this post, I want to lay out the details involved in how I first realized the opportunity, the formation of the business idea, the search for my supplier, the establishment and growth of the business, problems encountered an
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 10, 2011
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
VC Cafe
FEBRUARY 9, 2011
You’ve discovered the next big thing, and you feel you planned everything from concept to market entry. In the coming months you will make a multitude of decisions that will define the fate of your new company, and as an experienced startup consultant, I have seen the best and worst of cases. Below I briefly describe my experience with two of my clients, both of which faced the kinds of decisions that make or break a startup.
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