Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 15, 2012

My Blackberry died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. It seems so long ago that we had to start hiding our Blackberry’s in our pockets to avoid always being chastised. If you were caught sending out an email on your Blackberry you had to quickly whip out your iPhone to show that – wait! – I have one of these, too. It is stunning to think about the blind spots that market leaders can develop.

disruption 386

disruption consulting culture media 386

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 10, 2012

The other day, I'm in a meeting where someone told me an industry magazine that would be relevent to one of my companies. I texted the founder and got the following response: " Yeah. We were in their last issue.". Oh, umm. yeah. well, carry on. A lot of times, I take meetings with companies that feel a lot more like they're on the outside looking in than they should.

pitching 378

pitching startup networking founder 378

Gust

DECEMBER 31, 2012

Richard Branson image via Wikipedia. The buzz from startup executives, especially high-tech ones, has long been that startups are no place for Baby-Boomers (1946-1964) – you must have the high energy and crazy determination to work 20-hour days to succeed. Only the under-35 age group need apply. I will argue that times have changed, and you better take another look.

startup 177

startup energy construction consulting 177

abovethecrowd.com

DECEMBER 26, 2012

Over the past several years, I have become a huge fan of Mark Armstrong’s web service, Longreads. For those of you that don’t know, Longreads is a Twitter handle ( @longreads ), and a web service ( www.longreads.com ) that points to the best long form content on the Internet. At its core, it’s an amazingly effective editorial and discovery engine. Combined with a product like Instapaper, it creates an online/offline reading experience that feels purpose-built for a tablet world.

finance 68

finance financing media innovation 68

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strategy

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 27, 2012

Investors sometimes join into investment rounds that have been pre-negotiated by others, receiving the paperwork already created by attorneys from that negotiation. It is not uncommon for a sharp investor to discover a “stinky” clause or two in such agreements when reading them in preparation for signing. Bill Payne came across just such a stinky clause in a recent deal we both were late in the process of joining.

entrepreneurs 66

entrepreneurs investing investment 66

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2012

I got a call Sunday from a business colleague while I was sitting in the lounge at LAX waiting for yet another delayed flight. This colleague is a lawyer with whom I work on a deal and have done so for a couple of years. By all accounts I now consider him a friend. He caught me while I was sipping a Bloody Mary and thinking a bit a business situation that bummed me out.

startup 363

startup real estate VC venture capital 363

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 5, 2012

Raising money is hard. VCs give out money for a living and put their email address next to it, so that should give you a sense of what their inboxes look like. So how do you get in front of them? Once you do, how much badgering is ok? Is it persistence or annoyance? Here are a few things I recommend but remember that every investor is different so there may be some disagreement. 1) Please stop introducing yourself in self-effacing ways.

VC 360

VC pitching disruption advice 360

Gust

DECEMBER 24, 2012

Image via Facebook. New product startups rightfully begin with a heads-down focus on creating the ultimate product – whether it’s a new technology, a new look and ease of use, or a new low-cost delivery approach. Most then add customer service at the rollout, but very few really understand what it means to be truly customer centric, and even fewer really achieve it.

startup 166

startup education strategy technology 166

Tomasz Tunguz

DECEMBER 20, 2012

About three years ago, I started journaling my startup education by blogging. In retrospect, blogging has been one of the most rewarding activities for me as an investor. Blogging helps me some observe changes in the start-up ecosystem, communicate trends primarily through data while strengthening and building relationships. It’s been more gratifying than I could have hoped.

frameworks 40

frameworks disruption education media 40

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startup

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 13, 2012

Business cycles are a fact of life, and those of us who have lived through many cycles have gained experience in finding the proper time to step on the gas and when to use the brakes. These next several posts, we will explore a number of ways to build security into your plan, including insights relating to cash management, banker relations, and identifying recurring revenue streams that do not rise and fall with the business cycle… Often we joke together as CEOs that our goal is “world dom

investing 61

investing investment 61

Derek Sivers

DECEMBER 1, 2012

You can focus your time locally or globally. If you’re local, you focus on your community, doing things in-person. But this means you have less time to focus on the rest of the world. If you’re global, you make things for the whole world. But this means you have less time to be part of your local community. Neither approach is right or wrong, but you need to be aware of the trade-off.

communities 55

communities 55

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 10, 2012

My wife & I have a close friend who recently entered the workforce for his first-ever job. On his first day of work my wife was kind enough to write down words of wisdom from her years on the job. I don’t write about Tania very often – mostly at her request. Otherwise I’d shout from the mountain tops how smart & capable she is.

advice 414

advice peer-to-peer construction consulting 414

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 21, 2012

This week, three companies that I met super early and passed on raised significant rounds of funding. Actually, I wouldn't even really call them passes, because in a couple instances, they were just conversations--"Pre Deck" if you will. Devrim Yasar just raised an additional $7.25 million for Koding.com. I met him in April of 2010--almost two years before he got a venture round.

VC 265

VC education entrepreneurs development 265

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financing

Gust

DECEMBER 27, 2012

1. Understand your business. It sounds obvious, but the majority of entrepreneurs who pitch me have obviously never thought through many of the major issues surrounding their companies. You should know EVERYTHING about your business, product, customers and competition. You should know every metric regarding customer acquisition, conversion and retention.

investing 164

investing investment pitching mix-use 164

Tomasz Tunguz

DECEMBER 11, 2012

Tech startups write a ton of code. Broadly speaking, most of that code base is customer facing. But to be successful, the product must be supported by a litany of great “invisible” technology - the internal tools and products that help a company scale. They are the skeleton of the startup. At Google, there were hundreds if not thousands of small internal tools built to solve problems.

advice 40

advice education support enablement 40

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 6, 2012

How often do you take the time to rate your employee-associates? Is it really worth the time and effort when measured from the perspective of the company and of the employee? First, like any important process, the metrics used to measure effectiveness and progress are so important to a successful outcome, that a good manager will spend time reviewing those metrics used by others and create an appropriate set of measurements for your company that reflect the most important attributes of the empl

board 61

board development investing investment 61

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 13, 2012

One of the aspects of running a venture fund that I am most excited about is turning over rocks that other VCs might not. I'm less likely to get excited about the next big photo sharing app coming out of YC, and more into going "where no VC has gone before.". Whatever I do, it needs to be in big enough spaces. What are the biggest opportunities? To be really basic about it, everyone on the planet eats, sleeps, and poops--so you could start there.

investing 341

investing investment ecology communities 341

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technology

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 17, 2012

When I was little, I learned that "Knowing was half the battle." More recently, I've learned another phrase--that "data is the new journalism." In times of national tragedy, more and more people take to the internet on data research missions after reading news narratives. It's not enough for them to just hear a story. They want to know actionable facts.

media 310

media sustainability enablement innovation 310

Gust

DECEMBER 2, 2012

Image via Facebook.com. Every entrepreneur needs to be honest about their strengths and weaknesses, and realistic about their reasons for choosing the startup route. For any entrepreneur, even the best business opportunities, if entered for the wrong reasons, will likely fail. Some of these reasons seem obvious, so forgive me for restating, but I still hear them too often.

peer-to-peer 181

peer-to-peer startup entrepreneurs health 181

Gust

DECEMBER 16, 2012

ABC Shark Tank Angels via Elite Daily. Every new startup I know dreams of being funded early by one of the 318,000 active Angel investors in the USA alone. But many entrepreneurs don’t realize that Angels are also extremely discerning in the projects that they will invest in, rejecting approximately 97% of the proposals submitted to them, according to the California Investment Network.

networking 179

networking investing investment pitching 179

Gust

DECEMBER 6, 2012

What’s an advisor to a startup deal? Technically, advisor is one of those bucket terms that means anything and everything, depending on context. Those names and faces and backgrounds that turn up in pitches and business plans might be deep and important relationships, somebody with options or equity who is going to be helping for the long term; or meaningless fluff, somebody who agreed once to have his or her name appear, but really does nothing. .

startup 165

startup advice pitching capital 165

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opportunity

Gust

DECEMBER 9, 2012

Image via Facebook. It would be no fun if starting a business was simply plotting a straight line between your idea and success, with no challenges along the way. Zigging and zagging amongst the obstacles is the fun part of being an entrepreneur, and it’s what sets you apart from the average worker who knows exactly what he or she has to do every day to get paid.

startup 163

startup entrepreneurs pitching capital 163

Gust

DECEMBER 6, 2012

It depends on the quality of the idea. I’m a firm believer in Derek Sivers ‘ calculus, which goes like this: AWFUL IDEA = -$1. WEAK IDEA = $1. SO-SO IDEA = $5. GOOD IDEA = $10. GREAT IDEA = $15. BRILLIANT IDEA = $20. The real value, of course (as other answers here have noted), comes from executing on the idea. And to see how that calculation works, check out Derek’s classic, seminal article on the subject: [link].

investing 150

investing investment entrepreneurs startup 150

Gust

DECEMBER 18, 2012

Consider this (emphasis is mine): Ads are the Internet’s tax on users who want free apps and websites. Allmost all free apps and services have ads. Ad-supported companies are akin to the government in the sense that they are both really good at finding ways to charge you without it seemingly coming out of your pocket. Many people’s taxes are taken automatically out of their payroll, so they don’t think of that money as being theirs to begin with.

education 144

education opportunity support 144

Gust

DECEMBER 20, 2012

There is no specific ratio between “sweat equity” and cash in a venture, and that’s actually not a good way to think about the issue. The bottom line is that cash is cash is cash, and everything else is “not cash” The reason is that cash is fungible, which means it can be interchanged for everything else, from programming skills to vacations on the Riviera.

ventures 136

ventures investment investing angel investing 136

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