Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

'Five-and-a-half years ago I first met Chamillionaire at a tech conference in LA. I saw him on stage at the event talking about how he used social media to engage audiences. This was 2009 and his understanding of audience engagement was far beyond anything I was hearing from most people at that time. I reached out after the event to learn more. We started hanging out a bit and discussing technology and entrepreneurship.

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abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

'[An edited version of the following blog post originally appeared in a modified form in the pages of the weekend edition of the Financial Times last Saturday. ]. Every successful technology company raises money throughout its lifecycle, perhaps starting with a seed investment and progressing through Series A, B, C, late-stage investments, and, for the most successful companies, an IPO.

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financing finance investment investing 102

Guy Kawasaki

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

A good business model forces you to answer two simple questions: “Who has your money in their pockets?” And “How are you going to get it into your pocket?”. These questions may lack subtlety, but making money isn’t a subtle process. More elegantly stated, the first question involves identifying your customer and the need that she feels. The second question creates a sales mechanism to ensure that your revenues exceed your costs.

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David Teten VC

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

I’m surprised at how many funding pitches I get which lack some of the basic information which investors require before funding. I think this stems from two causes: 1) Lack of basic knowledge of the information investors require. But I would hope that a reasonably competent founder could easily educate herself about what information an investor wants with some basic research. 2) A desire to hide important information which you think might be perceived badly , e.g, you raised $9m but are pivot

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strategy

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

'Forming a board. It''s what the best performing companies do once they take on outside investors. Board members can provide useful feedback, help to focus the founding team, and provide a network of contacts. . Unfortunately, many companies don''t get financing--because they don''t get any of the above. They don''t get the feedback they need, especially around priorities.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

'*. What is the role of a VC for entrepreneurs? I suppose it can be different for every founder and for different VCs but I’d like to offer you some context on what I think it is and it isn’t. I was recently contacted by an entrepreneur who was consider a few different business models for his company. I barely know the guy (or his markets) but he wanted me to weigh in one “which market I thought he should pursue.” I responded. “I can’t tell you that one approa

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For Entrepreneurs

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

'Survey results from 342 B2B SaaS companies on key inside sales metrics including group structure, ramp and retention, quota and compensation, activity & technology and leadership. Intro The SaaS model has become mainstream, and is everywhere. Gone are the early fears of data privacy and security, and now even late adopters are using SaaS for […].

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

'When we accept the work commitment from a person we hire, we make a pact with the new employee that often stops at agreeing to pay for service rendered and to provide a safe working environment. There should be more than that. With some people you hire, you know you are just renting their services as they pass through your organization, aimed at a higher calling.

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culture opportunity support 70

Fink About It

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

I recently recorded a Podcast for Gavin McCully’s The Pitch Deck – Episode #53. Gavin offers a number of other great episodes. Enjoy Ep #53: Jeffrey Finkle, Angel Investor/Coach, ARC Angel Fund – Set the Context For Your Investors Joining me today on The Pitch Deckpodcast, our guest brings an amazing new perspective, which I don’t believe [.].

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startup

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

'I counsel a lot of job seekers looking to get into the startup world. Very quickly, I lay out the fact that getting a job comes down to two very simple things: 1) Do you know what you do? 2) Does everyone else? That''s it. If people had a clear concept of what value you bring to the table and lots of people understood that value, all you''d have to do is tweet that you were a free agent and the opportunities would come to you.

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venture capital opportunity technology capital 366

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Once a startup has found an initial product market fit, the business must evolve the way it models its growth. Before product market fit, a startup’s financial projections focus on costs. The company has no visibility into their revenue growth. So, the management team should minimize costs, maximize cash and lengthen runway to provide as much time as possible to find that product market fit.

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SaaS startup board development 44

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

'*. I recently wrote a post talking about how some VCs meddle in operating company decisions or some executive teams are too reliant on VCs to jump in and make hard calls for them. Fred Wilson also wrote on a similar topic in his usual more succinct manner , with a great quote being: “One thing I know for sure is that those who advise and invest in startups cannot and should not meddle in the day to day decision making.

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For Entrepreneurs

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

'The following is a guest post by Tim Bertrand. I have the pleasure of knowing Tim since the late 1990’s when we worked together at my last startup. Tim now heads up world wide sales and field operations at Acquia, the company behind Drupal. In this post, he offers some great advice for how to get consistent […].

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SaaS advice startup 166

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financing

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

'Unless your job is to teach, attempting to tell your direct reports HOW to do the job you’ve asked or ordered them to do will be a disincentive, will remove some of the authority you’ve delegated, and definitely reduce their motivation to act and lead. Think for a moment of sometime in the past where someone directed you to do a job, then launched into a lengthy explanation of how you should do it.

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Guy Kawasaki

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

Interesting story of how Alicia Shaffer sells $1 million of fashion items via her Etsy shop. It’s fantastic that Etsy has created a market like this–democratizing commerce and crafts! [link]. There is some controversy about whether her products are handcrafted “enough,” but there are marketing lessons to learn from her success, nonetheless! The post The Story of a Million-Dollar Etsy Business appeared first on Guy Kawasaki.

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entrepreneurship 40

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

'Two things ain''t nobody got time for: 1) That. 2) Keeping track of all of the various criteria and foci of the hundreds of potential co-investors you could have in a seed round. Especially not as a one partner fund. Given that I often help my companies finish fundraising by introducing them to other investors, I wind up making a lot of intros. Keeping up with who does extra stage, what defines too early, who will only do B2B, consumer, etc., is a huge pain in the ass.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

In The Shape of Things to Come , the New Yorker profiles Sir Jony Ive, the man they call Apple’s greatest product. Ive is iconic. His products have been sold 1.5 billion times. For all of his success, Ive’s personality isn’t well known. Neither is his personal history. Or how he manages the Apple Design Lab. The New Yorker article reveals some of these three things.

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culture collaboration technology 40

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technology

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

'A shortened, better edited and with nicer pictures version of this post first appeared on TechCrunch. But if you want it in it’s full V1 glory read on … You’ve never been a CEO but might like to be one some day. But how? Nobody sees you as a CEO since you’ve never been one? I wrote this conundrum and the need to take charge of how the market define your skills in my much-read blog post on “ personal branding.” If you don’t create the message about your

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advice peer-to-peer VC board 334

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

'My long-time friend Jason Lemkin is on the verge of launching a spectacular SaaS conference called SaaStr this week. What Jason has achieved in no time flat in VC is astounding. Without inventing the browser he has single-handedly created a personal VC brand on a shoestring. And as I’ve written about before – building a personal brand is extremely important in today’s competitive job market.

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SaaS VC board ventures 322

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

'*. Phone calls. Millennials are allergic to them. I have this conversation Sofa King often that I’m sure each reader who has met me will think I’m talking specifically about you. I’m not. Well, I am. But not only you. Email is efficient. You can crank out asynchronous thoughts, orders, questions, commands and comments. I email often.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

If I were asked to create a content marketing strategy for a person or a business from scratch, I would craft a strategy with three dimensions: customer segments, customer lifecycle stage and content type. **Customer Segments: **Product managers/marketers are responsible for identifying the most important customer segments a startup will pursue. Picking the right customer segments increases profitability , maximizes market size and prioritize the most attractive customer for the business.

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strategy startup SaaS frameworks 40

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opportunity

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Each quarter, Zendesk releases a Customer Satisfaction Benchmark to help companies build more effective customer support teams. The Q4 2014 differs from the previous in an important way. Instead of comparing companies in the same industry, for example, Education, Zendesk clustered companies with similar customer support characteristics, including ticket volumes, product support complexity and a few others, which revealed some important conclusions.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

How much should your startup budget for its employee stock option pool? One way of answering this question is a blanket addition per year, say a 2% renewal. Another way is to look at the cash based cost of the stock based compensation. We’re going to examine the second one today by looking at the basket of 50+ SaaS companies. The chart above shows the average stock-based compensation (SBC) per employee by years since founding across the basket of publicly traded SaaS companies.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

'I live in LA and fund startups. So you can imagine that I see a lot of video startups. Most will fail. I repeat the same mantra to every one I see. “You can’t build a large online video company. You have to build a large online tech company that distributes video.” I try to explain this to every team I see and I’m not being flippant.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

'Ever had a manager above you who said one thing and did another? At least once? Or in a pattern of repeats? Well, you’re not alone. Did you think less of that person for it? Would you follow that manager to the ends of the earth? Well, almost everyone has had multiple such experiences with a senior manager. And most people think less of that person than before.

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culture 66

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