SoCal CTO

MAY 15, 2009

Just a quick note that I'll be moderating a Technology Council Event : Social Networking as a Business Strategy May 19, 2009 - Culver City Social networking media are used on a daily basis to grow businesses and expand career opportunities. Individuals use social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo as career-advancing tools, even more useful in a down economy.

Social Network 150

Social Network Networking Los Angeles Fractional CTO 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Because I was the Acting CTO for eHarmony at it's start, I quite often get introduced to people who have an idea for a startup company that is based on some kind of matching algorithm. They describe the company as the eHarmony of careers, clothes, jobs, college, tutoring services, doctors, service companies, investments, etc. In fact, you can get a good idea of these various things by just searching on Google for "eHarmony of" startup.

Algorithm 196

Algorithm Matching Los Angeles Angel Investor 196

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 17, 2009

I’ve recently had a chance to reconnect with Eric David Greenspan ( LinkedIn , Twitter ) He’s the CEO of Make It Work a high quality, personal, high touch technology service provider for homes and small businesses. He’s done several startups and is a board member of the Technology Council of Southern California (which is where I met him originally).

Southern California 170

Southern California Acquisition Cost Customer 170

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 13, 2009

I'm hoping you can help me figure out who I should be connecting with on this. I find myself speaking at various venues in Los Angeles to tell people (most often service providers) about how I've used social media and particularly my blogs, LinkedIn, twitter and topic hubs as part of my own services business. These presentations always inspire people to do more with LinkedIn, create or improve their blog, and maybe do more with Twitter.

Los Angeles 167

Los Angeles Social Media Media Audience 167

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 4, 2009

Last month we Launched Los Angeles Tech and in the announcement we provide the Hot List for the first half of January 2009. This hot list is based on various social signals of what people are writing about, reading, bookmarking, searching, etc. You can go to the Hot List post to see what was hot then. But, in running it now for the second half of January, the keyword that popped to the top was: Layoffs And this is definitely a sign of the times.

San Diego 159

San Diego Los Angeles Southern California Aggregator 159

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 7, 2009

I talk to a lot of founders of startups. My initial conversations normally focus on the core of the business, important Startup Metrics , probably marketing strategy (ex. SEO for Startups and Negative Customer Acquisition Costs ) and, of course, the product itself. Normally the product is defined as a web site. Most founders are fairly passionate about the features and functions of the web site, iPhone application, Facebook application, or whatever web application represents the product.

Web 150

Web SMS HTML Distribution 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 11, 2009

I've known Farida for quite a while. Maybe ten years. She is a go to person for me when I have questions around technology or early stage marketing and branding. I hadn't talked to her in a while and then because of a presentation I did around Social Media for Service Professionals she and I reconnected. It has been fun to get to know her again. And I'm looking forward to more interaction now that she's blogging.

Early Stage 150

Early Stage Southern California Los Angeles Marketing 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

I recently had a conversation with an pre-launch startup where they discussed how SEO was going to be really important for them. They went on to describe a fairly common type of site that has some original content, but not much. They are in a space where there is lots of search traffic, but they didn't have anything particularly interesting to say about how they were going to get ranked.

SEO 150

SEO Startup Search Matching 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

I recently got together with Aaron Shechet and an early stage startup to discuss the direction the company might want to take. It was a great conversation and I thought it would be a good idea to do some visible networking with Aaron to get to know him better. Tell me a bit about your background. I grew up in Los Angeles and went to undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 2003 with Honors in Economics.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Southern California Startup SEO 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Kurt Daradics ( Facebook , @KurtyD , FriendFeed , MySpace , LinkedIn , Delicious ) (pronounced dare-a-dix) is a great guy to know. He recently co-founded CitySourced and I think Ben Kuo nailed him when he describes him as "a connector. someone who makes things happen, and knows everyone, and does his best to make the world a better place." Kurt has a great background in sales and marketing.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Southern California Technology Jordan 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 26, 2009

I'm beginning my final preparation for my presentation at eLearn 2009. As I did for my keynote at ASTD TechKnowledge in January, I'm using what I described in Twitter Conference Ideas. Particularly I'm using TweetLater to plan out my presentation and hopefully provide value to participants and people who are not attending but who might be interested in what I'm presenting.

Search 150

Search 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Great by Cliff Allen Business Networking Online who I had blogged about previously in Marketing, Startups and Networking in Los Angeles. In this post, Cliff provides some feedback on what works when you move towards doing business networking online. I'm trying to get the concept of visible networking going, so his feedback is really valuable. Cliff's feedback: Your idea of "Visible Networking" can help people take the "glad to meet you" networking to the next level -- "g

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Networking Southern California Aggregator 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 20, 2009

Based on a question I posted in LinkedIn, Serena Ehrlich posted How to Use Social Media to Find Prospects. Or Sell a House. and provides the following list of suggestions for ways to use social media to build a reputation and to reach prospects. Her list included quite a few things that would likely be much farther down my list: Create short videos of your presentations.

Social Media 150

Social Media Reputation Los Angeles Media 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 16, 2009

I'm a big fan of LinkedIn and think that there's incredible value in the site. And I'm happy that they now have the concept of Saved Profiles and that they provide the ability to organize your saved profiles. When you add this to some of the other CRM type capabilities they are adding, it begins to make LinkedIn even more powerful. But I'm a bit surprised that they decided to use a folder metaphor as opposed to tags.

Design 150

Design Software 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 12, 2009

This past week has had an interesting confluence of events that's led me to conclude that I want to start doing a lot of visible networking among the tech / web crowd here in Los Angeles. I want to take you through a bit of what brought me here, because I think it will help explain what I mean by visible networking. Networking Events – Questionable Return on Your Time Last week I posted about Networking Events in Los Angeles and Southern California and received back some interesting comments, so

Networking 150

Networking Los Angeles Southern California Social Media 150

SoCal CTO

MAY 19, 2009

Just read this article - Twitter sees tools, not ads, for revenue That could be really bad news. Part of the appeal of twitter is that it's a fairly open platform and that there are a lot of people building tools that live on top of the platform. If Twitter begins to charge for tools, they will likely need to lock away aspects of their platform to prevent other people from creating competitors to the tools they create.

Revenue 150

Revenue Social Network Networking Email 150

SoCal CTO

APRIL 1, 2009

I am excited to be participating in and announcing the of: Southern California Tech Central This is a community of people in Southern California who have come together to help find and organize the best content from blogs, news sources and other web sites all around technology in So Cal. The goal is to create a place where it's easy to find current and highly relevant content.

Southern California 150

Southern California California Metrics Social Media 150

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2009

Fantastic post by Christian Gammill - Startup Delta Force… From a competitive perspective (e.g. all the other folks out there that will try to enter the same market) the barriers have been dropping over the last few years. Customer Acquisition – social media, SEO, SEM, etc Economies of Scale – not as big a barrier in web world Investment – little to none required to get started Pricing – free or freemium makes trial simple Distribution – syndication and APIs make partnering easier IP – in genera

Business Model 150

Business Model SEM IP Syndicate 150

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 20, 2009

I'm happy to announce the launch of the Los Angeles Tech Content Community. This is the beginning of a content community that collects and organizes the best content from blogs and web sites. The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding Los Angeles Technology. To be clear Los Angeles Tech is a jump off point.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles San Diego Viral Metrics 150

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

Just a quick note that I'm going to the Digital Family Summit on Wed around online communities. Hope to run into some people there.

Community 150

Community 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Some Dilbert backup on why it's hard to Evaluate the Performance of Knowledge Workers :

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150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Sorry - I posted this on the wrong blog.

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150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I did a presentation about the use of Social Media to a great group of people who mostly are different kinds of service professionals (attorneys, accountants, consultants, etc.). I promised that I would do a follow-up post with some thoughts out of the presentation and providing links. This is that post. Value of Blogging I started the presentation talking about the value of blogging.

Social Media 222

Social Media Media Los Angeles Search 222

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Great post by Mark Geller What Goes in V1.0? He talks about something that I end up discussing a lot with startups. What do you put in that first version? Or more appropriately, the first few versions? Mark does a good job capturing the essence of the issue: These days, the role of V1.0 is harder to define. It is certainly not the first version of your product you will put in the hands of non-team-members.

Startup 150

Startup Viral Metrics Distribution 150