Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

In the first two years we were really focused on getting our product adopted through major channel partners like Commission Junction, LinkShare, Google, eBay, ShareASale and others. how much energy to put into channel partners vs. direct sales. So our board meetings consisted of discussion about. how to market our products and company.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2016

The people who spend the most money on reaching consumers: consumer products, car companies, food & beverage, entertainment – need to reach mass audiences and smaller channels aren’t as effective for them relative to the time to produce creative and learn how to perform in a channel.

Advertising 150

Advertising Iowa Campaign Media 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

But I pointed out that he would be up against competitors that had spend years building relationships with the big financial services companies (as well as channel partners) and he was going to have to start from scratch. He wanted to launch his next venture in financial services because it was a bigger industry.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

The media world now has its own leader running the largest YouTube multi-channel network startup. And that’s why the online video space and YouTube ecosystem has taken one more leap toward its rightful place as next generation video platform.

Video 320

Video Los Angeles Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 320

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

If the retailer can get the product “exclusively” (even for just a time window) then it hopes to get more customers shopping at its store or watching its video channel vs. its competitors. if you don’t know how to supply and service the large channels where consumers want to purchase products.

Curation 296

Curation Los Angeles Differentiation Channel 296

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

If you can break this down by channel that you’ve acquired them from this is obviously better. The next step after measuring the customers you’re adding is to add the “cost to acquire” by channel. How many adds came through organic SEO? How many through affiliate deals? How many through SEM? Do you have a customer referral program?

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2010

To give you an example it might go something like this, here is a made up situation that a portfolio company might face: - we currently sell through channels. - we’re the market leader in signing up our channel partners. - but not enough volume of business is yet going through the channels. -

Entrepreneur 372

Entrepreneur Channel Portfolio Framework 372

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2012

“Yeah, but I’m just going to execute this [channel sales deal, international license of my product, new industry, new operating system, biz dev deal] and then it will pretty much run itself.” That channel deal that you thought would take no times ends up burning scarce calories. I hear it every week.

Bandwidth 415

Bandwidth Management Startup Channel 415

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2012

Or maybe he’ll channel them through Suster. If we could persuade him to tell you all some of his lessons I think you’d learn some interesting insight. But maybe he’s keeping them all to himself?

United States 322

United States Software Developers Software Development Developer 322

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

The Dave I know is very insightful about marketing, channel management and building developer ecosystems. This Dave knew I was running an event on “the future of television” that was important to me. So he made a special trip to LA to be there for me. Brad does this kind of thing for people. He has strong opinions that are well informed.

China 309

China Incubator Email Portfolio 309

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Let me start by saying that most channel relationships don’t work. I’ve seen way too many startups spend all their energy getting channel deals done only to find out that they don’t produce ANY revenue. This post is dedicated to explaining why channel relationships suffer and how you can improve them.

Channel 293

Channel Startup Sales Partner 293

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Traction can simply mean showing that you’re making progress with customers, product development, channel partners, initial revenue as a proof point, attracting well-known angel investors, winning industry awards / recognition. So if it’s not necessarily revenue that’s preventing an investment, then WTF is traction?

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

new arrivals plus library versus just library) or even create channels (i.e. It’s possible that the best structure in the future is PPV (pay-per-view) or different tiers of content pricing (i.e. kids movies priced as a separate package).

Los Angeles 329

Los Angeles Revenue Retention Acquisition 329

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 24, 2014

You can subscribe to the Bothsides TV YouTube channel as well – you’ll get an email update when we post new videos. The first Bothsides TV episode is now live! I’ve created a separate Twitter handle that I’ll use to share all this content. Follow @BothsidesTV.

Los Angeles 288

Los Angeles Distribution Channel Audience 288

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. You can tell if they have a deep-seated competitive spirit. Can’t go a mile deep on competition?

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Of course I went through normal other channels of deal flow. I’m not saying that lawyers were my screening process – simply that they knew about deals early on and they had voted with their time and pocketbooks so I knew I had a degree of filtering. I spent time on college campuses.

Early Stage 361

Early Stage Deal Flow Investment Bankers Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

Additionally, MiTú partners with talented Latino content creators to launch and grow their English, Spanish and Portuguese-language digital video channels and connect them with the global marketplace. Example of these collaboration include Enchufe TV, the largest Spanish-language sketch company channel on YouTube.

South America 291

South America Colombia Mexico Vertical 291

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2011

This will be the team who hires the most talented people, channels them in the most productive configuration and gets the most output from their unique capabilities. In this globally connected world product leads disappear in nano-seconds. The company with the best team on the field will win. So how exactly do you assemble such a team?

Hiring 399

Hiring Startup Global Revenue 399

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2014

In the next clip (1 minute, 24 seconds), I offered my views of how Twitter & Facebook will begin to change video distribution (hint: they will unbundled & insert their own ad unit) and I asked Joe how content creators are dealing with the emergence of multiple social media platforms as major distribution channels.

Management 292

Management Founder Product RSS 292

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Of course I went through normal other channels of deal flow. I’m not saying that lawyers were my screening process – simply that they knew about deals early on and they had voted with their time and pocketbooks so I knew I had a degree of filtering. I spent time on college campuses.

Deal Flow 347

Deal Flow Early Stage Investment Bankers Technical Review 347

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

We said it was like two people who couldn’t swim across the English Channel (21 miles) putting their arms around each other and trying to swim across together. Another common scenario with inexperienced teams is when two struggling companies come together to create a stronger team. We had a joke about this when I lived in England.

Merger 276

Merger Technical Review Early Stage Dilution 276

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Monetization: virtual goods (1/3 of total revenues); Partnerships with major brands (currently partnered with H&M and Travel Channel); forecasted to hit 6mm users by end of Summer 2010. I would also note that they claim 2.1 Competes in the same space as FourSquare , GoWalla although with a slightly different approach.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. Developing O&O (owned & operated) businesses (outside of YouTube).

Networking 366

Networking Media Distribution Video 366

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 18, 2010

Anyway, I have no magic pills for controlling the urgency addiction but recognizing the pattern in myself was an important part of both trying to move to the non-urgent quadrant more and knowing that for some things like public speaking I’m just likely to continue to channel my urgent energies and be Ok with that. How about you?

China 374

China Asia Email Technical Review 374

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

Back Channel I mentioned earlier back-channeling as a way to get feedback after a pass on how to improve. Back-channeling is also very effective in helping your process. Your back-channels should be subtle and should be truthful but it helps you to avoid having to send 5 reminder emails to a VC yourself. They’re wrong.

Burn Rate 238

Burn Rate Term Sheet CTO Hire Fractional CTO 238

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

But it doesn’t really matter if the press wasn’t big enough for TechCrunch – it just matters that it’s in the public sphere and gets amplified through social channels. I also like to give some evening homework to the new employees.

Employee 341

Employee Email Sales Channel 341

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

My job doesn’t involve the daily grind of customer complaints, product outages, business partner / channel problems, hiring / firing, etc. When I go to conference I never sit in the meeting section – I always cruise the halls meeting people. I work hard, don’t get me wrong. And the VC job has plenty of admin and minutiae.

Technical Review 312

Technical Review Due Diligence Spain Warrant 312

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Many apparel brands and cosmetic companies will actively fight against discount channels like Ross carrying their products. Apparel – You’d think that all retail brands would want to maximize the amount of product that they sell. I personally find this all about bit Sneetch-ish but it’s basic human nature.

Customer 287

Customer Technical Review Caching PR 287

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

But if you can bottle up just a little bit of that feeling, if you can channel just an ounce of your best FOMO juice and i f you’re willing to accept taking just a few more self-confident risks in your process ?—?it VCs will literally drop everything else they’re doing when they’re in that situation. it will go a long way.

Term Sheet 217

Term Sheet Later Stage Demand Email 217

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

Let’s say you give a warrant to a channel partner to sell your product. In the above example you might say that the channel partner earns 25,000 shares for every $100,000 of your product that they sell in the next 12 months with up to a cap of 250,000 shares. Example: you allocate 4% in warrants to channel partner ABC.

Warrant 298

Warrant Dilution Startup Stock Options 298

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2016

And virtually none of my competitors — VCs between the ages of 35–55 — quite understand (or have the desire) to put out content on this media channel. Now here is the important thing for you to understand — many of my target customers — entrepreneurs between ages 21–35 — are on Snapchat! where everybody else publishes. (I I do these, too.

Video 200

Video Audience Channel Media 200

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

We need to know which users have authority are therefore driving the highest conversions by category of ad and which channels drive clicks. Obviously copy is also important so we obviously need to A/B test copy and link placement as well as demographic, geographic and psychographic performance.

Technical Review 286

Technical Review Advertising Early Stage Internet 286

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2014

As soon as TrueCar started growing at a phenomenal pace and dealers who understood it was an amazing channel to acquire customers (they only pay a fee if TrueCar sells a the car) a few dealers in every area started sucking up all of the sales. So what could be wrong with price transparency in the auto sector? Apparently everything.

Turkey 338

Turkey Cloud Startup China 338

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

They are tasked with “getting deals done” so they race around talking to tons of potential partners inking anything from channel sale deals , product integration, international distribution agreements, co-marketing arrangements, M&A discussions, etc. Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Retention PR SEO 164

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2014

In-car technologies for streaming will likely erode the channel and day-part stronghold that the major shows have always had and young people are tuning into SoundCloud, YouTube, Spotify and other sources that battle for “share of mind.” At times I worry about NPR because I’m guessing the audience is aging alongside me.

Los Angeles 299

Los Angeles Angel Investor Hosting Media 299

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 11, 2015

So I sat down with Ryan to ask him directly about his phenomenal success as a 27-year-old product-manager-turned-CEO and you can watch the entire interview on my YouTube Channel here or of course you can also listen on SoundCloud on your next commute here.

Product 150

Product Startup Social Media Community 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

It has become a short form premium destination that is verticalizing content in category channels. Do you think a multi-channel distribution strategy is important to guard against unforeseen changes? (51:30 Initially it was a UGC site that competed with sites like YouTube and Veoh. 51:30 – 1:02:40).

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265