Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2010

Burstly, a Santa Monica based company, provides an open and free ad management platform that helps mobile application developers better monetize their inventory. But I believe it’s a very comprehensive solution and our due diligence with large app developers confirmed as much. I’ll explain in detail below. Enter Burstly.

Mobile 282

Mobile Management Southern California Application Development 282

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

Your most talented developer quits because he thinks his boss is a fuckwit and he can’t work with her any more. More developers? Trust me – the infighting doesn’t disappear just because you work at a successful company. What do you do? Adjudication is about resolving intractable disputes. A larger marketing team?

CTO Hire 385

CTO Hire Entrepreneur Technical Review Leadership 385

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2012

When I started my first tech company in 1999 I had pretty good tech chops and had led teams but had very little exposure to many other things that matter in a startup including sales, marketing & business development. The owner of that company was in the meeting along with his business development lead. I talked too much.

United States 322

United States Software Developers Software Development Developer 322

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

The beauty of these businesses that weren’t immediate momentum is that they didn’t raise as much capital (so neither we nor the founders had to take the extra dilution), they took the time to develop true IP that is hard to replicate, they often only attracted 1 or 2 strong competitors and we may deliver more value from this cohort than even our up-and-to-the-right (..)

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

Some CTO’s swear that it is a huge improvement in development timeframes and doesn’t cause performance issues. They often aren’t great at planning development work. They should be setting the standards for how code is developed. For me the inflection point is usually when you have 5+ developers.

Fractional CTO 400

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 400

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

And this era ushered in by Amazon changed everything from the age of founders to the skill sets required to the structure of the VC industry and even to the layout of cities (yes, I would proclaim that boldly that Amazon AWS affected city development). So What Impact Did the Drop in Tech Founding Costs Have on VC?

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

The world is adopting smart phones and for many young people and many people in the developing world this will be one of their first computing devices. I would love to see FourSquare double down on web development and market it harder to its user base. I know that “Mobile First” has become engrained in developers minds.

Mobile 334

Mobile Web Software Review San Francisco 334

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 31, 2013

Developer mentors and judges from AT&T, i.am.angel, Google, Scopely, CGI, Factual, and ESRI and the City and County of LA will support coders during the weekend. Now that we have the first tech mayor of LA, it’s time for the developers and entrepreneurs to step up and show off our tech chops through an important cause.

Coder 295

Coder Community Government Hosting 295

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 years ago. That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel.

Los Angeles 387

Los Angeles Intellectual Property LP Venture Capital 387

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2012

I think it’s been tremendously helpful to us because the founder of Awe.sm ( Jonathan Strauss ) has a mentor who is going through similar issues but is a few years ahead in terms of company development. I’ve always wanted to work with Ian so it’s been a great experience for me, too.

Founder 294

Founder Vesting Startup Stock 294

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

42:20 Did agile development influence you? 1:05:35 Middle class job of the next generation: software development! 36:30 Eric: Social media is great for people with social capital. 38:00 Should you use avatars? 40:05 What happened after Imvu. 41:00 Transitioning from software to writing. 43:20 The inception of Lean Startup.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Because I knew that Ethan was on to a powerful idea and one in which he had developed huge competence and domain knowledge in. But more importantly Ethan developed the belief over time that consumers really needed a service that would allow them to book across many different service businesses from one convenient location.

Southern California 359

Southern California San Francisco CTO Hire SEM 359

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

Many years ago I worked at Andersen Consulting, originally developing software for large corporations and then as a strategy consultant. At my first company, which was based in London, we decided to set up a development facility in India. He also had experience in setting up tech development centers in India. Let me explain.

Pakistan 297

Pakistan India Technical Review Software Review 297

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. I’m going to save that for a future blog post. I felt the same way.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

Our business development discussions took longer than planned. We downsized, developed processes and found our groove. We downsized, developed processes and found our groove. I think the fondest memories and bonds in life are developed between people who go through shit like this all together and come out survivors.

PR 331

PR Software Review Ireland Germany 331

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

I had developers who thought that the chief architect was a bottleneck – having to be involved in every decision. Our most talented developer wanted to move to the US for personal reasons. This is akin in the US to having sales staff in NY, SF & LA with your HQ in one of these locations. We faced it when we were small.

Ireland 319

Ireland Sales Bankruptcy Germany 319

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

My partner Greg Bettinelli is an avid sports fan who throughout his career has developed an expert understanding in online ticketing (at eBay has was a champion of the StubHub acquisition) and online marketing.

Southern California 150

Southern California Philadelphia Mobile Stock 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Because they wouldn’t have the enormous amounts of profits that they’ve been able to sink back into research & development. A healthy eco-system of application developers is required for any software or Internet company to be massively successful. And then I saw many people developing Twitter spam filters.

Technical Review 286

Technical Review Advertising Early Stage Internet 286

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. I used to always tell my development team, “you need to design a product that my dad could use.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2017

years of software development. Our defensible infrastructure comes from the fact that we now have huge volumes of customer storage earning the equivalent of SaaS revenue and any new entrant would have to invest in the fleet of cars, bins, drivers and warehouses that we now have not to mention 4.5

Technical Review 268

Technical Review Los Angeles Software Review Artificial Inteligence 268

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

But you must work hard to develop alternate distribution at websites like Yahoo!, You also need to develop an O&O (your own websites) strategy. MSN & AOL. You must find ways to get some distribution through other online partners like Hulu or package up shows for distribution on Roku or Xbox. Technology is Critical.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Seksom most recently ran Corporate Development & Strategy for Twitter so he knows a thing or two about exits to corporates and whether he funds a startup or not I suspect many will get value from building a relationship with him for his expertise. He also wrote this excellent book on the Venture Capital industry that I highly recommend

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2016

Watching him develop over the past 4.5 Kevin not only built relationships with many of the younger, more emerging professionals in all of the US funds but he has also developed a very active investor relationships with Asian funds in particular in Japan, South Korea and China and in Northern Europe.

Partner 150

Partner South Korea Venture Capital Europe 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2019

For years software development worked on a “waterfall model” in which you did research, design, build, test, deploy and then watch how users reacted to your product. I also wrote an entire series on the topic of Startup Boards if you want to do any more reading that link has several articles you can dig into. How Do Boards Get Out of Sync?

Management 234

Management Startup Dividend Early Stage 234

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development. Also, this goes equally for business development. So I hope these posts will be useful to all and not just those who need road warriors.

Hiring 346

Hiring Sales Startup Early Stage 346

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2013

In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA. If you haven’t already followed me on Twitter, that’s the fastest way to get blog updates. Click here. This post is about the “P” or pain.

Sales 367

Sales Software Review Social Media Customer 367

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

So investing $3-5 million in a company and taking a year to 18 months to see how it develops before adding more fuel can often be the right course of action. We worked with police departments, the ministry of defense, many of the largest utility companies in Europe and a ton of contractors, engineers, architects, developers and suppliers.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

We have 12 developers and they have 3. Sales people will often sell future development work. If your team (and you) see a competitor massively undercut you on price you sure better be able to sell to your customer that the temporary offset in a cheaper price will be eroded by the much great benefit of working with you.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people. If you don’t know WHY you’re adding features don’t do it just because you have a development team. I love that saying.

Development Team Review 323

Development Team Review SEM Channel Social Media 323

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 19, 2015

An example might be a business development conversation, a first customer meeting, the first candidate in a recruiting process, the first time you talk with a journalist at TechCrunch or the first meeting to consider your business strategy. Lots of people start, very few finish.

LP 150

LP Warrant Portfolio Framework 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Do so at your peril. So, definition: when I talk about a business plan I’m not talking about a 40-page Word document outlining your market approach.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Early-stage companies shouldn’t: outsource core product development, have consulting firms build it for them to speed up time-to-market, shouldn’t hire too many business people until product is complete and early product/market fit tested. Engineering is critical but it is not everything.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2021

You need to develop pattern recognition for what truly exceptional looks like. If you see every FinTech company you can possible meet (or even a sub-sector of FinTech like Insurance Tech company … you can truly develop both intuition and expertise over time). Don’t rush to do deals.

Angel Investor 301

Angel Investor Deal Flow Portfolio Forecast 301

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#. He went out and found a developer and built a product. He looked stunned. I said that he had been talking about doing this for too long. He still had no website and no prototypes. I said that was my point.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 414

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Accomplished executives well her senior were very comfortable joining Meredith on this journey and trusting her leadership to raise capital, do business development deals, build a team and ultimately a great company. And finally it comes down to the good old instinct test.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence CTO Hire 418

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2014

Phoebe had moved to the US (to Southern California) to set up shop, raise money and build a digital team to start to develop her online direct business (much of her product is sold through third-parties today – most of it offline) more fully.

Merger 296

Merger Southern California eCommerce New Zealand 296

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

We had lots of debates about the tech world and about career development. We spent a lot of time together on the trip. In conferences, in bars, at late-night food, touring the sites in China. Trevor for those who know his is an intense and focused dude. And he has an edge. And I like it. Hard work.

Software Review 398

Software Review Technical Review China Mexico 398