Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2010

As your company develops multiple offices, hires a larger number of sales people or increases product complexity over time this kind of tacit knowledge doesn’t scale. PR – Some companies are excellent at PR and others don’t put much effort into it at all.

Sales 286

Sales PR Forecast Technical Review 286

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.

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

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

JUNE 22, 2015

I need to give credit for the topic to PR Malloy who Tweeted me this question. PR Malloy (@diddly_do_indy) June 13, 2015. Why Exclusivity Matters to Your Customers or Business Development Partners. So often exclusivity on mega deals is of huge importance to your potential customers or business development partners.

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. Final startup grind from msuster. figure out roles. identify gaps.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

But often this doesn’t tell the whole story because often companies are also spending money on PR and other marketing activities in order to support the sales process. Generally you should take your full marketing spend including PR divided by your customers acquired to get your “fully loaded CAC.”

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

o Huge on PR, “Be Everywhere” is his motto – fly to NY, proactively everywhere he could get press. To make PR big you need to find a way to “make news”. To make PR big you need to find a way to “make news”. o CPM model gave him control over the information in the acquisition cycle so he focused on that. -

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Warrant Customer Term Sheet 304

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, 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

APRIL 3, 2014

We have 12 developers and they have 3. Sales people will often sell future development work. It’s the easiest way to justify losing deals, put pressure on your to build the features they want and they always believe a competitors PR more than the reality they see inside your business. I’ve seen it a thousand times.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

He’s focused on that sector (not exclusively but predominantly) and therefore has an amazing network at large financial services firms to help you with business development. So they develop short-hand ways to qualify things better. So make sure you have a solid PR strategy. Understanding PR & Crisis Management.

Developer 366

Developer Silicon Valley PR Las Vegas 366

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There’s too much PR and too many tech blogs and too many newsletters and aggregators and Twitter summarizers to even try to catch everything that’s going on and equally there’s so much noise that it becomes harder to be heard. Do fewer business development deals but make the ones you do have more impact.

Software Review 150

Software Review Turkey Portfolio Syndicate 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. To be clear – I’m not saying huge successes make a VC less likely to be helpful to you – I’m just saying it’s not a guaranteed predictor. Connections?

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As a CEO you never stop needing to go on sales calls (or to work the phones in telesales or customer support) and ceasing to do this as your company grows because you’re focusing on investors, recruiting, PR or whatever is a mistake. If my CTO would have given me his update much detail would have been lost in translation.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2009

Handling PR with VCs. To update me on your PR? Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pro PR but please see it for what it is and don’t think that smart or experienced people are going to see it as any more than it is either. In your VC pitch your PR page should take no longer than 30 seconds – Wait.

PR 291

PR Bankruptcy Venture Capital Acquisition 291

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

Understanding “The Funding Angle” I sit at enough board meetings to hear conflicting advice given to entrepreneurs about how to handle PR and announcements at startups. In stead of doing my typical big long post with 10 PR tips (like I did there), I’m going to break them up into individual (I hope more digestible) chunks.

Startup 355

Startup PR Dividend Merger 355

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

And our software allowed us to offer: tighter pick-up windows, better utilization of “uploader staff” and to launch new products & services that I won’t discuss because they’re in development now. That marketing can be PR or SEO or influencer distribution or other forms of “unpaid” marketing.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

We have 12 developers and they have 3. Sales people will often sell future development work. It’s the easiest way to justify losing deals, put pressure on your to build the features they want and they always believe a competitors PR more than the reality they see inside your business. The excuse department is closed.

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

I’ve been having this PR discussion with three separate portfolio companies at once so I thought I’d just publish my thoughts more broadly. I have written many times about PR so if you want a deep dive on the “how” of PR you may enjoy reading some of these posts. Business Development - Biz Dev is hard.

PR 415

PR Early Stage Dividend Acquisition 415

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2010

From a PR perspective I would have made those announcements 2 weeks after the conference. Salesforce was very good at managing the 1-year roadmap so at any point in time we had a pretty good idea about what we would be developing and what we wouldn’t. We also knew what we wanted to build but wouldn’t be able to get to.

Acquisition 287

Acquisition Developer Management Advertising 287

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2011

I use technology precisely to try and develop an intuitive feel about what will work and what won’t” The management team got it. Do we have the wrong PR firm? To ignore FourSquare would be dumb. The VCs snickered a bit. I was unconvincing, I guess. They knew their position on FourSquare. Are we off message?

Startup 313

Startup Guerilla Silicon Valley Portfolio 313

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

Often it is a good idea to have a junior PR person in your company to interface with whatever PR firms you work with. At the B-round great teams often hire their first business development person. Other B-round scaling issues? These things don’t happen by themselves. They happen to those that level up. *.

Startup 381

Startup PR Finance Hiring 381

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

And given your stage of development you sure better at least know what your goal is. Usually you have a catch-all bucket for “direct” or similar that often came through PR or word-of-mouth. For example, if you have developers, content people or SEO folks working on SEO programs you’ll need to allocate their time / costs to this effort.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.). If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory. The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing.

Early Stage 380

Early Stage Stealth Marketing Startup 380

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Huge structural under-employment in much of the country and full employment in some niche tech markets where it’s impossible to hire developers, designers or sales professionals. For others it feels like a two-speed economy, where rules apply to hot tech startups that don’t apply elsewhere. You know what I’m talking about.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

I know he’s smart but you wouldn’t hire a Javascript developer to do your database design – would you? They’ll invite you out to events in which you’ll meet their other clients, you can get to know them socially and hopefully develop a real mentorship relationship where every conversation is not on the clock.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people. If you aren’t careful every PR team will measure inches over impact. So my corollary has always been “doing the right things is more important than doing things right.” Sounds simple but in practice I promise you most organization fall into the latter trap.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Retention PR SEO 164

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Because times are slightly better now for fund raising I’d probably say two extra things: a) it may be worth a modest increase in your team size / activities / development IF you can raise more money to do this now & b) if you can raise more than you need right now (within reason) without too much extra dilution I would do so.

Pre-Money Valuation 303

Pre-Money Valuation Dilution Valuation PR 303

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

But if your goal is to develop an audience that can be monetized in other ways, I’ll repeat my argument “you need to fish in the pond where the fish are.” And here’s the thing … YouTube PAYS YOU to develop these audiences. ” I’ve given some specific advice on how to do this before.

SEM 150

SEM Los Angeles Silicon Valley Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

We provide strategic advice to digital media companies in a manner that reflects how corporate development is actually done. If you want more marketing & PR tips I summarized a few of them over here on my blog , BothSidesofTheTable and I’ll add to the mix over time.

Campaign 389

Campaign Marketing Widget Analytics 389

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2010

This can evolve over time but laying the foundation with clear pricing statements would help third-party developers plan better. For other developers there might be consumption-based pricing. For ad-networks this can be a simple revenue share as is customary in more traditional online media.

Advertising 276

Advertising PR Revenue Hiring 276

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

So those bullish pipelines your teams have developed that may be completely real in this market environment but at some point will stop materializing. So those bullish pipelines your teams have developed that may be completely real in this market environment but at some point will stop materializing. limit your fixed costs.

Balance Sheet 150

Balance Sheet eCommerce Venture Capital Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

In the startup journey if you have success in your early product launches, fund raising and PR you’re likely to get “inbound interest” from likely acquirers. It is because when you share too much of this information with staff you develop an “options culture” the I find unhealthy.

Startup 417

Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

My first job after college was as a developer at Andersen Consulting. I don’t believe you can hire great business people who outsource the development to a hot incubator who builds you code to match your ambitions. I installed Windows 3.1 on all the computers and established a network using Novell. THE FIVE C’S.

NPV 337

NPV Chicago Balance Sheet Database 337

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If you fold simply because they haven’t responded to your last two emails you won’t have success in business development, sales, press, recruiting … anything. Your job is to push politely until you either get a “soft no” or more engagement.

Term Sheet 332

Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

“Reality is, at the seed stage, most rocketships look more like the cardboard variety you’d make as a kid than something NASA developed. Avoid the latest fads, trends or PR announcements. Don’t be psyched out by your competitors big financing round, latest product release or business development deal.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302