Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

dominated by a few very large incumbents who control much of the distribution or are you going into a market that is “fragmented” where nobody controls the industry. billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. Size of market matters but so, too, does “market structure.”

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

The “private sale” market phenomenon was started in France by Vente-Privee (literally means “private sale”) and was replicated in Germany by BrandsforFriends. Gilt Group is currently the largest private sale web site in US. To be fair to Ben Horowitz – I think he thinks this as well. Time will tell. Total raised: $29.5mm.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

If a company wanted to distribute software on a mobile device it need to sell via a “portal” (US term) or a “deck” (UK term) of a mobile carrier. As the desk-based Internet emerged it was initially sold through telecom carriers (after players like AOL and EarthLink innovated the market).

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

They tell you that they’re working on biz dev deals with distribution partners and they get the deals signed. Sales owns the former, the latter get marketing emails so you’ll be top of your prospects’ minds. Over deliver - The people who get funded are the people who actually get things done. They hire key staff.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Revenue Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 25, 2011

What excited me was that they had an immensely talented team that understood how to produce & distribute low-cost videos, initially via YouTube. They know this model of YouTube production & distribution better than anybody else that I’ve met in my 5 years in Los Angeles. Sound familiar?

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Internet 291

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

I have been saying privately for years now that I believe online video will evolve into fragmented distribution (my next online video post) and vertical production. Nobody has figured this out better than AwesomenessTV who not only has built an enormous online media presence but also packages and distributes shows for Nickelodeon.

South America 291

South America Colombia Mexico Vertical 291

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When they promise to help you with marketing, sales, distribution, integrated product development, etc. Imagine your investor has to call the CEO of a $20 billion company for approval for your merger or sale. Yeah, I know. it sure is tempting. And they probably have every intent of helping you.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. Distributed version control model – first in the industry like ours and we are filing patents. Reasons: cost of sales executives, long sales cycles, deep functional requirements.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

This states how the proceeds from a sale or dissolution of the company will be distributed. Term Sheet Overview : The second most important economic term in the term sheet other than price is “liquidation preference.&#

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

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

APRIL 21, 2013

While still owning the business he now does $60 million in annual sales built from nothing. I wonder how agressive they are with digital distribution. “We started this because we like fresh, spicy chili sauce.” ” And build a great business he did. Could he have grown faster with outside money? Branding matters.

Vietnam 415

Vietnam Los Angeles Entrepreneur Thailand 415

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

YouTube takes too high of a revenue split (45% vs. 30% that Apple and many other distribution companies take – FWIW, YouTube argues this is because their costs are much higher since they host and stream the video). YouTube is a distribution and marketing channel like any other. You can’t build a brand on YouTube.

SEM 150

SEM Los Angeles Silicon Valley Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

We’ll be conducting a series of educational programes covering: fund raising, team building, product development, sales, marketing, business development and how to prioritize your time as a CEO. But at the highest level they’ve created a marketplace for “flash&# sales. And of course we had, TheMan. with the clips.

Los Angeles 276

Los Angeles Stealth Securities and Exchange Commission Southern California 276

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. One of the most obvious places where you see this is in sales & marketing. Ditto the CFO. I was the laggard.

Non-Compete 296

Non-Compete Sales Hiring France 296

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 6, 2012

When you have limited distribution, the costs of distributing media are so prohibitive that only the largest of media producers (and distributors) are relevant. That couldn’t happen without the advent of lower cost production & distribution. This was how companies who produced media became big before the Internet.

Media 302

Media South Korea Distribution Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

Our publisher distribution network reaches in the tens of millions of unique users and is comprised of “head end&# stars as well as many “mid tier&# and “long tail&# publishers. They already had a completed product and a distribution deal with the largest affiliate network company, Commission Junction.

Advertising 284

Advertising Las Vegas Affiliate RSS 284

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

I suppose it depends how much money you’ve raised but if hiring critical staff, raising VC and streamlining your biz dev or sales is important to you then you might consider putting a small amount of spend against PR. So if you think of a great PR firm as “distribution” you will do well.

PR 319

PR Venture Capital Hiring Seed Capital 319

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

Company plans to use money to expand inventory and distribution capabilities, and build more social features. Woot was one of the first one-per-day item sales site with a humorous and not always PC content. -Founded in 2002 and expanded after founders graduated from CMU in 2006. TechCrunch. GroupSpaces. Total raised: $1.3mm.

IPO 242

IPO Venture Capital Private Placement Cofounder 242

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

We then walked through our sales pipeline and discussed major campaigns. Most people are visual thinkers and being able to see things like revenue, total sales pipeline, conversion rates, error rates or whatever the measure, putting it in a time series graph helps people to quickly digest business performance. Then competition.

Startup 331

Startup Balance Sheet Forecast Early Stage 331

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. Nothing was more heart warming than the photo of David Karp hugging Bijan Sabet after the sale to Yahoo! The top 2% do not drive 98% of the returns. I have seen many slices of the data. Their data looks at tech VCs.

LP 374

LP Later Stage IRR Term Sheet 374

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Once this new service became popular then the media companies could control the rules of distribution & advertising. The goal of any cartel is to control production, distribution & marketing of a set of goods with the goal of maintaining high prices. This narrative has been confirmed to me by several senior studio executives.

Video 292

Video Technical Review Advertising Distribution 292

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2016

We helped talent with O&O (owned & operated websites) and with ad sales. Each distribution channel you sell products in has its own unique customer base but your goal is to build a relationship with those end customers. The distribution sources are increasing. We built creators tools and website builders.

Aggregator 150

Aggregator Silicon Valley Distribution Video 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

From left to right I wrote in boxes: talent discovery, content development, production, post-production, distribution, & marketing. Underpinning it all I wrote: sales, asset management, analytics & talent management.

Technical Review 356

Technical Review Framework Audience Media 356

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

Obviously that barrier has been brought down with low-cost ability to capture, stream and distribute content over the Internet. The numerator (return) encourages more sales, which is fine. Today’s higher education is responding by making more courses online and available to people outside of physical boundaries.

Bankruptcy 403

Bankruptcy Offshore Liquidation Preference Balance Sheet 403

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 9, 2013

In my nearly 15 years of attending board meetings I can tell you that the distribution of time actually spent on these activities while you’re in person is more like: 1. should we ramp up sales hires now or wait for more traction? Deal with company admin: 409a valuations, approve stock options, vote on key measures (15%).

Advisory Board 337

Advisory Board Valuation Stock Options Seed Money 337

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2010

I’m working on a larger series on “scaling sales&# that will drop this weekend or early next week so I thought I’d go for a more light-hearted topic today. I’ve always thought about writing a few posts on features in products that drive me nuts. Is this evil? Naw, of course not. Here’s where I use it: 1.

Email 276

Email Distribution Portfolio Mobile 276

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We also discussed having distributed teams (e.g. Private, flash sales site focused on apparel goods (women, men and children). Metrics: 2.5mm members, 1,000 brands, 2,500 sale events to-date. Metrics: 2.5mm members, 1,000 brands, 2,500 sale events to-date. We discussed NY vs. Silicon Valley and NY vs. Boston.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Los Angeles Oakland Asia 217

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2011

The next generation takes the baton from their patriarch’s achievements and learn how to do better distribution, how to win over large customers, how to scale manufacturing, how to develop a niche market and be known as best-in-class in that niche. But then the world changes. It globalizes.

India 334

India New Jersey Silicon Valley France 334

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

Do you have sales productivity software? So it’s hard to argue you shouldn’t Tweet twice if you have a geographically distributed following. So you developed a product for the mommy community? Blog on that topic. Do you have an application that helps mobile developers build HTML5 apps? You know your blog topic.

Startup 373

Startup eCommerce Audience Community 373

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

Starting with exclusive rights to sell celebrity chef, Tyler Florence’s, line of baby food online, SproutBaby began seeing initial traction from customer interest as physical distribution spread. They dropped their number one selling product and switched to a competitor’s product while managing not to lose a single sale.

Deal Flow 292

Deal Flow Valuation Lead Investor Silicon Valley 292

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

In the era of Skype, web conferencing tools and collaboration software conventional wisdom says that distributed startup teams can be just as effective as those that are in person. Or more precisely the people espousing the benefits of distributed startups teams are often distributed and therefore self rationalizing it.

Distribution 335

Distribution Offshore CTO Hire Fractional CTO 335

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 22, 2011

In order to grow we hired successful and expensive sales people who in turn were able to (and incentivized to) sell projects at higher margins and close big deals. This has particularly hurt the print media businesses that can no longer charge enough to pay for editorial, printing & distribution. This was a mistake.

Non-Compete 386

Non-Compete Startup Internet Cost 386

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2010

“Over the Top&# video distribution – Apple TV comes out in November and is priced at $99. That said, Apple will remain a closed system designed to drive media consumption through a closed iTunes system and a take a toll for media distribution. The device itself will have no storage.

Distribution 386

Distribution Audience Video Internet 386