Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2014

In the most recent episode, I interviewed Joe Perez , Founder of Tastemade. He has a long career in developing products and companies (such as Pogo, Excite@Home, Demand Media, The Daily Plate and now TasteMade) discussed much about his career choices and lessons. If you don’t know Joe, you should.

Management 292

Management Founder Product RSS 292

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2016

Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job of asking, yet again, for money.

Pre-Money Valuation 292

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Early Stage Startup 292

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

what is the importance of social media? what is wrong with today’s social media? Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome, our guest is Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement. 35:29 Why people use social media. 36:30 Eric: Social media is great for people with social capital. Eric is so damn good. Check it out.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Solve Media is that. In the early days of the Internet as an advertising medium the industry organized to create “standard ad units&# for which most media companies would sell their inventory. So the debate in the print media world is whether or not to insert a paywall between users and content. But is there a better way?

Media 288

Media Advertising Early Stage Algorithm 288

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat. We set out to find Jonathan’s “co-founder.”

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

From left to right above is Tristan Walker (founder of Walker & Co), Magic Johnson (successful NBA basketball player and successful business man – his two life goals), Beatriz Acevedo (founder of Mitu, the largest Latino digital media company) and Troy Carter (founder of Atom Factory and Cross Culture Ventures).

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Video Los Angeles Philadelphia 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

San Francisco 256

San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

We have a large engineering staff led by the insanely talented Ryan Lissack (who was my co-founder at Koral and with whom I worked for many years before persuading him to leave SF for LA.). YouTube is our best, but not only, distribution source. Maker is now a powerhouse in its own right.

Networking 366

Networking Media Distribution Video 366

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

We had Farb Nivi , who is the founder & CEO of Grockit , a website that enables online group learning. Farb is the founder & CEO of Grockit.com. Current round: $3.35mm in Series A by TomorrowVentures (Eric Schmidt’s personal investment vehicle), Saban Ventures, Founder Collective, SK Telecom Ventures. LibreDigital.

Founder 214

Founder San Diego SMS Los Angeles 214

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2011

In a nutshell – I think airbnb eventually got to the right place and I was impressed with the letter their founder Brian Chesky wrote and their new commitment to safety and damages. Find other media outlets to tell your story. Trust me, these advisors will prove invaluable if you don’t have a lot of media experience.

PR 329

PR Management Startup Vietnam 329

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

And while of course the founders & management deserve all the credit for Maker’s success and will no doubt get their accolades in the press, from an investor perspective, Dana & I were hugely active in the company for years behind the scenes in recruiting, PR, product strategy, M&A, etc.

Los Angeles 387

Los Angeles Intellectual Property LP Venture Capital 387

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

It’s always fun debating companies with Dana because she’s always so knowledgeable on deals – particularly those in the digital media, ad-tech and eCommerce spaces. Founded in October 2006 by Jonah Peretti (co-founder of Huffington Post). When the show has been processed it will be available here (estimated 8pm PDT). Time will tell.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can. And I listen to the reasons their co-founders quit their well-payed job to join them.

Early Stage 361

Early Stage Deal Flow Investment Bankers Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

A Strong Pool of Tech Founders – Stating the obvious. Eric Paley , managing partner at Founder Collective , told me that they had implemented a city-wide program in Boston to help local university students get internships at local tech startups. There is much magic going on in this town with both pure tech as well as media tech.

Community 378

Community San Diego Silicon Valley Los Angeles 378

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Many questioned whether it could survive under the fail whale, inevitable competition from Facebook, founder fighting, fights with 3rd-party developers let alone become a revolutionary business that could make money. in fact we still look at many deals in the media sector whose main objective is to entertain people. Far from it.

Technical Review 362

Technical Review America Partner United States 362

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can. And I listen to the reasons their co-founders quit their well-payed job to join them.

Deal Flow 347

Deal Flow Early Stage Investment Bankers Technical Review 347

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2013

It got quite good reviews in the media: TechCrunch , LifeHacker & PandoDaily and many others. [and of course I use "we" loosely as the hard work of course was the entire MyTime team sans me]. Today they announced the mobile version of their product – I’d be grateful if you would download it and give it a spin.

Development Team Review 324

Development Team Review Los Angeles San Francisco Mobile 324

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2011

I turned around and there was StockTwits founder (and my favorite Tweeter) Howard Lindzon. And we’re here with Dan Martell , who like any great startup founder is wearing his company t-shirt for Flowtown. Wendy Tan White, the founder of Moonfruit. And a motley crew of other interesting startup founders.

Technical Cofounder 294

Technical Cofounder Austin Hosting Cofounder 294

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

Our investments focus heavily on the financial services industry, digital media, mobile applications & infrastructure, SaaS / Cloud and retail innovation. At GRP Partners our focus has always been on having a small number of investments in the industries we know well. And we’re not restricted to territories.

Partner 285

Partner Las Vegas San Francisco Baltimore 285

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

I really enjoyed learning more about Buddy Media and meeting Michael Lazerow. I also got the chance to hear from and meet the founder of About.com – Scott Kurnit – who gave a lively talk that challenged much startup conventional wisdom. And awesome to get to spend time with Ian Sigalow “comparing notes” (VC speak ).

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Traditional media companies published their stories on the web. And it is the most notable media darling not making any money so everyone is asking the question – how will they make money? So did the media. This is why many people are so excited by how much traffic they’re now generating from social media.

Technical Review 286

Technical Review Advertising Early Stage Internet 286

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Your role as a founder who brings on board members should be to understand the importance of the team dynamic and try to foster better human relationships so that in the future when you need people to work together for a common purpose a trust and rapport has been formed. The founders of a company are fighting.

LP 269

LP Startup Burn Rate Stock Options 269

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

I recently sat down with Matt Coffin , the founder of LowerMyBills, which sold for $400 million but was very nearly a bankruptcy only a few years early, and talked “startups.&#. o Their strong skill was online media buying and optimization – they rarely would do CPA deals – mostly buying CPM.

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Warrant Customer Term Sheet 304

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Quick aside: how can VC’s invest in online businesses, digital media, social networks or mobile applications if they don’t actually use the products actively themselves? I did almost every VC meeting myself save for when one of my co-founders, Tim Barker, was in town.

Founder 299

Founder Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

Blanchard/O’Reilly Media. Paul Graham’s assertion that “any startup founder can tell you the most common question they hear from investors is not about the founders or the product, but “who else is investing?&# Photo credit: D. When I’m in, I’m in. rings true to me.

Finance 286

Finance Term Sheet Technical Review Warrant 286

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” The narrative of this discussion is something like this: I meet a 35-40-year-old founder with two kids and mortgage.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Liquidation Preference Silicon Valley IP 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

As more consumers were skipping commercials the idea of authentically integrating brands into media seemed obvious to me and ended up informing a lot of my investments in 2009 and 2010. Media relationships. He reached out to younger founders and offered to help via his network at AT&T, Google, media agencies … you name it.

Partner 340

Partner Los Angeles South Africa Cap Table 340

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

I told her that I believed America’s best asset – driven initially from software innovation mindset in the San Francisco Bay Area and media innovation driven from Los Angeles – was our willingness to accept failure. I wish I had 20% of her confidence, focus and leadership skills at 25.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review South Korea San Francisco Software Review 417

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

On the founder’s side it’s about taking money off of the table and / or having strategic reserves for big acquisitions. That said, the founder is Stewart Butterfield , who co-founded Flickr. They help speed up the network by pushing the highly viewed and large media files to the “edge&# of the network (e.g.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2014

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a few brands & media properties that I truly love and for which I have huge loyalty. Technology is disrupting all types of media and talk radio will be no exception. And of course there are virulent debates about whether publicly funded media should exist at all. Virgin America.

Los Angeles 299

Los Angeles Angel Investor Hosting Media 299

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Sometimes that’s venture capital generally (like last year’s conversation with Reid Hoffman ) and sometimes it’s in a space where I’ve invested (like mobility and city innovation with Bird’s Travis VanderZanden , one of our portfolio founders.) Between the heavy hitters at the helm, the more than $1.4B

Los Angeles 244

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Mobile Video 244

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

should have come out early and say, “we lost the search war to Google but we still have a have a great media business and we’re going to focus on that.&# When Fox first hired its triumvirate of CEO’s to run MySpace after the founders’ departure, I argued the same. They dithered for years.

Los Angeles 329

Los Angeles Revenue Retention Acquisition 329

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

He built & IPOd Demand Media. LA is the largest metropolitan area in the US for people employed in art, design and media and the local creative economy of LA generates more than $140 billion in economic output – more than the GDP of many countries. He built & sold iMall in Internet 1.0 for $565 million to Excite.

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

It proved to be fortuitous because it allowed me the time & space I needed to get to know tons of founders and VCs and to hone my craft. Some Teams Create, Others Scale (Some do both) There is so much focus these days on founders and whether they should always remain in the CEO seat.

IP 223

IP Intellectual Property IRR Cofounder 223

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

The roster of speakers was vast and just off of the of my head it included the founders of DropBox, Box, WordPress, EverNote, TrueCar, HootSuite, Charity Water, DataSift, Indiegogo, Huddle, oDesk (and many others) plus the usual cast of characters such as Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dave McClure, Ben Huh, Shak, Shervin and many others.

Ireland 392

Ireland Global Las Vegas Switzerland 392

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. And through this industry legitimacy she was able to get the ear of Dany Levy, the co-founder of Daily Candy. She now recognizes the need to have co-founders. She focused on her customer.

Silicon Valley 363

Silicon Valley Cofounder Entrepreneur Startup 363

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

This is true whether it’s physical products or media products. Think about the tension between media companies and cable operators like last year when Viacom threatened to pull Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, etc. This is an age-old marketplace tension where leverage often determines the value captured.

Curation 296

Curation Los Angeles Differentiation Channel 296