Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets. uBeam intends to charge your mobile phones at amazing speeds while you are simply using your phone or setting it down anywhere.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence CTO Hire 418

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AUGUST 21, 2011

My background was 8 years of telecoms & mobile and 8 years of cloud computing & SaaS – so these two themes were a given. That strikes me as an attractive market for disruption over time. Two big themes have emerged in my head in the past 3 years: offline / online integration and mobile computing.

Mobile 329

Mobile Advertising Affiliate Internet 329

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MARCH 14, 2013

Mostly it’s because your marketing campaigns suck. Or more directly – they are likely narcissistic resuscitations of your newest features or bragging points that nobody but your marketing team and your mom care about. Plus they run conferences with the top people (which is another form of POV marketing by the way).

Campaign 389

Campaign Marketing Widget Analytics 389

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JANUARY 11, 2014

I actually really enjoyed many of the points Muhammad made about marketing in general and I found myself nodding through the entirety of the article except for it’s core premise. It’s about looking out for and catching the next major marketing wave before others have grokked it. I laughed as I did at much of his rant.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

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FEBRUARY 14, 2010

One of our core tasks was “market analysis,&# which consistent of: market sizing, market forecasts, competitive analysis and then instructing customers on which direction to take. I was in the midst of sizing the mobile handset markets in 3 regions: US, Europe and Asia. As scientific as that. I encourage it.

Investment Bankers 415

Investment Bankers Mobile Software Review Japan 415

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APRIL 18, 2019

An Insider’s Perspective “Bird Zero” that are custom designed by the company There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth where few really appreciate the speed and scale of what has happened.

South America 250

South America Global New York City Software Review 250

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JANUARY 6, 2014

By now you have many smart people around your board but probably people who don’t totally understand the nuances of your employees, customers, sales reps, marketing messages, technology challenges, competitors and strategic choices. how to market our products and company. So our board meetings consisted of discussion about.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

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APRIL 28, 2010

Dave’s a great guy with a good sense of humor and a broad knowledge of the market, which is why I was excited that he could be on the show. Zong – mobile payments has been a very hot area over the past couple of years with the success and growth of both Boku and Zong. VC Financings: 1. 15mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

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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

OCTOBER 29, 2014

We also built two very high-quality mobile apps that we were experimenting with in terms of building better customer acquisition toools. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the outcome of the combined company and its products in the market. Startup Lessons Tech Market Analysis Upfront Ventures'

Merger 296

Merger Southern California eCommerce New Zealand 296

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NOVEMBER 14, 2010

While many of my friends bragged about their 5 condos in Florida I kept talking about how the real estate market was in a bubble – their gains an illusion. above inflation yet in many markets in the US & Europe prices were rising at 10-25% per year. “Yeah, but there is a shortage of supply.

Florida 299

Florida Technical Review San Antonio Los Angeles 299

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FEBRUARY 7, 2013

And we wanted a head of global marketing. I wanted them to have a market lead before others could try and build what Ethan was working on. And in a world where we increasingly log in to personal web time at late hours or on our mobile phones that’s no longer good enough. With a benefit to both consumers and merchants.

Southern California 359

Southern California San Francisco CTO Hire SEM 359

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MAY 19, 2016

We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on simple Internet products or mobile apps and while great companies are built doing this, our goal as a fund is to try and fund things that can be 100x returns if they work. In short, we’re after venture returns.

Cofounder 207

Cofounder Differentiation Hosting Design 207

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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. Draft is a Fantasy Sports app designed for the mobile world and the busy lifestyle founded by Jeremy Levine.

Southern California 150

Southern California Philadelphia Mobile Stock 150

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DECEMBER 5, 2010

mobile, locations, layering of services, data management, portability & more]. It was: up-market, exclusive, urban, elite, aesthetically pleasing, ad-free and users were verified. Social Networking is Becoming Mobile. One interesting layer is the “mapping layer&# that is emerging in mobile social networks.

Social Network 297

Social Network Networking Internet EC2 297

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APRIL 4, 2011

They have a mobile app and I felt like it crashed too much for my liking. All applications crash and this is especially true in the nascent mobile world where dealing with device types, OS’s & networks adds one hell of a configuration management problem. If you have multiple versions of your product, how many are web vs. mobile?

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

They point out perceived market risks, they might question the management team’s experience, they might worry about regulatory risk or incumbent competitive powers. The hardest thing about new markets is timing because as they say as an investor, “Being too early is the same as being wrong.”

Technical Review 362

Technical Review America Partner United States 362

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JANUARY 25, 2015

Startups in a world of massive markets can be confusing. The law of large numbers, platforms that can make your company blow up unexpectedly and the trendy nature of tech markets can be deceiving. This is why I loved Brad Feld’s recent post about the “ illusion of product / market fit.”

Product 150

Product B2B Warrant Technical Review 150

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OCTOBER 11, 2016

It’s easy to think the role of a VC is to have strong opinions about markets, trends, tech dynamics and so forth. But Gregg stayed and grew and took on more responsibilities and became a senior member of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud team. Marketing departments, software partners and investors have now woken up to this opportunity.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

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JANUARY 22, 2014

Think of web vs. mobile. SEO marketing vs. social marketing. I’ve sat on ad tech boards with board members who clearly knew little about impressions, fill rates, CTRs, RTB, eCPMs or the difficulties & opportunities of embedded mobile SDKs vs. HTML5. Traditional software vs. SaaS.

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

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MAY 19, 2010

But truthfully both Dana and I are more aligned with the lean startup principles and believe you only go FAT when you’ve really proved out your product / market fit. The “private sale” market phenomenon was started in France by Vente-Privee (literally means “private sale”) and was replicated in Germany by BrandsforFriends.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

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MAY 7, 2013

This is classic “Innovator’s Dilemma” market conditions. Ryan was not only a senior engineer at Salesforce.com (he ran mobile and also ran content management) but was also my cofounder at Koral and lead architect at BuildOnline. Los Angeles Tech Market Analysis' The future of the Internet is video.

Video 320

Video Los Angeles Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 320

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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

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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.) We would argue that our movies are world-class movies, just designed entirely for mobile.”

Los Angeles 244

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Mobile Video 244

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JULY 13, 2012

As Google starts offering more consumer products (read: mobile devices) I assure you they will find ways to take customer service calls from you. But What About Mobile? You may have seen recently the WSJ report that Twitter is killing it with mobile ads while Facebook & Google have struggled. We have ridden the mobile wave.

New York 311

New York Mobile Technical Review Software Review 311

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OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. Has it begun to mature or is it just better marketed than in was say 5 years ago? Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly.

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

It’s important enough that I dedicate a tab on my blog to startup sales & marketing. is it OK to call an exec on his mobile phone. It’s the lifeblood of any organization and yet most startups don’t have any sales DNA on their teams. How much to compensate them? how to structure the comp plan. when to call.

Software Review 300

Software Review Sales Due Diligence Startup 300

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OCTOBER 19, 2014

Andrew was SVP of Mobile at Fox Digital Entertainment which launched the very successful Simpsons online game (curse you for wasting tons of my kids free time!) Tech Market Analysis Upfront Ventures' They also had much experience before that. And one more big announcement to come in the next 30 days. Watch this space. (as

Technical Review 373

Technical Review North America Los Angeles Cofounder 373

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OCTOBER 1, 2009

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising. This is one book-end of the cycle.

IPO 255

IPO Investment Bankers Venture Capital Marketing 255

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FEBRUARY 9, 2016

But it highlighted the misperceptions many people have had about serving urban markets. And of course African Americas and Latinos over-index in spend and consumption in many categories including many health & beauty products, movie theater attendance, mobile phone usage and even social media. The story was nearly universal.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Video Los Angeles Philadelphia 150

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OCTOBER 1, 2009

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. When the market run started in March people were relieved that “the world wasn’t ending” so they started spending again. Unemployment coupled with a stock market drop will stop this spending cold IMHO.

Technical Review 269

Technical Review Stock Hawaii Early Stage 269

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NOVEMBER 8, 2011

The tech market is filled with many stories of early-stage funding. Our investments focus heavily on the financial services industry, digital media, mobile applications & infrastructure, SaaS / Cloud and retail innovation. It’s even more exciting when you can report an exit of a company that is a major win.

Partner 285

Partner Las Vegas San Francisco Baltimore 285

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AUGUST 27, 2012

This was obviously prior to the Internet and everything that led to: (mobile smartphones, social networks, new payment technologies, etc.). Not just in Silicon Valley but in LA, NY, Seattle and other major tech markets. It seemed like “all of the big ideas had been done” in technology. “ And my fear?

Silicon Valley 299

Silicon Valley Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder 299

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FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Mark then talked about Crittercism, a mobile feedback solution. Meebo’s current focus is US market.&#. What is your mobile strategy? Mobile is another very important distribution place for the internet and Meebo is on the iPhone, Android, and BB. Then iterate and improve based on feedback. For Meebo 1.3%

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

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JANUARY 14, 2014

All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey). In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). Calls are changing but not dying. Much more data in the full post.

Mobile 339

Mobile Email Social Media Global 339

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MAY 19, 2013

was definitely in the bucket of amazingly talented founders with a great product that hadn’t yet proved product/market fit. If he wanted to sell we would enable it, but if given the choice I preferred to see the team fulfill their dream and I never lost confidence that our market was there. ” So true. chapter unfold.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

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MARCH 11, 2014

In fact, many people know I grew up in NorCal and still have a 650 area code on my mobile phone. We know the perceptions you have of our market from our past. We have a large number of highly talented engineers and entrepreneurs now developing companies in our local market. LA has a serious technology scene.

Los Angeles 318

Los Angeles Silicon Valley LP Warrant 318