Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2012

I had dinner with my friend Brooke Hammerling , founder of Brew PR recently. She was lamenting that some startups simply see their PR company as merely somebody who corrals the press when you want to get some inches. VENTURE CAPITAL. And finally that brings me to obvious topic of venture capital.

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Startup PR Venture Capital Angel Investor 363

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Or Salesforce.com who rose to prominence in this same period where they were ramping up PR and shouting from mountain tops when everybody else in the market was mute. It’s what I love about entrepreneurship and about venture capital. Why the bad side of bubbles affects entrepreneurs & investors alike.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Marketing with long payback is precisely what requires venture capital. That marketing can be PR or SEO or influencer distribution or other forms of “unpaid” marketing. PR requires time and effort from your team that isn’t spent elsewhere and thus is a real cost.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

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.

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PR Bankruptcy Venture Capital Acquisition 291

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

. “the ecommerce company gained fauxmentum by raising artificially high amounts of venture capital and spent lavishly on customer acquisition despite long payback periods and questionable LTV” __. I’m not saying you shouldn’t grow engineering or do PR. We live in heady times. limit your fixed costs.

eCommerce 150

eCommerce Balance Sheet Venture Capital Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of the series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. Not to mention providing the capital for growth. Open cloud led by Amazon with their AWS services drove total operating costs down by 90%.

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Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

As startup entrepreneurs we all want to work with them because having their name as reference clients makes it so much easier for marketing, PR, selling to other customers, fund raising and even recruiting. ’ &# The PR firm actually didn’t do badly but 4% was a lot of dilution. Large companies can be strange sometimes.

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Warrant Dilution Startup Stock Options 298

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 4, 2009

It’s what kills most sales cycles including raising venture capital. They generated an enormous amount of inbound leads through PR, email blasts and heavy efforts with analysts such as Gartner Group, IDC, Aberdeen Group, etc. Why Buy Now? The real test of sales and the topic of my post is “why buy now.”

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Sales Sales Cycle Startup Reputation 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

When you think about the success that is Silicon Valley, the unfair advantage is not just the huge amounts of available venture capital. A key deal not only helps you raise venture capital but it can help attract employees, garner press attention, help with product focus & importantly drive customer adoption and/or revenue.

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Seattle Silicon Valley Technical Review Los Angeles 317

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

For simplicity I’ll assume you’ve raised some money from angels or seed investors and you’re either raising an A round or a B round of venture capital. Of course there’s no exact number of VCs you should meet?—?these these are simply guidelines. I like to start with a list of approximately 40 qualified investors.

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Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

So why would raising venture capital be any different. So make sure you have a solid PR strategy. Understanding PR & Crisis Management. How to Work with PR Firms. Make sure good PR is underpinning your fund raising efforts. And PR also has a way of generating inbound funding opportunities.

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Developer Silicon Valley PR Las Vegas 366

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FEBRUARY 25, 2010

It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A. Don’t over shop – If the deal you’re involved with involves raising venture capital or selling your company you naturally want some competition. Anybody who didn’t close was dead.

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Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. Many MBAs took marketing courses but have never been on the front line of A/B testing, email campaigns or PR initiatives. I had to laugh a bit reading it.

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NPV Chicago Balance Sheet Database 337

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APRIL 10, 2010

I guess it may be impractical for Twitter to acquire Seesmic given it has raised considerable amounts of venture capital (reportedly $12 million) but the broader point for me is that I always believed Twitter should control the client versions of its product. Think about the creative tension.

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Acquisition Developer Management Advertising 287

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JUNE 29, 2014

I never asked Marc why he stopped blogging but I presume it is some combo of having started a venture capital firm (which you might guess takes a bit of time) and also allowing some air time for his then-less-well-known compadre. Of course they then added Chris Dixon, Ben Evans and many other great public voices. Transparency.

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Social Media PR Media Venture Capital 307

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

IdeaLab has a philosophy that if they can get a centralized group of expert staff to help with legal, accounting, recruiting, PR, etc. In fact, IdeaLab employees around 50 people who are not necessarily dedicated to a single company. they can build teams that really focus on building & marketing great products.

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Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

They never did any PR or marketing to get their videos to first get shown on the news during the 2000 election. Tune into the show – we get into a long discussion of eCPMs on YouTube, his history of ad / revenue shares and why he believes it isn’t the right model for JibJab. How did you go viral initially?

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Viral Investment Bankers Video Business Model 303