Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. There was no viral social networking products back then like Twitter where people could easily discover your content. My blog was wiped out. Page 2: What’s unique about Koral. Folksonomy.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

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SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

So why is online video such an attractive market to build a startup? These markets represent about $600 billion of total spend between them, leaving tons of opportunities for startups to disrupt and grow large. Content can go viral – the highest quality stuff is shared. Yet many of the startups I see are very US centric.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2010

Last night I co-hosted a dinner at Soho House in Los Angeles with some of the most senior people in the media industry with executives from Disney, Fox, Warner, media agencies and many promising tech & media startup CEO’s. It created viral buzz because other fans saw the email address and wanted to know how they got it.

Entrepreneur 356

Entrepreneur Los Angeles Norway Audience 356

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Another topic we debated early in the program was “lean startup” vs. “ fat startup ” where we both took the obvious hedge and said “it depends.” 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.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

To a 47-year-old, married, self confident guy who thinks about how to build virality into products this seemed like heresy. And importantly, just like on Tumblr no comments were allowed.

Social Media 150

Social Media Media Technical Review Viral 150

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APRIL 17, 2013

I’m sure you’ve all heard saying derived from Voltaire, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base. Startup Advice'

Viral 371

Viral PR Lean Founder 371

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

We then spoke about startups. Again, Seth: “One of the things I noticed when I looked around at startups is that often the founding teams hired people just like themselves. Startups shouldn’t be like this. And I’d recommend them to any talented startup founders out there.&#. And there you have it.

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

They have real stories about what drives user engagement and viral adoption. I know you have good knowledge of how the Internet is developing and have good intuition of what drives viral adoption, what local services are needed, what API’s need to be developed, etc. Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis VC Industry.

Angel Investor 288

Angel Investor Deal Flow Viral Algorithm 288

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JULY 16, 2013

I work with a lot of startups. “It has been a while that we’ve been trying to get the viral coefficient up but we haven’t seen progress. Startup Advice' I start to notice when bad behavior creeps into the system as a whole. I have seen much of that behavior over the past 2 years get worse.

Burn Rate 412

Burn Rate Dilution Revenue Valuation 412

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SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

10 Tips from BuzzFeed on How to Make Content Go Viral ” See what I did there? Startup Advice' data has confirmed it and BuzzFeed has built an entire business around it! and if you haven’t read & watched this YOU MUST! In Gabe’s post he explained why TechMeme was having editors write headlines.

Social Media 326

Social Media Curation Viral Media 326

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NOVEMBER 5, 2012

Costs of product on YouTube content is literally 99% cheaper than traditional TV and; Distribution of content can now go viral and can predictably distributed via social networks. In just 2 years we’ve gone from garage startups to more than 600 people across just 5 companies: Maker Studios, Machinima, FullScreen, BigFrame and Zefr.

Silicon Valley 374

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Java 374

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

You know, things like, “we’re looking for businesses with high viral coefficients,&# “we want to see non-linear growth,&# “what are your unfair advantages?&#. Or they’d speak in the fine-tuned VC lexicon to you. Like they’d seen it all before.

Viral 292

Viral Video Partner Entrepreneur 292

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MAY 23, 2012

I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. The number of startups being created has increased by an order of magnitude. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin! Today’s Normalization.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2013

Nobody goes into a startup expecting to fail – we all imagine the next big startup movie is going to be about us. Except that building a successful startup is hard. It happens to nearly every startup. Our inner script is heroic and the struggles are mere battle scars on the inevitable journey to slay King Joffrey.

Churn Rate 371

Churn Rate Vesting Viral eCommerce 371

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MAY 7, 2016

This is a very predictable phase of the startup journey and a lot of good can come from it. It’s why sometimes I fear when teams raise too much money too early in a startup because capital can mask underlying problems for a long time. But building a successful startup is hard. Your app isn’t getting enough repeat visitors.

Churn Rate 150

Churn Rate Vesting Dilution Europe 150

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SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

But more spend = more viral opps = more revenue down the road. >50% of our revenue in now viral. Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice VC Industry startup technology vc venture capital. We could do more in 2010 with more VC investment; the doubling assumes only ratable increase in marketing spend to achieve profitability.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

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APRIL 12, 2018

Many people will write the history on why Ring became an enormously successful company and why it became a real-world unicorn in a world when many startups are anointed that merely on paper. We first met Jamie when had had a startup called Simulscribe, which transcribed voicemail so you could read your messages rather than listen to them.

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

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FEBRUARY 3, 2011

We’ve hung out periodically over the past few years and I have enjoyed debating many startup topics. They realized for them this was dumb because people didn’t want to use up their credits so viral adoption wasn’t happening quickly enough. How has the viral coefficient been for you?

Viral 303

Viral Investment Bankers Video Business Model 303

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JANUARY 17, 2011

This applies equally to VCs, startups & big company executives. It’s ironic because I believe creativity is the most important success criterion for a startup. Yet most startups seem to constrain creativity to product design. So no whinging about what a long post this is! So I thought I would. That’s a shame.

Technical Review 356

Technical Review Framework Audience Media 356

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DECEMBER 5, 2010

There was a backlash against the Plaxo spamming yet it paved the way for everybody who came after them to get users to drive viral adoption and we’d throw up our arms and say, “oh boy, here goes another social network that my friends are going to spam me about&# mentality that made it acceptable for everybody who came afterward.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

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DECEMBER 3, 2013

Some startups I talk with mistakenly believe you can poll the Twitter API directly to get the feed but the Twitter API isn’t full fidelity, doesn’t have the full historical data corpus and isn’t real time. years ago and still rings true today, stating the unique Twitter attributes that are disruptive: Real time. Asymmetric.

Iran 358

Iran API San Francisco Nigeria 358

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FEBRUARY 8, 2015

I live in LA and fund startups. So you can imagine that I see a lot of video startups. I’ve written before about why I believe most Hollywood online video startups don’t get the future (and why most Silicon Valley startups don’t get online video ). Startup Lessons' Most will fail.

Video 150

Video Curation Distribution Silicon Valley 150

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JANUARY 18, 2011

I learned that he was originally with William Morris as a junior talent rep but wanted to be more in the business of helping digital startups. I figured it would be a great outcome if we could get both East Coast money and somebody who viewed startups and the world in a similar way that I did. And they still do.

Term Sheet 303

Term Sheet Mobile Cofounder Early Stage 303

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

So let me explain what I see as the importance and sustainability of Twitter as well as why I believe it’s still a great platform for startup companies and investors. Viral – One of the most important value drivers of any social network is the degree to which it makes content go viral. Twitter is inherently viral.

Viral 307

Viral Las Vegas Tunisia Syndicate 307