Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Let me start with the obvious baseline that most people probably know instinctively: Los Angeles is the 3rd largest technology startup ecosystem in the US. billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. When you begin to peel back the onion some surprising data presents itself.

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

But even more important than personal lessons of failure, I believe acceptance of failure at a societal level is one of the key ingredients that allows the technology startup industry in the US to flourish. I say this as somebody who has lived in 6 countries and worked in 9 — having lived abroad for 11 years of my work life.

South Korea 261

South Korea Silicon Valley Los Angeles Japan 261

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2010

He stood up, grabbed the mic and gave a heartfelt overview of his experiences in experimenting with new technologies to build relationships with his audience, get feedback on his product quality and to market his music all the way to the top of iTunes. He was riveting. To stay the crowed was “wowed&# was an understatement.

Entrepreneur 356

Entrepreneur Los Angeles Norway Audience 356

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

So we stayed close to our investment themes of: healthcare, fintech, computer vision, marketing technologies, video game infrastructure, sustainability and applied biology and we have partners that lead each practice area. We also focus heavily on geographies.

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

The world around us is being disrupted by the acceleration of technology into more industries and more consumer applications. Technology solutions are now used by authoritarians to monitor and control populations, to stymie an individual company’s economic prospects or to foment chaos through demagoguery. What Has Changed in Financing?

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

It is often the fortuitous mixture of new technologies, customer awareness and then acceptance of the technology and then the slow adoption into our daily lives that leads to markets exploding. We technology leaders also make this mistake. Markets develop for a complex set of factors that are often beyond all of our control.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Bulgaria Lean 374

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

The practical uses for uBeam technology is limitless. Did anybody hold patents that would prevent us from using this technology? With the explosion of “wearables’ wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to charge your watch, fitness tracker or noise-canceling headphones? Did the physics actually work?

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence CTO Hire 418

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

I was in it for the love of working with entrepreneurs on business problems and marveling at technology they had built. In retrospect it was a blessing for anybody becoming a VC back then because there were no expectations, no pressure, no FOMO and you could figure out where you wanted to make your mark in the world.

Valuation 466

Valuation San Francisco Ratchet Liquidation Preference 466

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

It’s what happens to me at ePoxy since I’m very public about investing in technology companies in the video sector and they have one of the most elegant products to help with video distribution that I’ve ever seen and one of the most talented product teams I’ve worked with in LA. I have fallen in love twice recently.

Video 373

Video Valuation Differentiation Distribution 373

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

The reality is that as a result of two major trends the costs of starting a technology startup went down massively. Well, both of those things happened but they were lagging indicators. Between 1999–2005 the costs went down by 90% and between 2005–2010 they went down a further 90%.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2013

This is final part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. It’s why many modern technology companies prefer to sell individual products to end-buyers who can buy on their credit cards with limited need for approval from others. Compelling Event.

Customer 324

Customer PR Marketing Technical Review 324

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2020

Even more likely is eventual technology disruption where drones deliver foods and make it hard for existing car delivery services to compete. And the market would still have DoorDash and PostMates duking it out as well as the potential that players like Instacart broadens its business one day or Amazon gets into food delivery.

Technical Review 242

Technical Review Software Review Australia Aggregator 242

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

But the real threat comes from the change in technologies that rule the old business obsolete. Equally, the streaming business has got to accelerate content acquisition, focus on customer retention, improve streaming technologies to make it better for users / worse for competitors, and they’ve got to continually improve the UI.

Los Angeles 329

Los Angeles Revenue Retention Acquisition 329

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Instead he championed our investment themes into sustainability and food technologies having invested in companies like Apeel Sciences and Ynsect. Just as Yves mentored me when I became his co-managing partner in 2011, he didn’t seek to ride off into the sunset either.

Partner 361

Partner Management Cofounder San Francisco 361

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

And of course the most successful technology companies: Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com [duh], Oracle, Microsoft all have loads of sales people. But they’re technology people not sales people! But the “no sales people” mantra isn’t what I’m here to take on. They know your customers systems.

Technical Review 403

Technical Review Software Review Startup API 403

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

The chosen candidate will probably have worked for a very reputable firm that is either in technology, consulting, investment banking, media or a startup. I love what CAA is doing and it’s a chance to work at the very interesting intersection of media, technology & celebrity. It was nearly identical. Self starter.

Los Angeles 290

Los Angeles Technical Review Due Diligence Venture Capital 290

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 27, 2012

It seemed like “all of the big ideas had been done” in technology. This was obviously prior to the Internet and everything that led to: (mobile smartphones, social networks, new payment technologies, etc.). The future certainly looks brighter to me.

Silicon Valley 299

Silicon Valley Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder 299

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. He was a really nice and personable guy who had deep domain knowledge in an industry that he’d worked in for 10 years that is in need of technological advancement. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. He wanted to be the guy who did it.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 414

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

We also had to invest heavily in “route optimization” technology to figure out the best way to pick up goods but we also had to build bundles of routes for drivers so we could maximize what we picked up or dropped off for one driving in any given day. Seriously, this happens.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

I’ve spoken our goal of funding more ambitious project before and we’ve enlisted the research help of a Principal in our firm – Kevin Zhang , who has an interest in Agtech (agriculture technology). Their vision is to create technology and products for a world where food is grown in and around where people live.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Software Review Founder Boston 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

It is a “talent first” company but one under-pinned with a serious multi-million dollar investment in technology that has helped fuel our growth and will continue to provide tools & support for our talent. So it should be no surprise to anybody that Maker is not a talent only company.

Video 320

Video Los Angeles Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 320

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

How Quibi is a technology platform first and then a content platform Being an investor in LA and having seen a decade’s worth of video startup ideas, one of the reasons many video startups fail is because they think they can just distribute content online the way they’ve done it offline for a hundred years, without the innovation of technology.

Los Angeles 244

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Mobile Video 244

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

They attended property management association meetings in Oregon outside of the technology echo chamber of California to get a sense for people’s daily problems. Watching User Interactions – One of the biggest problems in technology is that systems are designed by people who are technical by definition.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

In 2005 he was graduated and took a job in South Carolina working for technology company while he started his own web design company on the side. He started another company on the side while he was working during the day at a technology company. As a technologist he felt the US was “ground zero&# for technology innovation.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Canada Green South Carolina 282

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

I’ve seen this happen before where companies seems to be struggling with traction and one technology change at an industry level suddenly propelled them more rapidly. That leverage technology or drive change. It might be for technical reasons or it might be for customer adoption reasons. Business that are innovative.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. What person hasn’t crouched at an airport to get 18% extra on one’s battery before boarding an airplane?

Technical Review 417

Technical Review South Korea San Francisco Software Review 417

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. They are the lifeblood of many companies yet they are different than the traditional technology startup DNA so the ways that you hire, motivate, compensate and assess performance of these individuals will be different. My first startup was no different.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. Brad on blogging. How did you start blogging? “My Human Computer Interaction.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

so compelling (other than the fact that the CEO Sean Rad is a great young technology leader and his advisers – Brian Norgard , Dan Gould and Evan Rifkin - are some of the guys I respect most in the LA tech market.). He’s exactly what I look for in a technology CEO. So what do we mean by in-stream advertising?

Technical Review 286

Technical Review Advertising Early Stage Internet 286

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Tech teams are comprised of three distinct managements skills: people, process & technology. Your first sales people should be consultative sellers who can fuel evangelical sales. Don’t hire “relationship management” sales people too early. Know the difference. Some people are good at all. But that’s rare.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

We were super excited by their offering – they had patented technology in a field that we believe will continue to grow massively. I’ve heard this about similar technology executives of some of the biggest names out there in history. Another CEO presented to us from a company that was growing at a tremendously fast clip.

Technical Review 284

Technical Review Due Diligence Entrepreneur Early Stage 284

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2010

It was inspired somewhat by a comment that Matt Coffin (founder of LowerMyBills) made at a technology event hosted by Jason Nazar. We will host “founder dating&# events to help the CEO’s gain access to technology talent and vice-versa.

Southern California 259

Southern California Los Angeles Technical Review Covenant 259

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2010

If you’re not familiar with the term it’s basically trying to help all of us who are deluged with technology to find ways to cope with the masses of information without having it ruin our lives. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Start-up Advice Startup Advice startup technology vc.

France 295

France Spain Technical Review Hungary 295

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

Because it’s video it is understood so poorly by the normal tech elite but the company has an amazing combination of content production, marketing, talent management and technology (tech team of nearly 60) and I can’t think of a better partner and home to develop this great company than Disney.

Los Angeles 387

Los Angeles Intellectual Property LP Venture Capital 387

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2016

We have have been funding agriculture technologies, water conservation, wireless electricity, aquaponics and so forth in addition to our standard investment themes in software, data, video and retail innovation.

Cofounder 207

Cofounder Differentiation Hosting Design 207

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2016

How do you find somebody that is exceptionally bright, driven and accomplished and yet still be humble enough to understand that the founders we back are the ones who have invented technologies and have to live with the day-to-day decision-making and hard choices. I mean this seriously.

Partner 150

Partner South Korea Venture Capital Europe 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

the people who buy companies) in Q2 of this year of technology & media companies. M&A Outlook for 2010 / 2011 – Tags: SoCal Stuff VC Industry LA SoCal startup technology vc venture capital. Montgomery expects M&A to rebound to the normal recent levels at 450 deals by 2010. What are your predictions for the road ahead.

Technical Review 241

Technical Review IPO Southern California Venture Capital 241