Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah. Positive feedback feeds the idea.

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

And there is no short-cut, no collaboration tool, no spreadsheet, no web conference tool that can build trust even remotely as effectively as being in person. If you didn’t have chemistry on the first meeting it may not be able to be salvaged. Sometimes there just isn’t a fit.

Software Review 381

Software Review Churn Rate Due Diligence New York 381

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

The are at the center of a web and even being two degrees away from a super maven can help you greatly. You need to connect into the web with time, care, respect and reciprocity. But please don’t harass these people. Give Before you Get. The golden rule of networking ought to be the mantra, “ Give Before You Get.”

Networking 366

Networking CTO Hire Technical Review Email 366

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

.” * I first wrote about the changes to the Venture Capital ecosystem 10 years ago and this still serves as a good primer of how we arrived at 2011, a decade on from the Web 1.0 dot-com bonanza.

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2017

If they need to dial in make sure they’re on a web conference and you can see them and vice versa. I’m usually more able to see their laptops than you can at the front and I promise you — best will the world — they are sneaking a peek at their email, stock prices, web, etc. It happens. It is a HUGE MF distraction. It’s human nature.

Early Stage 212

Early Stage Technical Review Email Valuation 212

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

8:17 How did you decide to go with either shrinkwrap or web only product? Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome, our guest is Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement. 00:45 Intro to Eric. 01:17 Background, before the Lean Startup. 01:53 Yale during the Dot Com Bubble. 3:35 The real entrepreneurs come out during a down economy.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2010

The first big wave of this change came from the introduction of the iPhone, which was the first well built mobile device for using the web. It has existed on the tethered web for some time and open and free platforms like Open X have gained much traction. The way we use “computers&# is dramatically shifting. Good luck, guys.

Mobile 282

Mobile Management Southern California Application Development 282

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

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. We like that it is 1000x better than having to call restaurants on the phone, be put on hold or call during normal business hours to book appointments.

Southern California 359

Southern California San Francisco CTO Hire SEM 359

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 27, 2012

We once thought nobody could unseat Google since all inbound traffic to the web came from them. Laughable now. We once thought the merger of AOL/Time Warner needed to be investigated by the DOJ. Enter social media and its importance as a traffic source. Is Facebook unstoppable? Of course not.

Silicon Valley 299

Silicon Valley Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder 299

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

They may have met you at a conference, attended a web conference or somehow else interacted with your company’s marketing department. And of course you also need your outbound marketing campaigns to emphasize your USPs so that prospects are already asking about them before the sales reps even start their meeting. So what’s next?

Campaign 336

Campaign Sales Software Customer 336

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

The explosion of mobile phones has led to a boom in inbound click-to-call traffic that has proven to convert at a higher close rate and increase average-order-value over web-only sales & marketing. For some of my more skeptical portfolio companies I simply asked them to run a trial of inbound sales calls and they were shocked.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

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. Once you start censoring the Web, you restrict the ability to imagine and innovate. He came to the United States in 2001 to study Software Engineering at Auburn University.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Canada Green South Carolina 282

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Gilt Group is currently the largest private sale web site in US. Configurable from desktop-based web-based UI. If I were a number 3-5 players I’d be looking to exit early while there’s still a lot of enthusiasm for this hot market. Note that I’m not defining who numbers 1,2 are. Time will tell. Founded in 2007. Employees: 27.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

So they create a task list of all the marketing activities an organization can do: press releases, web site updates, customer case studies, blog posts, daily Tweets, Facebook fan page, attending conferences, etc. You have a marketing department with three people. They’re tasked with doing … marketing.

Development Team Review 323

Development Team Review SEM Channel Social Media 323

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

I wrote this on my flight home from f.ounders & web summit in Dublin, Ireland late last year. My trip was scheduled around the annual Web Summit and the f.ounders conference, both of which have become the hottest must-attend event in Europe and rivaling any great conference in the US. The Origins of Web Summit / f.ounders.

Ireland 392

Ireland Global Las Vegas Switzerland 392

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Was about a billion dollars on the IPO” and “was one of the first web analytics companies. “Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. was starting.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris runs a popular web interview series on TechCrunch so is used to being the guy asking the questions. He is the CEO of Hunch , company that I believe is solving a very big problem that I have been telling entrepreneurs needs to be solved for the past 2 years. If he implements it well I think it will be a very big business.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Cofounder API 281

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 26, 2010

I guess the older & wiser that I get the more I realize that finding common ground is often better than fighting. The guys who usually were there to talk sense into me were my close colleagues Stuart Lander (COO) and David Lapter (CFO) – both more level-headed than I.

Demand 340

Demand Equity Reputation Hosting 340

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2010

I found that I was always more curious about issues like “why do you charge for your web hosting services this way when newer non-incumbent players do not?&# must have given versions of that speech 20 times or more. And it’s true. until the technology matures?

Startup 288

Startup Merger Technical Review Framework 288

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2015

On the one hand it denied Facebook from enormous amounts of web traffic that Google controlled at the time but in the longer-run due to network effects of social networks it made Facebook significantly more powerful. If you have success you have to make hard choices.

Oauth 150

Oauth Software Review Technical Review IPO 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

I tried it, it worked incredibly well and meeting with people (in person, in a web conference or on the phone) is ALWAYS better for you to understand their buyer needs and them to better understand you. If they’re giving you time then you owe them more data and if they don’t give you time then you shouldn’t share you data.

Cap Table 336

Cap Table Due Diligence Forecast Churn Rate 336

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Think of web vs. mobile. You could look for a VC who has huge wins under his or her belt and therefore has a formula for success. The problem with this is that past successes aren’t always relevant to future ones as the methods and environment of the past may no longer apply. Traditional software vs. SaaS.

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

While you may be able to offer a price & terms for your service and not ever negotiate (especially if you’re an Internet company that sells cheaply to small businesses over the web and without onsite support & service) – you’ll still likely have to negotiate on business development deals.

Development Team Review 293

Development Team Review Software Review Demand Software 293

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

They can tell you the square foot costs of their property, they can tell you how much they spend on Amazon Web Services every month, they can tell you the 12 features that you’re working on for your next release. Did someone else pull you’re financial model together while you did “your job?&# Not good enough.

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2010

And more embarassingly to me Garindra Prahandono gave me this link to an article written by the guru of web design, Jakob Nielsen about the 1/9/90 rule written back in 2006. I still think they follow predictable behavior with power users, casual contributors and lurkers. But perhaps the lurker category is smaller.

Technical Review 294

Technical Review Distribution Social Network Networking 294

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2014

I also added a little Soundcloud widget on the sidebar (if you’re viewing on web – not on mobile or RSS reader) that you can listen to each episode with. Update : Bothsides TV is now available on iTunes , Soundcloud , Stitcher , or any RSS podcast player you use, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube.

Management 292

Management Founder Product RSS 292

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

We also talked about how brands are increasing driving much of their traffic to Facebook and away from their own web pages. Online service offering privacy certification for web sites. Offers cloud-based web analytics software provider. Providing web abalytics to 2,100+ brands (including: BofA, Office Depot).

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 30, 2011

They first started in 1994 and are therefore almost as old as the Web itself. I’m sure it probably resonants with how most of you read the web. The idea is that if I can serve you an ad for a function that you already need to perform on the web anyways – a captcha – with a brand message I can drive recall.

Advertising 352

Advertising Social Media Silicon Valley Media 352

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

I had a really fun 20-minute interview with Howard Lindzon of Stock Twits as part of a 5-part series on whether the web is dead. The topic of whether the web is dead was kicked off by Chris Andersen of Wired Magazine in this article. The Internet existed long before the World Wide Web and web browsers were created.

Web 300

Web HTML AJAX China 300

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2012

We’ve been testing things like: How do Facebook “Likes” perform relative to FB ads that drive you directly to a web page. I’ve been spending time looking at marketing conversion metrics at portfolio companies lately. How do brand pages convert relative to the Timeline. How well do YouTube ad campaigns work?

Marketing 297

Marketing Metrics Campaign Portfolio 297

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 15, 2012

I was jealous watching all my friends surf the web on their iPhones. I used it to browse the web. But I couldn’t suspend disbelief that it was anything but a poor cousin to the iPhone. Maybe Android devices are great by now. But it’s hard to go back. DANG that iPhone browser was beautiful. And all the Apps.

Turkey 386

Turkey Email Internet Web 386

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

The costs to start are much lower than ever (90% reduction in infrastructure costs to start a company through open source & web services) and large companies being created in many geographies. Think DropBox, Airbnb, Pinterest, Maker Studios, SnapChat, Tinder).

Venture Capital 362

Venture Capital IPO LP Jordan 362

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2011

In general, we seem to be building too many positive re-enforcement systems on the web. . “My desire for this “Opposing Views Reader” is related to my concern about information cascades. How about “agree” and “disagree” buttons? ” I feel the exact same way.

Startup 313

Startup Guerilla Silicon Valley Portfolio 313

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2010

[Update] : Some people have pointed out that all of today’s “innovations&# are just yesterday’s ideas rehashed such as Salesforce just doing Siebel on the web, Mint doing Quicken on the web, Quora copying Yahoo! And Siebel on your desktop is not the same as Salesforce.com on the web. My view.

Silicon Valley 296

Silicon Valley Warrant Flash Differentiation 296

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 23, 2010

Here’s my experience, my “ah ha&# moment and why I think, although still nascent, it’s one of the most powerful websites on the web right now. With Quora , it was the opposite – something has always felt right but it took me a while to. really understand it. Pre Quora – AVC & Answers OnStartups.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review Software Review 301

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

We had to buy Oracle database licenses, UNIX servers, a Sun Solaris operating system, web servers, load balancers, EMC storage, disk mirrors for redundancy and had to commit to a year-long hosting agreement at places such as Exodus. Linux (instead of UNIX), Apache (web server software), MySQL (instead of Oracle) and PHP.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Or how about the best example – Loic Le Meur gets everybody over to Paris every year for Le Web. LA has the annual Monty Conference. NY has a million including the obvious ones like AdWeek. It’s improbable to build the next SxSW in your city. But why not start with a niche event in a topic that can attract 200 people.

Community 378

Community San Diego Silicon Valley Los Angeles 378