Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2019

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. These days, you have to foster a community of support for your business. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. A startup must maintain a relevant laser focus.

Startup 242

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 242

David Teten

JANUARY 9, 2018

Many VCs focus on specific verticals, usually based on the sector in which a VC initially made her reputation. That said, one limitation in early-stage investing particularly is that 2022’s growth sectors probably don’t fit neatly into a vertical we can define today. This model certainly makes sense.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Private Equity Silicon Valley Differentiation 60

David Teten

JANUARY 9, 2018

Many VCs focus on specific verticals, usually based on the sector in which a VC initially made her reputation. That said, one limitation in early-stage investing particularly is that 2022’s growth sectors probably don’t fit neatly into a vertical we can define today. This model certainly makes sense.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Private Equity Silicon Valley Differentiation 60

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

This is particularly true for complex verticals such as B2B SaaS products, where product marketing’s ability to pinpoint users with the most need and educate them on product features and benefits proves useful. It defines what you want to communicate to your audience and in what form. Brand marketing: Create a community of raving fans.

Marketing 110

Marketing Product Audience Equity 110

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

To learn more about this space, I suggest join an online community I co-founded, PEVCTech. . Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

janryan (@janryan) | Twitter Kerry Rupp Kerry is a Capital Factory Mentor and founding partner of True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in women-led companies in the sustainable consumer and consumer health verticals. SXSW Panel: Return on Inclusion: Investing in Diverse Startups Arlan ????

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

My colleagues Sebastian Soler , Steven Greenberg and I recently launched a new online community, PEVCTech.com , exclusively for PE/VC investors; engineers who work at PE/VC funds; and other technologists who specialize in working on this problem. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. .

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2013

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. These days, you have to foster a community of support for your business. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. A startup must maintain a relevant laser focus.

Startup 293

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 293

View from Seed

AUGUST 13, 2014

Investors in this category are usually operating executives who have spent their entire careers in a specific industry vertical, like internet travel, for example. They’re typically focused on financial returns and little else when it comes to the entrepreneurial community. The Domain Angel. The Financial Angel.

Angel Investor 334

Angel Investor Syndicate Syndication Early Stage 334

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 28, 2012

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. These days, you have to foster a community of support for your business. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. A startup must maintain a laser focus.

Startup 247

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 247

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. As usual, then, I worked with three entrepreneurs working on specific businesses. Mava Consulting.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 17, 2016

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. These days, you have to foster a community of support for your business. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. A startup must maintain a relevant laser focus.

Startup 120

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 120

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 25, 2023

And as a business, you know, a lot of your audience is small business owners or solopreneurs or early stage, you know, entrepreneurs. People wanna get on the speaking circuits for whatever, you know, industry or vertical they're in. But yeah, I mean, why you would self-publish really blows down to your goals and your motives.

Audience 88

Audience Revenue Distribution Differentiation 88

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 17, 2018

We invest in the early stages of company creation , leading or participating in pre-seed and seed-rounds with cheque sizes between $500K and $750K. And we also look at companies that are creating the best product for a specific vertical – including bio/healthcare and other emerging tech. About Fund III.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley North America San Francisco LP 126

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Many investments in startups start with local venture firms in the early stages and then attract non-local venture firms for later stage and larger deal size opportunities. Entrepreneurs with early stage companies typically look for local funding before going out of region to pursue other funding sources.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2017

A key ingredient of Techstars accelerator programs is our experienced and engaged mentor community. As Techstars continues to selectively expand into new geographies and industry verticals, our mentors are important as ever. AngelList syndicates helps enable seed stage investing at scale.

Syndicate 70

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Vertical 70

View from Seed

APRIL 8, 2020

Stevens has held roles across verticals such as head of sales, marketing, product, and professional services at five startups over twenty years. He helps early-stage startups with sales, marketing, and general “go to market” topics. He has experience in B2B, supply chain, robotics, SaaS, and IoT spaces.

B2B 156

B2B Angel Investor Vertical Early Stage 156

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

As cofounder of an early stage venture fund myself, I’m here to tell you that while these statements are accurate, they’re also misleading when trying to understand the broad impact these implosions may have upon a firm. This is less of a problem when the entire vertical falls apart (think of the last generation of scooter startups).

Vertical 48

Vertical LP Syndicate Syndication 48

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 200

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

I strongly believe that the first few hires of a startup should belong to the growth department, whether they’re marketers, community managers, or salespeople (selling your product is the best way to learn how to improve it). Jun-15: Community Manager (growth team). 1x hacker in charge of product/development. this drops by $0.30-$0.50

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Tyler Tringas, General Partner, observes, “Almost all of these new [RBI] forms of financing really only work for more mature companies (say $25-50k MRR and up) and there are still very few new options at the stage where we are investing.” GSD Capital. “ GSD Capital partners with early-stage SaaS founders to fund growth initiatives.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

David Teten

NOVEMBER 30, 2020

I’ve identified a wide range of organizations who are working on bridging the economic, cultural, and political gap between Israel, the Arab community, and the Middle East/North Africa region (“MENA”) through technology. I also suggest look at the UAE-Israel Technology & Finance Community/Mailing List. Apply here. Takwin Labs.

UAE 60

UAE United Arab Emirates Technology 60

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

Opportunity cost is very real for any stage company, but it is critical for an early-stage one. We began data.world with the premise to be the world’s largest collaborative data community, and we’ve actually achieved that now, growing our community faster than GitHub did in their first two years of being live.

Software Review 48

Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 20, 2020

He’s been programming since he was a kid running some of the first online communities and networked games. UTAustin #Geothermal #Innovation Chelsea Collier is the founder of digi.city , focused on creating more connected, innovative, and inclusive cities and communities.

Austin 110

Austin Texas Cofounder Los Angeles 110

Hearpreneur

JUNE 4, 2016

We have established clients in some of the world’s largest companies, across multiple interesting verticals such as telecom, banking, travel and entertainment, and commerce. 11 – Creating a Community. I like having that sense of being in control of my own decisions, and ultimately, of my own destiny. Photo Credit: Hajmil Carr.

Entrepreneur 48

Entrepreneur Haiti Artificial Inteligence PR 48

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 22, 2016

” Enterprising founders were telling us about a future where many configurations of sensor-enabled hardware would be paired with software and developer communities to form new platforms. Namely, proprietary hardware giving way to software giving way to developer communities atop the software. b) Had platform potential.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Artificial Inteligence Vertical Early Stage 48

mashable.com

OCTOBER 5, 2012

Naming can be one of the most difficult challenges in the early stages of a startup. Our startup creates custom vertical search and decision making engines for people or businesses with structured data. We did a lot of brainstorming and research to come up with the name WebKite. W3 EDGE Rackspace Intridea Dynect DNS.

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Naming Startup Social Media RSS 84

VC Cafe

JUNE 19, 2020

Now it’s a big world of impact and technology out there, so let’s start by putting terms in context: Tech for Good: companies or projects that are concessionary in nature, might make a big impact in local communities but might not make as much money as a VC would require from its investments. Cecile Blilious and Leehe Skuler.

Venture Capital 174

Venture Capital Global South Africa 174

Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

I was asked recently how NextView evaluates such early stage companies for investment. Here are a couple examples from our portfolio: Vertical Communities: One of the exciting attributes of GrabCAD in the early days was its rapidly growing, engaged community of mechanical engineers.

Distribution 66

Distribution Vertical Viral B2B 66

mashable.com

OCTOBER 11, 2011

Not to mention, early-stage startups usually only employ a few people focused on product and development. For example, here is how a few of my favorite startups describe themselves: “ Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover and book unique spaces around the world online or from an iPhone.”

PR 103

PR Startup Social Media Technical Review 103

VC Cafe

APRIL 27, 2011

Depending on the stage of the company, sources may range from FFF (Friends, Family and Fools), angel investors, incubators, startup competitions, grants, crowd funding and off course, VC (though often a last resort in the earliest stages). Create events around guests arriving from abroad or experts in a vertical area.

Venture Capital 90

Venture Capital Differentiation Incubator Angel Investor 90

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

We’re dedicated to increasing diversity in the tech community and making our coworking space an inclusive and welcoming environment for people of all backgrounds and identities. The summit is a full day of programming to help inspire, engage and elevate female entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

Austin 48

Austin Startup Texas Community 48

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

The premium lounge includes an online curriculum addressing the common topics specific to very early stage entrepreneurship; private roundtables that many of you have requested; customer, channel partners, and investor introductions; media and analyst access; and a variety of other value-added services to make our entrepreneurs successful.

Startup 113

Startup India Silicon Valley Incubator 113

VC Cafe

JULY 11, 2011

It’s hard to be an early stage startup. Guerillapps is a vertical social gaming platform targeting lifestyle & health moms; launching with the Trash Tycoon , a Facebook game for moms. Roaste is an online coffee shop that brings together the worlds best specialty coffees and coffee-enthusiasts in an online community.

Artificial Inteligence 92

Artificial Inteligence Turkey Boston 92

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Once you’ve figured out whether you want to find a very early stage startup or a late stage one (the topic of my first post in this series ), the real hard work begins. On the early side, it's repeat founders coming together again or early runaway traction in an early beta that generates buzz.

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Startup Portfolio Later Stage Hiring 148

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 22, 2017

Even if you’re at a very early stage, if you’re reading this, it’s safe to say that research tasks are below your pay grade, and conducting them will leave you time for little else. Which of your client verticals are your champions? Later, your email platform will pull this data to form your email template.

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Curation Lead Generation Technical Review Email 44

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Yet the processes that early-stage companies were using were identical to that of large corporations. In hindsight it appeared clear that startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 132