Entrepreneurship: Nature vs. Nurture? A Religious Debate
Nature vs. Nurture. You’ve all heard the question before. Let’s talk about kids for a moment. I grew up believing that human behavior was 20% nature, 80% nurture. Now that I have two boys (4 and 7) I’m convinced it’s the other way around. There’s no question that both factors are involved. There have been [...]
How Do You Reference Check a VC?
This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. I often tell people that raising money is worse than getting married. I have to be careful in how that sounds because I love my wife and am happily married. But the truth is that in marriage if you’re unhappy you can at least [...]
The Yo-Yo Life of a Tech Entrepreneur – A Cautionary Tale
TechCrunch ran my article recently as a guest post but I wanted to have a copy here for anybody who missed it and for future readers of this blog. This is a slightly longer version and also has an update at the end. TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European [...]
The Best Entrepreneurs Are Hyper Competitive & Hate Losing
This is part of my series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks, one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute: Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts, Ability to Pivot, Resiliency, Inspiration, Perspiration , Willingness to Take Risks and Detail Orientation. [...]
What Makes an Entrepreneur (8/11) – Detail Orientation
This is part of my series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks, one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. The full list is now posted there if you want a sneak preview. I’ll try to add a few extra comments in my posts to keep in interesting. I started the series [...]
Building Products for Mass Adoption
Chris Dixon wrote a blog post last week titled, “Techies and Normals” in which he defined “Techies” as people who are not just “early adopters” but also have more of a geeky, technical, product bent. Normals (or “Muggles” as Catarina Fake called them) are people who, unlike Techies, don’t just use products simply because they’re [...]
How to Work with Lawyers at a Startup
I recently read a post over on VentureHacks titled, “Top Ten Reasons Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers” written by Scott Walker (who blogs on legal issues for entrepreneurs). I know that people have an allergy to lawyers out of fear of being screwed. Much of this is unfounded – some is not. If you’re a startup and [...]
How to Present at Big Meetings without Going Down a Rat Hole
I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. Congratulations. You’ve found a VC partner or principal who has invited you to the Monday partners’ meeting. Or on a sales campaign you’ve finally [...]
Inaugural Open Angel Forum Was a Success
Last night I attended the inaugural Open Angel Forum event started by Jason Calacanis, a fellow LA resident. Jason started the Open Angel Forum in response to his frustration that entrepreneurs were being charged by some angel organizations to present at their events. He wrote an excellent blog post on this topic. As a former [...]
Productivity Hacks: Voicemail, Folders & To-Do’s
I recently wrote a post about avoiding the “Deferred Life Plan” and some related thoughts about personal productivity that came from Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four Hour Workweek. I would love to say that I’m the productivity guru. Unfortunately my wife reads my blog and she’d log in and add comments to dispel this rumor [...]
What Can You Learn from the 4-Hour Workweek?
A couple of years ago I read the popular book, “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss. It was recommended to me by my friend, Net Jacobsson, who was trying to do some basic Life Hacking. If you’re not familiar with the term it’s basically trying to help all of us who are deluged with [...]
What Makes an Entrepreneur? Appetite for Risk (7/11)
This is part of my series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks, one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute: Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts, Ability to Pivot, Resiliency, Inspiration, and Perspiration. You need the whole package Through comment [...]
How to (re) Approach People (Advice on the Eve of LeWeb)
Business Etiquette Tips for dealing with VCs and Corporates at Conferences This is part of my ongoing series with Startup Advice. With the LeWeb conference about to start in Paris I thought the timing of this post would be appropriate. Right after Techcrunch50 Michael Arrington wrote this great post on how to interact at business [...]
Is Strategic Money an Oxymoron?
This is part of my ongoing Raising Venture Capital (VC) series Yesterday I had lunch with a really interesting and capable serial entrepreneur who is raising his A round. The topic of ”strategic” investors came up. It felt like Groundhog Day because I have this conversation again and again – literally dozens of times each [...]
Comments are the New Black
By Mark Suster on December 13, 2009
I’ve been thinking a lot about comments lately. I recently wrote a post about how to get access to people at conferencesand how to connect with people on social networks. These posts encouraged groups of people to provide their thoughts on these topics. As usual we began a dialog with lots of people sharing their [...]
Posted in Entrepreneurship | Tagged backtype, blogging, commenting, disqus, Entrepreneur Advice, intense debate, networking, Start-up Advice, Startup Advice | 1 Response