You’re most vulnerable right after you win a deal
This is part of my ongoing series, “Start-up Lessons.” Recently I wrote a blog post about how I hated losing, but I embrace it. My starting line with every entrepreneur is that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned from F’ing it up on my first business. I even put that in the [...]
Should Founders Be Allowed to Take Money off the Table?
This is part of my ongoing series “Start Up Advice” but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.” If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let [...]
The Best VC Meetings are Debates not Sales
This is part of my blog series “Pitching a VC.” I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. There is one classic mistake that I see across both types of meetings – “the [...]
Rage Against the Machine
Disclaimer – The following post includes strong opinions and strong language, It’ll also annoy a small, but ultra-powerful group of individuals. What the hell….. Recently I had the privilege to have a first hand glimpse of the fundraising woes of an internet start-up. Without giving details, it’ll suffice it to say that I spent some [...]
Startup CEO Who "Won't Take VC Abuse" Is Now a VC Himself and Blogs About It.
Valleywag named Mark Suster, then CEO of Koral “one entrepreneur who won’t just take VC abuse“ for his blog post “slamming one VC partnership for tardiness, inadequate preparation, and bad Blackberry manners.” That was late 2006… Not long after the “incident” his startup, Koral received funding, which, in hindsight was probably unnecessary: a few months [...]
Startup Lesson: How to Be Viral (Humor)
Here’s Michael Arrington’s favorite slide from the Things a VC Will Never Say slide-show. But Not All VC’s Are Created Equal. ( I think I should trademark this). Some will actually tell you .. even better, they show what they mean by those buzzwords. Here’s Mark Suster and Paul Kedrosky explaining what viral spread [...]
Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 – Call for Startups
Startup Entrepreneurs who did not make it to the recent Under the Radar event, here’s your second chance: join us at Launch: Silicon Valley 2009, co-presented by SVASE, Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft. In fact it will be more than a second chance: while the UtR event focused specifically on Cloud Computing, Launch 2009 is [...]
