Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. Yet it is the one element that too many entrepreneurs focus on only as an afterthought. Everyone assumes their product or service is so great that “word-of-mouth” will carry the day for […]
The LA TechWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 5/17/2019
The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for LA startups for 5/17/2019 featuring funding details for Spring Labs.
Why Sales Operations Could Be the Key to Scaling Your Company
Salespeople are great at selling. They’re less great at all the things that surround the sales process — things like filling out spreadsheets, hunting down pricing and contract information, and figuring out how to use complex tools. Even the sellers who are great at these tasks are more useful to their organizations in the field or on […]
5 Exciting Technologies That Need Your Execution Help
As a business advisor and technologist, I often think about the large array of opportunities for entrepreneurs as technology seems to be evolving faster and faster. Yet I still too often hear the question, “Can you give me a really sure-fire idea for starting my own business?” My standard answer is that ideas are a […]
The Reason That Bitcoin Popped and Uber Flopped
As of the writing of this post, Bitcoin is the top performing “asset class” of 2019 YTD, up 89% YTD. Bitcoin is up 22% in just the past week. And everyone wants to know why. The Markets Swing Between Bubbles And Crashes I have a word I use to describe the tendency of markets to become […]
Nail It Then Scale It: The New Mantra For Startups
I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries, called “nail […]
The LA TechWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 5/15/2019
The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for LA startups for 5/15/2019 featuring funding details for Halla and much more.
Don’t Let Short-Term Thinking Hurt Long-Term Success
I recently met a business where the owner made 100% of her decisions based on how it impacts the immediate cash flow of the business. And I mean every decision! Whether it was hiring business professionals like accountants or lawyers that were advising the business. Or, making marketing decisions based on what drove revenues this […]
5 Steps to a Winning Assault on the Army of Investors
Don’t charge the hill until you are “ready.” This probably seems obvious to military types, but I see entrepreneurs violating this rule all the time. They approach key potential investors way too early, trying to talk their way up the hill, with no supporting business plan, and before they have a support team around them. […]
A Personal Saga To Understanding Hardware Market Opportunities
The shock ripped through the industry, on almost every social media platform techies were bemoaning the loss of Anki. As a former robo-toy maker, I read the epitaph months earlier in the title of Lara Sorokanich’s Medium post, “Anki’s AI Robot Is a Delightful (and Expensive) Desk Toy.” When asked this week to comment, I could […]
The LA TechWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 5/14/2019
The latest venture capital seed and angel deals for LA startups for 5/14/2019 featuring previously unreported funding details for Hyperloop, CloudKeyz, and much more.