July 28, 2010
Whenever First Round Capital holds a party, we sometimes get emails from a few of our guests asking if they can bring another person with them. Maybe a VC friend of ours wants to bring another partner with him. ...
July 27, 2010
Yes, they will meet with you… Just ask
Today I met with a young venture professional who spent far too much time figuring out why thought leaders would even want to meet with him than he actually spent just asking them to meet. When I asked how many startup investors, for example, he had asked to meet in the last two weeks, he replied, “Well, none.” Ok, then don’t tell me they won’t want to meet with you until you get turned ...
July 27, 2010
How SaaS is killing karaoke and the entertainment column in expense accounts everywhere
If you are looking to hire a head of sales for your SaaS based business, you should also know the impact of SaaS on the sales process and the money you will save in your entertainment ...
July 27, 2010
How SaaS is killing karaoke and the “entertainment” column in expense accounts everywhere
If you are looking to hire a head of sales for your SaaS based business, you should also know the impact of SaaS on the sales process and the money you will save in your entertainment ...
July 26, 2010
Customer Acquisition is Oxygen to a Startup
The other day, Josh and I met with a very cool company that has some serious traction. They’re more than doubling revenue every quarter and will soon be on track for a million dollar run rate. The only concern was that they didn’t know what their cost of customer acquisition was, nor did they which channels would be most effective, or how much they could acquire out of each channel. That ...
July 25, 2010
Anticipation is magic (in product experience)
By anticipating my needs, Swipely showed me the ...
July 23, 2010
Switching over to a Mac, finally again…
I'm in the process of making the move - and I'm past the point of no return and I'm glad I did. It's not about "Think Different" - heck, I'd say Mac's are more than 50% of what you typically see at a Starbucks or startup these days. And it's not my first Mac by any stretch - I was selling and using Mac 128K's and 512K's 25 years ago, and got the second PowerBook 540C to arrive in Philadelphia ...
July 20, 2010
The Theory of Foursquare Mayoral Equilibrium
My take on why the game dynamics help Foursquare solve the problem of critical mass among one’s social network: The bleeding edge users within any given social graph will normally encounter a scarcity of other users on any given social network. This makes said social network much less useful. Foursquare provides game dynamics that enable a single user value proposition—it does something ...
July 1, 2010
Effective board meetings in 10 steps (my first Quora inspired post)
Recently, a meme on running great board meetings got started and a list of best practices emerged. This is the top 10 ...
June 30, 2010
When Luke Skywalker had to drop a proton torpedo into a reactor vent shaft, he had one shot. Failure was not an option. Startups, on the other hand, have lots of little failures and successes over time. Growing a company is a process with lots of little iterations over time--just like fundraising. Just ask Dennis Crowely. He’s done it twice. The first time around, his meetings with Union ...
