This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. ” Imagine you pour 5 years of your life into your next gig and it starts to become successful.  Would 8221;  The problem is that you’re opening yourself up to a claim by one of these people that you somehow stole their ideas.  I 8221;  If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here . In the Beginning …

Francisco Dao came up with the idea of letting 10 companies that weren’t selected for Twiistup to do a presentation the night before to a group of people and let the audience pick one company to win the final slot at Twiistup.  I I’ll put up the video when they post it on their website. Many of them have their iPhones and laptops Most people suck at presenting to big groups.  It’s It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  Many startup companies hire advisory boards.  If you plan to set one up – no problem.  Advisory Board Problems : There are several problems that I have encountered myself and in my many discussions with CEO’s who have set up advisory boards. It’s very tempting.  It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?)

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. If these numbers work out, then often scaling is more a question of capital. In many cases, I can break it down into: Customer Acquisition Cost – how will you reach prospects, how will you convert them and how much will it cost to convert them Customer Lifetime Value – how much will you make off of each converted customer This very simple model works for a surprising number of business models.

In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up . I used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should be. Most often at the earliest point in the life of a startup, the dominant need is certainly to produce product to get something in the market, get funding, etc. I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies.

Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capita This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here. You’ve You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s.  Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks. 

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  Many entrepreneurs who start technology companies are product people, technologists or savvy business people who worked previously for a larger company.  Most start-up entrepreneurs have little or no sales experience.  But through nearly I know I didn’t.  1.

This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons .” I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. BCG, Bain, LEK – they’re all great), a few years at a start-up or a few years somewhere like Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple.  8221; I

started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur :  Tenacity .  I caller dialed in to ask us questions about his startup. He was from South America but living in Switzerland and had launched a startup while holding down a day job at a consulting firm (McKinsey if memory serves). 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.

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that funding is something you do in “funding season,” some mythical  2-month period when you’re ready with a great Powerpoint deck and you hit up all of the VC’s at the same time so that you can quickly raise money and get back to the job of building a business. Tell them about what you’re up to in your business, show them your product or prototype, tell them your strategy, talk about the deals you’re working on and seek feedback. This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here .