First, I would say that most entrepreneurs do almost no reference checks or at least do them very informally.  Don’t The one where they HAD BETTER say good things about you because if they don’t then you’re really messed up for not suggesting the right people and calling them in advance to control the process and make sure that they say good things.  Good For some reason most entrepreneurs do.  Don’t This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital . I

When added to my volume of Facebook messages, LinkedIn requests, blog comments and Tweets my head is definitely below water.  So I scan it for the most important messages to be sure nothing urgent has popped up. 8221; They taught us to write down questions when they came up and batch them together in point sheets. 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

Let me start by saying I’m a huge business book cynic.  I But Net had told me that he picked up some valuable lessons from the book, so I thought, “WTF? So people diligently put in their hours every year, brag about how little vacation they’ve taken and try to save up for 45 years so that one day in their late 60’s (or in today’s era 70’s) they can do what they’ve always dreamed of.  They A couple of years ago I read the popular book, “The Four Hour Workweek ” by Tim Ferriss.  It It was recommended to me by my friend,

The promised to follow up with: calls, using your product, talking to customers or “noodle on things.” Despite best intentions they probably won’t follow up on their actions. Why don’t VC’s follow up? I like to tell entrepreneurs This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC .” 8221;  Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough.  Some

Let’s start with a discussion of existing social networks and then how to approach people on them. Second, I don’t want to clutter up the stream of information that I have in my Facebook newsfeed with information on people with whom I don’t have a relationship. LinkedIn.  The I sometimes think that certain advice is BGO (blinding glimpse of the obvious) and doesn’t warrant mentioning.  But But then people’s actions tell me otherwise.

Good idea & plan: You must start with a good idea and a PowerPoint deck (my outline is here , scroll down mid way).  Jarl In most cases if you can’t get a prototype done you’re probably not an entrepreneur.  That’s And a great product starts with the founder. This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC . Last night I attended a DealMaker Media (whom I love because they always host such great discussions) panel on raising angel money moderated by Dan Gould and with panelists Rob Hayes (First Round Capital, more seed or A round than angel),

Arnold Waldstein , who stops by periodically on my blog and always leaves relevant comments, made the observation that, “if I want to connect with you, I’ll engage with you on this blog …from there, a follow on Twitter, a link on LinkedIn are closing the loop of connection rather that opening a cold door.”  Many people who want to get to know me send me a LinkedIn invite, connect on Facebook or more recently follow me on Twitter.  I’ve been thinking a lot about comments lately.  I recently wrote a post about how to get access to people at conferences

And how she launched her latest startup, SkinnySongs. We were all starting out together and building our companies and competing and cooperating much as is the case of the technology industry today so a lot of fun, we’re all sort of around the same age, so it is very similar I think of what goes on today in the Valley with you know with the web companies. So that ends up being funny. The Harvard Business School Case Study on Heidi Roizen talks about the dinner parties she hosts for tech leaders like her personal friend, Bill Gates, and how people skills helped her build one of the most admired careers in Silicon Valley.

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs.  This blog post ended up on Valleywag (which had much bigger presence back then). Anyway, the starting point for this blog entry is a cartoon I remember reading in the New Yorker. After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company.  My blog was wiped out. 

In March 2007,  when Pownce launched, Twitter didn't have much of a head start. think, if I were to do a new start up or a different company, I would pick it in an area where there wasn’t such good competition, determined competition. think there is definitely different levels of start ups and Twitter was definitely (laughs) a good start up, and it's really hard to compete or be compared to. We talked about more than Pownce and Twitter in this interview. Leah Culver is a developer who launched many projects.