gid=1775486 Self-description: "80% of jobs (or more) are found through networking, so as a group of professionals from many different industries, we started our own local networking group in 2008. Frequency: Up to several times a month. Cost: Free and up Review: In addition to hosting mixers a couple times a year, they also organize group attendence at various cultural, This is will be a continually updating post. I'll be creating additional lists for educational, chamber of commerce, etc. Organizational representatives: please contact me directly for updates, etc.

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),

On Ben Kuo's blog, he posted about Entrepreneurs in Southern California and pointed to a post by Will Johnson, a Southern California entrepreneur and blogger. Will's post talks about lack of interest in working for startups here in Southern California, saying: ..we probably’d don’t have the: a) same support infrastructure (meet-ups, networking events, etc.); we b) history of success; and c) abundance of start-up companies (so if one fails there is another to jump on).

This is part of my Startup Advice series often have career discussions with entrepreneurs – both young and more mature – whether they should join company “X” or not.  I at a startup that has already raised $5 million the chances of you making your retirement money on that company is EXTREMELY small.  I I usually pull the old trick of answering a question with a question. 

So they set up seed programs that allowed for rapid decisions for $500k or less, often done as convertible debt for both speed and cost reasons.  I told entrepreneurs that it was a bit of a Faustian bargain.  8221;  And I think this line of thinking has started to become conventional wisdom as outlined in Chris Dixon’s excellent blog post saying that you need to be careful raising seed money from a large VC fund . This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital . This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response

This is part of my ongoing series on Start-up Lessons that I learned from founding two companies. believe that it is part of the DNA of an entrepreneur – being so competitive that you’re practically sick when you lose.  It’s Entrepreneurs are neurotic about it.  They’re I HATE LOSING . I

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. Tell me a bit about your background. Like many product managers, my background is fairly eclectic. That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. From there, I became the first non-founder employee at an e-commerce startup called BITSource, which was the first electronic software distributor delivering electronic volume software licenses to corporations. Visible networking is turning into a really great opportunity to get to know people better, get to meet new people, and have some interesting conversations.

You'll also have access to the list of attendees from all the past events you've signed up for. Referral Exchange Network is a rapidly-expanding group of business professionals who are sick and tired of attending networking meetings that suck our time and end up with dead leads. The whole point of business is to make the life you want to live possible--so why wait to start enjoying it? This is will be a continually updating post. I'll be creating additional lists for educational , chamber of commerce, etc. See also Networking & Social Media Job Search Webinars,

The Scott Sanfilippo Interview Media Optimization Firms Are Red Hot In Southern California in 2009 Proliferate - Aggregate - Integrate Startups Uncensored #4 - “Finding and Working with Partners” SoCal VC’s absent from Forbes Midas List Top Five Best Uses of an Entrepreneur's Legal Dollars What Data Crunchers Did for Obama An Evaluation of Web Strategy in the Musical Instrument Business Keywords Layoffs Fund Venture Capital Events Technology Angel Mahalo Zag MySpace Geni

Contrary to the common belief that Southern California "should be an easy place to raise money" with all of its' entertainment and real estate wealth, it is a very difficult place to raise Venture Capital for technology start-ups. To make matters even more difficult almost 90% of VCs based in SoCal in 1999 are now gone while our beachhead entertainment companies have a terrible track record at making early stage investments and now typically wait to invest in later rounds. The bulk of all professional Venture Capital is managed out of offices based in Silicon Valley and most of these fund managers like to invest close to home (except MHS Capital ).