The Top Venture Capitalists in the World
Here’s a short analysis of the top VCs in the world…
How to Be the Obvious Choice
Suzen Pettit
by Suzen Pettit at Omaginarium
“This seems like a lot of work for God’s sake. I have a website. I have a Facebook account. I send emails. I am a busy so and so. Why do I also need to be creating all this “content”?”
Let’s discuss amongst ourselves:
From Startup to $1B IPO: Why early Operations strategy matters
by Ram Krishnan, Advisor & Retired Operations Executive
To build a high value company, an entrepreneur must convince investors that the addressed market is large, that the company is capable of meeting market demand and that the profit margin can be maintained regardless of market conditions. In addition to the revenue and profitability requirements, such financially attractive markets are characterized by tough quality requirements and rapidly eroding average selling prices (ASP). A good example of such a market is the smart-phone market where annual volumes are in the hundreds of millions, selling prices erode at 20-25% per year and quality requirements are stringent.
SHARED, an Innovative Work-space for Creative People, Launches in San Francisco
We just met Marilyn Yu, an award-winning author/artist/designer, and her new creative work-space sounds amazing.
SHARED takes the idea of co-working and applies it to the different types of space that creative people need. It has office space, work space, and a shared work shop with tools and equipment. In addition, SHARED has space for meetings, classes, and events.
SHARED is a space for creative people to work and collaborate together. It is based in the belief that together we can create greater things than we could individually or in isolation.
Highlights:
#sfbeta :: iOS Edition — Don’t Miss It!
Sign up: http://sfbeta.eventbrite.com/
Welcome to #sfbeta, Silicon Valley’s Legendary Startup Mixer.
- Held in the heart of San Francisco, bringing people together since 2006, #sfbeta is a quarterly startup gathering with a rotating theme.
- 12 curated startups, fitting this event’s iOS theme, demo live throughout the night, around the venue. (Startups: apply to demo.)
- More than 500 people attend each event: founders, makers, hackers, writers, designers, artists, activists, cyborgs, photographers, #twitterati, investors, dealmakers, and more.
- Enjoy pitches and pints without the PowerPoint: our uniquely open, presentation-free format allows maximum time for socializing and networking.
Startup Tools: Visual Website Optimizer is Like a Second Pair of Eyes
This month, as part of our Startup Tools series, we’re covering Visual Website Optimizer.
Visual Website Optimizer makes it easy to A/B test your site. Why should you care about A/B testing? A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs best. You can compare two web pages by showing the two variants (let’s call them A and B) to visitors at the same time. Then you can measure what the visitors do on the site with heat maps and conversion goals.
Startup Spotlight: GoAnimate Makes Creating Your Next Video a Breeze
Steve Hoffman
by Steve Hoffman, Cofounder of Founders Space
This week’s Startup Spotlight is shining on GoAnimate.
There was a time when it required a professional team and thousands of dollars to create a video for your startup. Those days are gone thanks to GoAnimate. Within minutes, not days or weeks, you can create your own animations and get them live on your site, as well as YouTube and every major social network.
Here’s a video I created for Founders Space…
Mentors: The Key to Funding and Success
Can having the right mentors affect your ability to secure funding and build a successful company? Silicon Valley runs on shared knowledge and the collective experience. Hear from our panel of experts how getting the right advice can provide you with opportunities, funding, ideas and new viewpoints.
Presenters: Don Butler of Thomvest Ventures; Vish Mishra of Clearstone Venture Partners; Carl Showalter of Opus Capital; and Ron Weissman, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and angel.
The discussion will include:
- How to find the right mentors for your startup
- How to approach potential mentors
Is Your Company a Money Magnet? Show Investors How They Will Make Money with Your Startup
Are you getting the traction you need with investors? Discover how to position your startup as a money-making machine.
Presenters: Peter Craddock of Shoreline Venture Management; Bob McDonald of R.A. McDonald Company; and V.K. Rajaram of Band of Angels.
Our panel of experts will discuss:
- Business models that are especially attractive to investors
- The kind of returns investors expect to see on their investment
- Timing expectations of investors
- How to ask for investment based on goals
- How to position your team as the ideal match for solving the problem
How Startups Win by Providing Exceptional Customer Support
Steve Hoffman
In today’s highly competitive world where any startup can launch a new service practically overnight and compete with you, how do you differentiate yourself? One way is by providing exceptional customer service.
If you run a startup, your biggest hurdle is probably customer acquisition. It’s expensive to acquire new customers. Most startups spend a huge amount of time worrying about how to get customers cheaply, but they often overlook what it takes to keep them. This is where customer service comes in. There’s no better way to retain customers and have them recommend you than by outdoing your competitors when it comes to service.
Join us at FailCon
Stop being afraid of failure and start embracing it!
FailCon is a one-day conference for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers, and designers to study their own and others’ failures and prepare for success.
We all have founded, worked for or invested in startups that have failed. We’re smart, we keep up with the latest in technology trends, but sometimes things just don’t go as planned. How can you predict what will work and what won’t? Well, you can’t.
Collaborative Development Financings
This video was created by Richard and his daughter. Fun, creative and highly educational! For more videos like it, visit Richard’s blog at http://hsutube.com/
Richard Hsu is a Silicon Valley Technology Lawyer who believes we are so overloaded with information that if you cannot be brutally pithy and honest, it won’t get read.
Three Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur
Karen Milde, CEO and Co-Founder, Reframe Marketing Inc.
1. Belief
Successful entrepreneurs begin their business with a vision – a dream. They act on these dream by taking small steps towards accomplishing their goals. With every step entrepreneurs get closer to attaining their ultimate goal or vision. However, not all steps are easy to take. Nothing worth fighting for is easy to attain, especially when beginning a business. Successful entrepreneurs only made it through difficult times by being strong-willed. They never let pessimism stand in their way.
Cyber Threats and New Rules – What Has Changed? Why now?
| Panel Event: TOTAL ACCESS Panel Event: “Cyber Threats and New Rules – What Has Changed? Why Now?” with CloudFlare, Shape Security, BlueBox, and Wells Fargo | ||||||||||
Co-Hosted By: | ||||||||||
Startup Spotlight: Cazoomi Helps Startups to Build Better Customer and Sales Relationships
Cazoomi has been part of Founders Space since the beginning. Many of you will recognize Clint Wilson, Cazoomi’s CEO. He’s grown his business dramatically over the past couple years, and we wanted to feature some of the great work his startup has been doing.
Here are some of the problems Cazoomi solves:
Email Marketing
Marketers know what works: email marketing. But once you email your customers, leads and prospects how do you tell which email lead to the most conversions? To answer, you need Email Marketing metrics synced back to your CRM to see the results.
What Are the Top 3 Qualities Angel Investors Look For
Ryan Scott is a successful entrepreneur and pioneer, humanist and philanthropist. He’s also an investor and advisor to startup companies and charities.
In this video, he talks about what angel investors look for in entrepreneurs.
How do Startup Incubators Work?
Jay Adelson talks about how startup incubators work. He discusses the pros and cons of being funded by one. Jay also offers tips and advice on pitching them.
Advice for Tech Startups from Angels and VCs
- Sharon Wienbar, Scale Ventures
- Steve Kann, Bridgewater
- Brian Cohen, angel investor
- Howard Morgan, First Round
What do they look for in an investment?
Everyone wants a thoughtful numbers, even if you are wrong. Lots of patents in a field make them wary. At an event, meeting, or otherwise, don’t forget the value of energy and hand-to-hand sales tactics. But — with extra stress — you need to be very upfront about what your product does.
The 10 Myths of Entrepreneurship
This is a fun, little animated video that dispels the myths of entrepreneurship. What does it take to be a great entrepreneur?
Vator Splash startup event comes to LA
Vator Splash startup event comes to LA, May 30 (3:30 pm to 10 pm)
Vator, one of the largest business networks dedicated to high-tech entrepreneurs and investors, is bringing its popular Splash event to the Hollywood Roosevelt on the evening of May 30! Founders and/or CEOs of Twitter, Zynga, PayPal, Pandora, Zappos, Box etc. have spoken at Splash. Get energized and inspired by them as they share their lessons learned about their success and failures scaling their startups from the ground up.
A Man Walked Into A Phone Booth
Suzen Pettit
by Suzen Pettit at Omaginarium
An old wise man once said:
‘To love is to suffer.
To avoid suffering one must not love.
But then one suffers from not loving.
Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer.
To suffer is to suffer.
To be happy is to love.
To be happy then is to suffer.
But suffering makes one unhappy.
Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness.
I hope you’re getting this down?’ -Woody Allen
Guy Kawasaki: The Top 10 Mistakes of Entrepreneurs
Guy Kawasaki speaks at the UC Berkeley Startup Competition (Bplan) at the Haas School of Business.
Guy Kawasaki is the former chief evangelist of Apple and co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures. Here he explains the top ten mistakes that entrepreneurs make. His talk covers all stages of a startup, from inception to exit.
Guy Kawasaki’s Advice for Entrepreneurs: Typers & Prototypers
Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures.
Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
Google Analytics: Optimizing AdWords
This is an excellent video on optimizing Adwords using Google Analytics. Anyone with a website business should know this!
In this tough economy when many advertisers are cutting their online ad budgets, it’s important for all of us to review optimization tactics. What do you do when you start or are handed an AdWords account? Here’s an optimization “how-to” primer for you all.
How Many Startups Fail?
Everyone seems to think that their hot tech startup will make them a billionaire by their mid-20s, but that’s not always the case. What are the actual chances a typical startup will succeed?
Click here to View Info Graphic
Present Like an Investor: Tailor Your Approach to What Investors Care About
Founders Space Roundtable presents: Are you ready to wow investors at your next pitch event or meeting?
Sign up for Event: http://fssfapr2013.eventbrite.com
Presenters: Joydeep Bhattacharyya of Shasta Ventures; Sean Jacobsohn of Emergence Capital Partners; Richard Mordini of Javelin Venture Partners; and Ali Wasti of Azure Capital.
Find out what venture capitalists care about, and how to present your information to get to yes. Our panel will discuss:
- How to tell your story
- How to present your team
- How to explain the market potential
- Discussing competitors
- Sharing the business model
Investors Hate Risk: Demonstrate You’re A Sure Bet
Founders Space Roundtable presents: Which risk factors are non-starters for investors? How can you minimize risk to look like a sure bet? Even if you have a killer business concept and team, VCs and angels are weighing the risks. There are steps you can take to minimize perceived risk and get the funding you need.
Sign up for Event: http://fssvapr2013.eventbrite.com/
Presenters: John Giddings of Tech Angel Group, Jay Jamison of BlueRun Ventures, and Jon Soberg of Blumberg Capital.
Our expert panel will share knowledge on these questions and more:
- What do investors view as high risk?
WavePlay Presents the Silicon Valley Dojo Event
23 April from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in San Francisco
Sign up for Event: http://waveplaydojoapril2013.eventbrite.com
Network with investors, founders and the international community while gaining information on “The Silicon Valley Way” of doing business to connect with investors and get traction.
Do you want information on what makes business happen in Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay? You’ll get the information you need from investors and subject matter experts while networking with the international and domestic community. Our experts will answer these questions and more:
- What are the shortcuts to connecting with investors?
WavePlay’s Portuguese Speaking World Pitch Event in San Francisco
WavePlay and Leadership Business Consulting Present
26 April from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in San Francisco
Sign up for Event http://waveplayportuguese2013.eventbrite.com
This event is open to all interested parties
All presentations are in English
Network with investors, founders, subject matter experts, dignitaries and the San Francisco/Silicon Valley international community! Our panel of judges will give feedback and tips to entrepreneurs on their pitches, presented in English.
Countries represented: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Portugal
Agenda
2:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m. — Networking, drinks and appetizers
2:30 p.m.-2:40 p.m. — Welcome and introductions
Getting Your App Out There with App-o-Day
We’ve been exploring all sorts of ways to get our apps on as many iPhones and iPads as possible.
One good platform we found is App-o-Day. Their model is to offer their users a free app every day. They do this through their own app, which features a single free app each day.
This will only work if you can make your app free for a few days and then turn it back to paid. The result is a huge number of downloads in a single day.
We tried this out on our game Beetle Bounce, and it worked like a charm.
