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Branding first starts with your team

Branding first starts with your team

May 17, 2013
in Entrepreneurship

External branding starts with developing a consistent, internal message first. When you think of branding and positioning, remember that your first line of offense and the most important representation of your company comes from your employees.  Make sure you have a succinct, crisp and clear 2-3 sentence pitch on what you do and that everyone [...]

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Camping out and closing deals

Camping out and closing deals

Jan 15, 2013
in Entrepreneurship

I am sure you can see a common thread in many of my recent posts – Sales, Sales, Sales!  I don’t care how great your product is because without an ability to articulate the value proposition succinctly, tell the world about it in a capital efficient manner, and sell the damn thing, you are SOL [...]

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Cutco Knives and startups

Cutco Knives and startups

Sep 28, 2012
in Entrepreneurship

When I worked for Cutco Knives one summer in college selling the world’s finest cutlery, my dream was to sell the Homemaker +8 at every meeting.  It was the Rolls Royce of knife sets and in every sales call I had, I always tried to flog the deluxe set.  Of course, more often than not, I left [...]

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Startups and Intellectual Property (IP)

May 16, 2012
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Lately questions about Intellectual Property or IP have been cropping up left and right.  Eliot Durbin (my partner at BOLDstart Ventures) and I had a long discussion this morning in preparation for his panel today about IP and patents.  Last week, we met with a company and when we asked about their core IP, they [...]

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What entrepreneurs can learn from Jeff Spicoli

Jan 25, 2012
in Entrepreneurship

I know I may be dating myself here, but over the past few weeks I couldn’t help but think about the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and one of the standout characters, Jeff Spicoli.  When asked by Mr. Hand, his teacher, why he keeps coming late and wasting his time, Spicoli answers, “I don’t [...]

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Never give up but move on quickly

Oct 21, 2011
in Uncategorized

As a young kid, I was always taught the valuable lesson of never giving up or quitting.  No matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to stand up and keep moving.  That is the same trait that I also admire in many of the entrepreneurs that I have funded over the years. [...]

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Startups getting caught in No Man’s Land

Sep 29, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

“No Man’s Land” is traditionally known as the area between two trenches.  This is a reference to World War I and the vicious trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat that characterized that war. In “No Man’s Land” lay a wasteland of dead bodies and other debris and shrapnel.  Increasingly I am seeing many startups who were ably [...]

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The New York Startup Market Rocks and is REAL

Apr 15, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

OK, I may be biased having been an early stage VC based out of New York since 1996, but I must say that the vibe, energy, and people at the Techstars NYC Demo Day event yesterday was simply awesome.  Dave Tisch and team simply did a fantastic job guiding the startups, recruiting the mentors, and [...]

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Reflecting on passed investments

Apr 5, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Every 3 months I dig through my “passed company” folder to look at what investment opportunities we passed on and why.  Inevitably, there are a few companies that are near-misses, but we end up passing on for whatever reason.  Did we pass because we didn’t think the team was great or because we didn’t believe [...]

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Know When to Hold 'em, Know When to Fold 'em

Feb 14, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I had a tough call with an entrepreneur this morning.  His company raised a fair amount of seed financing but did not hit the milestones it needed to in order to raise a real round of venture capital.  The product is nice but they took too long iterating and releasing a subsequent version while the [...]

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