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“One of the big misconceptions in baseball is that playing the game keeps you in shape to pitch. I wish that was true. It's not.”...

6 Steps To Raising Venture Capital – Hint: Preparation Matters More Than Your Pitch
May 22, 2012 | 3 Comments
“One of the big misconceptions in baseball is that playing the game keeps you in shape to pitch. I wish that was true. It's not.” Steven Ellis, Professional Pitcher Major League baseball pitchers spend far more time preparing to pitch than they actually do pitching. The same should be true of an entrepreneur who is attempting to secure money from sophisticated investors. The steps outlined below represent an ideal approach to raising capital from sophisticated investors. Unfortunately, your fundraising efforts will be less linear. You might be at Step 2 with one VC and Step 3 with another. However, the greater degree you can sequentially follow these steps and maintain your discussions with each venture capitalist (VC) at relatively the same stage, the sooner you can spend less time in the company of investors and get back to running your business.

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During my tenure at Expertcity (creator of GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting), one of my responsibilities was leading our online marketing, a role I retained until our...

When Intent And Content Align, Online Ads Suck A Whole Lot Less
May 14, 2012 | No Comments
During my tenure at Expertcity (creator of GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting), one of my responsibilities was leading our online marketing, a role I retained until our eventual acquisition by Citrix. When we launched GoToMyPC in 2001, the rules of online marketing were still being written. Along with GoToMyPC, companies like Netflix, Classmates and ZoneLabs were learning from each other. Since then, the craft of advertising online has matured from an art to a science.

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This entry originally appeared on Forbes HERE Although it is tempting to overly intellectualize modern-day venture capital, its underlying construct has been part of human...

Don’t Pitch Your Idea To Venture Capitalists, They Don’t Care
May 7, 2012 | 11 Comments
This entry originally appeared on Forbes HERE Although it is tempting to overly intellectualize modern-day venture capital, its underlying construct has been part of human society for thousands of years. From the earliest days of seafaring traders, affluent dilettantes have been entrusting their capital to less-affluent, enterprising workers willing to share a portion of the resulting gain with their benefactors. Two early venture capitalists were King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who backed Christopher Columbus. The traits these royal investors sought in Columbus are surprisingly similar to the characteristics modern investors look for when evaluating startup teams.

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In his book Enchantment , Guy Kawasaki encourages entrepreneurs to immerse their audience in their “cause”, in order to enchant them. One of the immersion...

Discover The Hidden Persuasion Techniques Concealed In Online Ads
April 30, 2012 | 2 Comments
In his book Enchantment , Guy Kawasaki encourages entrepreneurs to immerse their audience in their “cause”, in order to enchant them. One of the immersion techniques Guy promotes is to offer a hands-on trial, in which the prospective customer can touch, feel and experience your product before purchasing it. If you care to learn more about the enchantment process, you may want to watch my interview with Guy HERE, in which he provides a number of enchanting tips and tricks.

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Article first published as Why A Prominent Start-up Executive Wants You to Get Fired and Fail on Technorati. Kim Kovacs, Founder and CEO OptionEase, recently...

Why A Prominent Startup Executive Wants You To Fail, Get Fired And Focus
April 24, 2012 | 4 Comments
Article first published as Why A Prominent Start-up Executive Wants You to Get Fired and Fail on Technorati. Kim Kovacs, Founder and CEO OptionEase, recently spoke to a class of emerging entrepreneurs at UC Santa Barbara. With over 700 customers, OptionEase has become the leading enterprise class SaaS solution for stock option and equity compensation tracking and compliance. Kim shocked some of the students by telling them that she hopes they fail. In this 8-minute video excerpt from her talk, Kim describes why, “failure is my favorite word at my company now.” Kim also discusses the importance of focus and why she does not hesitate to hire people who have previously been fired.

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Article first published as Steve Blank Discusses Origin And Future Of Lean Startup Movement on Technorati. I recently spoke with Steve Blank, author of the...

Steve Blank Discusses The Origin And Future Of The Lean Startup Movement
April 16, 2012 | No Comments
Article first published as Steve Blank Discusses Origin And Future Of Lean Startup Movement on Technorati. I recently spoke with Steve Blank, author of the new book The Startup Owner’s Manual. Steve is also a Stanford Professor and noted marketing entrepreneur. He is credited with pioneering the Lean Startup Movement in 2005 via the publication of his bestselling, Four Steps To The Epiphany. No matter how much you think you know about Steve’s lean startup philosophy, Eric Ries’ contributions to the movement, or the methodologies by which companies have put lean startup tenets into practice, I am confident you will be enlightened and entertained by Steve’s frank and insightful remarks. 

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This entry originally appeared at Live Your Legend. “It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame.” Eugene Kleiner, Co-founder Kleiner,...

Entrepreneurship Is A Compulsion, Not A Choice
April 9, 2012 | 4 Comments
This entry originally appeared at Live Your Legend. “It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame.” Eugene Kleiner, Co-founder Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers A small percentage of people in each free-market society generate the jobs for everyone else. These entrepreneurs do not risk everything, work outrageous hours and put themselves under extreme pressure because they want to.  They certainly do not do it for the promise of riches. They do it because they have to, because they are driven to create something from nothing.

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Note: This is Part IV in the Startup Team Building series. Read Part I HERE, Part II HERE and Part III HERE. This article originally appeared at...

Hands-on Techniques To Avoid Hiring Wantrepreneurs
April 3, 2012 | 3 Comments
Note: This is Part IV in the Startup Team Building series. Read Part I HERE, Part II HERE and Part III HERE. This article originally appeared at Inc.com HERE They smile, they laugh on cue and they have a rehearsed response for every conventional interview question. They profess to be entrepreneurs, but are they actually Wantrepreneurs? A Wantrepreneur is a well-intentioned person who wants to be an entrepreneur, but does not have the skills, personality and/or risk profile to be successful. When the going gets tough (as it always does at any startup) the Wantrepreneurs get busy emailing their resumes to prospective employers. The costs of a mis-hire during the early stages of your adVenture are dramatic. As such, deploy unconventional tactics to separate the ATM Operating Wantrepreneurs from the Bank Robbing entrepreneurs.

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This part two of a series; you can access part one HERE. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include:...

More Startup Tips From The Beatles
March 27, 2012 | 2 Comments
This part two of a series; you can access part one HERE. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include: Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison. I recently reviewed Richard Courtney and George Cassidy's published business book, Come Together – The Business Wisdom of The Beatles in the first entry of this series.   Although the Beatles' phenomenal career encompasses numerous startup lessons, many of the anecdotes cited in Come Together are trivial, while others are painfully obvious. However, despite the book's shortcomings, it contains a number of insightful lessons emerging entrepreneurs can apply to their startup careers.

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As part of the UC Santa Barbara's Distinguished Lecture Series, Emmy Award winner Seth Epstein and current Founder and CEO of SocialStay, described seven practical,...

7 Tools of Entrepreneurial Awesomeness
March 20, 2012 | 4 Comments
As part of the UC Santa Barbara's Distinguished Lecture Series, Emmy Award winner Seth Epstein and current Founder and CEO of SocialStay, described seven practical, hands-on techniques entrepreneurs can use to enhance their overall awesomeness. Seth's comments were particularly intriguing, as he attended UCSB but departed school before graduating in order to start a successful clothing company.

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