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Jas P

Distribution Hacks - 0 views

distributionhacks.com

startup startup idea validation growth hacking

shared by Jas P on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • “Hi Elle, what’s the angle?”
  • “Arbitrage on parsing shipping data,” I reply. “Well, everyone has an angle.”
  • My Dad explained that hedge funds are truly a dime-a-dozen in the finance world, not dissimilar from angel investors.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Then he said the thing that was THE THING: You can do a hedge fund anytime, why do it now? Well thanks Dad, for the vote of confidence (more like “holy fuck you think I could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in this economy!?”), but what do I do with that?
  • He continued to explain that creating a hedge fund, or any kind of fund, was something i should be thinking about in my 40s or 50s when I wanted a more traditional role in finance with a lower risk/reward profile.
  • My family is upper middle class, but as service providers to the very wealthy I’ve learned some valuable things about money, at a much younger age than I otherwise would.
  • It has changed how I approach people with money, for better or for worse. I expect this will have an interesting impact on my ability to raise funding for my company (and I’m not saying all positive here):
  • “Yes but what do we sell?”
  • “We sell trust, honey,” he smiles. “We’re honest people just like the steel workers, union laborers, and employees these companies serve. We help them keep their promises.”
  • A series of deaths in my family in the past couple years have made me more aware of mortality than I ever was before. My Dad pointed out, as we discussed the hedge fund business, that it was something I could do without actually leaving a chair. Move to New York, get a Blackberry, iPhone and 3-line desk phone and I could operate from anywhere.
  • But I would never be able to recapture, at 50, the energy of being 25. My Dad had me when he was 28. To him, I am so early in my life (I’m 27 now… this post reflects on a convo 2 years ago).
  • Staring down Demo Day, I hold this conversation in my mind. Have some balls, Elle. I’m pretty sure that’s what he was trying to say.
Jas P

How Canadian Entrepreneurs Finance Their Startups - Techvibes.com - 0 views

www.techvibes.com/...ance-their-startups-2012-08-30

vc funding leanstartupyeg

shared by Jas P on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • What do entrepreneurs use to fund their startup in its earliest stages? Themselves. According to Profit, 98% of those behind Canada's hottest startups fund their startup with their own capital. 62% continue to do this post-launch for growth capital (check out their infographic after the jump).
Jas P

Vinod Khosla Of Khosla Ventures: It's Not About Funding The Company, It's About Helping... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...company-its-about-helping-them

startup funding vc

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Khosla is very passionate about assisting his companies with recruiting, even suggesting that talented folks send him their resume.
  • Khosla went on to discuss what happens when you hire the wrong people, and he says that it’s hard to get a team back on track once those mistakes are made early on. I spend most of my time recruiting for my companies. You hire the first 15 people and they hire the rest.
  • Not only is it about hiring the “right” people, but as Khosla has said here on TechCrunch before, you don’t have to be a jerk to be successful. Finding the right spot for someone in a company is key: If people aren’t performing, put them in the another job where they can perform or fire them.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Disruption is key as well, as some of Khosla’s portfolio companies have taken on the biggest and most difficult problems in the world. On Khosla’s investment on payment service Square: If you said to someone three years ago that you could compete against PayPal, most people would say that’s a crazy idea, payments are done.
  • Some of the new things that Khosla’s firm is getting into is the consumerization of healthcare, and he has discussed some of the new companies he’s investing in, including smart chips and apps that help you track your vital signs. At the end of the day, Vinod Khosla doesn’t even like to refer to himself as a venture capitalist: I don’t consider myself a VC, I consider myself a mentor.
Jas P

Forget Angels, Try Your Parents or Piggy Bank - The Accelerators - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...try-your-parents-or-piggy-bank

vc funding

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • They found that 90% of the more than 2,000 startups that approached this group only garnered enough interest to elicit a follow-up offer from fewer than 10 of the group’s angel investors.
  • These entrepreneurs had almost no chance of receiving financing. Only 2%—or about 20—of these 2,000 startups attracted enough interest from between 35 and 191 angels to move on to the next round of consideration, giving them, on average, a 40% chance of getting funded, according to the study’s results.
  • Where did the funding come from for those companies that failed to attract an outside investment? For the vast majority—70%—of successful entrepreneurs starting their first companies, it was from personal savings. A much smaller number raised money from business partners, bank loans, friends and family, and other sources.
Jas P

The Emails That Got My Unsexy Start-Up Covered By TechCrunch - James Deer on starting up. - 0 views

jamesdeer.com/...techcrunch-emails

startup pr pr

shared by Jas P on 10 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • 2 weeks ago we walked away from $160,000 in seed funding because we decided after taking advice from many folks, including Joel from BufferApp, that we should get profitable before we take funding to get a better valuation, not rocket science I know, but as it was our first experience with investment the temptation to say yes was definitely difficult.The problem we're solving was born out of our own frustrations of managing the content development process. As I'm sure you can imagine playing email-tennis with word/google documents, and attachments is incredibly unproductive.
Jas P

The Genius of Starting a Company Without Outside Capital - NYTimes.com - 0 views

boss.blogs.nytimes.com/...ompany-without-outside-capital

vc funding bootstrapping

shared by Jas P on 14 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The first question owners need to ask — and challenge themselves on — is how much money they really need. My experience is that most entrepreneurs think they need much more money than they really do. There is almost always a cheaper way to get things done.
  • Every month that they are on the hunt for money instead of developing and marketing their product or service, they are wasting valuable time.
  • Q.What were your start-up costs?A.We started this business with less than $35,000.Q.Did you get any loans or take any equity from anyone?A.No, we took no equity partners and the start-up capital for the business was contributed by the three owners.
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  • Q.How long did it take before you were generating cash flow?A.Because we’re a contract brewery we were able to be cash-flow positive in a very short amount of time minus the initial outlay for packaging and ingredient costs, which were obviously funded by the start-up capital that we put in. We were able to really be cash-flow positive within the first six to eight weeks of operation and have been profitable on paper since our second or third batch of beer.
Jas P

Ten million users is the new one million users - Chris Dixon - 0 views

cdixon.org/...million-is-the-new-one-million

funding growth hacking vc

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • - For consumer startups with non-transactional models (ad-based or unknown business models), you need something closer to 10 million users versus 1 million users to get Series A funded.
Jas P

Vinod Khosla: "I Feel Sad Sometimes For Y Combinator Companies That Get So Much Hype" |... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...vinod-khosla-y-combinator

startup funding vc

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Khosla wasn’t trying to defame Y Combinator, noting “There’s plenty of smart teams out of YC that we fund.” But he stressed that heavily prepared presentations can backfire. “Too much of the polish of the five slide deck” distracts a team and can repel mentors like him. For a startup that believes it has a great idea, the next thing they need is great execution, and that requires an all-star team and savvy strategy — elements that the right angel or VC firm can offer. A pumped-up valuation might help the founders retain more equity, but that doesn’t matter without success.
  • If your idea is risky, but with a huge upside that isn’t valued too high, you can gain the support of people like Vinod and his Khosla Ventures. ”I spend most of my time recruiting for my companies. Once you hire the wrong people… it’s really hard to get a company back on track.”
Jas P

10 Studies That Reveal What Customers WANT You To Know About Them - 0 views

blog.kissmetrics.com/what-customers-want

Customer development customer service conversion

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 1. Customers Care More about Service Quality and Attitude than about Service Speed
  • A recent Gallup study reveals that when it comes to memorable service people tell their friends about, it’s more important that the service provided feels “thorough” and friendly, rather than quick. This was especially true for service in premium or prestigious markets, such as customer support at a bank.
  • Not only that, in a Customer Experience Report by RightNow, researchers found that the #1 reason customers would abandon a brand was due to poor quality and rude customer service, which were cited 18% more often than “slow or untimely service.”
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • 2. Customers Know What They (and Other Customers) Want; They’re also Willing to Help
  • In a study of 1,193 commercially successful innovations across nine industries, 737 (60%) came from customers (i.e., customers can have very innovative ideas). User-created innovations have been successfully utilized to turn around “innovative slump periods.” While #1 is certainly a shocking revelation, there is a unique case study for #2 that really paints a believable picture for just how valuable customer input is.
  • 3. Customers like Loyalty Programs… as Long as You Make Them Seem Easy
  • In their research on the Endowed Progress Effect, Nunes and Dreze tested two versions of a car-wash loyalty program, which consisted of a card that got stamped after every wash. The first card needed 8 stamps to get a free wash. The second card needed 10 stamps to get a free wash, but 2 stamps were automatically added when the customer joined. That means both cards took 8 stamps total to get a free wash; they were just framed differently. Which one do you think performed better? Their findings: Despite the similar process, the second card performed almost twice as well as the first card, having 34 percent of participants complete it versus 19 percent for the other card. Why is this important? It shows that customers are more likely to stick with loyalty programs if the task at hand is framed as already being started.
  • 4. Creating Goodwill with Customers Doesn’t Take a Lot of Money
  • An employee on the phone with a customer during a marathon troubleshooting session heard the customer tell someone in the background that they were getting hungry. As she tells it, “So I put them on hold, and I ordered them a pizza. About 30 minutes later, we were still on the phone, and there was a knock on their door. I told them to go answer it because it was pizza! They were so excited.”
  • What’s actually happening: While the cost of the gifts/actions is quite small, the human mind simply cannot refuse the psychological construct of reciprocity. Reciprocity can be summed up as our natural inclination to feel grateful for favors and our desire to “pay them back,” no matter how small they are (covered quite well by Cialdini in his famous book Influence). The other thing that you must understand about reciprocity is that research has shown us that the intentions of the “giver” can affect the perceived value of the gift. This is why “Frugal WOWs” work so well: Customers perceive the service as a genuine act of kindness rather than as you trying to buy their affection with costly gifts. So remember, it doesn’t take huge expenses to win customers over!
  • 5. Customers Absolutely Adore Personalization; They Will Gladly Pay More for It
  • Would you believe that waiters were able to increase their tips by 23% over a control group by utilizing something as inexpensive as mints? It’s true, and this research is not only important in helping you understand how to create repeat customers, but also how to keep your customers incredibly satisfied and supportive of your business offering.
  • The results were surprising to say the least: The first group studied had waiters giving mints along with the check, making no mention of the mints themselves. This increased tips by around 3% against the control group. The second group had waiters bring out two mints by hand (separate from the check), and they mentioned them to the table (i.e., “Would anyone like some mints before they leave?”). This saw tips increase by about 14% against the control group. The last group had waiters bring out the check first along with a few mints. A short time afterward, the waiters came back with another set of mints and let customers know they had brought out more mints, in case they wanted another. That last group is where waiters saw a 21% increase in tips… yet they still were bringing out only two mints. The researchers found that it was the perceived personalization of bringing out the second set of mints and mentioning it to customers (“Hey, I thought I might see if all of you are satisfied or if someone could use an extra mint.”) that made the difference.
  • Point being: It wasn’t really the mints; it was the personalized experience that they created. It made it perfectly clear to customers that the waiter was thinking of them. Be sure to incorporate this into your own offering: How can you follow up with customers in a personalized manner with free support, training, or reward for trying out your product or service?
  • Research lead by Melanie Green and Timothy Brock reveals that trying to persuade people by telling them stories works extremely well. The reason that stories (when told well) are so appealing to customers is that you can transport them inside the story and get your point across without directly selling.
  • Once inside the story, we are less likely to notice things which don’t match up with our everyday experience. For example, an inspirational Hollywood movie with a “can-do” spirit might convince us that we can tackle any problem, despite what we know about how the real world works. Also, when concentrating on a story, people are less aware that they are subject to a persuasion attempt: The message gets in under the radar. Our brains have a tendency to be mostly concerned with enjoying the story and absorbing the message.
  • For instance, over at Help Scout, I conducted an interview with Leo Wildrich of the BufferApp that discussed how a small team like Buffer’s could possibly handle email support with tens of thousands of customers. The tale of a small team dealing with mountains of support emails was definitely one that resonated with a lot of small business owners, and the post was quite popular and performed well, all without the “hard-sell.”
  • Everyone loves hearing their own name! The implications of this have been seen across a variety of situations in dealing with customers: People tend to like you more if you use their name a few times during conversations. (But there is a limit; saying their name too much becomes unnatural and insincere.) People open emails with more consistency if their name is included. (That’s a big reason to ask for a name if you want increased conversions via email.) People often assume you are more competent if you know their name; it’s a big part of their identity, and if you recall it and use it, you are instantly viewed in a better light in their eyes. Utilizing customer names when interacting with them directly is an important part of making people feel like individuals rather than a “support ticket.” It’s difficult to scale, but if you care about your customers, it’s an essential part of winning them over. There’s quite a difference between receiving an automated email from “DO-NOT-REPLY” versus receiving one from “Scott” saying, “Hey Greg, thank you for your purchase! :)”
  • 9. Selling “Time” over Savings Can put Your Customers in a Better Buying Mood Have you ever wondered why commercials for “cheap beer” never, ever focus on the money that you can save by buying them? Instead, they create ads and slogans that focus on having a great time (i.e., “It’s Miller Time!”) This isn’t an accident. As it turns out, new research from Stanford reveals that selling “time” over money can make customers more receptive to buying. From Aaker’s research: “Ultimately, time is a more scarce resource—once it’s gone, it’s gone—and therefore more meaningful to us,” says Mogilner. “How we spend our time says so much more about who we are than how we spend our money.” Getting people to think about a period of time they enjoyed (associated with a product) can be much more effective than reminding them that they could be saving money.
  • 10. Bringing up Savings Makes Customers Feel Self-Centered and Greedy
  • Psychologist Kathleen Vohs has done numerous studies on priming, specifically in terms of how it affects our perception of money. She found through her research that just thinking about money makes us more self-serving and less willing to help others: Two sets of subjects were “primed” with either cues related to money (money related images, essays about making money) or cues that were unrelated to money. Later, subjects were asked to solve a difficult “brain-buster” and to help others do the same (those others being people “in” on the study).
  • Getting people to think about money and having them enter this “selfish” state can be beneficial or disastrous in advertising benefits to customers. If you’re selling an item associated with luxury or prosperity, this mindset may be a good thing (advertising your mutual fund, financial/retirement services, etc.).
  • Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence, had this to say: [Marketers] who should be particularly cautious about money cues are those who want to appeal to the viewer’s feelings about others. Filling viewers with feelings of warmth and a desire to please someone else… and then reminding them about money, could be self-defeating.
  • Vohs agrees, citing research that shows how money often creates conflict and stress when paired with family issues, due to conflicting interests (Burroughs and Rindfleisch, 2002). The lesson: Be wary of reminding your customers about money if your product isn’t related to serving self-interests.
Jas P

The Truth about a Failing Startup | Hacker News - 0 views

news.ycombinator.com/item

startup failure vc funding

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • "investors are in a sense "buying" your time, not much different than consulting"Brilliant. I've never heard the concept of investing in a startup phrased so well.
  • My company has a really good chance of succeeding, but I still face these doubts every day. Here are some of the things that make the game worth the candle for me, even if we end up failing: * I'm proud of the product we've built. Even if it doesn't take off, nobody can take that away from me. * I'm incredibly proud of my engineering team. We're "a bunch of kids" who've built something incredible. Even if the company ultimately doesn't survive, we will have done really well. * I love my work and I love the people I work with. There are conflicts, sometimes I have to deliver bad news, deal with stress and monotonous work, firefight problems, etc. but in aggregate the work I do and the people I do it with bring me joy. I will always remember this time fondly. * When I started, I was a good engineer and a terrible product manager. Now I'm a good engineer and a good product manager, which makes me 100x more valuable. There is a bazillion other things I've learned, but this alone makes everything worthwhile.
  • * Facing doubt every day made me face the darkest corners of my soul. I stopped being an obnoxious cynical windbag and started appreciating the nuances of life, people, art, poetry, strength of human spirit and true magnitude of human dignity. * We're taking a real shot at building hard, sustainable technology that has a good chance to change the world. Even if we fail, I'll never regret taking the chance. * I met hundreds of people on my path. I dismissed some of them, but in retrospect I've learned from them all. I appreciate humanity a lot more now, and I understand where the dark parts of it come from much better. * Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. If you start a company you gain a lot of perspective. I could keep going, but I hope I've made my point. I'm not trying to sugar-coat anything -- failing may very well be the worst thing you've ever experienced emotionally to date. But keep everything in perspective and don't get cynical. You might still change the world in a big way. You might still change it in a small way. It doesn't matter. Enjoy the people around you. Get into adventures. Try to do something meaningful. Do the best you can -- things may not turn out how you wanted them to, but they'll probably turn out ok.
Jas P

Lessons Learned the Hard Way: Canadian Angel Investor Reveals His Million-dollar Mistak... - 0 views

www.techvibes.com/...ion-dollar-mistakes-2013-02-21

vc funding

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 1. Good copywriting is underrated: Compelling copy is key to conversions and also making your brand human, friendly and fuzzy. Developers can’t write copy that well, that’s what marketers are for. Lesson: Great copy is a huge differentiator. It connects your audience to your brand and it has a direct impact on retention and engagement. “Copy is so important because it communicates your vision and helps you solve your products,” said Isenberg. “If you can’t do that right you’ll have little conversion rates and your not going to have a consistent brand image.”
  • 2. Influencers are a big deal: Scale users quickly by onboarding communities. Isenberg worked with schools, trading rooms and blogs. Influencers hold the key to these communities. Lesson: The best way to onboard influencers is the old school way by building a real relationship. Pick up a phone, email them or best yet, take them out for drinks. “I love sitting behind a computer because it’s my safe haven, but the truth is that relationships is key to getting these people involved,” he said.
  • 5. Distribution, distribution, distribution: Strategic alliances with partners helps create value-add for their user base and helps you get traffic (and SEO juice). Lesson: Embeddable widgets that allow users to distribute content across the web are particularly powerful when it’s the strategic partner’s content. “Find your most compelling feature that can be embeddable and do deals.”
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  • 6. Create exclusivity, urgency and scarcity: Who says fear of missing out doesn’t exist on the web? Invite-only increases hype and word of mouth and people like to be a part of an exclusive club. Lesson: Emulate a land grab by providing users the ability to claim "land" on a first-come-first-serve basis (ex: About.me's vanity URL registration before launch).
Jas P

Why startups shouldn't have to pay to pitch angel investors | The Jason Calacanis Weblog - 0 views

calacanis.wordpress.com/...o-pay-to-pitch-angel-investors

startup funding leanstartupyeg

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • My Latest War: Angels charging startups to pitch ================= Recently, I was made aware of a group of angel investors that were charging startups to pitch them.
  • Yes, you heard that correctly: the rich people (angels) are charging the poor people (startup entrepreneurs desperate for cash to fuel their dreams) to hear their pitch. No, I’m not kidding. This is actually happening — and it’s widespread.
  • None of them have ever charged me a dime for doing so. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE RICH!
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It’s low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time. Seriously, what is the cost to the party hearing the pitch? If you answered “nothing” or “the cost of two cups of coffee” you win the prize! Even if you rent a hotel room and put out breakfast for your fellow angel investors that’s like $20 a person. You mean to tell me that a room full of rich investors can’t afford to pay for their own God-damned $20 in bad coffee, stale pastry and stained ballroom rugs? Really?
  • To be clear, I am making this a class war because it is one: cash-poor startups are bringing RICH angel investors an opportunity to become EVEN MORE RICH. As such, the rich folks should pick up the non-existent to minimal costs.
  • Why startups fall for “angel group” payola =========== Now, you ask: why would any self-respecting entrepreneur pay thousands of dollars to rich people just for the opportunity to pitch? Well, the truth is that the more mature — or flat out better — startups would never pay to present. The best ideas by the best entrepreneurs get socialized instantly. As an new angel investor myself, one who has only done two investments of $25,000 and $50,000, I can tell you that I already get flooded with pitches. I can’t even imagine the volume of pitches real angel investors like Matt Coffin, Sandy Climan, Sky Dayton, Tony Hsieh and Ron Conway get inundated with.
  • c) you are actually a good person who has just never thought about how smarmy it is to charge a startup for your time?
Jas P

Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Pitch Their Ideas To Venture Capitalists - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...r-ideas-to-venture-capitalists

funding vc

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Ideas are infinite, and in the absence of competent execution, they are worth nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Conversely, money in pursuit of outsized returns is plentiful. Thus, if both ideas and money are abundant, what is the scarce constraint in the fundraising equation?
  • Skilled entrepreneurs bring ideas and money together by building a bridge of trust.
  • Unless an investor specifically asks you to educate them regarding your space, focus your pitch on why you and your team are uniquely qualified to exploit the opportunity and turn the idea into a lucrative, self-sustaining business.
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  • No matter how much trust an entrepreneur builds during our interactions, I always verify the veracity of their claims and prior accomplishments by speaking to people with whom they previously worked. Confirmation from people whom the entrepreneur did not cite as a reference is vital.
  • No B.S. – A firm handshake, coupled with direct eye contact, was often the only contract underlying a Grubstake deal. As such, communication had to be clear, open and direct. I have no interest partnering with an entrepreneur who only communicates positive information, while obfuscating negative issues. As such, part of our diligence process includes assessing how clearly and honestly the entrepreneur communicates.
Jas P

[Companies with 8 figures of revenue] are worth many multiples of 8 figures to a... | H... - 0 views

news.ycombinator.com/item

pricing funding startup financial

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Let's say that you've built up, from essentially nothing, enough of a presence in your industry that you're selling $10 million a year of SaaS. That's only 10k accounts at a blended average of $100 a month -- far less if, like many SaaS companies, you make a significant whack of your money on custom enterprise deals that are not on the pricing page.
  • Now consider this company from the perspective of a Fortune 500 like, say, Intuit:1) They have software which exists.2) Their software creates clear value for customers. They have 10,000 people signing their praises and case studies up the wazoo. We know people will pay $100 a month for it -- we have copious, audited financial statements that prove that.
  • 3) Oh yeah, we're a Fortune 500 company. Launching a new product costs us $250 million and we could fail to produce something that both achieves technical success and produces any value for anyone anywhere. Assuming we do, selling to our built-in base of hundreds of thousands of customers is what we do best.Intuit can totally justify spending, say, $300 million to buy $20 million a year of revenue and the opportunity to 20x that by selling it to everyone who has ever heard of Quickbooks. Or mid 8 figures for something which has, say, a million a year in revenue.
Jas P

The value of short term thinking by Ilya Lichtenstein - 0 views

influencehacks.com/e-value-of-short-term-thinking

funding vc

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • In technology, long term thinking is impossible, because everything changes so fast, and the pace of change is quickening. The rules are changing too fast. Nobody knows when a sudden shift in technology will open up new markets and business models.
  • All we can do as entrepreneurs is take it step by step, and adapt quickly when we sense the market shifting.
  • The best companies are not built on a single, infallible grand vision. They’re built piece by piece, making one user or customer at a time, getting to the next milestone and waiting for the next major opportunity to reveal itself.
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