I have been thinking a fair amount lately about what it takes to make a successful start-up ecosystem. (I am focused, unsurprisingly given my background, on technology communities.) There are a limited number of thriving start-up ecosystems globally (Silicon Valley/San Francisco, Israel, New York, Boston, Chicago, London, and Berlin among them, together with a handful […]
All Companies Should Have Financial Projections
Yes, even if you are just raising your first outside capital from angels – or even friends and family – you should have financial projections. For a very new company, these need not be particularly complicated, and no one expects them to be accurate, especially when it comes to revenue projections. But you should […]
Immigration, Barbecue and Snoop Dogg
Together with a handful of other members of the technology community, I attended SXSW this past weekend in Austin. It was my second time at SX; I went two years ago and was still recovering last year. A lot of people have asked me, many with skepticism, why I went. At the same time, it […]
The Unfair Advantage
I’m often asked what I look for in a company when considering investing. There are a variety of factors that I consider, some of which I’ve written about in other blog posts, many of which other smart people have described eloquently. One important factor that doesn’t get as much attention is what I call the […]
Segmentation Is Dead
The concept of market segmentation is simple and powerful and has been a major driver of marketing strategy and spending for decades. It is also a fundamentally flawed concept that will soon be a thing of the past. The basic premise of market segmentation is that consumers are not all the same, that one marketing […]