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8 Simple Rules For Dating Your Advisor

Getting time and attention from experienced advisors is a rite of passage for the first-time entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial advisors provide everything from informed feedback, market validation and technical direction, to introductions that can lead to partnerships, investors and customers. Advisors are often former serial entrepreneurs themselves with well-earned battle scars from

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Entrepreneurship

Getting it Right – Feld Thoughts

Entrepreneurial and Venture Capital thought leader Brad Feld offered the following pearl of wisdom: “I don’t want to see a powerpoint deck – I want to play with something. I don’t want to hear a description of what you do – I want to see a demo. I don’t want

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Pitching

Nikola Tesla Pitching Silicon Valley VCs

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Sure, it’s a parody, but this is as close to the typical entrepreneur-pitch experience as it gets – particularly the comments of the VCs responding to a pitch by one of the greatest innovators that ever lived. And, sadly, I’ve been on

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Humor

Venture Pitches – It’s “X” for “Y” …

In earlier post, I was writing about the sometimes-effective-but-overused “High-Concept Pitch“, and showcased a satirical website that generated automatic versions of the It’s an “X” for “Y” styled pitches. I stumbled across a Quora discussion about the topic, with a few insightful answers. Somewhere down the list, a member posted

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Entrepreneurship

The Automated, High-Concept Pitch

After a few years of working in the television industry, particularly on the planet they call Hollywood, I was immersed in the “high concept pitch” language of the entertainment industry. The practice is meant to impart your idea to studio executives with nano-attention spans by equating the idea with another

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How Most Young Entrepreneurs Appear to Investors

This is gem of a video: In front of a roomful of the best and the brightest investors (the Venture Capital Fundraising Club of Silicon Valley), here’s a vivid example of an investor pitch that seems to have all the right elements: Big vision. An energetic, articulate and likable young

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