Disqus - Latest Comments for chrisyeh

Re: Just Fucking Sell

Chris Yeh — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:08:17 -0000

Don't forget McClure...he loves to drop the F-bomb.

I'm with you on this post. Too many people spend time trying to find signs of traction. Fuck that. Generate traction that is so fucking obvious that only a fucking idiot would ignore it.

(Just doing my part to f*ck things up around here!)

Re: Announcing SoftTech VC III’s final close at $55M

Chris Yeh — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:28:32 -0000

Hearty congratulations. My only regret is that I couldn't arrange enough liquidity to become an LP!

Re: Jeff Clavier builds a bigger seed fund - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog Term Sheet

Chris Yeh — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:54:48 -0000

Jeff doesn't spend a lot of time generating hype or attracting attention to himself. He just funds great entrepreneurs. If you can get his money, take it.

Re: http://blog.eventvue.com/post/372936164

Chris Yeh — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:08:06 -0000

I found out the bad news from Chris Byrne this morning. It's a classic tale--you have to provide a "must have" not a "nice to have" if you're going to charge people money.

The key may also be finding the right market niche; a great product pitched to the wrong market will be equally unsuccessful.

I look forward to seeing what you guys do next!

Re: Techies and normals

Chris Yeh — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:33:05 -0000

The Zyngas of the world are following a Crossing the Chasm strategy. Their paid advertising was very targeted on a particular group (Facebook users, skewing female) with a specific application (simple but addictive non-traditional videogames).

It is a lot easier to Cross the Chasm when you can tap into the explosive word of mouth that the techie community provides, but you can go mainstream without it, even as you follow the Crossing the Chasm bowling pin strategy.

As a side note, it will be fascinating to see if the rise of Twitter and Facebook as mainstream phenomena increase the tendency of normals to meme-hop as the techie community has. Good news for startups if that's the case!

Re: How to Present at Big Meetings without Going Down a Rat Hole

Chris Yeh — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:25:25 -0000

I found myself laughing to myself as you described the various rat holers--I tell you, the Blackberry has derailed more pitches and board meetings than just about anything else!

The one thing I'll add is that this post just reinforces the need to prepare and pre-sell before any meeting. I've always told entrepreneurs that the best presenters have already won over the audience before they've started speaking.

Do the work to make sure everything you need agreement on has been pre-sold, either by you or your sponsor. Don't let your eagerness to get a decision reduce your chances of getting the decision you want.

Re: What’s strategic for Google?

Chris Yeh — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:26:21 -0000

Ha, I thought of Hunch instantly when you posted about looking for things that look like toys, but are constantly improving!

Re: How To Live (Comfortably) on $36 A Month For Food

Chris Yeh — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:11:31 -0000

I had a couple of quarters where I was taking 27-30 credits...definitely no girlfriend then either.

Re: How To Live (Comfortably) on $36 A Month For Food

Chris Yeh — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:20:56 -0000

Andrew, did you have a girlfriend during this time? I was doing well on my $1/day diet after I graduated, but then I met my wife, and she put an end to my dried-bean-eating, powdered-milk-drinking ways.

Re: VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding!

Chris Yeh — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:45:12 -0000

I love the idea of calling the First Round Plus Prorata Capital (FRP2C)!

If you can convince a great VC to devote the time to a seed stage deal, I think it's a great idea. It's just been that historically, bigger VCs that did seed deals took the option approach, as opposed to the high-involvement approach.

If you can get a good seed/A investor who is willing to put in the time AND will stick with you in tough times, that is truly the best of both worlds.

Re: VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding!

Chris Yeh — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:05:42 -0000

I think the issue isn't VC vs. angel, but rather taking seed-stage investments from a firm where that is not the focus.

If a firm is set up to do Series A deals, your seed deal won't get the attention you probably want, and you'll have a harder time raising a Series A from an outside investor.

Firms like FRC get around this by explicitly committing to only doing seed-stage deals.

The paradox here is that it is better to raise seed funding from someone who can't do a Series A than it is to raise it from someone who can.

Re: Why I Don’t Like Board Observers

Chris Yeh — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:21:36 -0000

I can totally relate to your observation that a board observer can end up having more influence than any of the board members. I can recall one instance where a heavyweight partner from a Tier 1 firm ended up as a board observer because the firm came in at the last minute, after a lead commitment had already been made.

It was quite clear that despite his lack of a vote, that his opinion was clearly the most important in the boardroom.

I will leave it as a fun parlor game to let folks guess which company and which board member I'm referring to.

Re: Entrepreneurs: Is there a ’success to family’ pendulum?

Chris Yeh — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:20:34 -0000

I've started a number of companies. I've been married for all of them (to the same woman, my very tolerant wife Alisha), and I've had kids for the past several.

There's no question that it's easier to be an entrepreneur when you have gobs of time and no personal life, but as a dad, I think I work smarter because I have no alternative.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Re: What carries you up will also bring you down

Chris Yeh — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:39:27 -0000

An entrepreneur and a philosopher...impressive!

Re: Should Your Startup Have an Advisory Board?

Chris Yeh — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:45:44 -0000

Mark, what I tell the companies that I advise (including Daniel's Teens in Tech) is that they have to have the right expectations. I can't do work for them--I simply don't have time. What I can do is listen to an explanation of an issue or situation, then offer an action plan that can help them resolve or get the most out of it.

I suspect that my primary value lies in helping them make the right decisions, rather than in any work I'm doing for them.

I also give each entrepreneur my cell phone number and tell them to call me at either 8:30 AM or 5:30 PM, since I am driving at those times, and let them know that they can call me as often as they want in those time slots.

Re: The cloud is a powder keg

Chris Yeh — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:58:31 -0000

Chris, the issue of data concentration is real, but I don't think that the issue is a lack of security expertise on the cloud/SaaS providers. I'm pretty sure that any credible providers in the space are much more serious about security than most of their customers.

But the Willie Sutton effect is very real. The question is, do the superior security of cloud/SaaS providers make up for that effect?

I don't know what your portfolio company does, but if it helps cloud/SaaS companies provide better security, it's simply ameliorating the Willie Sutton effect, not eliminating it.

Re: Let�s Bury Short-Termism to Avoid Another Crisis - Bill George

Chris Yeh — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:59:16 -0000

Glad you're lending your weight, Bill. The more we privilege long-term capital gains, the more we discourage short-termism. By definition, short-termism is a zero- or negative-sum game.

Re: What if online business model innovation is slowing down?

Chris Yeh — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:25:39 -0000

Chris, the irony is, I think you nailed it in your last post. Online advertising is all about purchasing intent. Facebook is rarely about purchasing. Therefore, Facebook should not be advertising supported.

I agree with Fred that some form of micropayments is probably the best bet, but I wonder if you can get Google scale from the virtual goods market.

Re: PBWorks injects social networking into collaboration tools

Chris Yeh — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:40:22 -0000

Thanks for the post, Camille! As an investor in PBworks as well as an employee, I'm pretty excited about this new functionality. I even wrote about our thought processes on my personal blog:

http://chrisyeh.blogspot.co...

Re: I met with an investor, what happens next?

Chris Yeh — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:25:08 -0000

Totally agree. 1 paragraph with a couple of bullet points is more than enough. If you can't convey excitement in that format, you're trying too hard.

Re: I met with an investor, what happens next?

Chris Yeh — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:32:06 -0000

Mark, one technique I've used in the past is to send regular updates. Think of it as a "Pre-investor Newsletter." The idea is to update potential investors on interesting developments as they happen. I like to send out such updates every two weeks or so, and of course, only if the investor expresses their interest.

It takes work, since I have to send out the messages individually (pretty tacky to send it out as a mailing list), but I think it's worth it.

Re: Leaving Forrester, Joining Jive

Chris Yeh — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:38:44 -0000

First Gil, now you? Boy it's tough to keep losing my analysts. Good luck over at Jive! If you're going to work out of the Palo Alto office, we should get together some time soon.

Re: Launching a start-up and having a family life: It’s possible!

Chris Yeh — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:21:19 -0000

One other key thing: Pick a good co-founder(s) and employees. If you have people you truly trust, running a startup is far more manageable. When you feel like you have to do everything, that's a bad sign for both your startup and your work-life-balance.

Re: Dividing free and paid features in “freemium” products

Chris Yeh — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:39:23 -0000

The real trick is to find the equivalent of the Saturday-night stayover.

Airlines charge a lot more for travel that doesn't include a Saturday-night stay. Why? Business travelers, who are more price insensitive, hate to be away from home on weekends.

This qualitative difference is much easier to leverage than a simple quantitative difference like price.

At PBworks, one of our "Saturday-night stayovers" is granular access control. Consumers don't need to keep certain parts of their wikis/workspaces hidden from others, but businesses definitely do.

Re: Books For Entrepreneurs (continued)

Chris Yeh — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:57:33 -0000

I've sent a note to the customer support team to upgrade this wiki to PBworks Public Edition, which includes some pretty useful features, including mobile access via iPhone and Blackberry.

Thanks for doing this, Zachary!