When meeting with investors or even your board, during the period devoted to feedback after your presentation, you will hear comments and recommendations that don’t resonate with you. Some will be from a misunderstanding of your explanation. Some listeners will challenge your assumptions. Some will seem to ask just plain show-off questions, in which the […]
Dave Berkus
Your “Drop Dead” Question For a Customer Survey
Here’s the question: Sean Ellis, the marketing guru behind DropBox and other successes, advises clients that “The most important question on a survey is, ‘How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?’” He goes on to quantify the response. If more than forty percent of the respondents say they would be “very […]
“LALA” – A short lesson in marketing
Focus upon you as marketing genius Let’s focus not upon the process of marketing and positioning, but on you. How should you become the best marketer you can be, even if you are a first-time entrepreneur or a seasoned CEO? There’s an answer for that. The title of this insight helps us find a formula: LALA. […]
4 Ways to Create Marketing Excellence
First, let’s recall the four “P’s” of marketing Marketing is a science devised to help drive customers to your door. There are lots of ways to define how to market well, including the four P’s of marketing (1): product, price, promotion and place. This is considered to be the producer-oriented model. These are still the driving focus […]
Do You Really Want to be the First to Market?
My stories of missing the context of the times Over the years, as I managed my several computer companies as CEO or executive chairman, I made the decision to go to market with a brand-new product that had never before been exposed to my customer’s marketplace. In each case, after overwhelming publicity, certainly noticed by a […]
Could You Make 10% Net Income Every Month?
How planning is done today Most entrepreneurs and managers, when modeling their business operations using a spreadsheet, start with expected revenue by month. Then they calculate cost of sales, and then project their expenses, to find the bottom-line profit or loss each projected month. One way to think for tomorrow There is a rarely used twist […]
Please don’t overestimate your audience’s knowledge
Ask the important question first When making a presentation to a new audience, the smart thing to do, if there is an opportunity, is to ask your audience by show of hands, if they have some knowledge of your industry or space. And if you are making a one-to-one presentation, don’t start without a conversation about […]
Raising money? Find your champion.
Increasing your chances of success If you seek funds from an organized investment group such as an angel fund, venture capital entity, or even an investment club, the first thing you want to do is to find one person to buy into your vision, become excited by your enthusiasm and be willing to become the […]
Have You Heard the Rule of the Thirds?
It starts with sharing the opportunity and upside Think of startups and early stage businesses whose entrepreneurs you know. How many of them, particularly in technology, were able to start a company, supply all the funding, and share no management tasks or equity with others, and still grow the company to any significant size, worthy of […]
Financing with grants, not equity or debt
First, an example of grant-based financing I was chairman of a company that, for twelve years never took a dollar of outside investment. The company was funded entirely by grants from the National Institute of Health, amounting to millions of non-dilutive dollars in all. The company created a product that could be […]
