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Village Voice vying to take back classifieds

by Ezra Roizen, October 29, 2008 | Comments (0)

Weekly turns daily, and fights for online local ads

The Village Voice has been around for 41 years, and for the latter part of the last century dominated the local advertising and classified market in New York. It was a weekly newspaper that survived on advertising. But these days, the Village Voice, which is comprised of 15 newspapers and five national blogs has watched Craigslist and Yelp, as well ...

Street fighters' down round survival guide

by Ezra Roizen, October 17, 2008 | Comments (1)

If you're an entrepreneur and your back is against the wall, read this

There's a lot of whacky stuff going on in the private/VC financing world right now. So, I thought I'd put out a quick note on three things I think entrepreneurs should be considering if they're in the unfortunate position of needing to negotiate a critical round of financing right now, and their hands aren't very strong relative to their investors.As ...

Get people to buy into your dream

by Ezra Roizen, July 16, 2008 | Comments (1)

Customers, vendors can help finance your company

Entrepreneurs should think of OPM - other people's money, said Intense Debate CEO Tom Keller, who shared his lessons and advice to entrepreneurs in this interview. "It's important to get other people to buy into the dream," he said. Importantly, Tom isn't just referring to investors. He's referring to customers and vendors. Paying customers are a form of non-diluted financing. ...

CEO Pete Vlastelica on the Yardbarker playbook

by Ezra Roizen, June 30, 2008 | Comments (0)

After originally launching a “Digg for sports,” Pete Vlastelica realized that in order to attract big league advertisers he was going to either need to bring them “closer to a purchase decision” or create a highly-engaging content experience. So after drawing up a new set of plays for the company, Pete and his team were able to land a $6 million round of financing from DFJ, Labrador and a roster of big name athletes. Now Pete is rolling out a ...

Lessons Learned: Spend little to go as long as possible

by Ezra Roizen, June 17, 2008 | Comments (1)

Yardbarker started out as a Digg for sports. It's iterated a lot since its early days, and it's found a business model to boot - to be an ad network for blogs/publishers targeting males. It's no wonder, Pete Vlastelica, co-founder and CEO is very cognizant of money that's being spent. “Spend as little money as possible to prove as much as possible to go as long as possible," he said. "We bootstrapped the company for 12 months and paid ourselves ...

Lessons Learned: How to raise the initial VC round

by Ezra Roizen, May 13, 2008 | Comments (0)

When it comes to consumer Internet sites, the best thing an entrepreneur can do is go out to friends and family and build a prototype, or proof of concept. That's exactly what online travel site Nile Guide did. And, it's paid off. In this segment of "Lessons for entrepreneurs," Nile Guide CEO and founder Josh Steinitz, who was a former marketing executive at Cendant and in business development at Away.com, laid out the steps he took to get his travel ...

Nile Guide wants to be your concierge

by Ezra Roizen, April 28, 2008 | Comments (1)

Nile Guide on Monday formally announced that it's entered the crowded but fast-growing online travel market with a service that combines recommendations with trip-planning and booking.The company is looking to take advantage of the preferences of Internet users who want to plan and book their trip with one site, rather than going to separate ones for booking hotels, flights and dinner reservations.NileGuide allows users to type in the name of a city and plan an entire trip, through its own ...

Lessons Learned: Eze Vidra of VC Cafe says non-U.S. entrepreneurs should "think big"

by Ezra Roizen, February 15, 2008 | Comments (0)

Helping entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley get access to the capital and networking opportunities available to valley startups is part of our core mission here at Vator.tv.But we're not the only ones trying to help overseas innovators.As we told you when we posted our first interview with Ezequiel (Eze) Vidra, his VC Cafe is devoted to shining a spotlight on Israeli-based startups. In this second part of his interview with Vator.tv contributing editor Ezra Roizen, Vidra says that cracking the U.S. ...

VC Cafe shining a spotlight on Israeli startups

by Ezra Roizen, February 4, 2008 | Comments (1)

Israel has the highest ratio of startup companies per capita, according to Ezequiel (Eze) Vidra, who founded the Web site VC Cafe to help shine a spotlight on that nation's entrepreneurs.It's not that high-quality startups there haven't gotten the attention of investors or strategic buyers like AOL, which bought Quigo and its online ad network last year for $300 million. Still, while Israeli entrepreneurs are heavy on technical know-how, they often lack the marketing skills to bring their product to ...

KickApps CEO Alex Blum on new social-media tools and services

by Ezra Roizen, January 31, 2008 | Comments (0)

KickApps gives online publishers the ability to quickly and easily add social-networking features to their Web sites.The company provides a suite of hosted services and offers tools for developers to customize their own sites with things like chat, messaging and rich-media features like video uploads and sharing.In this interview with Vator.tv, KickApps CEO Alex Blum tells Ezra Roizen that the platform is so easy to use that a small team of developers can create a custom site "in a matter ...

Lessons Learned: Eric King says all the warnings are true

by Ezra Roizen, January 24, 2008 | Comments (0)

Eric King, the chief marketing officer of Clean Power Finance, doesn't sugarcoat his advice for startup entrepreneurs. "When you hear that it's going to take twice as much time and twice as much money as you thought to get to profitability -- (it's) all true," says King, who is also a managing director at the merchant bank Arena Group LLC.And where do all those unforeseen expenses come from? "People tend to underestimate salary costs or, conversely, they hire too many people," King ...

Clean Power Finance wants to bring solar power to mass consumer market

by Ezra Roizen, December 19, 2007 | Comments (0)

Without the financing that auto makers provide to both car dealers and consumers, the new-car market would be out of reach for a significant number of buyers.Clean Power Finance wants to use that same financing model to help consumers afford the high cost of solar power. The average residential solar installation is between $30,000 and $40,000, so getting consumers over sticker shock is a big hurdle for contractors who install solar power, Clean Power chief marketing officer Eric King tells Ezra ...

Mobilize Your Holiday Shopping

by Ezra Roizen, December 11, 2007 | Comments (0)

Scott Dunlap CEO of NearByNow discusses how his service is a virtual aid to physical shoppers. The company aggregates real-time inventory data and provides consumers with easy-to-use tools for finding and reserving desired items. The service drives traffic to shopping malls and enables store operators to promote to actively shopping consumers in real-time on their mobile phones. Watch NearByNow's video pitch in which Scott talks about how he came up with the idea while shopping with his wife.

Match.com founder Gary Kremen says consider exit strategies early

by Ezra Roizen, November 29, 2007 | Comments (2)

Match.com founder Gary Kremen answers whether or not his new venture, Sex.com, is the ultimate distillation of his earlier efforts. Gary, who gave his pitch about his other ventures -- Citizen Hawk and Clean Power Finance -- on Vator.tv, also talks about innovation, his thoughts on angel investing and what he looks for in the entrepreneurs he backs. He also shares his thoughts on why exit/acquisition dynamics are something startups should consider early. Essentially, he suggests that entrepreneurs think about ...

The Latest Thing in eCommerce: You

by Ezra Roizen, November 12, 2007 | Comments (0)

Many of the experiences we have were conceived and designed by someone else prior to us having them. When we go to the supermarket, for instance, it seems our entire experience – however idiosyncratic - has been played out and anticipated. The same is true when we go out to dinner, to a movie, or the airport. Disneyland is probably the extreme case. We live in a world in which macro contexts are largely set for us. Our own micro ...

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