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What I Learned Today

Really, what I learned last week at the MIT Enterprise Forum Startup Cinic. These are my notes typed up after I got back:

  • Don’t put your hands in your pockets when speaking
  • learn your speech before presenting
  • show the core economics - COGS, COCA and path to profitability
  • show that you understand the market, else why are you running this outfit?
  • pick your audience (Copley Education was speaking to a generalist, technical audience, when they have a specialist product that is adjacent to known spaces)
  • pick your team (Copley was founded by VCs, and is seeking capital, but the business model is labor-driven, so why the capital intensity?) (Seahorse is selling into the waste disposal sector, but none of the senior team members are from that sector, casting doubt that they understand their market)

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Technology Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Reddit This

4 Responses to “What I Learned Today”

  1. Shimon Rura Says:
    February 21st, 2006 at 3:48 pm

    What’s COGS and COCA?

  2. Ray Deck Says:
    February 21st, 2006 at 3:54 pm

    Financial acronyms. COGS is cost of goods sold as a percentage of revenue.

    COCA is cost of customer acquisition (Sales, Marketing as a percentage of revenues). I discuss the latter here

  3. Lipovox Says:
    October 3rd, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    Thanks to the article. My only question about Lipovox is: why they do not include the amount of each superfoods?

  4. Nicholas Nguyen Says:
    November 12th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

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