Mark joined GRP Partners in 2007 after having worked with GRP for nearly 8 years as a two-time entrepreneur. Most recently Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com (NASDAQ: CRM) following its acquisition of Koral,where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, the largest independent global content collaboration company focused on the engineering and construction sectors, which was acquired by SWORD Group (PARIS: SWP). Earlier in his career, Mark spent nearly ten years working for Accenture in Europe, Japan and the U.S.
Mark received a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a dual citizen of the US and the UK.
Mark founded Launchpad LA, a program designed to help mentor LA’s most promising first-time startup CEO’s. He runs the Southern California Venture Capital Alliance (VCA) and is on the board of advisors for the venture capital fund of the UCSD Rady School of Business.
Mark sits on the Boards of RingRevenue, GumGum and Ad.ly. He was formerly on the boards of EMN8, Qualys, Koral and BuildOnline.
The tech industry has a certain narrative on how startups are created. Given the immense wealth generated in a short period of time, entrepreneurial lessons are often lost in the measure of dollars and growth.
My take away from Mark Zuckerberg & Steve Jobs are their maniacal passion for building a great product.
Startup founders are always looking to apply lessons.
If you look… → Read More
It’s hard to land large customers when you’re a tiny enterprise software startup and when you do you have to be careful that you don’t become their internal R&D department.
This post offers a strategy for turning your enterprise customers into a platinum “insiders club” where they can even bid money to accelerate your roadmap. Yes, you can sell it. But be careful you don’t sell your soul. → Read More
Many investors and advisors will tell you that you shouldn’t have professional services revenue at your enterprise startup. This is wrong. PS helps secure customer success and brings in quick revenue to cover your fixed costs. But you can’t be addicted to PS or you’ll never scale a software business. This post explains the seven steps to layering in PS revenue to drive success. → Read More
The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. And many enterprise startups I meet try to convince me they don’t need professional services teams. This is a big mistake. This post explains why … → Read More
Creating awareness for your brand is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise. This post provides advice on how to move from narcissistic marketing to “point-of-view” marketing to help you win the battle you really care about – share of mind. Read on … → Read More
Global audiences of prosumer video producers will create content that is viewed by global audiences in numbers far in excess of traditional TV. TV will enter the era of “participation” and when the medium changes from one-way broadcast to the millions to the ability to interact with each other through video it is unlikely that the future will resemble the past. Why would it? Read on … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
The 2000 election was characterized by the narrative of Al Gore inventing the Internet and sighing at debates. We had his famous “lock boxes” (whatever that is) and George Bush’s “fuzzy math.”
Whatever you think of their policies or… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
In the first phase of the Internet – roughly from 1995-2005 it was difficult to build massive Internet-based companies outside of Silicon Valley. The big companies to be built and scaled were mostly infrastructure: databases, routers… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster on his Startup Advice blog: Both Sides of the Table
Ah. We’re back to discussing convertible debt again. This time by the efforts of Adeo Ressi to introduce a new kind of structure called “convertible equity.” → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster on his Startup Advice blog: Both Sides of the Table
The media industry has operated for the past 100 years by large operators who have a stronghold on the industry through high costs of production (think studios, book publishers or record labels) and the high… → Read More
Launchpad LA today announces it will accept applications for its third class of Los Angeles-based tech startups. There are significant VC commitments and every entering company will get $50,000 in funding plus free office space.
The program was founded in 2009 by LA-based venture capitalist Mark Suster and has received funding from several prominent investors including Rincon Ventures (largest… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Back when I ran board meetings as a CEO, the biggest annoyance was Blackberrys. You would always be able to tell what was going on by seeing the unhealthy infatuation board members had with staring at their crotches. Somehow they imagined… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Later today I’ll be giving a keynote at the VCJ Venture Alpha conference here in San Francisco. I was asked to speak about the topic of “what is going on in the venture capital world and what is the next big thing after social… → Read More
Everybody knows that when you raise money at a startup your ownership percentage of the company goes down. The goal is to have the value of the startup go up by enough that you own a smaller percentage of a much larger business and therefore your total personal value goes up.
The simplest way to think about this is: If you own 20% of a $2 million company your stake is worth $400,000. If you… → Read More
A month ago I applauded Reed Hasting’s bold decision to split his business into two components. Today he’s announcing that they’re backing out of this decision.
Netflix as a service has always prided itself on movie recommendations that are tailored specifically to you, plus user ratings on the quality of films. So let me use their ratings system to judge their actions to date and explain how… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Venture Capitalists typically have partners’ meetings on Mondays. Yesterday was a Monday. And not a pleasant one.
The stock market is off 15.1% over the past 2 weeks. Nobody knows where it’s headed next. But as VC partners sat in their… → Read More
tl;dr version:
If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. read it. live it.
It’s written by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson. They know what they’re talking about. It’s important information that you need to avoid “information asymmetry” with VCs
Some big lessons I’ve learned over the years about term sheets:
1) the language never says anything… → Read More
I recently wrote a post about the open nature of Twitter and why I’m long on its future. I know it’s easier to write “horse race” stories about who’s signing up more users, raising more funding or who’s “hot” lately. But something more nuanced is at hand that is worth debating – is the future of the Internet & global communications more open or more closed.
Twitter is open. No, not just the… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Most web publishers measure where their traffic is coming from using an analytics package such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Core Metrics. These were good packages in the pre social media world at helping figure out who was driving… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Bubble. There, I said it. We’re definitely in some stage of it – whether early in the cycle or the end of it nobody can say. And it will all be fine.
People get too worked up over the word. I’m no great scholar on bubbles – I have… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Any company who develops products reliant on iOS spends weeks crapping their pants before WWDC. No vacation schedules allowed for weeks before or weeks after. The announcements come out in one day and then even if you survive the annual… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
It’s 2011 but you could forgive yourself for thinking you’ve gone back in a decade old time capsule to a time with frothy valuations and easy money. I know, I know. It’s not the same market. There are more users now using the Internet… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
There is an old management adage that says, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” The idea has become conventional wisdom. It says that you need to take due care in selecting team members. It also says that you need to act quickly when your… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Are we headed for a long era of innovation in which startups are the new norm? Are we seeing a time in which pre-revenue companies are more valuable than our offline institutional brands?
Yes, there is unprecedented innovation. The… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
I’m in Seattle this week. Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. Great lifestyle, great cost of living, motivated people and only the crap weather on the negative side.
They have had their… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Banner Ads. They first started in 1994 and are therefore almost as old as the Web itself. They were very effective back then, with the original ad garnering a 78% click-through rate (CTR)! I guess from there we had nowhere to go but… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry who are in search of high margin, highly scalable… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
I’m a very big proponent of the “lean startup movement” as espoused by Steve Blank & Eric Ries. The part of the movement that resonates the most with me is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Blogs. We all read them to get a sense of what is going on in the world, peeling back layers of the old world in which media was too scripted.
By definition, if you are reading this you read blogs. But should you actually write one if… → Read More
Startups. We know the mantra: Team matters. Is this philosophy exaggerated? Overrated? Cliché? No. Team is the only thing that matters. Whatever you’re working on now it’s irrelevant unless you continue rapid innovation.
Why? Either you’re in an interesting market or your not. If you’re in an interesting market and if you start to prove value then you’ll have the world gunning… → Read More
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