Mark Suster
Latest from Mark Suster
The Case for In-Stream Advertising
The topic of whether in-stream advertising has heated up. I just read well written pieces on the topic by Ross Kimbarovsky, Robert Scoble, Paul Carr and the NY Times. I myself recently covered the topic when I spoke about why GRP Partners invested in Ad.ly. Let me lay out my defense of In-Stream Advertising because ...
Don’t Roll out the Red Carpet on the Way out the Door
This is part of my Startup Advice series. Before I started my first company in 1999 I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). One of the things I noticed was that when really talented people – The “A players” – wanted to quit, the firm would quickly scramble to try and keep that person from ...
How To Deal with Your Elephant in the Room
This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. There’s an old saying that if I’m talking with you and I start the conversation by saying, “whatever you do, DO NOT think about Elephants” then you can’t help but thinking about elephants while we’re speaking. It’s called “The Elephant in the Room” and there’s ...
VC Funding Season Ends Next Week
This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital. It’s worth you knowing this so you don’t waste your time. It’s also very important to understand so that you ...
Career Management: Earn or Learn?
I often have career discussions with entrepreneurs – both young and more mature – whether they should join company “X” or not. I usually pull the old trick of answering a question with a question. My reply is usually, “is it time for you to earn or to learn?” Let’s face it. If you’re thinking ...
Are Business Plans Still Necessary?
This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 craze. There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0 wares. ...
Turning Your Organization Inside Out
This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. The world has changed much since I started my first company in 1999. As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. In the first 4 years of running BuildOnline we were an “Outside In” organization. ...
