Video games were around well before the wide adoption of the personal computer. What first started as a technical oddity at a 1950s science fair, gained national attention and wide-spread popularity by the early 1970s. Played predominantly on TV-connected consoles, and free-standing video arcade machines, games such as Spacewar! and Atari’s Pong, began captivating a growing population of video gamers across the nation and the globe by the early 1970s. Flash forward 40 years and the video game industry looks starkly different.

Today, by last count, there are over 50 national TV networks (broadcast and cable), running over 300 stations, all driven by advertisers willing to pay for access to their potential customers. In 2017, TV advertising spend is projected to reach over $72 billion with annual digital ad spend projected to reach a total of $77 billion.  Ratings are the currency of the market and for over 60 years, the Nielsen Company has been the arbitrator of the critical advertising rates that broadcasters from across the globe charge advertisers.

Entrepreneurs ask me all the time about the secrets of a successful pitch as well as the biggest gaffs to avoid in pitching an early stage VC.  You are all smart enough to know that there is not a secret formula, but there ARE key elements that every entrepreneur should look to include so let’s talk about them. 

As a technologist with a great idea but no team, getting your startup off the ground requires careful decisions that can affect the growth of the company.

There are many things to consider when building a successful inside sales force. I talked to an expert in the field, Jason O’Hare, the VP of Sales at WordStream, to ask for the most important factors when creating a sales team. WordStream is a company that sells automated marketing software, and required a robust sales force to make it the successful company it is today. Jason gave these five recommendations as the steps to building a sales force for any company.

I recently had lunch with Patrick Mitchell, who is a lawyer at Cooley LLC and a friend to Sigma Prime. He has extensive experience with startups primarily in the tech sector. I asked Pat about hiring a lawyer, as if I were an entrepreneur and was out looking for a partner to help incorporate an idea into a business.

Hiring a Lawyer – The Legal Stuff:

When should a startup hire a lawyer? An entrepreneur with an idea should only begin to think about hiring a lawyer when they are serious about their company or idea – i.e., ready to go fulltime.

One of our focus areas is finding great entrepreneurs in other geographies – often overseas – and ‘importing’ them to Boston. Innovation happens across the globe, and valuable technologies don’t lose their commercial viability at geopolitical boundaries. The majority of our investments are in B2B companies, and when a promising foreign startup begins getting traction in their local B2B market, it’s no surprise that they want to start fishing where the fish are.

Welcome to the new Sigma Prime website! As part of our refresh, we're launching a blog, which you are now reading. We hope you like it so far.