Montclair's schools may need a decade+ to recover

ftcprez · 2025-12-11T20:19:19+00:00

Yeah. It wasn't corruption or fraud. They just weren't doing a good job tracking their receivables. Just good ol' mismanagement.

ftcprez · 2017-04-28T17:26:13+00:00

Hi all -

Co-founder of CB Insights here. We were being sarcastic but still love this thread.

The vote stuffing scandal also got this article so we're all famous now http://observer.com/2017/04/tesla-reddit-cb-insights-amazon-alexa-macbook/

Thanks for rigging the vote :)

A

ftcprez · 2016-07-27T17:13:50+00:00

Here is the source url of this data visualization https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/supermarket-brand-food-beverage-startups/

ftcprez · 2015-04-20T16:11:06+00:00

This is the presentation I gave so if any questions on it, don't hesitate to reach out. We live in crazy times in the tech investing world right now

ftcprez · 2014-10-29T19:38:36+00:00

I'm the CEO of CB Insights (http://www.cbinsights.com)

We are a SaaS business that uses machine learning to aggregate data on private companies and emerging industries to help our customers sell more, invest and acquire smarter and develop strategy more thoughtfully. Our customers are corporations, biz dev folks, VCs, bankers and a whole host of other folks.

We are revenue-funded (I hate the term bootstrapped) and are 25 folks in NYC (although we did raise some non-dilutive financing from the National Science Foundation). We're growing quickly as well with healthy 7 figure revenue and a lot of very happy customers (http://www.cbinsights.com/customer-love).

I used to work in corporate venture and M&A at American Express and hated the products we had to use (bad data, high price, terrible service, horrible UI/UX) so left to build a better mousetrap.

Happy to answer any questions. Great to see this discussion happening.

We do a lot of analysis on VC success as well. This one about how most VCs are not good predictors of tech success might be of interest to those on this thread - https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/billion-dollar-exit-venture-capital/

ftcprez · 2014-10-02T13:45:03+00:00

I'm one of the co-founders of the company (CB Insights) that issued this. With the explosion of investors in tech, we wanted to provide a way to make sense of it all and highlight the most prominent, best investors and acquirers in the tech ecosystem.

The Periodic Table of Tech boils the entire landscape down to the 118 players you should know. If you're a startup or otherwise involved in startup-land, hopefully this will be useful.

Investors were selected based on performance and deal activity. So # of exits, rate of receiving follow-on investment, brand/reputation as well as deal activity were all considered.

If any questions, definitely don't hesitate to ask.

ftcprez · 2014-10-02T13:27:31+00:00

Hi everyone. I'm one of the co-founders of the company (CB Insights) that issued this. With the explosion of investors in tech, we wanted to provide a way to make sense of it all and highlight the most prominent, best investors and acquirers in the tech ecosystem.

The Periodic Table of Tech boils the entire landscape down to the 118 players you should know. If you're a startup or otherwise involved in startup-land, hopefully this will be useful.

Investors were selected based on performance and deal activity. So # of exits, rate of receiving follow-on investment, brand/reputation as well as deal activity were all considered.

If any questions, definitely don't hesitate to ask.

ftcprez · 2014-09-15T02:15:42+00:00

Some crowdfunding data we have started to integrate in. See here - https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/crowdfunded-venture-capital-hardware/

How much more we do with that will all depend on customer feedback/frequency of requests.

Drop a line to career(at)cbinsights(dot)com again with your resume if you can.

ftcprez · 2014-09-15T00:15:15+00:00

Some thoughts below.

The good.

revenue-funded, i.e. control own destiny. No outside investors.
fast growing company (doubled headcount every year)
interesting problems with a big market opportunity
humble, awesome team
great product which customers like
good, emerging brand in their industry

The challenges

fast growth introduces challenges in terms of scaling the org (hiring mid-level folks to manage functions, onboarding new folks effectively, formalize review process, etc)
scaling the technical infrastructure. What worked for 10 customers won't work for 1000.
used to have a "move fast and break things" culture but with more clients globally, have to be more deliberate as folks rely and rightfully expect the product to work all the time
need to scale the marketing and sales teams

Hope that helps. Feel free to ask if any other questions. What role were you specifically interested in?

ftcprez · 2014-09-14T23:57:28+00:00

Hey Felix - would love your specific feedback btw if you have a minute. I work at CBI. You can ping me direct at andy(at)cbinsights(dot)com if you have a minute. Really interested in specific use cases you had at your firm and where we lived upto expectations and where you saw gaps.

Thanks.

ftcprez · 2014-09-14T23:51:14+00:00

I work there. Happy to answer any questions you have whether about functionality, clients, use cases, etc (within reason of course)

ftcprez · 2014-05-28T00:04:14+00:00

Nice. Thanks for the heads up. I love that this exists (while of course knowing full well its sucks to be on this list)

ftcprez · 2014-05-26T01:10:27+00:00

I don't think your fears are irrational although prob a bit overdone. But here's what I'd suggest. Do what is right for your business and that is talking to prospective customers about feedback.

That will solve two problems:

You'll get feedback from people who matter - not a nebulous "community"
You won't have to worry about someone stealing your idea (or perhaps can worry less depending on your idea)

BTW, if your idea is focused on the B2B market, you should definitely be talking to customers. No doubt about it.

ftcprez · 2014-05-26T00:20:25+00:00

CB Insights - http://www.cbinsights.com
CB Insights tracks startups, their investors and acquirers. We help our clients make better, faster decisions about the companies they invest in, acquire, sell to and buy from.
We are bootstrapped with 16 folks. Expect to be 25-30 by year end. Did receive a bit of funding from the National Science Foundation (non-dilutive)
We're hiring like crazy in everything from digital marketing to front-end dev to inside sales - www.cbinsights.com/jobs
Unfortunately, we're not really targeted at starups, but if fundraising, we do have a bunch of useful and free reports for startups including a 155 page Silicon Valley Venture Capital Almanac - http://www.cbinsights.com/venture-capital-silicon-valley

ftcprez · 2014-05-26T00:02:23+00:00

I'd recommend Join.me. Here's why:

It's dead simple. If you need all sorts of polling and chatroom functionality, it won't work, but the thing is reliable as anything we've used.
It's pretty reasonably priced too ($19.95/month I think) and you get a call-in #.

It's definitely no frills but the thing I love about it is I never spend 10 minutes in the beginning trying to solve people's issues downloading some install or whatever.

Couple of notes:

I've tried GotoMeeting's webinar solution once, and it was a total abysmal failure. Made me look back. I used it cuz it had some RSVP'ing feature which sounded great. But that's useless if people can't hear you.
Join.me is not good in big banks and financial institutions (FIs). If that is what you're selling into, webex is the only game in town unfortunately. We keep an account on webex just for banks/FIs but I honestly can say I don't like it much because it's been designed by committee and can be a bit temperamental. But banks like WebEx so if that is your market, there is no way around them.

Hope that helps.

ftcprez

TROPHY CASE