Jack Abraham

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• Is a landing page and people signing up based on a description of the service considered enough for validation?

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    It depends on the service you are thinking of creating but in most cases that would be a good initial gut check for the idea.

• Once you had your initial idea what was the next step you took after that?

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    I did research on the market and to see if anyone else was actively working on it.

• What is the best way to find a mentor in Tech Startups in NYC?

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    Try and get an intro to several CEOs of NYC tech companies, take them out to lunch, be humble and ask them to coach and/or mentor you.

• What do I need to learn/read/attend to become an expert in BizDev?

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    I would try and find a mentor. Look for someone who has been very successful in biz dev in the industry you are interested in who you can learn from and listen to.

• Is there room for more Biz accelerators/incubators in the startup scene?

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    Absolutely. The more of these that exist, however, the less of an advantage it will be for you as a startup coming out of one. You’ll want to focus on figuring out how to stand out from the crowd.

• What are the top 2-3 books in the categories of Sales, public speaking and negotiating?

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    These are difficult skills to get from reading a book. Try selling, take opportunities to speak publicly whenever possible and get in situations where you can practice negotiating. Practice makes perfect and there is no substitute for experience.

• may i ask one question?

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    Just one. :)

• What is the best way to collect customer feedback?

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    By analyzing product metrics.

• What is the best way to get the sand hill road club and other vc's interested in my pitch?

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    Put together a great team, build a great product solving a pervasive problem, get traction and have a plan for getting much more in a big market. Then get an introduction to a partner you’d be interested in working with who likes your space from a CEO of one of their portfolio companies. Line up as many meetings as possible with different firms within a 2-3 day window so that VCs will be spurred into action and once you have interest create a forcing function to get them to offer a term sheet, do fast/clean diligence and close the investment.

• Were you afraid of letting any VCs invest in Milo.com? Do you believe you had too many investors who wanted to invest in Milo.com? If you had to do it all over again, would you have chosen less investors?

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    I was not afraid of letting VCs invest in Milo but I was very afraid of letting the wrong VC invest in Milo and/or investment structures that would mean I would lose control over the company. I am glad we had many investors. Angel investors generally only want a very small percentage of your company and can add a lot of value to the company over time. In other words you might get the same amount of value out of an angel investor that you sell >1% of your company to vs. a VC that costs you 20% of your company.