Belz Consulting

Tribogenics closes $2.5 M round

admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:00:45 +0000

Read the VentureBeat article about the successful Tribogenics seed round here.

Speaking at LA County Tech Week

admin — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:32:28 +0000

On October 20 I’ll be moderating a panel: Funding or Marketing: Fish and Bait? Learn more here .

Seed the cloud

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:26:34 +0000

Look for industries managing large volumes of data; two excellent examples are education and healthcare….

where the users (students and patients) are really extensive data sets collected over a long period of time. One opportunity lies in becoming the tool to manage and aggregate the data, and another lies in the ability to synthesize and distill enormous data sets.

Published in E-Commerce Times

Board issues you can’t ignore

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:20:27 +0000

Even an engaged board may find that it is unprepared to face significant operational problems, since the most defensive management team often has good reason to be concerned.

Published in Corporate Compliance Insights

NASA: From Kennedy to the Ming Dynasty

admin — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:21:15 +0000

The decline of the space program marks a loss in many related fields, as research and development funding associated with the Space Race led to many stunning technology successes in the U.S., including digital image processing used in MRIs, miniature electronics for pacemakers, memory foam mattresses and air bags for cars. The original Internet was born from defense funding…

Read the entire column on E-Commerce Times here.

Angel Investors Talk Up Video Tech: Vokle’s ‘virtual auditorium’ a funding favorite

admin — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 06:03:24 +0000

Published by the LA Business Journal by Joel Russell

When Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul decided to organize a virtual town hall meeting last week, his campaign did it with video streaming technology from a Santa Monica startup called Vokle Inc. The Paul campaign was the latest in a string of Vokle success stories that have made the company a darling among small tech investors. This month, the company announced a total investment of $1.26 million by Tech Coast Angels, the largest network of individual investors in the United States. Vokle’s technology couples two hot Internet trends: social media and video advertising.

Andrea Belz, a former angel investor and president of Belz Commercialization Consulting Group in Pasadena, said Vokle could run into resistance from customers when it comes to switching its business model. “It’s very hard to get people to pay for things they’re used to getting for free,” she said. “Very early on, companies need to decide on either an advertising or a subscription model. You have to provide a whole lot of value to justify subscriptions.”

Stemming the Tide

admin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 01:54:14 +0000

We reduced funding for academically talented students to enter science while we reduced general science and development funding. Meanwhile, our university students get more bang for their study buck, doing less work to earn higher grades. The loss of discipline has led to a population without the mathematical rigor to tackle quantitative analysis, so we have to flex our immigration policy to import analytical skills.

Read the entire column on E-Commerce Times here.

Amazon Shoppers Becoming E-Bookworms

admin — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:40:47 +0000

Hints can be found in the larger publishing industry, said Andrea Belz, president of Belz Commercialization Consulting Group.

“The Amazon announcement is consistent with first-quarter results from trade associations showing that all publishers have seen a tremendous increase in sales volumes,” she told the E-Commerce Times.

“The publishing industry is finally following in the footsteps of the music industry and the broader world of copyrighted works, where publishers serve as marketing entities rather than distributors. The inventory and distribution costs associated with digital distribution are almost negligible and thus prices are likely to stay rather flat.”

I was interviewed for this story, read the entire article here.

The Googleist Reformation

admin — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:39:58 +0000

The Protestant Reformation shifted power from the Pope and priesthood to the lay leadership, empowered with newly available Bibles printed in local languages. Similarly, the Googleist Reformation represents the movement of power from advertising and marketing executives to the lowly customers, who suddenly have access to information generated by other users in the shared dialect of the 140-character Twitter feed.

Read the entire column on USA Today’s blog

A Patented Method to Create Jobs

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:22:18 +0000

American immigration policy allows foreign investors who create jobs to apply for residency via the EB-5 visa. If it’s possible to accelerate job creation by revising immigration policy, might it be possible to create a patent policy that does the same? At a minimum, the USPTO should look to players in the small company ecosystem, such as venture capitalists and successful entrepreneurs, for guidance in defining its next policy moves.