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Don Mathis

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Lessons From The Front…

…  musings from a career in entrepreneurship, big business and the Navy.

 

@Mathis_DHM

  • From my colleague Rajesh Aggarwal MD PhD FRCS FACS. "When greater than 50% of the population is deemed to be … twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
  • RT @MyDaughtersArmy: The amazing moment a deaf child or adult truly hears for the first time in their lives. #CochlearImplants https://t.c… 6 months ago
  • Ron Kerbs, one of the most inspirational young leaders I have had the honor to work with. Got to know Ron and his c… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 7 months ago
  • Proud father moment: Daniel Mathis, on his summer strategy internship. lnkd.in/eVxPq_vK 7 months ago
  • Thanks to my work with the Harvard #InnovationLab and the HBS #RockCenter, and with #ComcastNBCUniversal, I have ha… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 10 months ago
  • Incredible step forward for the future of healthcare in the home!Bravo Quil team twitter.com/cedwardski/sta… 1 year ago
  • RT @cedwardski: Quil introduces the ‘Quil Assure’ connected home platform to revolutionize the #AgingAtHome experience– for both #seniors a… 1 year ago
  • Kidas raises money from Overwolf to protect young gamers from cyberbullies venturebeat.com/2022/01/25/kid… via @VentureBeat 1 year ago
  • RT @LiamKillingstad: If you enjoyed this please consider: 1) giving the first tweet in the thread a RT (below) 2 giving me a follow. I wri… 1 year ago
Follow @Mathis_DHM

Lessons From The Front…

…  musings from a career in entrepreneurship, big business and the Navy.

 

@Mathis_DHM

  • From my colleague Rajesh Aggarwal MD PhD FRCS FACS. "When greater than 50% of the population is deemed to be … twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
  • RT @MyDaughtersArmy: The amazing moment a deaf child or adult truly hears for the first time in their lives. #CochlearImplants https://t.c… 6 months ago
  • Ron Kerbs, one of the most inspirational young leaders I have had the honor to work with. Got to know Ron and his c… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 7 months ago
  • Proud father moment: Daniel Mathis, on his summer strategy internship. lnkd.in/eVxPq_vK 7 months ago
  • Thanks to my work with the Harvard #InnovationLab and the HBS #RockCenter, and with #ComcastNBCUniversal, I have ha… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 10 months ago
  • Incredible step forward for the future of healthcare in the home!Bravo Quil team twitter.com/cedwardski/sta… 1 year ago
  • RT @cedwardski: Quil introduces the ‘Quil Assure’ connected home platform to revolutionize the #AgingAtHome experience– for both #seniors a… 1 year ago
  • Kidas raises money from Overwolf to protect young gamers from cyberbullies venturebeat.com/2022/01/25/kid… via @VentureBeat 1 year ago
  • RT @LiamKillingstad: If you enjoyed this please consider: 1) giving the first tweet in the thread a RT (below) 2 giving me a follow. I wri… 1 year ago
Follow @Mathis_DHM

Tag: Internet marketing

Maybe there is no “Series A Crunch”. But it still ain’t easy.

 

Don Mathis Kinetic Social Series A Crunch!

For the last few years, the venture capital and start-up community have exhaustively explored the idea that there is a “Series A crunch”. Opinions differ – sometimes sharply – on the topic.

As Inc. magazine described it:

It goes like this: After slogging through six months to a year of frenzied product development and user testing, seed-funded tech start-ups are fatally hitting a wall — the million to several million dollars in VC funding they need to scale up their cool new services is nowhere to be found. The result is the cruel and needless throttling of a vast stream of promising fledgling companies down to a mere trickle of survivors. Share of seed-funded companies that won’t be able to get follow-on funding: 61%.

Don Mathis Kinetic Social_Series A Shadow of Death
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of start-up death…

In mid-2014, William Hsu of Mucker Capital wrote in re/code:  “the distance between that “eureka” moment when an entrepreneur has an idea, to getting funded by a seed-stageinstitutional VC, has become the valley of death — littered with companies that just simply could not get off the ground with little fanfare, attention, or data.”

With 2014 being a massive year for tech M&A, some of the Series A crunch concerns have been alleviated by the availability of early stage “acqui-hire” exits; as Jacob Mullins notes in Business Insider, “Google, Facebook, and Twitter cut the path for the acqui-hire and eased the Series A crunch.”

So maybe there is no crunch, or if there is, it isn’t the horrific “valley of death” that some believe. But crunch or no, from my experience it is certainly difficult.

My company, Kinetic Social, raised its Series A in May, 2013 – a combination of equity and venture debt. We raised our Series B in early 2014, all equity and substantially larger ($18 million versus $8 million). And yet, while both were challenging, the Series A was definitely the harder raise.

Why? In our case, there were at least three significant challenges to surmount:

  1. We were out raising money from entirely new investors, pitching our company to venture investors who had barely heard of us.
  2. We were operating in a sector (paid social advertising) that was largely unproven at that time.
  3. We operated in a crowded industry segment with literally dozens of companies (50+ in our space) that had some form of seed or early stage capital… and some that were further along than that. As AdExchanger’s Zach Rogers puts it: “To many, it seems the landscape of social ad buying platforms has been rapidly commoditized … But Kinetic is betting that it’s early innings for social marketing, and that the winners will bring special-sauce optimization to multiple APIs.”

Don Mathis Kinetic Social, Social Media OpportunityWe were indeed betting on the “early innings” concept Zach suggested. Moreover, we were convinced: 1) what we had already built at Kinetic would command an investment from a smart venture capital firm; and 2) Kinetic would stand out from the pack with a clearly differentiated product and solution. In effect, we were going to market to ask (new) investors to pick us as the likely winners in our crowded space.

Fortunately, it worked. But it wasn’t easy. We contacted about 60 firms, pitched to 30 or so, and ended up with three term sheets – all in roughly one year’s time.  Our conviction got us through the process – we believed we were on to something substantial. The combination of a talented team and a strong market opportunity propelled us to realize our vision.

It also helped – a lot – that the market for our services began to shift in our direction. In particular, social media advertising began to evolve from being a primarily earned (free) media model to a primarily paid advertising model. And while we weren’t surprised, we spent a long time in 2012 and early 2013 hoping the pace of this change would accelerate. We began to see it in early 2013 – it’s no coincidence that we closed the Series A shortly thereafter.

Bottom line? The Series A is hard, but raising it simply means you must prove that you have something real. Once you do this, once you prove that there is a bona fide market opportunity for your idea, there is smart capital out there to back your enterprise.

Follow Don on Twitter @KineticDHM   ///   Connect with Don on Google+

Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a social data and technology company focused on making sense of the world’s social signal. He also serves in the US Navy on reserve duty, where he is an Expeditionary Combat Logistics & Anti-Terrorism Officer.

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Posted on January 20, 2015April 14, 2018Categories PostsTags Ad:tech, AdExchanger, Business, Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, entrepreneurship, Facebook, Internet marketing, Kinetic, Leadership, Management, Mathis, Series A, Series B, social, Social marketing, Social media marketing, Start-up, Twitter, Venture capital, Zach Rodgers

Don Mathis on OMMA Social Panel

Catharine P. Taylor moderates a panel discussing the future of Facebook were they to launch an online ad network.

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Posted on September 16, 2014April 14, 2018Categories VideoTags Ad:tech, advertising, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, Facebook, Internet marketing, Kinetic Social, Social media marketingLeave a comment on Don Mathis on OMMA Social Panel

“How do YOU define leadership?” (In A Tweet)

Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School managed a Twitter conversation with alumni recently, asking the question “How Do YOU Define Leadership?” There are a lot of smart responses in the Storify version of the dialog. It isn’t easy to say something thoughtful about such a broad subject in 140 characters, but many folks did!

Here are my own responses from the Storify / Twitter conversation:

Q: "How do YOU define leadership?"

— HBS Alumni (@HBSAlumni) September 13, 2013

@HBSAlumni Inspiring a group of people / team to accomplish a mission. Any team, any mission, any context.

— Don Mathis (@KineticDHM) September 13, 2013

.@KineticDHM thanks for joining the chat! We're curious..what types of leadership challenges do you face and how do you address them?

— HBS Alumni (@HBSAlumni) September 14, 2013

@HBSAlumni My challenge is a tech start-up. Like pushing Sisyphus’ boulder… Rest a bit, it rolls backwards. Rest more, it rolls over you.

— Don Mathis (@KineticDHM) September 14, 2013

@HBSAlumni momentum is everything & flows from leadership. Leadership = getting the team & ALL stakeholders motivated around the vision.

— Don Mathis (@KineticDHM) September 14, 2013

@HBSAlumni As R. Kaplan says, you motivate around vision by (over) communication. Time enough in a day to do that = my biggest challenge.

— Don Mathis (@KineticDHM) September 14, 2013

.@KineticDHM thanks for such thoughtful responses! FYI, in case you didn't know Robert Kaplan is on Twitter at @RobSKaplan 🙂

— HBS Alumni (@HBSAlumni) September 14, 2013

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Posted on September 21, 2013April 14, 2018Categories PostsTags Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, entrepreneurship, Facebook, Harvard Business School, Internet marketing, Kinetic, Leadership, Management, Mathis, Online Communities, PMD, Social Media, Social media marketing, Social Networking, Storify, Twitter

Beyond the Big Three Social Networks

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

The accelerating monetization initiatives of the social media “Big Three” – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – have received a fair share of headlines recently. But what does the rest of the pack of social media players have up their sleeves? Keep reading…

This post has been moved to my industry-focused blog, “Silicon Alley Considered: Observations from the grittier tech space.” You can click on the link to keep reading.

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Posted on July 31, 2013April 14, 2018Categories PostsTags Ad:tech, ad:tech sector, AdExchanger, advertising, Big Three, brands, CEO, co-founder, customers, Dennis Crowley, Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, Facebook, Foursquare, Internet marketing, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Social marketing, Social Media, Tumblr, Twitter2 Comments on Beyond the Big Three Social Networks
“It’s the Advice, Stupid”

“It’s the Advice, Stupid”

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

Earlier this week, we began to hear more details regarding the changes Facebook has made to the Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program, in particular as these changes will relate to both the initial application to the PMD program as well as to the recertification process for existing badge holders. Keep reading…

This post has been moved to my industry-focused blog, “Silicon Alley Considered: Observations from the grittier tech space.” You can click on the link to keep reading.

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Posted on March 5, 2013April 14, 2018Categories PostsTags Ad:tech, AdExchanger, Business, Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, entrepreneurship, Facebook, Internet marketing, Kinetic, Kinetic & Related Stories, Mathis, PMD, social, Social marketing, Social Media, Social media marketing, Start-up, Zach Rodgers1 Comment on “It’s the Advice, Stupid”

Atlas (Socially) Unshrugged …

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

I was speaking to an investor in one of the Facebook PMD players last year, and he told me that his portfolio company was “going to be the Atlas of Social Media.” My response was that Facebook already was the Atlas of social (at least, of its own social media). Now, it is also the Atlas of Atlas … which means, of the open display & mobile web.

It is a brilliant transaction if Facebook executes well. Keep reading…

This post has been moved to my industry-focused blog, “Silicon Alley Considered: Observations from the grittier tech space.” You can click on the link to keep reading.

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Posted on March 1, 2013April 14, 2018Categories PostsTags Ad:tech, AdExchanger, Atlas, Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, Facebook, Internet marketing, Kinetic, Kinetic & Related Stories, Mathis, Microsoft, social, Social Media, Social media marketing, Zach Rodgers4 Comments on Atlas (Socially) Unshrugged …

From Chaos to Sanity: Facebook Modifies PMD Program

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

On Feb 13th, Business Insider broke a story about Facebook changing its PMD program that caught the attention of a lot of people in the social ad:tech space. AdExchanger picked up on the story as well. What’s going on? Facebook has changed the rules regarding new entrants to its Preferred Marketing Developer program – the single most important program for a company like my own, Kinetic Social, for conducting advertising on Facebook. Keep reading…

This post has been moved to my industry-focused blog, “Silicon Alley Considered: Observations from the grittier tech space.” You can click on the link to keep reading.

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Posted on February 14, 2013April 14, 2018Categories PostsTags AdExchanger, Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, Facebook, Internet marketing, Kinetic & Related Stories, LUMA, Lumascape, Mathis, PMD, Social marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Zach Rodgers3 Comments on From Chaos to Sanity: Facebook Modifies PMD Program

Why I Serve

January 28, 2013

Don Mathis, CEO of Kinetic Social and Navy Officer
Don Mathis, CEO of Kinetic Social & Navy Officer. With Petty Officer at Evening Colors aboard USS John F. Kennedy in NYC.

Like most reservists I know, I lead a busy life. Kids and a working spouse, the constant juggle of obligations, the feeling that at some level you don’t have enough time, ever, to do all that needs to be done.

On the civilian-side, I have the fortune of being the CEO of a growing social media-related technology company. It is a stimulating and challenging environment, and I work with a truly outstanding team. It isn’t easy to find the caliber of commitment or intensity in the civilian world that is common in the service, but I believe that at my company, Kinetic Social, I have.

But the work is challenging. We are a small young company, not yet profitable and constantly scrambling to fund-raise. Issues must be resolved decisively and immediately; we don’t have the luxury of excess capital to offset poor decisions or to allow for long deliberations. All this can translate into long days and painful travel schedules. In the last week for example, I was in three cities across the country in two days, flew home from the West Coast to NY on the red-eye, and worked all day on a Saturday until 4am the following Sunday morning.

Come to think of it, it feels almost like a mobilization and deployment “downrange”: intense and hectic operations tempo, seemingly impossible objectives, and too few resources to meet them.

Except that it isn’t. In fact, when you take a step back, it isn’t even close. The stakes don’t begin to compare to what our military personnel face when deployed into a combat zone. Moreover, for the reservist in particular, the frequency of mobilizations and the ensuing life disruptions are an enormous burden. George Washington reportedly said “when we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen,” and this is a motivating quote for the citizen-military model of our reserve and National Guard forces. But, I’m pretty sure the first President didn’t envision a world of multiple Don Mathis, Kinetic Social: One Weekend A Month My Asstheater tours in the Long War.

So why do it? Why commit such time – which as every reservist knows is a lot more than one weekend a month, two weeks a summer – when we face so many other demands in our lives?  When the responsibilities and the consequences of reserve service can be so extreme?

I have reflected on this question a lot. Probably every reservist has. When I am on my way to a drill weekend away from home and missing my daughter’s soccer game, I certainly do. And what reservist post-9/11 hasn’t had that experience of sitting in their quarters at their mobilization processing station, staring at the mil-spec cinder block walls, dreading the flight out the next morning for some godforsaken place where he or she will be “Boots On Ground” for 365 days?

—————————–

As a reservist, you stand always at the ready … for whatever you must do, for whatever your country asks. When it asks – and since 9/11, it has asked often – you respond.

When a reservist is mobilized, it is always because something bad has happened. We Don Mathis, Kinetic Social in Desert BDUsknow that we will likely be in harms’ way. The average person runs in the other direction from danger. But not us. We engage, we protect, we fight if we must. We get tasked with herculean objectives in insane environments. We feel our absence on the home front almost every waking moment. It is never convenient when we deploy; it creates hardships at work, it can of course be dangerous, and our families carry the brunt of our absence. I’ll never forget my little boy’s or my wife’s tears when I left them in front of our apartment building, on my way to the airport for my first deployment to the Middle East. It is an experience that many of us have had too often over the last decade.

Deployments are stressful in a way that few civilian experiences can be, unless one works in a hazardous or first response-type occupation. In business, it may feel stressful – in the moment anyway – to work under a crazy deadline to get a proposal in front of a client. But that doesn’t cause PTSD. It doesn’t compare to what you feel when you hear the zip of an AK-47 round – a very distinct sound, and those who have heard it know what I mean – and know that the person who pulled the trigger was trying to kill you. It doesn’t compare to what you feel when you are in a convoy in hostile territory wondering if that curious mound of dirt up ahead will detonate under your vehicle, or if some poor dumb Taliban S.O.B. will have his lucky day and land an RPG into your helicopter as you approach the landing zone.

Perhaps most of all: no civilian stress compares to the fear that your actions or decisions may result in one of your team getting hurt. If I make a mistake at my civilian job, the worst case scenario is someone faces the unemployment line. If I make a mistake when deployed, someone may be getting shipped home in a box.

Such stresses aren’t just limited to war zones, and the reservist or Guardsman may be called to provide “aid to civil authorities” in times of need, for example Hurricane Sandy and Katrina relief. In my own experience, while I’ve spent most of my active duty time since 2001 forward deployed, some of my most powerful and moving service has been in providing aid right here at home: I was at Ground Zero the day after 9/11, working first with a provisional joint task force Don Mathis, Kinetic Social: My Sector at WTC Siteon a search and recovery team, and then spending several months on state-ordered homeland defense duties. My experiences there, especially on “The Pile”, were like none other in my life. Mostly, I don’t think about it: the sights, the sounds, and perhaps above all the smell … these are things best left in a box high up on a mental shelf that I rarely open. It would be an understatement to suggest that it was like your worst nightmare – I know of no one who could conjure a nightmare on a scale of the aftermath of 9/11 in downtown New York, and we all walked away from the experience with some scars that may never fade. But we all heeded that call to respond, and I don’t think a one of us would have wanted it otherwise. The selfless devotion I saw at Ground Zero was awe-inspiring.

Herein lays the answer to the question: I serve to be around people like this. I find such commitment to be motivating, to be humbling. It gives me hope for the country. It keeps me grounded in what really matters when I get sucked into the trials and tribulations of my civilian job.

—————————–

It has been often observed that we live in a self-absorbed time. From reality television Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO & Naval Officerto the online industry I work in, new media forms seem to enhance our collective obsession with over-sharing the banal, with celebrating the pursuit of material gain and capital accumulation, and with narcissistic preening.

As true as this may be, my experience with a military reserve component has allowed me to meet many who give selflessly and without a second thought. Who voluntarily take risks on behalf of serving others. Who act with little regard for personal risk or consequence. Who are committed to something greater than themselves.

At a time when the predominant cultural ethos seems to be rooted in a snarky cynicism and unapologetic self-aggrandizement, there remain many who commit themselves to helping others and to serving their nation and ask for precious little in return. They are the reason I continue to serve, and I am eternally grateful for the privilege of sharing a little piece of the burden they carry for all of us.

Follow Don on Twitter @Mathis_DHM

Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a social data and technology company focused on making sense of the world’s social signal. He also serves in the US Navy on reserve duty, where he is an Expeditionary Combat Logistics & Anti-Terrorism Officer.

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Posted on January 28, 2013March 18, 2019Categories PostsTags Archives related to "Silicon Alley Considered", Business, Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, Internet marketing, Kinetic, Mathis, Navy, Reserve, Reservist, Social Media, Social media marketing, Start-up, Why I Serve5 Comments on Why I Serve
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