November, 2019

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10 Early Business Strategies That Can Lead To Failure

Startup Professionals Musings

Starting a new business is a serious undertaking. Yet many aspiring entrepreneurs I know approach it as a fun project, get-rich quick scheme, or perhaps an expensive hobby. Others quit their day jobs and commit everything to their new passion, without regard for their own well-being, or the welfare of others around them. Neither of these approaches bodes well for success.

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Denouement

View from Seed

Like many things in life, the VC/startup ecosystem is one of cycles. Looking back over the last decade it’s remarkable to see how the emphasis has shifted across cycles and what the overarching narrative was. I believe we are in a denouement ( the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved ) that will both signal a high water mark for many startups but also create an opportunity for patient, early investors

IPO 202
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5 Essential Skills all Entrepreneurs Need to Build Success

ReadWriteStart

Developing a small business into a successful enterprise demands more than passion. Unfortunately, over half of new businesses fail; mainly because the entrepreneur is unable to translate their passion into practical business skills. Here are five essential skills all entrepreneurs need to build success. Studies show that 30 percent of new businesses fail during their first two years of being open, 50 percent during the first five years and 66 percent during the first 10 years.

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5 Tips On Creating A Killer Digital Marketing Plan For Your Startup

YoungUpstarts

Every month of the year, approximately 540,000 people start new businesses and become self-employed entrepreneurs. That’s over half a million new startups every month, all fighting for customers’ attention. If you’re starting a business and hope to reach those customers, you’ll need a killer digital marketing plan to get noticed.

Marketing 211
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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

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Why The Government is Isn’t a Bigger Version of a Startup

Steve Blank

This article previously appeared in War On The Rocks. There was a time when much of U.S. academia was engaged in weapon systems research for the Defense Department and intelligence community. Some of the best and brightest wanted to work for defense contractors or corporate research and development labs. And the best startups spun out of Stanford were building components for weapon systems.

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28 Entrepreneurs Explain How They Came Up With Their Business Names

Hearpreneur

The idea of exactly what your business is going to usually come first. Secondly, most often, is giving a title to your idea. What exactly is going to be the name of your business? Some people turn to their childhood for inspiration or a beloved family pet. It could be a made up word you dream of one night and feel it has the right ring to it. Even still there are some people who study foreign words for the perfect meaning behind their chosen business.

Naming 157

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Startup Benchmarks

VC Cafe

All Good to Great companies began the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts about the reality of their business. When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident.” — Jim Collins , author of Good to Great. I joked the other day that some of the best fairytales are written in Excel.

B2C 141
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Why the Gig Economy is Coming for Architects, Engineers

ReadWriteStart

It’s official: The gig economy is coming to construction. While other industries have been quick to adapt to freelance employment, architects and engineers within the construction sector have lagged behind — and that is beginning to change. Here’s why the gig economy is coming for architects and engineers. The majority of all workers will be freelance within the next ten years.

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Five Tech Solutions For Client Retention And Communication For Freelancers

YoungUpstarts

Remote work and freelancing are professional roles that involve an incredible amount of effort, tech-savvy, and time management. Entrepreneurs and freelancers generally struggle with this balance more than companies that hire dedicated salespeople to oversee client relationships. Something shared by every remote professional is the need to retain current clients and develop relationships with new clients without restricting the time that he or she spends on productive work.

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Looking for opportunities in femtech

Version One Ventures

I recently froze my eggs. I was actually surprised by how much energy, effort and time was involved. It’s not as straightforward as taking a “fertility test” today and then deciding to freeze your eggs tomorrow. The entire process demands months of preparation – from getting your body to optimal health to coordinating with care providers, pharmacies, etc.

OTC 141
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Top Tips and Tools for Increasing Workplace Productivity and Employee Output

The Startup Magazine

Anyone who has ever worked or managed an office knows that it can be a tough place to get organized. The organization is vital when it comes to workplace optimization and employee output. Properly organized workplaces are well-oiled machines that provide a nice amount of profit and ROI. There are several different ways to improve your workplace productivity and employee output.

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When Planning A Startup, A Top Priority Is Location

Startup Professionals Musings

Even in this age of globalization and virtualization, the geographic area where you choose to live and work can still make or break your startup business. I still have to tell some entrepreneurs that even with the best idea, they have to move to Silicon Valley to find the investors they need, or they need to move to the U.S. get the attention of the market they choose.

Las Vegas 243
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10 Takeaways for Israeli founders considering the UK

VC Cafe

This week brought together a few different parts of my personal and professional life. On Monday, Kevin Baxpehler and I hosted the UK Israel Business investor delegation to Tel Aviv, and today I spent the morning with the 8200 EISP startup delegation to London where I was joined by Kirsten Connell (Cylon Lab, Managing Director) Simon Menashy (MMC Ventures, General Partner).

Founder 138
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When’s the Right Time to Leave the App Store?

ReadWriteStart

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference used to be the stuff of legend. We waited with bated breath for groundbreaking innovation. But… this year’s WWDC didn’t feature the significant product launches of yesteryear. Instead, the crowds watched the unveiling of Apple Arcade – the games subscription service. On the one hand, it indicates the growing importance ‘services’ business hold is for Apple.

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5 Steps For Organizing Your Paperless Office

YoungUpstarts

by Farica Chang, Principal of Anderson Archival. As your company expands, safeguarding important legal and business documents becomes crucial for the well-being of your company. This process includes preserving and documenting the start, growth, and general history of your company, as well as day-to-day documentation important to work flow. Whether from serious natural disasters, crime, or cybercrime, all companies are vulnerable to some sort of data breach or loss, so it’s best to be prepared.

St. Louis 178
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How Much Do SaaS Companies Spend on Their MVPs?

ConversionXL

Eric Ries once described the minimum viable product (MVP) as a version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort: Instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs, and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems.

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22 Entrepreneurs Explain What They Love About Being An Entrepreneur

Hearpreneur

Being in love is great. Being in love with your business, when you’re an entrepreneur, is even better. Waking up each morning knowing you are getting to do exactly what you love is more than most people could ever say about any “job” they have had. Although there are days when tossing in your hat seems like a viable option, remembering how much you love your “job” can quickly snap an entrepreneur out of that mentality.

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Why You Need Tools And Analytics For Employee Metrics

Startup Professionals Musings

Even after many years mentoring entrepreneurs and advising businesses, I continue to be surprised by the primary focus on products and processes, and the often incidental attention to hiring and nurturing the right people. Employees are still too often thought of as a commodity, to be acquired “just in time” for the lowest cost, and managed as a disposable asset.

Analytics 245
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Here’s How to Make Your Startup Irresistible to Investors

The Startup Magazine

By Lihi Pinto Fryman, Co-Founder and CMO of Syte. Startup success depends on a many factors related to your vision, product, and market opportunity. But critical capital raising success depends on a separate set of factors. See Lihi’s formula for funding success… Television so often over-hypes real life situations for the sake of entertainment, but the producers of Shark Tank really didn’t have to do much embellishing to make the whole investor pitching process look like a high stake

Startup 99
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Remote Bob: Remote Work is About Smooth Integration and Controlled Supervision

Transformify

Our guest today is Barbara Krecak, an entrepreneur passionate about operations and business development. She is Director of Remote Bob – a company connecting busy London leaders with a high-quality, affordable remote workforce from Croatia. Barbara was the youngest columnist in Croatian magazine “Entrepreneur“ and the youngest Cotrugli Business School Executive MBA graduate.

Croatia 64
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The Heartfelt Holiday: Nine Ways To Show Your Employees You Care This Holiday Season

YoungUpstarts

by Deb Boelkes, author of “ The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture “ As the holiday season approaches, leaders are starting to look for ways to show their teams they care. Yes, that’s what bonuses are for. But cash gifts aside, there are plenty of other ways to show your employees that you appreciate their hard work, creativity, and dedication during the season of giving.

Employee 211
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How We Took on Slack (and Lived to Tell About It)

ConversionXL

How do you compete with one of the biggest names in your industry—and with a brand new product? Three years ago, we launched Chanty, a SaaS application for team chat. This was nothing new. Thousands of apps are born and die each year. There was one difference—we were going against Slack, the giant that is the SaaS role model. Call it bold or stupid, but we had our work cut out for us.

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Top 3 Reasons Why Your Board Needs a Secure Communications App

Board Effect

When an executive or board director sends you a message from their personal email account, does that send up a red flag for you? How many times have you simply hit reply or reply all without giving it a second thought? Have you considered that the original email or any of the responses to it may have contained sensitive or confidential information? The topic of cybersecurity has been an important one in board circles.

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10 Key Strategies For Innovation Leadership By Design

Startup Professionals Musings

As a business advisor, I strongly believe that continuous innovation and design thinking are the keys to long-term viability and success. A recent survey of design professionals shows strong agreement, but 92 percent expressed some lack of confidence in their organization’s design vision. They are always on the lookout for ways to prepare current and future design leaders.

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5 Best Strategies To Boost SEO Traffic in 2020

The Startup Magazine

The year is just about to end. Webpreneurs are hoping that next year will be more productive than this year. The search engines on the other hand are looking to make some changes on how businesses rank on the results pages. Regardless of the many marketing evolutions that are expected next year, SEO will still remain to be one of the most reliable digital marketing streams out there.

SEO 96
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Managing Your Modern Marketing Efforts with the Right Software

Duct Tape Marketing

Managing Your Modern Marketing Efforts with the Right Software written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Josh Slone. Podcast Transcript. On today’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I sit down with Josh Slone , product marketer for Gist. Gist is an all-in-one software platform that brings together all of the tools you need to successfully run a modern business.

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Ramish Zaidi On Top 5 Technologies To Look Forward To In 2020

YoungUpstarts

by Ramish Zaidi, Managing Director of Vortex Infosolutions. The fourth revolution has already started, and it’s absolutely moving at a pace, double the speed of the last three revolutions together. While taking the 3rd revolution as a foundation, we already see numerous revolutions in the 4th one. And 2020 is just the cornerstone year we were all looking out for.

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What’s the Deal with Seed Funds Waiting for Traction?

View from Seed

I sent a tweet out last week that elicited quite a few responses from both founders and investors: seed funds that don’t invest pre-traction =. — Rob Go (@robgo) November 4, 2019. I could hear the internet nodding in violent agreement. I thought I’d share a few additional thoughts on what may be driving this. First – there are a lot of seed investors out there that don’t actually want to invest in seed.

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Salesforce's vertical journey

deal architect

As part of my series of posts on vertical solutions, I had an excellent briefing this week from Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, EVP of Industries at Salesforce. I am also impressed at the wide range of sessions by industry that are being.

Vertical 299
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10 Ways To Trample And Smother Business Innovation

Startup Professionals Musings

Success in any business these days requires a constant flow of new and innovative solutions, to keep up with changes in the market, competition, and to attract new customers. Yet in my role as a small business advisor, I still see a singular focus on achieving repeatable processes and “cookie-cutter” manufacturing. I don’t believe these two objectives have to be mutually exclusive.

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Top It Certifications That You Need to Start Your Career: 2020 Edition

The Startup Magazine

We have outlined the top IT certifications that you need to know about this year! Stay ahead of the trends and become certified today! Job listings attract 250 resumes on average. This means your resume could be floating in a slush pile with 249 other candidates. In order to be seen you need to set yourself apart from the rest. That’s where certifications come in.

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Eliminating the Distractions of Modern Life

Duct Tape Marketing

Eliminating the Distractions of Modern Life written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Nir Eyal. Podcast Transcript. Today on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, writer, consultant and teacher Nir Eyal stops by to discuss his latest book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. An expert on the intersection of psychology, technology, and business, Eyal’s latest book is a look at what’s really at the root of our modern, di

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How To Quiet The Ego And Lead With Humility

YoungUpstarts

by Quint Studer, author of “ The Busy Leader’s Handbook: How To Lead People and Places That Thrive “ Great leadership is not always about being “right.” In fact, it rarely is. The leader’s job is to bring out the best in employees and to engage them in working together to do what’s best for the company. This cannot happen when a leader is too attached to their own ideas or convinced that they are the smartest person in the room.

Florida 164
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Should Nonprofits Have a Legal and Compliance Department?

Board Effect

There is no legal requirement for nonprofit organizations to have a legal and compliance department; nonetheless, all nonprofit organizations are required to know and follow all state and federal laws that govern them. Not all nonprofits will have sufficient funds or staff to establish a formal legal and compliance department, especially if they’re just starting up.

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Constellation Research event: Expansive, respectful vibe

deal architect

Let's face it - industry events are increasingly formulaic. Most vendor conferences are predictable - keynotes and product futures, rock bands, large partner booths. Most research firm events tend to be siloed around their category definitions and what currently excites.

Partner 239
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6 Steps To Move From Inspiration To Business Reality

Startup Professionals Musings

As a new business advisor and occasional investor, I get approached regularly by people who have a dream or a new business idea, and are looking for support and money to make it a reality. They are usually short on specifics required for execution , so I have to tell them that the idea is the easy part – and the real challenge is execution, even if someone gives you the money.