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Many aspiring entrepreneurs are looking to the Internet as an opportunity to get rich quick, instead of a place where you can start a business you love, for very little capital and minimal technical expertise. The reality is that if you build a business you love, you may in fact make big money, but if you start a business to get rich, you will probably fail.
You may have one or more ideas about how to make life easier or how to improve upon an already existing technology. Yet, you may have found that moving forward with that idea takes more than wishful thinking. Many entrepreneurs have used InventHelp to turn their imagined opportunities into real businesses. InventHelp allows you to discover and nurture the entrepreneur inside you.
It’s tough to survive in today’s highly competitive market. It’s almost impossible to thrive without a solid online presence. A website has become one of the most important aspects of a brand’s online marketing strategy. Without an optimized brand website, your small business will not stand out. Most modern customers are used to easy access of information online and expect a well designed site.
Bplans and Palo Alto Software are strong supporters of entrepreneurs and small business owners. We work with like-minded partners who also want to help your businesses succeed by providing the best tools and content for the job. If our readers choose to learn more or purchase from links to our partners, sometimes we earn affiliate commissions that support Bplans’ mission.
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
Today is amongst the proudest days I’ve had at Upfront Ventures — getting the chance to announce that Kevin Zhang has been promoted to Partner. Watching him develop over the past 4.5 years at Upfront has been both a pleasure and also has taught me a lot about venture capital. Kevin joined Upfront in 2012 as an Associate. We generally look for associates who are deeply quantitative, have great research & analytical skills and often have the tool kit for framing and making complex decisions.
There is, almost literally, an unlimited number of things you could focus on to create a high impact data-influenced organization. And, as if unlimited is not enough, nearly every month your analytics vendors release new features, you discover new analytics solutions, and as your business is more successful (hurray!) there is a new mobile app to track or a new digital experience to problem-solve or a crazy online to offline campaign that upends everything unleashes a new layer of tactical activi
Contrary to what you might guess, the highest rate of entrepreneurial growth over the last few years is not Gen-Y upstarts, but Boomers over the age of 50, now called encore entrepreneurs. In fact, according to the most recent Index of Startup Activity by the Kauffman Foundation and recent SBA reports , these Baby Boomers are actually driving a new entrepreneurship boom.
Contrary to what you might guess, the highest rate of entrepreneurial growth over the last few years is not Gen-Y upstarts, but Boomers over the age of 50, now called encore entrepreneurs. In fact, according to the most recent Index of Startup Activity by the Kauffman Foundation and recent SBA reports , these Baby Boomers are actually driving a new entrepreneurship boom.
So, you’ve got the bug to work for yourself? There is no doubt about it, the appeal of startup culture is inarguable. It represents our chance to get away from the nine to five grind, stop taking orders, and start working for yourself. Instead of completing one menial task after another, we’ll have the ability to make our dent in the world. With luck, we might even make some money doing it.
Share The end of every year is the opportunity reflect on a 365 day journey. 2016 was a bad year for some and for some it was a great year. Many businesses were launched and others were closed. Pivots were made and goals were shattered. In the last few days of 2016, we took some time to ask a few entrepreneurs and business what their biggest business accomplishments were. #1 – Officially Incorporated & More.
This has been an important year for us as a firm, as well as the market in general. We couldn’t begin any recap of 2016 without focusing on the bubble we hear so much about. The industry entered the year bracing for an apocalypse. Every announcement – whether it was a funding round, exit or layoffs – was analyzed within the context that the tech bubble has definitely burst or that we’re still in the bubble.
In the spirit of clearing out some half-formed thoughts, one takeaway is that we’re again in a period where the most exciting investment opportunities possess real technology risk. When we started Homebrew in 2013 our industry was, in retrospect, probably midway through a cycle where innovations were in business model rather than underlying technology.
“If we build it, they will come.” I heard it again yesterday from a technical entrepreneur who should know better than to believe the old “ Field of Dreams ” sports fantasy movie theme in today’s Internet information overload environment. These days, building a new business is all about visibility and marketing, no matter how great or innovative a solution you bring to the table.
by Kaloyan Dimitrov, founder of Vambos.com and Coriti.com. A business has various departments which work interdependently to maximize performance. For instance, a typical firm will have sales, operations, accounting, customer service and human resource departments. Each unit has distinct roles and performance metrics. An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software comes to combine these functions into one system.
Nowadays nearly every online shop utilizes some sort of product recommendation engine, which is no wonder, as these systems, if set up and configured properly can significantly boost revenues, CTRs, conversions, and other important metrics. Moreover, they can have considerable positive effects on the user experience as well, which translates into metrics that are harder to measure, but are nonetheless of paramount importance to online businesses, such as customer satisfaction and retention.
Dave’s note: This week we invite long-time CEO of Quicksilver Software to respond to our question: “How have you remained relevant in the gaming software business over so many years?” He and his company have worked in the video game business since the very earliest generation of games in the early 1980’s. His company is one of the oldest independent studios in the business.
Today it has been announced that I’m leading a $15 million funding round in Tact , a new generation of Enterprise Software company along with other investors including Microsoft Ventures and previous investors Accel and Redpoint Rather than just waxing lyrically about how great the company is I thought I’d provide some context about why I invested and also about a fundamental change I see in the coming years in the way enterprise software is used.
Things change so fast these days in business that your first priority as an entrepreneur is to stay current, by talking to customers, peers, and experts. Secondly, you must constantly communicate suggested changes to your team, implement necessary pivots, and realign all the elements of your business, including partners, investors, and vendors. No change means falling behind.
by Raghav Mathur, VP Strategy, Partnerships & Business Operations, G/O Digital. Social media marketing – every small business owner has been told time and time again they must do it. Anyone who has a Facebook account can set up an ad campaign in a snap, and even target specific audiences based on a variety of characteristics. It’s affordable, effective and has almost no barrier to entry.
Worrying is a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Worry” causes the very thing you’re worried about, to actually happen. When you’re backstage getting more and more anxious that your performance won’t be good, you’re implanting thoughts of second-guessing and fear that will arise during the performance. Instead, you should realize you’ve already done all the practice required, and mistakes don’t actually matter anyway.
Customers don’t usually see one ad and then click over to purchase. In reality, the path is much more complex, and usually includes various marketing channels – organic and paid search, referral, social media, television. But if you’re a rigorous and data-driven marketer, the question has to cross your mind: how much credit can I give each channel for this conversion?
One of my company CEO’s recently described his rule for acquisition success, and it resonated with me as a great goal for planning during acquisition exercises. This CEO states that he has made it work twice when acquiring companies, and that is enough for him to make it his rule for all future acquisitions. If the target company is able to show a ten percent EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), then the acquisition team should be able to create a way to
So much of digital innovation has changed the way people communicate and create or access content. As a result, few departments in business have changed how they work quite like marketing, and few functions look so fundamentally different today than a decade ago. So hiring your first marketer as a startup founder can be a daunting task. What’s the profile of the candidate?
I enjoy spending time with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex. We share a passion for automation and other manufacturing technology and we enjoy sharing notes on outstanding plants and facilities we get to visit. With a new President about to.
by David Estrakh, Senior Vice President at Express Trade Capital. Even though your manufacturing facility is up and running, that doesn’t mean you can forget about it and turn your attention to other aspects of your business. Manufacturing requires constant attention to ensure that costs remain low and quality and productivity stay high. Here are a few ideas for keeping your operation running smoothly: Manage the Product Lifecycle.
“Being in Silicon Valley, a lot of my friends want to work for Google or Apple, but this class showed me that the problems in public service were even more challenging and rewarding. I used to watch the news about Syrian refugees and feel that I was just a bystander to a hopeless situation. But this class helped me realize I can have an impact and be part of the solution.”.
At some point in their life, hopefully everyone strives to be the best in their chosen profession. Most people think that being the best requires more intelligence, more training, and more experience. In reality, in business or even in sports, the evidence is conclusive that it is as much about how you think, as what you do. I saw this illustrated a while back in the classic sports book, “ Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else ”, by Jon Gordon.
What would happen if I forced you to develop all your precious, proprietary, secret-sauce code in a public Github repository? One thing would be: You would be judged. Your peers would judge you by that code, with a broad definition of “goodness” that includes everything from file and class organization, documentation, tests, avoiding placing API keys in code, eliminating your reliance on “security by obscurity,” and even that artful quality which like the proverbial US Su
NYTech does not mirror the diversity of its host city… Today on Gotham Alpha, I talk to Alex Qin, Skillshare engineer and founder of Code Cooperative, about the reality of New York Tech’s diversity gap…what factors actually reinforce hiring prejudice here…and how we can all start to fix this problem, right now. Follow me and Alex at twitter.com/tdevane and twitter.com/alexqin.
More from my conversation with Jason Blessing What other trends excite you in terms of manufacturing technology? I think the other interesting thing that is emerging in manufacturing from a technology perspective is 3D printing and how that's affecting how.
by Roger Chen, Vice President, Asia for GoDaddy. Domain name, check. Web hosting, check. Website designed, check. Products and solutions to sell, check. Shopping cart, check. Congratulations, your business is now online. What next? When it comes to finding success as a small business on the internet, having a website set up is merely the first step.
“Being in Silicon Valley, a lot of my friends want to work for Google or Apple, but this class showed me that the problems in public service were even more challenging and rewarding. I used to watch the news about Syrian refugees and feel that I was just a bystander to a hopeless situation. But this class helped me realize I can have an impact and be part of the solution.”.
Too many entrepreneurs put their best creative thinking into the startup idea, and believe that the business implementation simply requires following tried and true business practices. In my experience as a startup advisor, nothing could be further from the truth. To win, you need to think outside the box to deliver a better customer experience, business model, and new positioning.
Businesses of all sizes develop branding strategies to ultimately develop a distinction over competitive offerings in a customer’s mind. Your customers should be able to distill your brand’s essence in your stories, marketing activities and products. Needless to say, building brand differentiation and a narrative requires careful thought.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been to a couple of tech events that were sparsely populated by straight white men. Yeah, can you believe it? One was a careers panel aimed at women in tech held at Flatiron School and the other was Alterconf. The goal of Alterconf is to provide safe opportunities and spaces for marginalized people in tech and those who support them by highlighting positive initiatives of local community members.
After 15 years and countless deals, you would think integrating acquisitions would be an Oracle core competence. It’s inconsistently so if you talk to many “refugees” who have left after an Oracle acquisition. After listening yesterday (replay here) to Oracle.
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