Steve Blank
DECEMBER 17, 2015
This is the fourth in a series about corporate innovation co-authored with Evangelos Simoudis. Evangelos and I are working on what we hope will become a book about the new model for corporate entrepreneurship. Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D , part two on Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley , and part three The 6 Decisions to Make Before Setting up an Innovation Outpost.
View from Seed
DECEMBER 17, 2015
Editor’s Note: NextView recently kicked off a Boston-based workshop series on technical interviewing with Google. (Portfolio companies can contact us to learn more.) This interview covers a wide range of topics also covered in our workshops. Saurya Velagapudi is a senior software engineer at Google, based in their Cambridge, Mass., office, right in the heart of MIT.
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Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 14, 2015
Image via Flickr by Side Wages Some entrepreneurs forget that they need an innovative business model along with an innovative solution to have a successful startup. Inventors alone, or business gurus alone, generally fail. It really takes a complementary pair of founders to improve the odds. That’s why I say “two heads are better than one” in a startup.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 28, 2015
Inbound marketing service provider HubSpot recently released its first ever State of Inbound Report for Asia – which surveyed some 400 marketing and sales professionals at virtually all levels and across all industries in Asia to compile some of the most comprehensive analysis on online marketing in this part of the world. According to the study, 3 out of 4 marketers in Asia use mostly inbound strategy, such as SEO, content creation, social media, and lead generation to drive ROI.
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
Version One Ventures
DECEMBER 7, 2015
We know that companies are successful (or not successful) because of their people. Over the past few years, it has become relatively acceptable to work with a leadership coach and investors typically have a handful of good coaches in their rolodex ready to support and develop young founders. Yet even with this rise in popularity, leadership development is still primarily limited to CEOs and select executives.
VC Cafe
DECEMBER 1, 2015
This is a guest post by Libby Kinsey , a former VC with an Msc in Machine Learning from UCL (bio below). Machine Learning and AI are fast becoming ubiquitous in data driven businesses, that is to say, an awful lot of businesses. Here I choose a few areas where it’s possible that big corporations haven’t already eaten everybody’s lunch. It’s not uncharted territory?
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
View from Seed
DECEMBER 8, 2015
Editor’s note: At a recent team meeting at NextView, we looked at the high number of startups we invested in which were pre-product at the time. The question arose: What is a seed VC’s process like when a company is pre-product? The below article answers that question. You can also find a graphic outlining Rob’s process in detail here.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 27, 2015
Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. In reality, more features will more likely make the product confusing and less usable to all. Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 10, 2015
by Shawn Murphy, author of “ The Optimistic Workplace: Creating an Environment That Energizes Everyone “ To change the world through your work, you need to be grounded in beliefs that unleash human potential. After all, changing the world isn’t a solo endeavor. It takes a group of purpose-oriented people to shift realities. You could say it takes a rebellious mindset to even believe it’s possible to change the world.
Up and Running
DECEMBER 22, 2015
Angel investors can teach you a lot about money, whether or not you’re seeking funding from them. I’ve seen this over and over in my dealings as a member of a local angel investment group. We don’t just reject startups; we explain why. And we don’t just say yes either; we explain what else is needed. What we do at the Willamette Angel Conference is the rule, not the exception.
Version One Ventures
DECEMBER 15, 2015
Messaging platforms are gaining more and more mindshare. Michael Wolf’s deck on the Future of Tech and Media shows that messaging will soon blow past social media as the dominant media activity and will add 1 billion new users by 2018. Given these numbers, the opportunities for messaging platforms are getting very interesting – particularly in terms of how to leverage messaging platforms to help people solve problems at work and in day to day life.
ConversionXL
DECEMBER 2, 2015
A/B testing – for all the content out there about testing, huge amounts of people still mess it up. From testing the wrong things to running the tests incorrectly, there are lots of ways to get it wrong. Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide: 1. What is A/B testing and How Does It Work? 2. What to Test to Improve Our Chances of Winning?
View from Seed
DECEMBER 3, 2015
This post on how to retain tech talent was written by Dan DeMeyere, director of engineering at thredUP. NextView is an investor in thredUP, and this post originally appeared on their engineering team blog. Retaining engineering talent has become an increasingly challenging task for any engineering manager in the Bay Area. Engineers have a lot of power in the current market and, as a result, it’s easy for engineers to leave and find a new position elsewhere.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 6, 2015
Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs seem to prefer to fail their way to the top, rather than do some research and learn from the successes and mistakes of others. It seems to be part of the “ fail fast, fail often ” mantra often heard in Silicon Valley. As an advisor to many startups, I’m convinced it’s an expensive and painful approach, but I do see it used all too often.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 29, 2015
by Gaurav Sharma, a founder of Antipull and digital strategist at Nine Hertz. In this era, mobile applications have almost replaced the use of desktop versions. As mobile apps can be accessed anytime at anywhere, people feel more convenient with apps instead of waiting to load for a whole website. According to the recent statistics, the number of mobile apps in Android and iOS has crossed over 1.6 and 1.5 million respectively.
Up and Running
DECEMBER 16, 2015
I don’t have children yet but when I do, I know I’m going to want to make sure they’re intelligent, creative, compassionate, and self-confident—probably what every non-parent hopes for, right? Wishful thinking aside, I do still want to raise children who feel the world is their oyster. I don’t want to bring up ruthless little businessmen that hike drug prices 5,000 percent, but people more like Blake Mycoskie and Sanjit “Bunker” Roy who temper business smarts with a whole lot of compassion.
Version One Ventures
DECEMBER 17, 2015
As 2015 comes to an end, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve done and where we’re headed. It’s hard to believe that it has been just a little over a year since we launched Fund II with $35M in commitments. Since then, we’ve accelerated our pace – backing exceptional entrepreneurs, feeding their growth, and seeing others out with successful exits.
Feld Thoughts
DECEMBER 16, 2015
There are two common ways to scale a system – horizontally or vertically. If you are a software engineer, you probably get this instinctively. If you don’t know what this is, let’s work with the simple Wikipedia definition which is pretty good. Scale Vertically (or “scale up”): Add resources to a single node in a system, typically involving the addition of CPUs or memory to a single computer.
Hearpreneur
DECEMBER 5, 2015
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.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 5, 2015
Building a successful startup is not a job for the Lone Ranger. Every entrepreneur must effectively collaborate with many people, including internal team members, partners, customers, and investors. Real collaboration requires leadership and initiative from the entrepreneur in order to drive the collaborative process and make the whole team better than the sum of its parts.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 21, 2015
by Richard Milam , the Founder and CEO of EnableSoft Incorporated. Budgets are a tricky facet for any business owner however being one of the most critical aspects to the operations, productivity, profitability, and growth of a business. Every year, dynamic markets, the state of the economy, and consumer demands change the requirements of a business and the costs of operation.
Up and Running
DECEMBER 29, 2015
Your plan just got rejected. Welcome to the club. Whether it was angel investment you were after or venture capital, or even investment from friends or family, you didn’t get the money. Reality check: You’re the rule, not the exception. In an average year in the U.S., more than six million businesses get started. But, fewer than 100,000 businesses get angel investment, and fewer than 5,000 get venture capital.
ConversionXL
DECEMBER 21, 2015
Various studies have estimated the average consumer sees anywhere from 3,000 to 20,000 marketing messages each day. Of course, most of these go unnoticed. One possible reason? People are increasingly tuning out inauthentic and blatant marketing attempts. For this reason, we’ve seen a recent rise in what’s known as ‘transparency marketing.’. Though transparency and authenticity have always been virtues extolled by thought leaders, certain blogs, companies and movements have given greater exposure
The Equity Kicker
DECEMBER 15, 2015
My brother Rob is an economist by background and we have an ongoing debate that is repeated between techno-optimists and economists around the world. Every day I see improvements in technology helping us to live fuller lives and do more of the things we want to do but Rob and I struggle to reconcile that with the meagre growth and stagnant productivity statistics that he looks at.
Hearpreneur
DECEMBER 27, 2015
Happy New Year! Every new year brings with it a new form of excitement and anticipation. The reason is that every new year brings about a “newness” for lack of a better term when we are able to start fresh and erase those things that we did bad or things we have been thinking about doing. For us at CEO Blog Nation, we get it. So that’s why we are excited about 2016 because there will be more and more entrepreneurs and businesses.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
DECEMBER 8, 2015
Does it feel like everyone is working very hard, all the time, and yet not accomplishing as much as everyone would like? Maybe this is why. Suppose a web server is running at 50% of its full capacity. Browser traffic doesn’t arrive in regular, smooth amounts; it comes in spurts and occasionally large spikes. Because the server is under-utilized, when a spike arrives there are spare resource to deal with the increase.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 8, 2015
by Emma Rosser of Publicize. A successful entrepreneur is one that disrupts, creates and innovates. This quality is inherent in all great leaders. Having a depth of knowledge in a selected field and the ability to shout about it allows entrepreneurs to differentiate themselves and their products. For a startup, being new to the scene this can be difficult.
Duct Tape Marketing
DECEMBER 21, 2015
Planning Your 2016 Content Marketing Calendar written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. There are only a few weeks left in 2015, and that means it’s time to start planning your marketing calendar for 2016. Actually, that time was about three months ago, but we both know that you’re probably just now getting around to it. Hey, no worries—we’re all busy small business owners here, so we’re not going to judge you if you’re running a little behind.
ConversionXL
DECEMBER 18, 2015
Email makes the world go around, right? No matter how many times you read about “the death of email”, it remains paramount in the online world. In fact, I’ll bet you’ll receive at least two emails in the time it will take you to read this article from start to finish. Are all emails created equal? No, not exactly. According to Salesforce , the top 3 uses of email are newsletters (66%), promotional content (54%) and welcome series emails (42%).
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 6, 2015
I came off of a few tough weeks at work. In part that’s why you’ve heard less from me recently. I had some good days and bad days like most of you. I had a very big negative surprise which I’ve mostly worked through but will take time. And I’ve had some good moments, too, for sure. But through all of this I’m always reminded that in tough times some people pull up their socks and help get the job done while others turn to being critics: Even some who don’t act
Software By Rob
DECEMBER 2, 2015
In early 2011 I was looking for my next thing. Long ago I learned that when I’m not learning I’m not happy. And in early 2011, aside from hosting our first successful MicroConf, I wasn’t doing many things that scared me. Which told me I needed a next thing. My book was selling well. I had a portfolio of 8 or 9 small apps and websites.
Steve Blank
DECEMBER 15, 2015
In a rapidly changing world those who copy the past have doomed their future. When companies or agencies search for disruptive and innovative strategies they often assemble a panel of experts to advise them. Ironically the panel is often made up of people whose ideas about innovation were relevant in the past. I’ve seen this scenario play out in almost every large company and government agency trying to grapple with disruption and innovation.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 14, 2015
by Donna Cutting, Founder & CEO of Red Carpet Learning Systems, Inc. and the author of “ 501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers “ For many businesses, the holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year. But it certainly is not the time slack off on service. In fact, in today’s market, there is a direct correlation between service and sales. 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they’re being treated.
Duct Tape Marketing
DECEMBER 17, 2015
5 Tips to Prepare Yourself for an Entrepreneurial Burnout Threat written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. There are several areas an entrepreneur needs to shred for getting a better position in the game before the risk itself devours him whole. The entrepreneurial spirit must be kept alive and the fire kindled from time to time so doesn’t die out of hope and exhaustion.
ConversionXL
DECEMBER 30, 2015
As an eCommerce site, you likely send emails regularly. Black Friday emails, Valentine’s Day emails, BOGO emails, confirmation emails, thank you emails, reminder emails… the list is endless. Are you getting real results or simply opens / clicks? Are you promoting the right products to the right people at the right time? Generating revenue via email marketing requires strategy.
deal architect
DECEMBER 17, 2015
This time of the year, I am reminded of my Brazilian-American friend, Karin Morton. With family spread around thee world she said her father would have palpitations, as she was growing up, with all the international phone calls at $.
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