Steve Blank
MAY 19, 2015
Startups focus on speed since they are burning cash every day as they search for product/market fit. But over time code/hardware written/built to validate hypotheses and find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. These shortcuts add up and become what is called technical debt. And the size of the problem increases with the success of the company.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 4, 2015
Amazon. It is a household name. It has become so synonymous with Internet companies that the French have invented a disdainful term including Amazon: “les GAFA,” which they refer to as Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon to talk about American dominance of the Internet. Try to imagine if you *didn’t* already know Amazon and the company walking into VC meetings telling people they were going to disrupt the selling of all goods starting with books but then extending into electronics, ap
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Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 16, 2015
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.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 15, 2015
by Dario Zadro, web strategist at Zadro Web. Startups have a lot of enthusiasm and drive, but one thing they don’t always have a lot of is cash. But that does not need to stop you when it comes to marketing your new business. Many online marketing techniques range in price from cheap to free, so you don’t have to spend a fortune to get noticed.
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
View from Seed
MAY 14, 2015
Accidental VC is a series of short posts written by me, Jay Acunzo. Though I never planned it, I somehow wound up working in VC as NextView’s VP of platform. As an operator, not an investor, I’m amazed at how many casual, throwaway comments that happen inside a VC’s office would be genuinely useful to entrepreneurs building their businesses. So this series is my attempt to share that knowledge beyond our walls … one overheard lesson at a time.
Brandanew
MAY 18, 2015
Here’s a post that talked about why “real products” market themselves and do not need content marketing. I am not writing a rebuttal because it’s my husband and that we disagree, but mostly because, his view is not an isolated view. Many product managers and Tech experts tend to say this. My husband thinks I am the Martha Stewart of branding (and I take that compliment, thank you!
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 2, 2015
What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. I love the enthusiasm, the boundless energy and the sense of possibility that comes from having an idea that hasn’t yet been beat up in the marketplace of competing ideas, customer contracts, VC skepticism, jaded journalists or fickle consumers who are on the The New, New Thing.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 6, 2015
Perhaps sparked by the recession recovery, I’m seeing a new era of the entrepreneur, with startups springing up all around. Based on my own mentoring and investing experience, the best entrepreneurs are pragmatic problem solvers. They have an uncanny ability to find elegant, easy, and fast solutions to pain points in the marketplace, as well as their own challenges.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 27, 2015
By Brian Sutter, Director of Marketing, Wasp Barcode Technologies. Unless you’re Kimmy Schmidt, you probably heard some buzz (or as the case may be, panic) about Mobilegeddon over the past few weeks. On April 21, Google launched its new algorithm update , designed to alter the ranking of its mobile search results to favor mobile-friendly sites and ultimately, to provide a better search experience for mobile users.
Up and Running
MAY 4, 2015
When you’re pitching your business, the time allotted will impact a great deal of what you should do and say. If you’re going to have a five minute time block followed by a Q&A, you will need to approach that differently than if you’re giving a one-minute presentation. So how do you know what to include in pitching opportunities for varying lengths of time?
Brandanew
MAY 29, 2015
Startups need PR, publicity and proof of visibility for investors and while you may have a PR agency, many struggle with producing enough or high quality content. The all encompassing Internet does provide opportunities but not when we create a content stealing epidemic. Content marketing and growth hacking are not mere buzzwords in hopes of fast movement but need time investment (and therefore money) on creating originality or quality experiences.
Feld Thoughts
MAY 28, 2015
Congrats to my friends at Rally Software on the announcement that they’ve signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by CA Technologies for $480 million. Part of the fun of having a blog for a long time is that it captures some of the history – in the moment – of what’s going on. For example, from a post in 2008 about Rally’s $16.85m financing , I riffed on the origins of the company.
Hearpreneur
MAY 12, 2015
Each business has a story. No matter if the business is a Goliath like Wal-Mart, or a local business owned by a couple or family, the business has roots in an idea. For each business owner, the story of their journey can range from monetary needs or the passion for a unique project. Each story is different though the reasons may remain the same. No matter the tale, the background behind each and every business is what fuels each entrepreneur and brand.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 10, 2015
Every entrepreneur and business leader waits too long before really working on the legacy that he wants to leave to society and his family. They realize too late that they don’t really want to be remembered for how many hours they spent on airplanes, how many emails they produced, or even how much money they made for the business. If you disappeared today, what would your legacy show?
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 11, 2015
There comes a time when a business looks hard at its website and lets out a groan of dismay. Your website is out-dated, out-moded, and out-competed and it doesn’t take a genius to see. Your own customers may have been telling you to get it together and, whether you are listening or not, it doesn’t diminish the truth that something must be done.
Up and Running
MAY 21, 2015
Most every organization will benefit from even the most elementary market research. If it does not provide new information, it will confirm what is known. Market research is the process of gaining information about your market. Preferably, this is specific information about your target market and the key factors that influence their buying decisions.
K9 Ventures
MAY 6, 2015
The title of this post is an oxymoron — but it is intentional as it most succinctly captures the essence of this post. Conventional wisdom in the startup world dictates that two founders are ideal for a startup. There are lots of famous pairs of duo co-founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Hewlett and Packard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Hunter Walker
MAY 15, 2015
You meet a lot of interesting folks on Twitter. Sara Chipps , cofounder/CEO of Jewelbots was one of them although most enjoyably, she reached out to me initially because she thought I had something to do with Homebrew, the Mac package manager and not Homebrew the venture fund. Once that was resolved it turned out we still had things in common and got together in NYC last year.
ConversionXL
MAY 11, 2015
This is the methodology that I have developed over 12 years in the industry and working with over 300 organizations. It is also the methodology that has been used to have a near perfect test streak (6 test failures in 5.5 years), even if most others do not believe that stat. Theory is nice, but pragmatic examples and real-world results are far better.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 15, 2015
The military has long recognized that machine guns are force multipliers for rifles, but businesses have been slow to capitalize on this concept. Sometimes all the planning in the world isn’t enough for business survival, when things change as fast as they do today. Every business, especially startups, needs all guns blazing quickly on every opportunity or insight into the market.
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 1, 2015
Where does creativity come from? Apparently it flows straight from the fingers, and this amazing guy shows us how it is an unstoppable force! This man has developed a technique that lets his creativity flow in way that is thoroughly unique and incredibly special. As I type this, I can’t help but think of what this artist would be doing if he were typing this particular blog post!
Up and Running
MAY 14, 2015
Business plans go by many names: Strategic plans, operational plans, internal plans, and many others. Lately, I’ve been focusing on lean business plans. There are also one-page business plans, although those are really more summaries. Of course there are traditional business plans, which can also be called formal business plans, or wow-do-I-really-have-to-do-all-that business plans.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
MAY 4, 2015
Dane Maxwell is one of those entrepreneurs with boundless enthusiasm for life, but particularly for his entrepreneurial activities. He has built a multi-million dollar software company and never has to work a day again in his life, but is fueled by a blazing passion to help others do what he has. The post How Dane Maxwell Created A Multimillion Dollar Passive Income Software Business By Age 32 appeared first on Entrepreneurs-Journey.com.
Hunter Walker
MAY 1, 2015
If you haven’t checked out #TalkPay on Twitter, you should. People are tweeting about their salary histories. Not verifiable and not scientific, but part of the desire to help drive awareness and close pay gaps for the same jobs, whether between men and women, or Caucasians and other ethnicities. At the heart of pay bias issues are the employers who, with short-term thinking, pay less to people when circumstances allow it.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 30, 2015
I’m so tired of seeing young entrepreneurs get screwed by their angel investors on convertible notes and I know I can’t convince you not to do it so I’d like to offer one simple bit of advice to help you avoid getting screwed (at least on one part of your note). When you do a convertible note with a cap that converts into the next round of funding one of the unintended consequences is that if you’re successful and raise at a larger price than your cap the early angels oft
deal architect
MAY 14, 2015
When I wrote SAP Nation, I built several economic models on the size of the economy. In the book, I presented one which runs about $ 200 bn a year. The most expensive model showed close to $ 400 bn.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 22, 2015
The Minimalist Guide To Managing Your Brand Reputation Online written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. A dissatisfied customer, on an average, tells 25 of his friends, while a happy one tells only 15. Seems like if good reviews spread like wildfire, bad reviews would be rushing with light speed. Reviews, and how the masses consume them, are human nature, but this human nature can be fatal for online businesses especially at a time when 8 out of 1
Up and Running
MAY 22, 2015
When first starting your business you do it all—you oversee every aspect of your company. But as things grow, you eventually have to admit that trying to do everything yourself is no longer effective. However, it’s hard to let go. We asked 12 founders from the YEC to share with us when they knew it was time to hire a manager (or a few managers) to oversee the day-to-day activities of their business.
Steve Blank
MAY 1, 2015
Thibault Duchemin and his team applied for our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley in 2014. We accepted them because it was clear Thibault was driven to solve a very personal problem – he grew up in a Deaf family, the only one who could hear. His team project was to provide automated aids for the hearing impaired. Here’s his story. ——-. Lean LaunchPad: A Year After.
View from Seed
MAY 27, 2015
Today, we are excited to announce the launch of our new podcast TRACTION. On the show, we’ll explore and share the stories of all the creative, unusual, and clever ways that entrepreneurs find early results. We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 14, 2015
*. Unicorns. The most overused word in the technology industry today. And they aren’t even f **g real. That is how absurd thing have gotten. No, I take that back. THIS is how absurd things have gotten: “I have to raise at a billion-dollar valuation” “Why? You don’t have the revenue or profit to support that valuation.” “But if I don’t I won’t be able to recruit the best people in the market.
deal architect
MAY 21, 2015
Analyst relations at vendors is never an easy job. Sitting between big egos of analysts and just as big egos of their executives is always uncomfortable. They are supposed to be mind readers: “Why did he write this?” or even.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 28, 2015
How Customer Photos Improve Mobile Shopping written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Mobile commerce is expected to grow nearly 50% in the next four years. But even with the rapid rate of tablet and smartphone technology, there are still many advantages of web over mobile for creating a seamless online shopping experience.
Up and Running
MAY 28, 2015
Let’s say you have zero traction, an unknown product, and no budget to speak of. Perhaps not the most desirable position to be in, but at least you have some resources to tap into: time and creativity. One of the most rewarding aspects of marketing is the challenge, so realize that you’re up for it. You can grind your way to gaining traction. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution; what might work for one company might completely flop for another.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 1, 2015
Most business managers preach that the key to success is holding employees accountable for actions, but I have found that successful entrepreneurs are all about holding themselves accountable. They skip the blame and complain game, and make things happen despite major obstacles. As a startup investor, I view any evidence of a victim mentality as the kiss of death.
View from Seed
MAY 12, 2015
For entrepreneurs setting out to raise a round of VC financing, with some diligent research, it’s reasonably straightforward to put together a list of target firms to pitch. Start with the firms of whatever city you’re in that have a history of investing in the stage and sector of your startup, then augment with additional firms outside your home geography which may have a strong particular fit with your company.
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