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 24, 2015
Twitter, which originated as an accidental side project of a failing Internet startup, first launched into prominence in 2007 when it landed best start-up in the blog category of the technology portion of annual festival SxSW that year. That winning announcement would catapult them into the Internet big league – whether the service, or the co-founders behind it, were ready or not.
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.
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.
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?
YoungUpstarts
MAY 13, 2015
Your website may be your most effective tool to engage prospects and convert them to customers. An effective website, however, has to be tailored to the needs of your customer and your industry. Your web design has a huge impact on the number of prospects you convert to clients. How do customers use your website? To implement a plan for web design, you need to know how customers are using your website.
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.
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.
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.
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.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 13, 2015
by Todd McDaniel, Vice President at Dynavistics Inc. Historically, the interaction between the credit collections department and the sales team has been an adversarial relationship. The credit collections team believes that salespeople have no concern for collections and just want to sell to anyone to make commissions and meet quotas. The sales team sees the credit collections department as an obstacle to opening new accounts and closing deals.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 10, 2015
*. Lawsuits. I’m so tired of the nature of the legal system in the United States where bullying, intimidation and mobster-like shake-downs are becoming prevalent. As I write these words I already imagine my next deposition in which I’m asked to read this out loud. Lawsuits are becoming so prevalent these days. Even when I’m not the one being sued I find myself being dragged into deposition after deposition and my blog (along with all my emails) are being served as evidence.
deal architect
MAY 2, 2015
In the 90s, SAP used to fly a handful of Gartner analysts to Walldorf, Germany for several days of briefings. It allowed analysts “full immersion time” with executives and product development/strategy folks. It required significant investment on both sides, and.
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.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 25, 2015
Every entrepreneur I know is dismayed by the number of friends who approach them with a line such as “I have an even better idea that will change the world, and one of these days I’m going to get around to starting my own business.” I always wonder what is more important to them on an ongoing basis than changing the world, since their startups usually never materialize.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 28, 2015
The Internet has become an enormous platform for businesses to advertise and communicate to existing and potential customers. It is also where consumers first turn when looking for any kind of product or service, and this means that businesses in every industry need a strong online presence as well as a flawlessly-conceived internet marketing campaign.
Up and Running
MAY 18, 2015
Editor’s note: After writing this article and prior to publication, oDesk and Elance have merged and rebranded to Upwork. While quotes will maintain the use of the name oDesk, we will refer to the site as Upwork. Never fear—they are still essentially the same site. As I write this, I am currently sitting in my home office, overlooking my sleepy little neighborhood in Southeast Portland.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 20, 2015
Anybody who reads the blog regularly will know that I’m long video. I’ve made 5 investments in the sector and I hope to make 5 more. Between the US & Europe alone the video sector is worth around $500 billion. And TV / Film / Video Games / Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality and frankly the Internet will all merge. Western countries watch > 5 hours of TV per day.
deal architect
MAY 3, 2015
A competing sales executive recently paid the SAP CEO the ultimate compliment: “I pray he is too busy to get personally involved in deals I am chasing. We seem to lose those often” Bill is one smooth salesperson, but he.
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