View from Seed
MARCH 19, 2015
'If you’re in the tech startup industry today, you get the sense that every one of your peers wants to take on the entire world. Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. Engineers and even marketers proudly claim to be “full stack.” Startups launched around seemingly mundane, insular problems glow about their abilities to change the world.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 14, 2015
'“Scope creep” (or feature creep) is an insidious disease that kills more new business solutions than any other, especially high-tech ones, and yet most founders (who may be the cause) never even see it happening. This term refers to the penchant to add just one more feature to the product or service before first delivery, just because you can. The instigators are all well-intentioned – executives talk to potential customers who “must have” a few more things; or the technical team edicts some “t
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Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 23, 2015
'Last week Fred Wilson and I sat down in Santa Monica for an hour+ discussion with the video cameras rolling. One of the questions we discussed is, “How much capital should a startup raise?” Fred & I are both in agreement that there is a tension between capital constraints and creativity. In his words, [in some instances] “because lots of capital is available, the company takes on the capital and that ends up resulting in no constraints on decision making and so the company
Steve Blank
MARCH 3, 2015
'During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Stanford’s focus was Electronic Intelligence and those advanced microwave components and systems were useful in a variety of weapons systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley
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
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 5, 2015
'by Rob Bellenfant, founder and CEO of TechnologyAdvice. If you keep up with the news on project management and business strategy, you’ve probably come across the buzzword “agile” more than a few times. You may have also noticed that agile methodology — which was once thought to be only for software developers — is now being used just about everywhere, from construction to marketing, human resources, manufacturing, and even wedding planning.
Up and Running
MARCH 27, 2015
'Does your website have you feeling stressed? If you’re a small business owner or service professional who wants to develop a new website, you might find yourself thinking, “It’s a jungle out there!” You wouldn’t be wrong. Let’s work through a case study with Carl, a financial planner, who’s a composite of several professional service businesses.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 4, 2015
'In my years of mentoring entrepreneurs, a problem I have seen too often is low self-esteem, and over-compensating through arrogance and ego. These entrepreneurs find it hard to respect customers or team members, and their ventures usually fail. As a team member, low self-esteem leads to low confidence, poor productivity, and no job satisfaction. Fortunately, both can be fixed.
Startup Lessons Learned
MARCH 13, 2015
'We live today in a golden age of writing and resources for entrepreneurs. There are books on most (but not yet all) of the critical topics about startups, and of course a massive amount of information on blogs and Twitter. Elite VCs - from Brad Feld to Reid Hoffman to Peter Thiel - write books and tweet constantly (or at least one does). As the ecosystem develops, this information is getting more and more specialized, which is awesome.
Occam's Razor
MARCH 10, 2015
'In a Q&A after a keynote a couple of years ago, I was asked: " When will traditional business analysis subsume the web analytics silo? " My reply: " All business will ultimately be digital, so, if anything, web analytics will subsume business analysis! " That was a half-cheeky reply. But, if you reflect upon the developments in analytics over the last couple of years it is incredible to see that we, web analytics, have moved so quickly towards the aforementioned outcome.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 20, 2015
'by Dan Prosser, author of “ Thirteeners: Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy – and How Yours Can Be One of Them “. Did you know that the business world, in general, is a vast network of interrelated conversations? It’s true. And your company is a microcosm of that network. What this means is that the conversations that take place between your team members are incredibly important.
Up and Running
MARCH 11, 2015
'Whether or not you’re raising money for your business, getting advice from venture capitalists can be invaluable. But, getting in the doors of a Sand Hill Road VC in Silicon Valley can be an incredibly difficult undertaking. Fortunately, many of the top VCs share their thoughts on their blogs and are full of advice for startups, both big and small.
Mike Michalowicz
MARCH 16, 2015
'Show Summary. Matt Rissell, co-founder and CEO of TSheets, joins Episode 19 of the Profit First Podcast. Matt dives into how time tracking protects employees and helps employers maximize their profitability. Our Guest. Matt Rissell is the co-founder and CEO of TSheets, an Eagle, Idaho-based technology firm that provides online, GPS-powered time tracking for companies with hourly employees.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 20, 2015
'Every entrepreneur with a new technology tells me that his innovation will be industry-disrupting, meaning that it will render the existing technology obsolete, and create a new market. Yet truly disruptive innovations, like the smartphone from Apple and the rise of the Internet, are very rare, and are generally unpredicted. So why would any investor ever believe any of these claims?
Hunter Walker
MARCH 25, 2015
'Forerunner Ventures is one of Homebrew’s favorite co-investors for consumer commerce/retail startups. Firm founder Kirsten Green has an amazing analytical mind combined with empathy for the consumer. Since talent attracts talent, it’s not surprising Kirsten built a small community around her that also shines, notably Eurie Kim. We got to know Eurie over the last two years via our work together and I asked her to share some of her stories here… Hunter Walk: What was your path
ConversionXL
MARCH 30, 2015
'Best practices are starting points: if you have no data, start with these. They are not what you should end up with, but it’s where you start (the optimization). That’s an important distinction. Here are some ideas about of how you can apply 10 Jakob Nielsen Usability Heuristics to lead generation websites in the B2B or high consideration B2C realm, where there isn’t necessarily any transactional functionality, e.g. e-commerce, user registrations, etc.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 26, 2015
'Over the last few years, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of small businesses and startups around the world, with each one being driven by entrepreneurs filled with unfaltering ambition, energy and desire. However, not every is lucky enough to early stage or seed funding, which makes most startups and small businesses obsessed with the words like low-cost and cost-effective.
Up and Running
MARCH 26, 2015
'Unsure what kind of business plan you need? Read on. We get this question a lot, mainly because there are so many different things labelled as business plans: strategic plans, annual plans, operational plans, feasibility plans, and, of course, what most people think of, business plans for startups seeking investment. And also, what real business owners want—lean business plans for better management.
Mike Michalowicz
MARCH 11, 2015
'My experience with Simplify Commerce exemplifies the most important lesson in customer service: pick up the phone. Make sure you employ this lesson in your own business before its too late. First a little background. I started a new business this past summer to help accountants and bookkeepers stand out in their extremely competitive industry. Just like any start-up, we set up our new office, hired our staff, and configured our e-commerce components.
Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook
MARCH 5, 2015
'Creativity, Innovation, and Economic Development — Embracing the Challenge. Better Questions Means Better Answers for Regional Economic Development. It’s about Attitudes, Projects, and Baby Steps. Economic Development is important and challenging work. Having just interviewed players in this field and surveyed some regional initiatives — it’s clear that innovative work is being done in regional economic development — by some.
Hunter Walker
MARCH 9, 2015
'“The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of aesthetics which holds that when features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some observers.” – Wikipedia. While the term is most often applied to robotics or 3D animation attempting to mimic people or animals, I want to stretch a bit here and talk about the Uncanny Valley of Branding.
Software By Rob
MARCH 26, 2015
'Between this blog, my podcast , MicroConf and the Micropreneur Academy , I’ve had the privilege of watching hundreds of entrepreneurs launch products over the past decade (even into the thousands, depending on how you count). After a while, I started to notice a pattern emerging among the pool of bootstrappers who were able to successfully replace their income, buy back their time, and quit their jobs.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 8, 2015
'by Dan Prosser, author of “ Thirteeners: Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy – and How Yours Can Be One of Them “ It happens again and again. You come up with a viable strategy that you believe will “fix” your ailing company. You hold lots of employee meetings to talk about it. Maybe you leave fired up with enthusiasm, or maybe you harbor a nagging sense of doubt — worried that perhaps you just have the wrong people.
Up and Running
MARCH 17, 2015
'For small businesses, plastic payments have been a thorny problem for years. More and more people pay by plastic all the time, and increasingly, it’s absolutely expected that you offer plastic as an option. But with credit cards come complex hardware setups, costly contracts, gateways, and support networks. For small businesses on a tight budget, it was an impossible situation.
Duct Tape Marketing
MARCH 13, 2015
'How to Use Marketing Automation Throughout the Customer Journey written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Today’s Guest Post is by Sarah Burke – Enjoy! The customer’s journey is often defined in 3 stages: Awareness, consideration and decision. For small business owners and marketers, keeping track of each and every customer, and where they are in this journey, is one of our biggest struggles.
deal architect
MARCH 28, 2015
'Thomas Smouse, VP of Administration and HR at Newfield Exploration, an attendee at Oracle’s HCM event this week in Washington, DC, appropriately framed for me the rapidly changing talent market. The oil and gas industry has been transformed with innovations.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 6, 2015
'*. If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. It is, of course, a very recent phenomenon. Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe. I was out to raise my first seed money in my second startup of $500,000.
View from Seed
MARCH 31, 2015
'Editor’s note: Unlike the Ubers and Airbnbs of the tech startup world, seed-stage companies don’t typically have the valuations, awareness, or traction typically associated with press coverage. That said, coverage is important, and early-stage companies would be wise to work with local press in addition to national. Below, we interview Lauren Landry, a journalist who covered the Boston innovation economy for four years prior to her recent move to Northeastern University.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 4, 2015
'By Kris Duggan, CEO of BetterWorks. It’s no secret that setting goals is critical to achieving any kind of success, and making sure they’re realistic and measurable is vital to maintaining momentum and motivation, especially in the startup game. After all, dangling a carrot is only effective if at some point you actually get the satisfaction of enjoying the carrot.
Up and Running
MARCH 6, 2015
'Every month over 1 million people visit Bplans. Most of those people are at the very early stages of starting a business and as such, are looking to see what others have done. Some have already decided and are in the process of writing a business plan. They’re asking questions: What should a tutoring agency include in their business plan? How do you write an executive summary for a car washing business?
Steve Blank
MARCH 11, 2015
'I just spent a day working with Bob, the Chief Innovation Officer of a very smart large company I’ll call Acme Widgets. Bob summarized Acme’s impediments to innovation. “At our company we have a culture that fears failure. A failed project is considered a negative to a corporate career. As a result, few people want to start a project that might not succeed.
deal architect
MARCH 20, 2015
'During a plant tour on Wednesday, I was asked if most vendors organized such visits for analysts. I had to confess I have been to data centers, call centers, R&D labs but not to many factory visits. Most ERP vendors.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 10, 2015
'I write about sales often both because it’s the lifeblood of any organization and because in my experience it is the area in which more startups are least experienced or inclined. I also write and talk about it frequently because raising capital is a part of sales and this is important for entrepreneurs to understand. To make it simple and easy to remember – there are three basic rules of sales: 1.
View from Seed
MARCH 24, 2015
'There is something so funny and also so appropriate about all this talk about Unicorn companies. I’m not the first person to say that the proliferation of startups valued at $1 billion or higher is a signal of an overheated late-stage market. Yet there continues to be so much fanfare and excitement about all of these unicorn companies. Unicorns are a great metaphor and a brilliant meme – just excellent marketing.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 3, 2015
'by Farbood Nivi, CEO of Learnist. Are you a knower or a learner? Knowers solve problems by pulling entirely from their experience, whereas learners take time to study a problem before prescribing a solution. As a former educator, I understand the importance of a formal education. But learning should not end when you leave school. Letting your curiosity fizzle out and settling into the debilitating knower mindset can put your business at risk of plateauing.
Up and Running
MARCH 5, 2015
'Is your company name hurting your business? When company names go bad. There’s a whole heap of problems that can scupper a business in its plans to develop and grow: poor sales, an interrupted supply chain, industry price-cutting or new competition, a marketing strategy that didn’t quite go to plan, HR issues, sudden increases in overheads, late payments—the list of potential pitfalls is long, and the cause of many sleepless nights.
Steve Blank
MARCH 31, 2015
'Lead, follow or get the heck out of the way. In peacetime the U.S. military is an immovable and inflexible bureaucracy. In wartime it can adapt and adopt organizational change with startling speed. BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. —– But first some history… World War II.
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