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.
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
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YoungUpstarts
MARCH 31, 2015
'by Max Yoder, co-founder and CEO of Lesson.ly. Small businesses are always looking for improvements to help their businesses run effectively while maintaining a positive reputation in the community. Online solutions that provide a “buttoned-up” impression don’t have to be costly. In fact, some of the best tools available are created to give a bigger-business feel without breaking the bank.
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?
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
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.
Mike Michalowicz
MARCH 20, 2015
'In a few rare moments of downtime, I was flipping through TV channels when I happened on Suze Orman. I paused to watch a bit, and her words were profound. She said that financial freedom today achieved by getting more pleasure out of what you save rather than what you spend. While Suze was talking about personal finances, I immediately thought that the same principle holds true for businesses as well.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
David Teten
MARCH 29, 2015
'Ever since I studied Total Quality Management in college, I’ve been a bit obsessed with documenting processes. I was particularly influenced by Dr. Atul Gawande’s “ Checklist Manifesto ”, which underlined for me the value of collecting, documenting, analyzing, and continually re-optimizing best practices. I wrote a while ago a 3-part series on communications: How to Write a Memo That People Will Actually Read.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 27, 2015
'by Max Nomad, author of “ Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse: Safer Computing Tips for Small Business Managers and Everyday People ” . Cybercriminals are coming up with more and more devious ways to steal every day. Some of the breaches are huge, like the recent Anthem security breach, allow hackers to get access to millions of people social security numbers, email address, credit card numbers and other personal information.
Lightspeed Venture Partners
MARCH 24, 2015
'Today we are excited to announce Lightspeed’s $10 million Series A investment in Rubrik. Just as Apple built a time machine to protect Macs, Rubrik has built a powerful time machine for enterprise cloud infrastructure that unites data management with web-scale technology. A market size of epic proportions, a groundbreaking architectural approach, and a world-class founding team drove our decision to invest.
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.
The Equity Kicker
MARCH 19, 2015
'One of the defining characteristics of business this century is the return of authenticity. For much of the twentieth century success for large corporations was driven more by great marketing than great product. The internet, and particularly social media, opened up communications and changed that. The truth will out now. In the days of television advertising companies could control the information consumers received by buying the airwaves.
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.
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 17, 2015
'by Max Yoder, co-founder and CEO of Lesson.ly. Small businesses are always looking for improvements to help their businesses run effectively while maintaining a positive reputation in the community. Businesses want to appear as though they aren’t brand new and have a firm foundation, especially when it comes to new employees, or consumers looking for a new product.
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
Up and Running
MARCH 19, 2015
'Of the many courses I took in college, business writing was the most challenging. Students whose plans involve business careers are not interested in abstract rules, referencing standards, confusing legal language, and other materials presented in those classes. After a term spent editing and writing different documents, my classmates and I ended up even more confused.
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.
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.
ConversionXL
MARCH 20, 2015
'I’ve been to a lot of conferences. A lot. Most of them are mediocre. I made it my personal goal to deliver an amazing conference. I took inspiration from the good things I’ve seen at other conferences, made sure I avoided the bad things – and so ConversionXL Live 2015 was born. We had 245 attendees from 23 countries. The crowd was very diverse, very high level (~75% of attendees were CRO professionals).
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 30, 2015
'By Nuno Pereira, Director APAC, OutSystems. The idea of mobile application development for the enterprise is rapidly catching on, as mobile apps are now an obvious (and critical) path to both generate revenue and improve the customer experience for today’s modern businesses. However, churning out mobile apps isn’t really as simple as 1-2-3. According to a study by Opinion Matters, 85% of companies have a mobile backlog of between one and 20 applications, with half having a backlog of between 10
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 14, 2015
'*. I love Twitter. I’m loving Meerkat so far. It’s brand new but the enthusiasm we’ve seen for such an early product is truly awesome. I ran a VC AMA (ask me anything) last Monday on Meerkat and had > 1,000 simultaneous people asking me questions. The energy was election so I’m going to do it again this coming week. You may have read that Twitter has now made it harder for Meerkat to operate.
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.
Software By Rob
MARCH 26, 2015
Between this blog, my podcast , MicroConf and the TinySeed , 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.
deal architect
MARCH 25, 2015
'This continues a series showcasing customers which are adopting two-tier, ring fence, third party maintenance strategies or outright replacing their core enterprise applications. Previous posts have highlighted UNIT4, Microsoft, Rimini Street , E2Open and Infor. NetSuite has shared with us.
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 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.
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.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 30, 2015
'Outside of dreams, there is no real business opportunity without risk. Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active Angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.
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.
deal architect
MARCH 25, 2015
'When SAP announced S4 in February, several analysts commented (see my post here) there were scores of unanswered questions. What does the product release roadmap look like beyond the Simple Finance? When will industry specific applications become part of the.
View from Seed
MARCH 26, 2015
'In the last year or so, the debate over the definitions of seed versus pre-seed capital (sometimes called genesis rounds) has exploded. Much digital ink has been spilled about what dollar amount constitutes a pre-seed and how that might affect a startup’s ability to go raise a “normal” seed round from institutional investors. (Among those trying to inform the industry and offer perspective was my partner Rob Go.).
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 21, 2015
'How has video conferencing changed the professional landscape for companies and employees? Read on to find insights collected from the Small Business site and The Future of Business Collaboration and Pownowwow blogs. . Cost savings. Company: this is one of the best results if not outright the best one, on the list. With low cost web based video technologies like Blue Jeans, small companies and startups now have the chance to add video to their organizations without hurting their bottom line.
Steve Blank
MARCH 17, 2015
'I’ve been working with Roberto, the Chief Innovation Officer of a diversified company I’ll call Sprocket Industries. I hadn’t heard from Roberto in awhile and when we caught up, it was clear his initial optimism had faded. I listened as Roberto listed the obstacles to the new innovation program at Sprocket, “We’ve created innovation teams in both the business units and in corporate.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 29, 2015
'Wouldn’t you like to be one of the lucky people who joined Google and Facebook when these were startups, and now be a multi-millionaire? So people ask me “How many shares should I ask for or expect when I join a startup today?” In reality, the number of shares doesn’t mean anything – it’s your percent of the total that you need to negotiate. For example, 200,000 shares may sound like a lot, but if the startup has issued 20 million (a common starting point), that’s just 1% of the company.
Rembrandt Communications
MARCH 25, 2015
'Your writing is great… that’s what you think! Are you happy with all of the marketing content your business is producing? If so, it’s time for a review. Yes, I know you have many responsibilities as a business owner, and you may place your content near the bottom of the “To Do” pile. But your […]. The post How to Know if Your Content Stinks and What to Do About it… Fast!
deal architect
MARCH 24, 2015
'In SAP Nation, I wrote “SAP has a tendency to write code, and then hand it over to its partners. It fails to think enough about customer deployment issues.” More of that focus on what happens in their labs and.
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