Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 3, 2015
In our industry we always talk about funding big ideas or funding things with more meaning. It’s something Yves Sisteron & I have been talking about for years at Upfront Ventures. Today we’re proud to talk more about Grove Labs – we really hope you’ll quickly check out this innovative product and we think many of you will be as impressed with Grove as we have been.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
Valuing a business based on assets and financial performance is a well-understood process, but every investor knows the real value goes well beyond these parameters, either higher or lower. The key elements of leadership in a company, both individual and organizational, are less tangible, but very critical in setting a market value for investment, acquisition, or going public.
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Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 11, 2015
A startup is not a part-time activity. Trying to do a startup while keeping your day job may doom you to failure. So will failing to understand your customers. Successful founders have a laser-like focus and commitment; a keen understanding of customers’ needs; and a tenacious spirit, said the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111.
Up and Running
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
These are the tools that we know, love, and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend—many of them we use ourselves. Use them to propel your startup into success and growth. Accounting software. Quickbooks: In the U.S., QuickBooks is hands-down the most popular accounting software out there. If you’re working with an accountant, chances are that they’ll ask you to use QuickBooks.
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
NOVEMBER 20, 2015
Today, the world is smaller than it ever was before. The developments in technology now allow us to communicate with other people based anywhere across the globe within seconds. Similarly to our personal lives, globalisation can also have a positive effect on businesses. The idea of international expansion becomes more and more popular within the UK SMEs.
ConversionXL
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
You have an A/B testing tool, a well-researched hypothesis and a winning test with 95% confidence. The next step is to declare the winner and push it live, right? Not so fast. There are factors threatening the validity of your test, without you even realizing it. If they go unrecognized, you risk making decisions based on bad data. [Tweet It!]. What Are Validity Threats?
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 8, 2015
Many new entrepreneurs are so excited by their latest idea that they can’t resist contacting every investor they know, assuming the investor will be equally excited and want to contribute immediately. Others will work hard on a business plan, and then mail it indiscriminately to every potential investor they can find on the Internet. Both of these approaches are a waste of your time and theirs.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 21, 2015
I first met Evangelos Simoudis when he ran IBM’s Business Intelligence Solutions Division and then as CEO of his first startup Customer Analytics. Evangelos has spent the last 15 years as a Venture Capitalist, first at Apax Partners and later at Trident Capital. During the last three years he’s worked with over 100 companies, many of which established Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley.
Up and Running
NOVEMBER 10, 2015
At Palo Alto Software, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs. Our LivePlan customers are entrepreneurs, our founder and staff have run and sold companies, the Bplans readers are aspiring entrepreneurs (or actual entrepreneurs), and as I sell my own handmade jewelry, I like to think I have a very small claim to the title. That said, there are still plenty of us, myself included, who do not feel ready to take the plunge and start a full-time business, and it’s not for lack of wanting to.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 19, 2015
By Marina Djordjevic, Director of Talent Acquisition at Idean. The rapid rise of the digital economy and sharp focus on delivering an excellent user experience has made it challenging for companies that aren’t Google or some other tech giant to recruit the creative talent they need. Big companies can throw money at candidates with hard-to-find skill sets, an option that isn’t available to most startups or smaller app development businesses.
Version One Ventures
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Nearly four years ago, I joined the Insight Data Science team and we launched an intensive 7 week post-doctoral training fellowship bridging the gap between academia and data science. Since then, over 400 Insight alumni have been hired as data scientists or data engineers at top tier companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Airbnb, and Google. Although I formally left the company in March 2013 (but continue to have an advisory role there), I still field countless questions from entrepreneur
YFS Magazine
NOVEMBER 5, 2015
Following these fundamentals may not guarantee success, but they will lower your chance of failure by decreasing the room for error.
Berkonomics
NOVEMBER 12, 2015
This one is attributed to Rod Adair, the famous oil and gas fire suppressing expert. And boy, does it apply to most of us and our offerings. “Quality” products and services should not be positioned as “cheap,” or your potential customers will question your message from the start, and will be more critical of the delivered product than if offered as one or the other, but not both.
Lightspeed Venture Partners
NOVEMBER 12, 2015
One of my favorite things about the tech industry is that reputations and relationships matter. Unlike Wall Street, or Hollywood, people in the tech industry pay it forward and treat each other well. This isn’t just Northern California touchie feelie; life goes in cycles and startups are a repeat game. We will all see each other again if we hang around the valley long enough.
Up and Running
NOVEMBER 19, 2015
We all want the best for our babies—and our business plans! Nearly all businesses, whether they are small or large, are comprised of intellectual property (IP) and trade secrets, which can serve as the foundation for commercial success. The World Intellectual Property Organization defines IP as, “creations of the mind,” which, depending on the business, can take many forms.
ConversionXL
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
Understanding what consumers want, what consumers need and why is a crucial part of conversion rate optimization. Earlier this year, BrandShop released the results of the 2015 Digital Consumer Preferences Survey , which revealed in no uncertain terms that consumers want (and need) buying online directly from brands to be easier. Why do consumers, despite the rise of eCommerce, find buying online difficult?
K9 Ventures
NOVEMBER 2, 2015
I love teaching (Although I hate grading, but that’s why I invested in Gradescope. More on that some other time). Every time I interact with students, I find myself repeating the same contrarian advice to them over and over again. So I figured I should write up a quick post so that I can point students to it and also have it hopefully reach more students than I get to interact with one on one.
YFS Magazine
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
Starting a website isn’t the massive headache it used to be. With a little bit of time, minimal tech knowledge, and little to zero cost, you can create a site that puts the early days of the Internet to shame.
Duct Tape Marketing
NOVEMBER 20, 2015
7 Activities That Don’t Scale but Will Win You Customers written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Photo Credit: www.launchsolid.com. Starting a business is hard work and early on you will need to hustle to find your first customers. There is no need to stress right away about what marketing channels will scale because you won’t know which options work best.
Hearpreneur
NOVEMBER 21, 2015
Being an entrepreneur is a source of pride. It also evidences an individual with a huge amount of discipline and focus to be able to build a business a lot of times from just an idea. It is the ambition of an entrepreneur that built the most profitable and successful companies. The only issue is that the word entrepreneurship can often vary from person to person. #1 – Encompasses many Experiences.
Up and Running
NOVEMBER 9, 2015
It’s easy to picture the journey to entrepreneurship as a solitary adventure. The late-night brainstorming sessions, the planning, the research—I don’t know about you, but in my mind that’s one lone figure doing it all (fueled by a seemingly bottomless mug of coffee). Hey, if it works, it works—innumerable companies have been started in just such a way.
ConversionXL
NOVEMBER 3, 2015
Most product copy is awful. Or worse, non-existent. Product copy seems like such a minor thing in the grand scheme of conversion optimization, so many brands brush it off. But for companies doing it right, excellent product copy is a great way to sprinkle brand personality in a place that most people don’t expect it. In fact, some companies do product copy so well that it’s almost a feature of the product itself.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 11, 2015
Dear Dr. Plattner: I read your latest rant about Oracle and I felt vindicated in writing in SAP Nation that Oracle is Moby Dick to SAP’s Ahab. You are obsessed with that whale – in the past you would complain.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Implementing the Lean Startup in any company is hard. All the culture and incentives are designed for execution. Innovation at times seems like you’re swimming up hill. Now compound that level of effort with trying to put a Lean Startup culture in place in Japan. According to Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino, Japanese companies tend to be technology centric, obsess over quality and have weak leadership.
Duct Tape Marketing
NOVEMBER 9, 2015
5 Tips For Improving Franchise SEO Rankings written by Phil Singleton read more at Duct Tape Marketing. If you are a franchise owner, or even the owner of a multiple-location local business, search engine optimization has its own set of issues and challenges for your business. The truth is that there are more brands than ever competing for search engine visibility.
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 12, 2015
Guess what is often the worst slide in an investor pitch deck ? For me, it’s the competition slide. At best, it’s a list of competitors plotted in some 2×2 or Harvey-ball chart that isn’t terribly helpful. At worst, it’s hurtful. You’d be surprised how often a competitor slide has tons of players but not the one that I end up thinking the most about after a bit of research.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 1, 2015
Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Unfortunately, the market is changing so fast these days that any upward climb can level off quickly, as the core business growth begins to stall. This S-Curve, with no correction, can quickly lead to disaster.
ConversionXL
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
When you think about the holiday season, you think more traffic, right? More traffic means more conversions. More conversions mean more data. More data means more insights. But is the data from the tests you run during major shopping holidays representative? We can’t throw sample pollution out the window, can we? Will your insights still be relevant in February when the rush dies down?
deal architect
NOVEMBER 18, 2015
I am researching how automation – robotics, AI, 3D printing, process bots, drones etc – is changing every job category and the results may end up in a book, several blogs. In just the beginning stages of my research, I.
Brandanew
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
Twitter has over 300 million monthly active users. And who best to talk about awesome Twitter hacks than the founder of TribeGrowth, Nathan Murphy, helping businesses grow their social following. Here’s his story… Over the last 12 months I’ve learnt to leverage my time on Twitter for the massive gains. In the beginning of 2015 I had less than 500 followers, now I’ve got over 22,000 – and I’ve helped clients do the same.
Duct Tape Marketing
NOVEMBER 19, 2015
Social Customer Service Metrics: 3 Case Studies written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Flickr. How has marketing changed thanks to social media? Well, now 90% of customers are influenced by online reviews. Some companies cringe when they hear this: The decision whether to buy can come down to a good or bad Yelp review.
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 19, 2015
To raise or not to raise, that is the question. The following is a real (but anonymized) email to us at NextView where a founder debates the timing of his seed raise: I met with someone today who said I should push to close a seed round before I launch the product. I planned on launching, taking in the feedback, iterating based on the data, and then working hard to get to product-market fit.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 6, 2015
Surviving as an entrepreneur requires unbridled passion, enthusiasm and a certain naiveté in the face of many unknowns. Young people are more accustomed to facing a new world each day, so they don’t worry about it, and usually actually relish the new adventure. Once the rest of us reach a certain age, we know too many things that can go wrong, so we avoid the path entirely.
ConversionXL
NOVEMBER 9, 2015
If we’re supposed to optimize what’s closest to the money, what is the value in optimizing for micro-conversions? Many blog posts have espoused this as a way to incrementally increase revenue and final conversions, but does tweaking stuff unrelated to purchase actually assist your bigger goals? There are many different opinions on this question. What Are Micro-Conversions?
deal architect
NOVEMBER 1, 2015
The Coliseum loomed large for me this week at Oracle OpenWorld. I flew into Oakland and took the new people-mover from the airport to the BART station at the venue which Oracle sponsors. So much more appealing and efficient than.
Brandanew
NOVEMBER 11, 2015
We are storytelling animals. And so, before you ask yourself what can storytelling offer to your business, think back on what you engage with as a person. Looking at the hundreds of thousands of years of storytelling history, we can see how storytelling has evolved. And there have been changes in businesses storytelling as well. What began with small brochures , television ads to very sophisticated content marketing strategies, we’ve come a long way.
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