SoCal CTO

JUNE 13, 2011

We had an interesting presentation at the LA CTO Forum by the CTO of a startup who chose Groovy / Grails as the framework for their startup. t prompted a good discussion around how CTOs go about choosing the programming language and framework for their startup. Some common themes from the discussion: Know Where You Are Going Before you can possibly make a choice around language and framework you need to ask all the important questions that are talked about in Startup Software Development – Do Yo

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This post originally ran on TechCrunch. I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. I asked what the audience most needed to hear. He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2011

A while back I talked about how and where to find a co-founder in “ Ten Steps in Choosing the Right Startup Partner ”. The feedback was good, but some readers asked me to be a bit more specific on attributes that might indicate an ideal startup partner. Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

We recently underwent a Cinderella-like transformation: A total redesign of the WP Engine website from despicable steaming pile of hideousness to a designed, thematic — dare I say artistic? — sleek new look. Does it matter? It must have mattered. Look how bad it was. Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups: Just look at us now , sporting a grayscale 1950′s automotive motif playing off the “engine&# concept using the lates

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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

Startup

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 17, 2011

Wireless music sharing must be the “hot new thing&# – right after we wrote about MyStream , Singapore-based mobile application developer Bitsmedia announces and launches Frenzapp Music , an application that allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to share and discover music. Like MyStream , Frenzapp Music users can mutually share favorite tunes and allow friends to browse their favorite song library.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 14, 2011

Something interesting is happening in Washington, DC right now. It's not the usual partisan fights about the budget or the deficit. In fact, it doesn't fit any of our stock ideological categories very well. The Federal government is being transformed - initially, in small ways - by people I think should be recognized as entrepreneurs. They are leveraging the same kinds of new technology, management thinking, and big data to improve lives that we routinely use here in Silicon Valley.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “ good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. “ We need to learn from doing, by trial-and-error. If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have been working 20 hours a day, and spent your last dollar, but have no results to show, investors will be sympathetic, but will probably tell you that your dream doesn’t have wheels. Traction means forward progress. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start.

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David Teten

JUNE 6, 2011

The new FinTech Innovation Lab , an annual program run by the New York City Investment Fund and Accenture, had their launch event on Thursday night. It attracted a very high quality crowd of senior executives from major investment banks and members of the innovation community — two groups that don’t normally mingle. One peculiar note: they didn’t disclose the companies selected.

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YoungUpstarts

JUNE 9, 2011

By Nigel Collin, LeadingCreatives. Being Creative is Sexy. Being creative is sexy. Everybody is talking about it and everybody is doing it. Being creative is the new black. And in business, being creative is even sexier. Why? Because being creative drives business. It adds real value to a business. Value to its people, value to its customers, and value to its bottom line.

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K9 Ventures

JUNE 22, 2011

This is how I remember it: It’s September 2005, and I was sitting in my office at Stanford in Gates 382. In walks Ren Ng , introduces himself and says something along the lines of “I hear you do startups, could we chat?” Ren, now Dr. Ren Ng, was a fellow PhD student with me at Stanford. His office was next door to mine. I didn’t know Ren personally, but I certainly knew him by reputation — as one of the smartest people around.

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ReadWriteStart

JUNE 23, 2011

We have done almost 90 roundtables so far and, based on this extensive experience of learning directly from entrepreneurs about their core issues, 1M/1M has just launched a new assessment tool for entrepreneurs. It is a quick self-assessment that you can apply to calibrate where you are in your business-building process. We have also provided relevant 1M/1M curriculum modules that you can use to bridge the gaps in your knowledge and understanding of a robust entrepreneurship methodology.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. 2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. I acknowledged this in the article. You can be pissed off, but I don’t set prices.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 28, 2011

Presenting your startup vision as a founder to a potential investor, or presenting an idea as an employee to an executive, requires that you effectively communicate, or “translate”, the value proposition into terms that the receiver can fully understand and appreciate. If you fail, it’s your loss, not theirs, no matter what the reason. For example, if your investor has been a senior business leader, you need to transform your message so that it addresses the issues that senior business leaders h

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crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 28, 2011

A few days ago, Christian Jung, a designer and consultant from Germany wrote an interesting post – Goodbye Basecamp, This Is The End Of A True Love. My Heart Is Broken , explaining why he would no longer use Basecamp , popular project management software created by 37signals. Christian decided that after six years, his needs changed and Basecamp was no longer the best solution for him.

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YoungUpstarts

JUNE 13, 2011

by Edward D. Hess, author of “ Growing an Entrepreneurial Business “ For many, achieving the American Dream means taking control of their destiny, quitting their 9 to 5, and opening the doors to their very own business. These brave entrepreneurial souls have shaped American enterprise, and today, they’re playing the very important role of helping to drive the nation’s economic recovery.

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David Teten

JUNE 14, 2011

I am delighted to announce that I’m joining ff Venture Capital as a Partner. Official blog post and more details here. In addition, Michael Yavonditte , CEO of Hashable , is joining as a Venture Partner. Since 1999, ff has made over 100 investments in over 35 companies , and from the beginning has been highly focused on generating industry leading returns.

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ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Our society puts a lot of emphasis on the college degree as a key step towards job readiness. In doing so, we tend to overlook the other ways in which knowledge and expertise can be shared. These can include internships and mentorships, both of which place student-learners in situations where they can hands-on experience and advice from actual practitioners in their field.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2011

This is the final part of a 3-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software & the venture capital industries. The series started here if you want to read from the start. Or the Cliff Note’s version: Open Source & Cloud Computing (led by Amazon) drove down tech startup costs by 90%. The result was a massive increase in startups & a whole group of new funding sources: both angels & “micro VCs&#.

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Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation Angel Investor 289

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 13, 2011

The innovation engine that powered the U.S. economy over the last century seems to be slowing down and dying, threatening not only local opportunities, but the economies all over the world. The $30 billion trade surplus in advanced technology products that America enjoyed just one decade ago has now become a $56 billion deficit. More and more people, like Henry R.

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crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 8, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

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YoungUpstarts

JUNE 13, 2011

The only thing worse than having no customers is having non-paying ones. And small businesses, with limited credit and cash flows, suffer from non-paying customers more than most. After all, it sucks doing a whole bunch of work and rack up a large number in your receivables column, but have your business go under because you can’t collect on them to pay off your own bills.

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David Teten

JUNE 1, 2011

I enjoyed participating in last week’s Capital Roundtable Private Equity Masterclass on “ Best Practices for Sourcing Quality Deal Flow & Developing New Business ” (May 26 th , 2011). Our star intern Adam Kalamchi took detailed notes, below. High Road Capital Partners Deal Sourcing Keynote. View more presentations. Chairman’s Keynote: How to Win -The Five S’s of Successful Deal Sourcing.

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ReadWriteStart

JUNE 2, 2011

Judy Estrin is a serial entrepreneur, having started seven tech companies since 1981. She was the former CTO of Cisco Systems from 1998-2000, and is on the boards of Disney and Packet Design and was a board member at Sun and FedEx for many years. She wrote Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy back in 2008 and now runs her own firm JLabs speaking and advising businesses on innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship.

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CTO Hire Startup Algorithm Leadership 118

Growthink Blog

JUNE 30, 2011

Do you still have your high school yearbook? I do. I don't look at it very often. But when I do, it's pretty cool to see the pictures of me and my friends. And to read all the comments my friends wrote in it. But I recently learned that yearbooks have gotten a whole lot better. I learned this when my son Max graduated from the fifth grade last week.

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Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

JUNE 24, 2011

It’s so interesting that most entrepreneurs use basic online products in their lives every single day, but fail to realize what hooked them into using those products. Even more ironic is the fact that how disconnected we have become in recognizing the commonalities these mega successful products have that make them a “mega success”. Ok, let me be more specific.

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Software Review Cloud Search Advertising 77

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 24, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 91

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 26, 2011

Inventor and entrepreneur Stephen Key is a man who’s spent most of his working life cooking up ideas for a living. With his new book “ One Simple Idea: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work “, the developer of products like Michael Jordan’s Wallball , the Spinformation rotating label and HotPicks guitar picks shares his blueprint of how you can also look for ways to turn your creativity into profit.

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K9 Ventures

JUNE 23, 2011

It’s been a busy week folks! I’m pleased to announce the developer launch of K9 Ventures’ portfolio company, card.io (pronounced card-I-O). As the name suggests, card.io is the simple and secure way to accept credit cards in mobile applications. A huge congrats to the founding team of Mike Mettler , Josh Bleecher Snyder and Brent Fitzgerald on the launch!

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

Overnight success. It’s one of the biggest myths in the tech industry. It’s a ongoing struggle to overcome this bias. I say “struggle to overcome&# because I care about young people entering our industry with a set of realistic expectations about what “normal&# is. If you take a snapshot during an extraordinary surge in valuations, M&A activity, IPOs and thus wealth creation you’d echo John Doerr’s famous quote from 1999 that, “The Internet is the gr

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IPO Finance Valuation Naming 391

Scott Edward Walker

JUNE 30, 2011

Introduction I’ve been helping entrepreneurs raise capital as a securities lawyer for 17+ years, and there are certain fundamental legal mistakes that I’ve seen entrepreneurs make over and over again. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to share three basic tips for entrepreneurs in connection with raising capital. (Note: this post was originally published on The Huffington Post.

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Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

JUNE 7, 2011

In the first article in this series – Ask Yourself This Important Question: Is Your Business Growing Or Dying? – I talked about why the ‘be the best’ mindset is so important and why it has been the ultimate success factor for many businesses. There were, however, a number of misunderstandings, prevalent in the comment section, which I would like to clarify.

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Internet Technical Review Networking Search 76

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 15, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 91

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 3, 2011

One of the companies that will feature at the upcoming web and mobile technology startup conference Echelon 2011 is Fetch Plus , a social media and mobile application development company. As we know, this space is a very competitive one; Fetch Plus differentiates itself from the rest by targeting companies with holdings, focusing on developing tools necessary for these companies’ holdings to efficiently and effectively build and scale their social media footprint through different networks

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Social Media Media Management Application Development 187

Ben's Blog

JUNE 18, 2011

This post originally appeared as my opening statement in my debate with my friend Steve Blank in The Economist. We are not in a technology bubble. We have not even taken a major step towards a technology bubble. Predicting such things is a bit like predicting the end of the world; the prediction will eventually come true, but almost everyone who listens to you in the meanwhile will regret having done so.

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Technical Review Software Review Valuation Internet 60

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JUNE 6, 2011

That’s right, I prefer writing code than writing words and yet it’s been two months now that I started outsourcing the development of TaskArmy to someone in Ukraine. I spent the first 8 months developing the website myself until I proved to myself that my idea was a viable business idea. I was then ready mentally to spend more money into my idea. Anton is working full-time with me and I wouldn’t look back on that decision.

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