Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2011

Today’s post courtesy of the Dave McClure school of vocabulary. About a month ago I was meeting with a seasoned entrepreneur. After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. He was recounting one of his higher profile startups to me. He founded the company, raised a bunch of money, built the product and established a good reputation and market position.

Leadership 418

Leadership Technical Review Software Review PR 418

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

(Powered by LaunchBit ). Tweet. --> It’s one of the hardest steps in a startup, getting that first rube to part with their money over your barely-minimum barely-viable product. Here’s an email I got last week: Hello Jason, I am a big fan of your advice and wanted to see if you could offer any advice for marketing my start-up XYZ. I was totally product focused for the last year and now it’s live, so I need to start thinking about finding some customers.

Customer 279

Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2011

QR codes were first created by Toyota to track vehicles in manufacturing, offering a small barcode that can be quickly decoded. That was 1994, and now, almost 20 years later, QR code technology is experiencing a revival — but not in the automotive industry. The small, square codes are ubiquitous, showing up on everything from flyers to beer bottles, allowing anyone with a smart phone to quickly scan and find out more information with the code.

Software Review 262

Software Review Technical Review Mobile Video 262

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!) I presented to 1,000’s of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had 9 interviews, chatted with 8 VC’s, sat on 4 panels, talked policy with 2 government ministers, 2 members of parliament, 1 head of a public pension fund and was in 1 TV-documentary.

Finland 332

Finland Naming Russia Government 332

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

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I saw a great post from Tristan Kromer Pivoting on Investor Feedback a.k.a Beware of Mentors. It was a top post on StartupRoar on Tuesday. His basic point was: If someone, including me, tells you something isn’t a great idea and there’s no market for it there are only two acceptable responses. Either: "That’s interesting. I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 28, 2011

Most of the entrepreneurs I know realize they have some bad habits, like maybe procrastination or not listening well, so they focus on dropping these. New studies indicate that a more productive approach would be adopting new good habits and behaviors that clearly move your business forward, like good time management and implementing customer recommendations.

Entrepreneur 262

Entrepreneur Programming Partner Design 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

It’s Episode 3 my little “ Loveline for startups. ” Introduced a few months ago as an Austin event, I’m now doing this live audio advice column to the web, taking phone calls from startups around the country. My co-hosts were Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley , hosts of the well-known Startup Success Podcast. It’s awesome having podcasting experts on board, Bob with pithy advice and Patrick producing and organizing the show which is a lot more work than you might imagin

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Near Field Communication (NFC) – a form of data transmission that allows simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other – is one of the newest technologies currently being embraced by the mobile communications industry, and especially by handset makers. Samsung, for example, together with Google recently unveiled in an event Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” on the Samsung GALAXY NEXUS smartphone.

Singapore 207

Singapore Technical Review Technology Brunei 207

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. This is the first of two posts about Finland and entrepreneurship. —— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University.

Finland 329

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 329

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 24, 2011

I continually face the challenge of designing and building registration / sign-up pages on a wide variety of different web sites and mobile applications. Back in January 2010, I wrote a post that's one of the most popular on this blog: When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? That post looked at when and why you would use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. as part of your registration and authentication mechanism.

Design 225

Design Social Network Oauth Caching 225

deal architect

OCTOBER 6, 2011

Larry Ellison could have been somber – if he knew of his friend Steve Jobs dying he did not let on. He could have been pissy about the Marc Benioff incident in the morning. He could have been lethargic –.

Software Review 218

Software Review Software 218

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

Individual accredited investors in typical angel deals put personal capital at risk for an equity share of growth-oriented, start-up companies. These angel investors generally invest $25,000 to $100,000 in a round totaling $250,000 to $1,000,000. In 2011, the valuation of pre-revenue, start-up companies is typically in the range of $1.5–$2.5 million and is established by negotiations between the entrepreneur and the angel investors.

Valuation 146

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Intellectual Property Technical Review 146

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 17, 2011

I wanted to expand on the practical and mathematical implementations of the cancellation rate I referred to in last week’s post. Why cancellation rate is so important. As a preamble to the metrics, it’s useful to know what you’re measuring and why it’s vital. [Cancellation rate] = [product utility] + [service quality] + [acceptable price].

Business Model 245

Business Model Metrics Engineer Technical Review 245

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 18, 2011

Even though online professional networking sites and services like LinkedIn and BranchOut have changed the face of human resource recruitment, there’s still room for continued disruption. In fact, a new web-based talent sourcing solution aims to make Boolean search string training for recruiters – which they traditionally rely on – obsolete: Scavado , a simple, yet powerful, alternative to costly Boolean search training that quickly yields relevant prospects to recruit.

CTO Hire 224

CTO Hire Search Web Internet 224

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 16, 2011

What is a freelancer if not a small business? Just like small businesses, freelancers must engage in marketing, manage payables and receivables and other accounting tasks, perform HR functions, direct production, and plan strategy. 1. Planning and strategy. There are lots of great tools and apps out there that will help you to plan and execute great strategy for your freelance career or business, but the greatest tool you can use is knowledge.

Small Business 118

Small Business Technical Review Software Review Startup 118

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. This is the first of two posts about Finland and entrepreneurship. I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford's Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 17, 2011

Tweet. 1) You need it. Not every company raises venture capital—most don’t. Not raising gives you flexibility about the market size you want to go after, speed of growth, and de-risks your plan—because once you start spending someone else’s money, the clock starts ticking on your “out of cash” date. Slow and steady isn’t a bad thing. 2) Only 22 year old hacker dudes get funding.

Venture Capital 148

Venture Capital Non-Compete New York City Early Stage 148

Gust

OCTOBER 18, 2011

This is the first of a six part series on different methods used by angel investors to arrive at pre-money startup valuations. Below is a brief description of each of the most popular methods. Detailed descriptions will be published over the next few weeks: The Scorecard Method: This method compares the target company to typical angel-funded startup ventures and adjusts the average valuation of recently funded companies in the region to establish a pre-money valuation of the target.

Valuation 174

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Southern California Post-Money Valuation 174

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 28, 2011

While Jane was building SayAhh’s revenue projections , Dick focused his attention on building the expense side of the projections. He procrastinated for a few weeks because he was deep in product development, but surfaced a few days ago when he realized they had an investor meeting coming up and really should have at least a basic financial model ready in case the investor asked about it.

Revenue 128

Revenue Balance Sheet Forecast Software Review 128

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 14, 2011

“Never was so much owed by so many to so few” – these famous words were uttered in a wartime speech by Sir Winston Churchill, referring to pilots of the Royal Air Force in defense of Britain during World War II. But those same words could easily be applied to the Singapore-based technology entrepreneurs present at Techventure 2011.

Singapore 198

Singapore Technical Review Technology Incubator 198

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 6, 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!

Social Media 98

Social Media Small Business Design Media 98

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 13, 2011

In the world of payments online, there’s usually a financial institution involved – a bank, a credit card company, etc. There’s several problems with this status quo- apart from the fact that financial services companies take a cut from every commerce transaction online, these payments are usually non-reversible and expensive to process.

Open Source 99

Open Source Software Review Technical Review Software 99

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 28, 2011

I asked a company the other day whether or not they were going to take advantage of a great event here in NYC. Its an opportunity to pitch Sony on a biz dev deal --a no brainer for nearly any company given the scope of Sony's areas of interest. ( applications are due this Monday the 31st ) The company said no because their main angel investor didn't think it was a good idea to let an audience see their pitch.

Angel Investor 118

Angel Investor Technical Review Audience Management 118

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 27, 2011

During today's roundtable, we had some excellent discussions of product marketing for a couple of different concepts. The 1M/1M Channel on Stanzr. The first of these discussions was about a new social media marketing platform called Stanzr, from San Francisco-based Voluble, that we are using at 1M/1M. Taariq Lewis, the founder of Voluble, is a 1M/1M premium entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur 116

Entrepreneur San Francisco Technical Review New Jersey 116

Agile VC

OCTOBER 27, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. The Consumerization of Business Software. October 28, 2011. One of the themes that we’ve been most interested in at NextView over the last 12+ months has been the impact of consumer web trends on business software. I’m not the first person to describe this trend, and my prior background has been primarily as a consumer web guy more than in B2B companies.

Software 100

Software B2B Silicon Valley Acquisition 100

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Co-authored by Stanford University Marketing Professor Jennifer Aaker and her husband Andy Smith, a leading marketing consultant of Vonavona Ventures, “ The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change ” offers a recipe for social change leveraging on the power of social media. Unlike many other books on social media which are strong on examples but weak on structure, the book proposed a systematic design thinking oriented process w

Social Media 178

Social Media Technical Review Media United States 178

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 28, 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!

Social Media 98

Social Media Small Business Design Media 98

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Binpress , the latest project by the Israeli startup incubator Lionite is making waves in the coding community with their source code marketplace. The purpose of binpress is to save coders time coding by finding existing solutions to time consuming problems. Their focus is on code for web applications in all sorts of languages, frameworks, and platforms.

Web Development 94

Web Development Coder Web Developer 94

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 11, 2011

IndexTank (@ IndexTank ) has been acquired by LinkedIn ! Huge congratulations to the entire IndexTank Team and especially to IndexTank’s founder Diego Basch (@ dbasch ). Diego and I first met in 1997. I had recently finished the Master of Software Engineering ( MSE ) program at Carnegie Mellon and gone full time on my first startup. Diego had just started in the MSE program.

Pennsylvania 93

Pennsylvania Search Acquisition Software Engineering 93

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 13, 2011

OK. I know with a title like that I’m going to subject myself to people thinking I’m just being a grumpy, exclusive VC. That’s not the point. It’s honest advice so please judge once you’re read the post. I’ll keep it short. Meals or coffee are a great way to build rapport with other people and since I’m an ENTP I love breaking bread as much as the next guy.

Networking 397

Networking Email Portfolio Sales 397

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 18, 2011

It was the most advanced consumer product of the century. The industry started with its innovators located in different cities over a wide region. But within 20 years it would be concentrated in a single entrepreneurial startup cluster. At first it was a craft business, then it was driven by relentless technology innovation and then a price war as economies of scale drove efficiencies in production.

Detroit 312

Detroit Distribution Vertical Finance 312

deal architect

OCTOBER 18, 2011

SAP announced recently it was moving to smaller, more frequent modifications to its Business Suite every three months: “In the past, we have delivered innovation with enhancement packages or releases in a bundle, but our customers gave us clear feedback.

Cloud 297

Cloud Customer 297

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 13, 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!

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 9, 2011

As every month, VC Cafe is re-posting the “Invest in Israel” Newsletter, published by the investment promotion center of Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor , which offers many helpful tools for prospecting investors. See the September 2011 edition after the jump. For previous editions, click here. TECHNION PROF DANIEL SHECHTMAN WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY.

Israel 90

Israel Argentina Paraguay Uruguay 90

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 11, 2011

IndexTank (@ IndexTank ) has been acquired by LinkedIn ! Huge congratulations to the entire IndexTank Team and especially to IndexTank’s founder Diego Basch (@ dbasch ). Diego and I first met in 1997. I had recently finished the Master of Software Engineering ( MSE ) program at Carnegie Mellon and gone full time on my first startup. Diego had just started in the MSE program.

Pennsylvania 90

Pennsylvania Search Acquisition Software Engineering 90

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2011

This post originally appeared on TechCrunch. Dilution. Or as industry insiders call it, “taking a haircut.” Everybody knows that when you raise money at a startup your ownership percentage of the company goes down. The goal is to have the value of the startup go up by enough that you own a smaller percentage of a much larger business and therefore your total personal value goes up.

Dilution 394

Dilution Pre-Money Valuation Startup Valuation 394