Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2015

The hardest thing about starting a company is that from day one you emerge as this completely vulnerable entity trying its hardest to project success, power, trajectory and inevitability while you secretly know that you’re one knock-out blow from extinction. Think about it: You start with nearly no money, you bring on some co-founders and if they quit it could completely derail your mission, you talk to journalists who if they decide to be cranky can ruin your reputation, you pitch investo

Oauth 286

Oauth Software Review IPO Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2015

Todd Dunn is the Director of Innovation and runs the Intermountain Healthcare Transformation Lab , which is working to foster innovation in the healthcare industry. He’s now run several Lean LaunchPad classes and has seen a ton of healthcare startups. Here’s his advice for startups in this space. ——— I have spent the last 10 years in the Healthcare space.

Startup 258

Startup Early Stage Azure Lean 258

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this valley, and there are some good ones I will outline here.

Entrepreneur 215

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 215

YoungUpstarts

JULY 20, 2015

By Leon Adato, Head Geek, SolarWinds. In a study conducted by SolarWinds in Singapore, application performance and availability were found to be critical for 59% of respondents to accomplish their work. For 71% it became more important over the past five years due to an increase in the time spent using applications, coupled with an increase in their workload and more demanding deadlines.

Networking 176

Networking Bandwidth Software Review Security 176

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

View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

On Tuesday, July 21, we hosted the first-ever Boston Consumer Tech Summit. The invite-only event was attended by 300 of the area’s best tech leaders, founders, product managers, designers, developers, investors, engineers, salesmen and women, and more, all of whom are hard at work in consumer tech. This is a recap of the more insightful tweets and comments from the event.

Boston 216

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 216

Brandanew

JULY 31, 2015

The good thing about online marketing is that it is not very hard to learn. In fact this is true for everything on the internet. It provides us more information that we can ever consume and that too for free. In fact it is complete opposite to the formal education we are used to. Actually everything in the online world evolves and changes so rapidly that it is not possible to create formal courses and taught through an academic year as the scene may change drastically even before the year ends.

Social Media 185

Social Media Media Software Review Campaign 185

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey.

Lean 210

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 210

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 25, 2015

These days, it is almost impossible to find a small business where everything is done at the home location, by full-time employees. We are in the age of outsourcing, by any of many popular names, including subcontracting, freelancing, and virtual assistants. These approaches allow your startup to grow more rapidly, save costs, but costly mistakes can lead to business failure.

Philippines 214

Philippines Startup Bandwidth Cofounder 214

YoungUpstarts

JULY 1, 2015

Do you know what Inbound Marketing is? Keen to use inbound marketing to improve your marketing ROI? Pioneered by co-founders of HubSpot Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, inbound marketing is a leading Business-to-Business (B2B) digital marketing strategy. The fact that HubSpot is a NASDAQ listed marketing automation company worth $1.24 billion in market capitalisation is a testimony to inbound marketing’s strengths.

Software Review 174

Software Review Marketing Social Media B2B 174

The Next Web

JULY 10, 2015

The goal of agile programming is to provide early and continuous delivery of valuable software. But it’s not so easy to implement methodologies that can deliver on the agile promise, and the blame typically lands on people: they’re just not the tech elite. Agile is an iterative software development methodology, as opposed to the more linear traditional methods.

Agile 131

Agile Software Development Software Developers Software 131

Up and Running

JULY 23, 2015

As your business grows, you’ll be looking to expand your customer base. You’ve successfully launched your business, and built up a solid—if small—customer base. Starting small has its benefits; after all, it allowed you the opportunity to cultivate a loyal relationship with your customers. By now, you’ve had time to work out any kinks, and you’re confident that your product or service is truly the best your business can offer.

Customer 127

Customer Elevator Pitch Networking Software Review 127

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2015

I noticed this post today from Ezra Galston titled “ Dear Brad, Fred & Mark: How The Hell Do You Do It? ” The premise is that either I (I won’t speak for Fred or Brad) have some magical solutions that allow me to produce a lot of content, or I’m super human or conversely I could read it as a negative post in that I’m somehow neglecting my duties as a mentor and advisor to the startup companies in which I’ve invested or to the fund that I manage. **. tl;dr

Iran 281

Iran Chicago Software Review Portfolio 281

Version One Ventures

JULY 5, 2015

As a marketplace figures out how to bring buyers and sellers together and builds liquidity, the virtuous cycle starts kicking in. The growth of sellers and buyers quickly accelerates. The ultimate goal is that a successful startup grows into a big company. But as you begin to scale, there are new considerations and strategies to keep the forward progress going.

eCommerce 124

eCommerce Differentiation Analytics Leadership 124

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2015

Since the recession, and at least partially sparked by it, I’m seeing a real resurgence of entrepreneurial spirit, and more startup activity than ever before. I believe the days of the “job work” mentality are thankfully waning, with more people looking to get satisfaction by making the world a better place, rather than just tolerating brain-numbing work to fund enjoyment elsewhere.

IPO 221

IPO Angel Investor Startup Incubator 221

YoungUpstarts

JULY 15, 2015

By Robert Hake, Founder and CEO of MyLocker.net. All successful entrepreneurs remember the first few months of their start-up and know that feeling of pure innovation that makes your business click. You need creativity to keep going, and you need creativity from your employees to keep growing. For us, it all started with a blanket. We needed custom blankets for a client, and when we saw a pile of thermal pizza delivery bags, we were inspired to back our fleece blankets with pizza bag lining for

Employee 170

Employee Detroit Michigan Small Business Administration 170

ConversionXL

JULY 27, 2015

Inaccessible sites lose sales. Let’s look at the numbers: The UK music industry loses 2.5 million ticket sales per year due to inaccessible booking sites. US consumers with vision loss have an estimated $175 billion of disposable income. AbilityNet say that ecommerce is losing out £50 billion a year in the UK spending power due to poor accessibility [PDF].

Conversion 95

Conversion Software Review Technical Review HTML 95

Up and Running

JULY 14, 2015

More is always better, right? Not so fast—raising more money than you need can actually hurt your business. Most businesses need to raise external funding from investors to take their company to the next level. An early stage startup will want to access funds to help further validate its business proposition. A more established business that already has traction may be looking for funding to help accelerate growth.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Valuation Due Diligence Finder 108

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

If you follow the Twittersphere you may have noticed several people weighing in on this recent piece by Mike Isaac of the NY Times, asking “ How Many Angels is Too Many? ” I found myself nodding through all of it with quotes like, “Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley,” said Sam Altman. I myself coined the term ENIFA (everyone now is a f **g angel) in 2011 but it didn’t stick as well as the term Unicorn did.

Cap Table 265

Cap Table Cofounder Silicon Valley Startup 265

Start Up Blog

JULY 2, 2015

If you haven’t already realised, cars are no longer machines, but rolling computers. This also means that cars will move from being powered by fossil fuel engines to electric motors. It’s already started, and it is going to happen much more quickly than we anticipate. I’d go as far to predict that there will hardly be a petrol car on the road in 10 years.

Technical Review 105

Technical Review Silicon Valley Cost Business Model 105

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2015

The most valuable assets of a new startup are the people on the team, and the most challenging task of the entrepreneur and team leaders is to spend their leadership time and energy productively. Cash isn’t always the scarcest resource startups have to invest – more often it’s the leadership capital of under-experienced and over-stretched entrepreneurs and co-founders.

Startup 213

Startup Leadership Cofounder Matching 213

deal architect

JULY 6, 2015

I am always invigorated when I spend time with Plex executives and customers as I did at its PowerPlex event in Nashville last week. There was a blue collar excitement to the event. Accounting had an industrial engineering flavor with.

Nashville 277

Nashville Engineer Customer Cloud 277

ConversionXL

JULY 29, 2015

Crowdfunding is painful. With standard conversions, people receive value immediately. They buy your product. Then they receive your product. Done and done. That’s not crowdfunding. With crowdfunding, the end product doesn’t even exist. You need to convince people to give you money for something that they won’t receive for months (and possible longer).

Campaign 103

Campaign Reputation Metrics Naming 103

Up and Running

JULY 3, 2015

True story: As my software business began to grow, as we went from two employees to five, then 10, I discovered how hard real management is with startups and small business that grow organically. In a startup, those first few people who join feel like friends, not employees. What they taught in my MBA courses on organization and management didn’t apply.

Business Plan 106

Business Plan Management Software Review Lean 106

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2015

Yesterday I saw two biopic films: “ Amy ” about the life of Jazz sensation Amy Winehouse who died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27 and “ Montage of Heck ” about the life of Kurt Cobain , the grunge-rock generational voice who died of an overdose of heroin and valium at the age of … 27. It was a heavy day, for sure.

Houston 305

Houston Vesting Founder Capital Call 305

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 30, 2015

Benefits of Outsourcing Marketing Activities written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Flickr. In the beginning, startup companies are always trying to fix everything by themselves. Their marketing strategies are usually made by self-thought marketing experts, who also work in some other company sectors.

Marketing 57

Marketing Software Review Small Business Salary 57

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2015

As an advisor to startups, I often get asked what to look for in an ideal co-founder or business partner. My first response is that it’s much like finding that ideal spouse, where chemistry, common interests and complementary communication skills are key. After some reflection, I now realize these attributes are necessary but not sufficient to be an ideal business partner.

Partner 211

Partner Technical Review Due Diligence Startup 211

deal architect

JULY 15, 2015

BusinessWeek had two recent stories – one was how quickly the bubble around rare earths has burst. Molycorp has filed for bankruptcy just a short couple of years after the world was fretting that China had a stranglehold on that.

Software 270

Software Bankruptcy China Cloud 270

ConversionXL

JULY 9, 2015

Free trials are to SaaS applications as keys are to locks. The right one gets you in right away, but sometimes you have to try a few before you find the one that works. For many SaaS and cloud service providers, 100% of customers sign up for a free trial as part of the sales process — yet one study suggested that even the best-in-class of SaaS marketers were losing a staggering 75% of those who signed up for a free trial before they entered their credit card details.

Analytics 88

Analytics Conversion Software Review Email 88

View from Seed

JULY 9, 2015

Accidental VC is a series of short posts written by me, Jay Acunzo. Though I never planned it, I somehow wound up working in VC as NextView’s VP of platform. As an operator, not an investor, I’m amazed at how many casual, throwaway comments that happen inside a VC’s office would be genuinely useful to entrepreneurs building their businesses. So this series is my attempt to share that knowledge beyond our walls … one overheard lesson at a time.

Startup 259

Startup PR Cofounder Stealth 259

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

__. faux·men·tum. fōˈmen(t)əm,fəˈmen(t)əm/. noun. when a technology startup, its investors or the market believe in robust growth rates writ large. “the ecommerce company gained fauxmentum by raising artificially high amounts of venture capital and spent lavishly on customer acquisition despite long payback periods and questionable LTV” __.

Balance Sheet 270

Balance Sheet eCommerce Venture Capital Acquisition 270

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Errol Arkilic , former program director for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps), now founder of M34 Capital. Steve Weinstein , CEO of MovieLabs. Venk Shukla , president TiE Silicon Valley and general partner, Monta Vista Capital. In my interview with Errol, we discussed the origins of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps), how and why it was created, and how it

Government 222

Government Channel Southern California Lean 222

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 11, 2015

As a mentor and advisor to entrepreneurs, I find it’s easy to recognize “street smarts” when I see them, but it’s hard to explain the specifics to someone on the other end of the spectrum, even if they are willing to learn. Some people argue that street smarts are only a natural born skill, but I disagree. I believe they are disciplines that can be taught and learned.

Partner 211

Partner Finance Entrepreneur Revenue 211

deal architect

JULY 16, 2015

I told John Sumser he was brave to use the term “stack” in an HCM context because it has been hijacked by the infrastructure software folks (e.g. Red v. Blue), but reading his firm’s new report (you can buy it.

Software 265

Software 265

ConversionXL

JULY 17, 2015

At ConversionXL Live 2015 we had an amazing testing panel featuring statistics and testing gurus Lukas Vermeer from Booking.com, Matt Gershoff from Conductrics and Yuan Wright from Electronic Arts. And the audience asked some of the toughest testing questions ever. All of them got answer. Watch the video here: Note: get on the email list to get notified when tickets for ConversionXL Live 2016 become available.

Video 83

Video Mobile Conversion Audience 83

View from Seed

JULY 22, 2015

The NextView podcast Traction shares the incredible stories of the creative and unusual things entrepreneurs did to make initial progress in an important area of their businesses. You can listen on iTunes or SoundCloud. Stories to date include LinkedIn, General Assembly, NatureBox, InsightSquared, and more. It’s always amazing to hear people’s founding stories, but few have struck me as just plain necessary for entrepreneurs to hear today than this one.

Seed Stage 246

Seed Stage Cofounder Viral Audience 246

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

Many people are too cautious in sales processes and as a result when they present their solutions they end up sounding milquetoast and undifferentiated from anybody else in the market. In this post I advocate taking a harder stand on where your product or solution differentiates in the market – even if it means you lose some deals as a result.

Sales 260

Sales Silicon Valley Las Vegas Southern California 260