Sat.Nov 16, 2019 - Fri.Nov 22, 2019

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3 Founder Attributes We Look For When Investing

View from Seed

Recently, Stu Landesberg, the CEO of Grove Collaborative shared the story of the struggle he faced in raising his series A round. You don’t often hear a founder speak so candidly about this (especially before the final chapter is written) so it’s worth a listen. . We were co-lead investors in Grove’s seed round and actually doubled down in an intermediate round prior to this challenging series A process.

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5 Essential Skills all Entrepreneurs Need to Build Success

ReadWriteStart

Developing a small business into a successful enterprise demands more than passion. Unfortunately, over half of new businesses fail; mainly because the entrepreneur is unable to translate their passion into practical business skills. Here are five essential skills all entrepreneurs need to build success. Studies show that 30 percent of new businesses fail during their first two years of being open, 50 percent during the first five years and 66 percent during the first 10 years.

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May Freelancers Juggling Multiple Clients Bring a Fresh Perspective?

Transformify

Our guest today is Rachael Bozsik , a keynote speaker and thought leadership coach supporting female entrepreneurs. Rachael, hiring freelancers is still seen as risky by many entrepreneurs, especially early on. Why did you decide to rely on gig workers? We have great experience hiring freelancers and the success is credited to strategically recruiting individuals who view their gig work as a creative outlet from their nine to five careers.

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Compliance Certifications Entrepreneurs Should Know

YoungUpstarts

Compliance certifications are meant to provide fair playing ground for businesses across various industries, besides ensuring that consumers get the highest-quality goods and services. Business compliance is an all-encompassing term that implies how well a company adheres to laws and regulations imposed by industry regulatory bodies. Typically, legal and regulatory requirements vary from one industry to another.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

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

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How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Network

Duct Tape Marketing

How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Network written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for small businesses looking to grow their network. They boast 660 million members worldwide and over 165 million in the U.S. alone. Because it’s a business-focused social network, it’s a necessity for those running B2Bs to have a presence on the platform.

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8 Techniques For Shining A Light On Your Blind Spots

Startup Professionals Musings

Most of us have blind spots in our ability to build a business, due to lack of experience, too much ego, over-confidence, or unjustified faith in a subordinate. Only a few of the entrepreneurs I have worked with in a decade of consulting are smart and humble enough to recognize that they don’t know what they don’t know, and have an effective process for shining a light on their blind spots.

More Trending

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Make The Most Of Your Next VC Pitch By Doing These 10 Things

YoungUpstarts

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. In the startup world, opportunities are fleeting, and obstacles are ubiquitous. Competition from other startups and established incumbents, constraints on time and capital, and limited access to talent and technology resources are just a few of the hurdles nearly every first-time founder faces while trying to build a business.

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How We Took on Slack (and Lived to Tell About It)

ConversionXL

How do you compete with one of the biggest names in your industry—and with a brand new product? Three years ago, we launched Chanty, a SaaS application for team chat. This was nothing new. Thousands of apps are born and die each year. There was one difference—we were going against Slack, the giant that is the SaaS role model. Call it bold or stupid, but we had our work cut out for us.

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Remote Bob: Remote Work is About Smooth Integration and Controlled Supervision

Transformify

Our guest today is Barbara Krecak, an entrepreneur passionate about operations and business development. She is Director of Remote Bob – a company connecting busy London leaders with a high-quality, affordable remote workforce from Croatia. Barbara was the youngest columnist in Croatian magazine “Entrepreneur“ and the youngest Cotrugli Business School Executive MBA graduate.

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Here’s How to Make Your Startup Irresistible to Investors

The Startup Magazine

By Lihi Pinto Fryman, Co-Founder and CMO of Syte. Startup success depends on a many factors related to your vision, product, and market opportunity. But critical capital raising success depends on a separate set of factors. See Lihi’s formula for funding success… Television so often over-hypes real life situations for the sake of entertainment, but the producers of Shark Tank really didn’t have to do much embellishing to make the whole investor pitching process look like a high stake

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Warning Signs Your Business Software Is Outdated

YoungUpstarts

Software programs are becoming more and more important to the daily workings of our businesses. If the central software of most businesses stops working, the company has to suspend their activities too. That’s why it is important to pay special attention to the software programs we use and make sure they are regularly updated. Sadly, however, many companies fail to keep their software program updates, and as a result, they’ll lose out on a lot of money and make themselves more vulnerable to secu

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Should Nonprofits Have a Legal and Compliance Department?

Board Effect

There is no legal requirement for nonprofit organizations to have a legal and compliance department; nonetheless, all nonprofit organizations are required to know and follow all state and federal laws that govern them. Not all nonprofits will have sufficient funds or staff to establish a formal legal and compliance department, especially if they’re just starting up.

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Skyrocket Productivity with Xebec

Austin Startup

In today’s society, we are all seeking more of the same resource: TIME. In order to balance the various responsibilities at home, at work, and personally, productivity is becoming increasingly essential. At the same time, our lives are moving online. We work there, shop there, create there, and even socialize there. How can we boost our productivity, especially as it relates to time spent on computers?

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Top It Certifications That You Need to Start Your Career: 2020 Edition

The Startup Magazine

We have outlined the top IT certifications that you need to know about this year! Stay ahead of the trends and become certified today! Job listings attract 250 resumes on average. This means your resume could be floating in a slush pile with 249 other candidates. In order to be seen you need to set yourself apart from the rest. That’s where certifications come in.

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Here’s How To Make Your Startup Irresistible To Investors

YoungUpstarts

by Lihi Pinto Fryman, Co-Founder and CMO of Syte. Television so often over-hypes real life situations for the sake of entertainment, but the producers of Shark Tank really didn’t have to do much embellishing to make the whole investor pitching process look like a high stakes game show. Because that’s exactly what it is. I’m speaking from firsthand experience.

Startup 138
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How We Took on Slack (and Lived to Tell About It)

ConversionXL

How do you compete with one of the biggest names in your industry—and with a brand new product? Three years ago, we launched Chanty, a SaaS application for team chat. This was nothing new. Thousands of apps are born and die each year. There was one difference—we were going against Slack, the giant that is the SaaS role model. Call it bold or stupid, but we had our work cut out for us.

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Strategies for Effective Board Leadership

Board Effect

In general, boards are in the spotlight with a focus on board effectiveness. As the light shines brighter, weak boards stand out more than ever before. As new board directors join the board, they need to be concerned about meeting performance expectations. Risk and liability are also big issues to which board directors need to give their attention. Today’s board directors need to be more well-rounded than ever before.

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5 Ways To Increase Your Agility In The Face Of Change

Startup Professionals Musings

As a business and entrepreneur advisor, I have no trouble getting owners and managers to agree that change is happening faster and faster in the consumer and technology world, requiring them to keep their business more agile , just to keep up. The challenge is that too many are confused on what that means for them, and what it takes to make their business competitively agile.

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Why Psychological Safety Matters: 16 Ways To Make It Okay For People To Tell The Truth And Take Risks

YoungUpstarts

by Quint Studer, author of “ The Busy Leader’s Handbook: How To Lead People and Places That Thrive “ When Google conducted its internal research study Project Aristotle in 2015, it found that psychological safety — the belief that one can speak up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes without punishment or humiliation — was the most important characteristic in terms of what makes a team productive.

Employee 138
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Maximizing IT Efficiency in Your Business

Women Entrepreneurs Can

IT is the tool that is allowing you to read this post right now. It’s also what will enable you to get online, communicate with your customers, and perform a myriad of other tasks that your business needs completing today as well. Of course, that means having effective IT is crucial to your business success. Efficacy is not the only concern when it comes to IT, however.

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How Nonprofits Can Best Manage Their Online Reputation

Board Effect

We live in the Information Age and it would be impossible for a nonprofit to be successful without an online presence. The internet is the best place for nonprofits to get the word out across the miles for the good work that they do. A nonprofit website is the hub where they can educate people about their cause, notify them of important events, seek and collect donations, and gain membership.

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10 Traits of Leaders Who Can Hold People Accountable

Startup Professionals Musings

Getting things done effectively in a startup requires total individual and team accountability. You can’t afford excuses and multiple people doing the same job. In my view, “taking responsibility” is the core element behind accountability. Many people hear responsibility as an obligation, but I hear it as “the ability to respond.” Unfortunately many people don’t have the ability to respond, because they lack confidence in themselves, or simply don’t have the skills required.

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How To Take Your Small Business To The Next Level

YoungUpstarts

Running a small business is a rewarding career but can also be quite challenging of a job. All the pressure to succeed is on your shoulders and others are constantly looking to you for direction and advice. You’re going to have a much better chance of growing your company and thriving in your industry when you focus on improving over time. There are a few ways in particular that you can take your business to the next level and win over more customers.

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Better business forecasting – Part Two

NZ Entrepreneur

In Part 1 of this two-part series on forecasting, we discussed why it’s important for any size or type of business to get into the habit. Then we looked at four ways to help improve your forecasting accuracy. Here, we delve into the next four. The point of forecasting is to give you a view of what’s most likely to happen in the future – so you can make decisions and plan, based on having the real data rather than relying on hunches.

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The 6 Most Common Mistakes That Inexperienced Amazon Sellers Make

Women Entrepreneurs Can

The beginning process of any new venture can be difficult, and mistakes happen. In most cases, you can overcome these mistakes and get down to business. However, with Amazon, these shortcomings for beginners can often come back to haunt you! Amazon is a competitive environment with millions of sellers and even more buyers. While listing on Amazon can open up access to a whole new market for you, simple errors can jeopardize any effort you make to capture these buyers.

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8 Tips For Right-Brain Entrepreneurs To Build Balance

Startup Professionals Musings

Traditionally, the majority of entrepreneurs have been logical thinkers, problem solvers, with full attention to details. These are the stereotypical left-brain engineers. Yet I see a big shift from the knowledge age, with its left-brain foundation, to a critical focus today on visualization, creativity, relationships, and collaboration, which are more in the domain of right-brainers.

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Is America’s Corporate Culture In The Dark Ages?

YoungUpstarts

by Bill Higgs, author of the upcoming book “Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business”. American work habits can seem downright oppressive when viewed from afar. Various reports and studies show that Americans experience a more burdensome work week than many of their peers abroad, spending interminable hours at the office, wolfing down lunch at their desks, letting vacation days expire unused, and answering emails after hours and on weekends.

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Atkinson Prakash Charan’s Beginners’ Guide to Investing

The Startup Magazine

Beginners may be intimidated by the process of investing. Investing is one of the best ways to grow your financial portfolio, and it is possible for anyone to learn the basics, even if they do not have very much money to begin with. There are several common-sense principles that new investors should consider before they take the plunge. Prakash Charan, an entrepreneur, and philanthropist describes the steps that novice investors can take to build an investment portfolio and become part of the in

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A New Venture with Serial Entrepreneur, Uri Haramati

ReadWriteStart

In this episode of the How To CEO podcast, I had a chance to catch up with Uri Haramati. Uri is a seasoned product manager with over a decade of business knowledge and experience in diverse capacities. Here is a new venture with a serial entrepreneur. A serial entrepreneur, Uri founded Life on Air – the company behind Meerkat and Houseparty. He has been working on a new venture: Torii.

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Look For The Hunter Gene In Every New Venture Founder

Startup Professionals Musings

Most entrepreneurs believe they are “different,” but they can’t quite understand how. They usually explain it by insisting that they are driven to follow their passion, need to be their own boss, want to get rich quick, or want to change the world. I now believe that the roots of the difference may go back more than 10,000 years, when hunting and farming became two different lifestyles.

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Here’s How To Make Your Startup Irresistible To Investors

YoungUpstarts

by Lihi Pinto Fryman, Co-Founder and CMO of Syte. Television so often over-hypes real life situations for the sake of entertainment, but the producers of Shark Tank really didn’t have to do much embellishing to make the whole investor pitching process look like a high stakes game show. Because that’s exactly what it is. I’m speaking from firsthand experience.

Startup 113
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5 High-Impact CASB Use Cases For Securing Your Startup

The Startup Magazine

Enterprises use Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions to protect their sensitive information when using the cloud. The main CASB functions include constant visibility support, compliance, threat protection and overall security. As an entrepreneur trying to grow your new business from the ground up, you need these security measures in place. Avoid common startup security mistakes by integrating a simple solution when deploying cloud software.

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Kickstarting a Stagnant Company

ReadWriteStart

When done right, it’s hard to identify when your company moves from one growth stage to another. The transition should be seamless and can seem to flow naturally as the company grows. When you’re a business leader, however, it’s clear that this evolution rarely (if ever) happens on its own. Here’s what to do when kickstarting a stagnant company.

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Abandoned Cart Email Offers: What We Learned from 1,000 Ecommerce Brands

ConversionXL

Cart abandonment is a huge issue in ecommerce. So cart abandonment emails are often a top revenue generator. And discounts and offers within those emails are proven tactics for increasing conversions. All standard wisdom. But we wanted to see how ecommerce brands deployed their offers. Are “best practices” for offers prevailing? Which strategies are brands using—or neglecting?

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Turn Small Business Saturday Traffic Into Future Sales: Five Ways The Right CRM Can Help

YoungUpstarts

by John Oechsle, President and CEO of Swiftpage. The holidays are just around the corner and for many small or midsized businesses (SMBs) that means the potential for big sales. Small Business Saturday (held the day after Black Friday) has become a beacon, driving shoppers to seek out and support local small businesses while on the hunt for the perfect gift.

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The Relationship Between Procurement and Collaboration

The Startup Magazine

Procurement is an important part of any organization, but too many CPOs get caught up in adhering to a budget or making short-term purchases. To succeed, this role also needs to optimize for collaboration—both internally and externally. With better collaboration, your entire procurement department can run more efficiently, resulting in a better bottom line for the organization and fewer headaches for your procurement team.