Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 30, 2014
'When I first met Meredith Perry she was 24. That was three months ago this week. Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
'“ By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.”. Book of Five Rings. A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. —-. I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress.
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View from Seed
NOVEMBER 6, 2014
'Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make. NextView Ventures: You just experienced something that most developers don’t ever see: zero code base at a company.
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 7, 2014
'by Don Thomas Jacob, Head Geek at SolarWinds. Today’s technology landscape is littered with buzzwords and seemingly urgent exhortations for businesses: move to the cloud, spend time and money developing a mobile app, support mobility, and so on. They are also inundated with news of trendy tech gear and encouraged to spend on implementing big technologies such as BYOD or big data and associated IT infrastructure.
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
Feld Thoughts
OCTOBER 15, 2014
'Guest Post By William Hertling – williamhertling.com (Author). William Hertling is a web strategist, programmer, father, short-order cook and the author of two award-winning and best-selling techothrillers: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity is Closer than It Appears and A.I. Apocalypse. You can follow him at @hertling or on his blog, williamhertling.com.
This is going to be BIG.
MAY 12, 2014
'Two years ago I started a fund. For the fund to be viable, it had to be at least $5 million, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $8-10 million would have been perfect. Thankfully, that''s what I raised--$8.3 million. So how does it work? How does one make money raising a venture fund of this size? Not easily, let me tell you. The benefit comes in the upside, and it''s very back end weighted.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
The Next Web
SEPTEMBER 6, 2014
'Dries Buytaert created Drupal, an open source content management platform, in his dorm room. He is also the co-founder and CTO at Acquia, a company providing enterprise software for websites and commerce. Society is undergoing tremendous change right now — those of us who enjoy services like Uber and Kickstarter are experiencing it firsthand. The sharing and collaboration practices of the internet are extending to transportation (Uber), hotels (Airbnb), financing (Kickstarter, LendingClub), mus
Lightspeed Venture Partners
JANUARY 13, 2014
'Congratulations to Tony Fadell, Matt Rogers and the world class team at Nest! Today Nest announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Google. As investors in the company since the early days, we here at Lightspeed have been honored to be a partner of Nest. Nest is a very special company with a truly exceptional team… a VC’s dream. We are thrilled to see Nest have an opportunity to further accelerate its business as part of Google.
ConversionXL
OCTOBER 31, 2014
'Some of you out there may find this Google Analytics feature overview to be mostly review. That’s awesome! That means you’re really taking ownership of your data. However, if you’ve never used any of these features, only experimented with them a little, or aren’t sure you’re using them correctly, you should read on. From the time you set up your account and put your tracking code on your site, Google Analytics, starts to capture and display a lot of data.
crowdSPRING Blog
MARCH 4, 2014
'If you don’t have a dedicated website for your startup or small business, you are not alone. But you’re in grave danger to fall further behind your competition. You might be slowly building a fan base on Facebook ( if you’re buying fans on Facebook by advertising, you’re very likely wasting your money ), sharing small bits of content on Twitter and posting images to Pinterest.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 5, 2014
'Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
'How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. ——-. I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 9, 2014
'This is a guest post from Stephano Kim , former co-founder of Web 1.0 success story Blackboard and veteran entrepreneur who’s held several COO and president roles at various startups. Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. But what do COOs actually do for startups? When should founders hire one? Based on what criteria?
Version One Ventures
MAY 29, 2014
'We’re all too familiar with the very real gender gap within the tech community. Women are underrepresented as engineers, management, investors, and founders. A commonly cited statistic is that only 7 percent of U.S. venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Business Insider recently crunched the numbers behind 26 of the top venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and learned that the percentage of female-founded startups in their portfolios ranged from a high of 19% to a low of just
Up and Running
SEPTEMBER 10, 2014
'Good bookkeeping is essential to keep your business thriving—not just surviving. Badly tracked finances can cause your business a world of problems—from poor cash flow to improper tax filings and beyond. These kinds of problems can put a young business at serious risk. Good bookkeeping habits, on the other hand, can help a business thrive—and not just survive.
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
'A few weeks ago, I was talking with a founder that I backed and he was telling me how excited he was about his company. He said the path was so clear that he could literally see it--and that''s the way he''s always been since I met him. He has a quiet confidence and he''s excited to talk about his company--and he could go on and on if you let him. It''s a stark contrast to people who beg for "just five minutes" of my time.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 7, 2014
'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. If you build products or services, then having empathy for your users is part of your job. Good news: If you build products or services, then we have empathy for you. We talked with Laura Klein, a preeminent expert on user experience, about the questions she gets asked most often by other product pros.
The Next Web
FEBRUARY 23, 2014
'This post originally appeared on the TransferWise blog. TransferWise is the clever new way to transfer money between countries, from the people the people who built Skype and PayPal. From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley, and Berlin’s hip coffee shops to East London’s Silicon Roundabout , the world is well versed in the global innovation boom towns.
Hunter Walker
DECEMBER 2, 2014
'One of my favorite aspects of the tech industry is that behind the noise, the tweets, the press headlines, there’s a depth of operator-founders who build amazing, lasting and valuable companies. My friend Russ Fradin is one of those people and my bet is that most of the folks who read my blog don’t know Russ. He’s currently cofounder/CEO of Dynamic Signal which helps companies involve their employees in enterprise social media – he calls it an “OS for advocacy.R
ConversionXL
JANUARY 31, 2014
'What follows is a list of resources that can be applied specifically to landing page optimization, found here on ConversionXL & from other great websites around the web. We’ve organized everything to best simulate a visitor’s experience on a landing page from first click to final conversion. To get the most out of this guide, please use each resource to focus on one area of your landing page experience at a time.
abovethecrowd.com
JULY 10, 2014
'On June 18, Aswath Damodaran , a finance professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, published an article on FiveThirtyEight titled “ Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion. ” This post was a shortened version of a more detailed post he had written for his own blog titled “ A Disruptive Cab Ride to Riches: The Uber Payoff.” Using a combination of market data, math, and financial analysis, Professor Damodaran concluded that his best estimate of the value of Uber is $5.9 billion, far short of the value re
Scott Edward Walker
FEBRUARY 1, 2014
'My law firm recently entered into a new partnership with This Week in Startups and sponsored their live fireside chat last month in San Francisco with authors Nick Bilton and Brad Stone. Prior to the event, I conducted a legal workshop entitled “The 5 Biggest Legal Mistakes That Startups Make,” which I have uploaded below. If you would like to jump to different sections of the video, here’s how it breaks down: Mistake #1 : forming the wrong entity (at 1:25).
Steve Blank
MARCH 12, 2014
'While the Lean LaunchPad class has been adopted by Universities and the National Science Foundation, the question we get is, “Can students in K-12 handle an experiential entrepreneurship class?” Hawken School has now given us an answer. Their seniors just completed the school’s first-ever 3-credit semester program in evidence-based entrepreneurship.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 30, 2014
'7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Use Video To Grow Their New Business written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Joe Forte – Enjoy! Congratulations! Your business plans are in place, perhaps you have sought out and won investors, and gotten a foothold in the market with your product.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 22, 2014
'The story on Uber has been written about ad nauseam, which is why I’ve been reluctant to weigh in. But enough people have asked my perspective so I decided to weigh in with my non-conformist view. I love Uber and I don’t believe there has yet been a real scandal. Grievances – yes. But scandal? I’m not so sure. For starters – I’m not an investor in Uber.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'This post was originally published on the personal blog of NextView founding partner Lee Hower. Lee’s posts also appear regularly on View From Seed. Subscribe here for more. Most folks reading this will know that many startups were built in part with the help of venture capital. Most attention goes to tech companies ranging from Google to Genentech, but some non-tech companies like FedEx and Starbucks also raised VC early in their lives.
Seeing Both Sides
FEBRUARY 5, 2014
'I love dressing informally, maybe too much. My wife frequently reprimands me for dressing down. I recently met with a US Senator in slacks and a collar shirt (which I thought was being respectfully dressy!) and he wryly cracked that I looked awfully comfortable. I sometime teach my HBS class in jeans (please don''t tell the dean). But lately, I have been wondering if entrepreneurs have taken informality too far.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 12, 2014
'Virtual team management can get a whole lot easier when you apply the right tips and tools. Truthfully, managing a virtual team is a whole lot of work and has more challenges than just psyching yourself up to get out of those nightclothes and into something snappy. Here are five Servcorp Singapore tips on making virtual team management a whole lot easier: Communicate Via the Right Channels.
The Next Web
JUNE 1, 2014
'Chris Bolman is the Director of Growth at Percolate. This post originally appeared on the Percolate blog. Over the summer of 2013, David Byttow, a former Google software developer, started building a mobile app to solve a problem he had. Byttow noticed he and the engineers he worked with were bad at giving each other feedback, and he wanted a way they could comment honestly on each other’s work without professional or personal backlash for saying something negative.
Agile VC
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'Most folks reading this will know that many startups were built in part with the help of venture capital. Most attention goes to tech companies ranging from Google to Genentech, but some non-tech companies like FedEx and Starbucks also raised VC early in their lives. However, many folks probably don’t think about exactly where those VC dollars that help fund startups actually come from.
ConversionXL
AUGUST 19, 2014
'As more and more business owners are learning about the benefits of the new version of Google Analytics (referred to as “Universal Analytics”) as well as the utility of Tag Management Systems (made even more popular by the release of the free Google Tag Manager), Peep reached out to me to write an article about moving an inline GA implementation to Google Tag Manager.
Genuine VC
DECEMBER 3, 2014
'It’s official: now two months after the IPO, HubSpot has surpassed the $1B market cap threshold and has become that “pillar” company that the tech ecosystem long anticipated. The benefits have been touted previously : an anchor for attracting and retaining talent in Boston, as well as a breeding ground for the next set of great Boston entrepreneurs and founders.
Scott Edward Walker
FEBRUARY 1, 2014
'My law firm recently entered into a new partnership with This Week in Startups and sponsored their live fireside chat last month in San Francisco with authors Nick Bilton and Brad Stone. Prior to the event, I conducted a legal workshop entitled “The 5 Biggest Legal Mistakes That Startups Make,” which I have uploaded below. If you would like to jump to different sections of the video, here’s how it breaks down: Mistake #1: forming the wrong entity (at 1:25) Mistake #2: not buttoning-down IP
Steve Blank
JULY 30, 2014
'Startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but interestingly we see that companies are not larger versions of startups. I’ve been spending some time with large companies that are interested in using Lean methods. One of the conundrums is why does innovation take so long to happen in corporations? Previously Hank Chesbrough and I have written about some of the strategic issues that impede innovation inside large corporations here and here.
Duct Tape Marketing
JANUARY 9, 2014
'The Future of Small Business SEO (Hint: It’s About Content) written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Phil Singleton – Enjoy! 2013 was an exciting year for small business Internet marketing. Search engine optimization transformed from a game of link popularity into what it was supposed to be from the beginning: high quality, relevant content from trusted sourc
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 18, 2014
'In my Twitter bio is says that I’m “ looking to invest in passionate entrepreneurs ,” which almost sounds like I was just looking for a cliché soundbite to describe myself. Yet along with “authenticity” they are two of the key attributes I look for when I meet with companies I may consider funding one day. Passion is also the featured heavily in nearly every presentation I give to entrepreneurs or on college campuses or in talks with MBA students.
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