Sat.Oct 30, 2010 - Fri.Nov 05, 2010

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Scaling Sales: Arming & Aiming – A’s, B’s & C’s

Both Sides of the Table

This article was originally posted in a much more concise version over GigaOm if you prefer the shorter version. This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback.

Sales 286
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Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers

SoCal CTO

I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. We had several emails back and forth where he provided basic details on the concept. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Was it a case of needing Homework? Did they really need a Startup CTO or Developer or both?

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Internet Business Lingo Quiz for Entrepreneurs

Startup Professionals Musings

Many of the investors and entrepreneurs I know still don’t realize that they need to use and understand the Internet, even if their business is not e-commerce. Maybe you have also heard a lot of Internet terms, but are not sure you can explain how, when, and why they are relevant to your business success. Here is a quick test of your real Internet savvy.

Internet 224
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Twitter Link Roundup #59 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

crowdSPRING Blog

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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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 Instantly Turn What You Love Into An Income

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Before I got into the fat loss industry, I was a musician (I still play today so who knows what the future holds!). In the past, I tried to make that love an income. My dreams were big, but my pockets ultimately were empty. Eventually I had to do what a lot of musicians do and get a job. Luckily, it ended up being in something else that I love – health and fitness.

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How Ideas Grow: Seth Godin Inspires an iPad App

Up and Running

I like this story of how a business app came together even better than I like the app itself. And I do like the app, called NonLinear. I called it A Cool New Tool For Presenting Slides on the Ipad in my positive review on Small Business Trends. But I like the story better. It started last February with Seth Godin’s The iPad App of my Dreams : It’s a very simple concept: a collection of pages (slides, images, type, let’s call them pages) that are easy to navigate in a non-linear

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Election Postscript – That’s Pride Talking

Growthink Blog

In 20 years we will look back at the first few elections of the global Internet age the way we remember the smoky backrooms of elections past. As in I can’t believe we actually did things like that once. Why? Because for the first time in human history, true competition – the kind of competition that brought us the $300 computer, the electric car that goes 95 miles-per-hour, the $800 HD big-screen TV, and free overnight shipping on purchases as small as a few dollars, THAT kind of competition is

Coder 69
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Market Samurai Review – How Keyword Research Can Increase Your Traffic

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Ever since I started blogging, I intentionally stayed away from keyword research. It just seemed like one of those things that could take up too much of my time. I understood the principles of keyword research but felt that in order to do it effectively, I had a lot of work to do. I opted to take the “lazy” way out. I just wrote. Writing came easy, and I didn’t have to worry about doing too much work before writing.

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A Pirate’s Life for Me … Not

Up and Running

While I have to admit I sometimes worry that we over-dramatize the adventure of entrepreneurship, there’s also something to be said for the occasional reminder that building a business, when it goes right, can be quite an adventure. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, posted Are You a Pirate ? over the weekend, a thoughtful celebration of the adventure of entrepreneurship.

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Understanding How The Innovator’s Dilemma Affects You

Both Sides of the Table

One of the most influential books of my career is The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clay Christensen. I cannot recommend it enough for people in the technology or media sectors. Many people bandy about the definitions of “disruptive technology&# or “the innovator’s dilemma&# without ever having read the book and almost universally misunderstand the concepts.

Vesting 376
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Big Bang Releases

SVPG

What is a “Big Bang” release? This is when a team works for several months on a project with the intention of pushing it live in one big product creation event. Note that Big Bang is not necessarily the same as Waterfall, but it is an all too common consequence of Waterfall. But it’s not limited to Waterfall. Scrum teams can actually be forced into Big Bang releases too.

SCRUM 62
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Techies? Write Your Own Ticket In Southern California

blog.socaltech.com

I’ve covered this topic many times before, but I keep coming back to it, because everytime I turn around I’m talking with both startups and established companies in Southern California who are telling me they are looking for technical talent to join their company. My conclusion: if you’re a software engineer, with good technical background and ability, you can pretty much write your own ticket in Southern California.

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Technology and my first week home.

deal architect

On October 7 while presenting in Vail, CO, I thought I had an attack of altitude sickness (not unusual me coming from sea level in Florida). The medics disagreed and had me checked into the Swedish Medical Center in Denver.

Denver 264
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Give Your Teams Swiss Army Knives

Both Sides of the Table

There is a transition in every company from a “seat of the pants&# kind of entrepreneurial company to a “process driven&# mechanized one. Many people who are successful in the former fare less well in the latter. Frankly, I’m much more of the former kind of guy and I tire of the routine process & politics required to succeed in a big company.

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Make the most of a work conference

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Last week, I attended a 10,000 persons conference on information management and analytics. It was huge and tiring. Here are my notes/tips for making the most of a work conference: Don’t party so hard at night that you can’t attend conference sessions during the day. The number one reason is that you can get fired if your company knew that you slacked off.

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Ten Ways to Differentiate Your Customer Service

Startup Professionals Musings

A while back, I wrote about the importance of a “ sustainable competitive advantage ,” and outlined the business plan value and limitations of patents and competitor feature comparisons. But once you start selling products, all of these pale in comparison to your level of customer service. I agree with John Spence, in his book “ Awesomely Simple ,” that in a world of nearly limitless product options and highly educated consumers with instant access to price, features, and benefits of almost ever

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Entrepreneurs: regarding equity to developers

chrischandler.name

to the beginning home Self-aggrandizing About Past and present Projects rss syndication entries rss syndication comments to the bottom down Chris Chandler Squandering time as a raving egomaniac « Converting latitude and longitude to timezones Ubuntu JeOS » Entrepreneurs: regarding equity to developers August 10, 2009 // 43 13 [link] Entrepreneurs%3A+regarding+equity+to+developers 2009-08-10+23%3A40%3A49 Chris+Chandler Dear enthusiastic entrepreneur, I would like first and foremost to

Equity 40
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Scaling Sales: Arming & Aiming – Objection Handling

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of a series on sales & marketing. The original post of this article on appeared on GigaOm in a more concise version here. I previously covered how early phase sales teams should be “evangelical&# and consultative in nature. As a tech startup grows it needs to develop more process & management if it is to scale. I call this “arming & aiming&# your salesforce.

Sales 289
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Make the most of a work conference

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Last week, I attended a 10,000 persons conference on information management and analytics. It was huge and tiring. Here are my notes/tips for making the most of a work conference: Don’t party so hard at night that you can’t attend conference sessions during the day. The number one reason is that you can get fired if your company knew that you slacked off.

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Five Easy Steps to Investor Reverse Due Diligence

Startup Professionals Musings

Due diligence should always be a two-way street. A while back, I published an article on “ Understanding the Dreaded Investor Due Diligence ,” describing what investors do to validate your startup before they invest. Here is the inverse, sometimes called reverse due diligence, describing what you should do to validate your investor before signing up for an equity partnership.

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Rise of the ‘Edupunk’ Spells Opportunity For Entrepreneurs

Campus Entrepreneurship

Jack Stripling has an interesting piece in the wake of the recent TIAA-CREF Institute’s 2010 Higher Education Leadership Conference. In a notable acknowledgment of the tail wagging the dog, several panelists alluded here to the possibility that if colleges don’t change the way they do business, then students will change the way colleges do business.

Flash 44
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My thoughts on the future of digital advertising

Jeff Hilimire

I was interviewed for Tech News Daily about the future of digital advertising. You can read the entire article here , but I pulled out the parts that I contributed to get thoughts/feedback. … Unrealized power of digital marketing. Jeff Hilimire, chief digital officer of advertising and marketing agency Engauge, agrees that companies aren’t pushing the envelope just yet. “Many marketers don’t understand the power of digital marketing.

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Google Code API Console – Nicely Done

SoCal CTO

Google Code just release the API console. It better organizes Google’s APIs and I even discovered a couple new APIs. Right now (more are expected soon) it provides: Buzz API - Google Buzz provides developers with a powerful set of API endpoints for searching, reading, and updating post content and metadata. Custom Search API - Google Custom Search enables you to search over a slice of the web, such as your own website, or a collection of websites.

API 175
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Try Biotech for Blockbuster Startup Opportunities

Startup Professionals Musings

In addition to the “green” sector, which I outlined a few weeks ago , I see biotech as one of the places where startups can always go for real opportunities. Recession-proof products with innovation continue to come from the biotechnology industry. Plus, it was the top industry attracting VC money in the most recent quarter of 2010 , with a total of $944 million.

Startup 192
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The Coming Entrepreneurial Tidal Wave: University Entrepreneurship 2.0 – David B. Lerner

Campus Entrepreneurship

I am not sure how I have missed David Lerner, Director of the Columbia University Venture Lab, but I have. Just found him. Here is a snippet from a post in December 2009 on the coming tidal wave of University Entrepreneurship: According to AUTM statistics, American universities are now spinning-off companies based on university intellectual property at a clip approaching 600 per year.

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How To Create a Sustainable Entrepreneurial Community

Feld Thoughts

Last week I posted an article on peHUB titled How to Create a Sustainable Entrepreneurial Community. Here it is in its entirety. I’ve lived in Boulder for 15 years after living in Boston for a dozen. While I’ve spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley — both as an angel and venture capital investor — I’ve never lived there. While the firm I’m a partner in — Foundry Group — invests all over the United States, I regularly hear statements like, “The only place to start a tech company is in Silicon Va

Community 171
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Kauffman Foundation Sponsorship Gives Major Boost to Women 2.0's Founder Labs

ReadWriteStart

Women 2.0 announced this evening at its annual Pitch Night , that it has received sponsorship by the Kauffman Foundation to support its "Founder Labs," a pre-incubator program whose mission is to increase the number of female founders of technology startups. The sponsorship will double the reach of Women 2.0's pre-incubator program, enabling additional Founder Labs which will serve at least 100 aspiring entrepreneurs in 2011.

Founder 146
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Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes #4: Lowball Pricing

This is going to be BIG.

Last night, my ZogSports softball team, the Lousy Shirts (so named b/c we won last year and all we got were these…), won our second championship—back to back after winning the Spring/Summer league. In the earlier league, we went 9-0, absolutely crushing most of the teams we played along the way. We were scoring at least 15 runs a game, and had one of the best pitchers in the league to go along with a very tight defense.

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Why Krispy Kreme failed in Australia

Start Up Blog

No doubt you’ve heard the news about Krispy Kreme going into administration in Australia. Many people seemed surprised at the news given it was a such a successful launch. But when we look a little closer it’s pretty clear why they failed. They broke a few simple retail rules which are worth considering. Why Krispy Kreme failed: Firstly, they failed to understand that in this country they needed to operate as a specialty retailer.

Australia 123
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What The Hell Does Your Company Do?

Feld Thoughts

Terry Kawaja of Luma Partners created today’s hilarious XtraNormal to help us understand what is going on at ad:tech. Tags: Great Stuff humor.

Partner 176
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20 Recommended Quora Threads for Startups

ReadWriteStart

The Q&A site Quora has become an indispensable trove of knowledge and expertise when it comes to the tech industry. Ask a question and get an answer - that is, after all, what all Q&A sites offer. But Quora boasts active participation from entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, designers, journalists and so on, so that the quality of the responses are quite high.

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A Dinevore list that can get you funded: Where do New York VCs eat?

This is going to be BIG.

I’m a big fan of the lunch meeting—because I like food, I like efficiency, and I like the fact that there’s a scripted end. The food is gone, plates have been removed… once the check is paid, we’re done. I wish the end of the meeting in the office came with that obvious of a milestone. I’m really horrific at keeping meetings from running over—especially when I’m really interested in the topic.

New York 120
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Why People Struggle To Get What They Want

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

I was speaking to my home loan broker this week. I’m purchasing an investment property and he helps organize the loans to make it all happen. My broker is good at what he does, but like many small business owners there’s a lot of latency in his operations. He was explaining to me how he had a huge database of people who had showed interest in getting finance, but he had no system for communicating with these people automatically.

Database 110
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The Defrag Conference 2010 Is Almost Here

Feld Thoughts

The Defrag Conference is happening in Boulder on Wednesday November 17th and Thursday November 18th and is looking like it will be the best one yet. If you haven’t yet registered, use the code “foundry2″ to take 15% off of your registration. The confirmed Keynote Speakers include: Alex Wright addressing the “deep history&# of Oral Culture and Social Networks.

Colorado 124
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A Look at the Demographic Data for Who's Seeking Startup Funding

ReadWriteStart

A little less than a month ago, we reported on ChubbyBrain's new Funding Recommendation Engine , a service that will help entrepreneurs find suitable investors. The recommendation engine is based on the research from CB Insights and as such offers a "reverse due diligence," so that startups can glean insights about where best to aim their funding pitches.

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Getting high on your own Svpply: When who’s using the service is part of the product

This is going to be BIG.

I learned about Svpply at Brooklyn Beta. It's a beautifully uncomplicated service--you share cool products and follow the shared products of others. Sharing is quick and easy. It's been done before--whole social networks have been built out around the idea of product sharing and cool finds, but their comprehensiveness (complexity) seemed to be their downfall.

Nebraska 102