Sat.Dec 22, 2012 - Fri.Dec 28, 2012

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Privacy is a Startup Challenge and an Opportunity

Startup Professionals Musings

With another list of the Top 10 Internet Scams and more identity theft , there seems to be a growing population out there worried about all the people intent on hurting them. Why is everyone so paranoid these days? My plea to entrepreneurs is to recognize these concerns as an opportunity, and go the extra mile to make people’s life better, rather than stoke the fires.

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Internet Growth Means Big Changes For How Businesses Connect

YoungUpstarts

By John Curran, President and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). When the Internet was first conceived as a better way for computers to communicate with one another, no one could predict the impact it would have on business communications. Today we depend on the Internet to reach customers, manage suppliers, and conduct our business in general.

Internet 180
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Mentoring the mentors: Advice and inspiration for startup mentors

siliconflorist.com

Silicon Florist. Covering the blossoming startup industry in Portland, Oregon, and the Silicon Forest. Subscribe via RSS population: Blog. About. Ads. Archive. Contact. Jobs/Gigs. Search for: July 3rd, 2012. Mentoring the mentors: Advice and inspiration for startup mentors. by Rick Turoczy. 3 Comments. Last year around the time PIE was starting, David Cohen , cofounder of TechStars , shared the TechStars Mentor Manifesto.

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Big Changes to 5 Important Online Tools

Duct Tape Marketing

Some of my favorite tools and services have gone through some pretty big changes recently – enough so that felt it warranted a post just to point the changes out. The first three, Gmail , Evernote and TweetDeck , are tools I use every day to run my business. The last two, Yelp and Foursquare , are familiar rating and location tools that have morphed a bit to go after the lucrative local search market and deserve a good hard look from local small businesses. 1) User interface changes for Gm

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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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6 Approaches to Maximizing Good Business Habits

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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“A-Commerce” To Rise In 2013, Says Schedulicity

YoungUpstarts

It’s accepted that the more than 27 million small businesses operating today in the United States form the bedrock U.S. economy. And in 2013, technology will increasingly enable this valuable economic sector to focus on establishing and nurturing client relationships, while automating and streamlining essential business functions, says Jerry Nettuno, founder and CEO of online appointment scheduling service Schedulicity.

More Trending

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Do I feel lucky?

deal architect

I can somewhat understand citizens of Orlando getting upset about the optics of the City’s apparent no-bid award to Workday. But for competitive vendors to howl about it is, well, a bit hypocritical. Sole sourcing runs our industry: a) Most.

Software 278
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?????????? – Tenacity: How I Spent A Year One Night in Kiev

Steve Blank

This July I thought I had set the record for tenacity in my age group. Go ahead and take a moment to read the post , it’s short. I reminded my Startup Owners Manual co-author Bob Dorf this is how entrepreneurs played the game, blah, blah, blah. As usual Bob did one better. Here’s a guest post on what happened to him in the Ukraine. —– Usually when you teach entrepreneurship, one of the key things you teach is tenacity , a vital characteristic of great entrepreneurs.

Ukraine 291
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Entrepreneurs Learn New Rules for Real Influence

Startup Professionals Musings

Successful entrepreneurs, like Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Casey Sheahan of Patagonia , have long since realized that influence is no longer something that you do to someone to get what you want, but requires listening and relationship building to do what they want, with a win-win outcome. We now live in a world where even subtle persuasion efforts are suspect.

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7 Necessary Components For Your New Business Plan

YoungUpstarts

by Lyndsey Freeman. If you’re starting a new business, do not take one more sip of coffee, one more step and spend one penny before you write your business plan. Here are 7 things you need to include: 1. Executive Summary. The executive summary is the first and most important part of your business plan. If the project is not clear or compelling enough in this section, often your investors won’t waste their time reading the rest, so you’ve got to get this part right.

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Tough Love for Southwest Airlines

deal architect

I sent Gary Kelly and Herb Kelleher of Southwest the letter below on December 9. Within a week, I started getting calls from their reps. I finally caught up with Tim last week and notes from those conversation are in.

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Hope Is Critical To A Strategy

Feld Thoughts

There has been a cliche going around the last decade or so that goes “hope is not a strategy.” It inspired a book titled Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale and is repeated often by VCs in boardrooms when they are confronted with companies that are flailing, especially when trying to reach their revenue goals. I’ve been guilty of saying it a few times although it always left a funny taste in my mouth and I didn’t know why until this morning when

Revenue 177
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10 Action Items to Keep Angel Investors Hovering

Startup Professionals Musings

Every new startup I know dreams of being funded early by one of the 318,000 active Angel investors in the USA alone. But many entrepreneurs don’t realize that Angels are also extremely discerning in the projects that they will invest in, rejecting approximately 97% of the proposals submitted to them, according to the California Investment Network. Most of these investors are members of Angel groups that have a rigorous filtering and screening process, to select the top 3% and most fundable propo

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Newsflash: Winning Is Everything

YoungUpstarts

?. By Andrew Collins, Founder & CEO of Mailman Group?. Winning IS everything. That’s right. I’m not going to butter it up for you and say ‘having a go’ is enough, as that’s one of the biggest ‘cop outs’ anyone can accept. Winning is everything and it should be treated as such. It’s not just why you are getting into doing what you are doing but it should embody you as an entrepreneur.??

Asia 162
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Call me Ishmael

deal architect

My friend Michael Krigsman has been running a series on "Industry Influencers". Personally, I cringe when I hear the term – I know it sounds ungrateful since many include me in the lists of influencers they compile. Trust me, I.

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4 Startup Tenets for Extreme Focus on Customers

Gust

Image via Facebook. New product startups rightfully begin with a heads-down focus on creating the ultimate product – whether it’s a new technology, a new look and ease of use, or a new low-cost delivery approach. Most then add customer service at the rollout, but very few really understand what it means to be truly customer centric, and even fewer really achieve it.

Customer 166
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Few Entrepreneurs Achieve Extreme Leadership Status

Startup Professionals Musings

By definition, most entrepreneurs are thought leaders. They have the ability to recognize a market need, the skills to design and implement a solution, and the drive to start a business from that solution. It all comes from within themselves. A business leader does the same thing and more through the people around them. Most entrepreneurs are not both.

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[Singapore][Event] Ideas.Inc 2013 Looks For New Aspiring Young Entrepreneurs

YoungUpstarts

The Ideas Inc. Business Challenge , the annual business plan and startup competition that’s organized by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) , is back – and it’s bigger and better. The startup accelerator program, hosted by NTU’s Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre , is again inviting submissions from aspiring startup founders who are looking to test and validate their business ideas.

Singapore 160
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Two nations separated by a common language

deal architect

This time of the year brings even more memories of the UK. I met Margaret during a posting in London in 1989. We go back often and Margaret took Tommy to the London Olympics and to Cambridge and Oxford this.

Global 220
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Snapchat and Poke and culture

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lots of coverage about Facebook Poke, which many have pointed out is a feature for feature clone of Snapchat. Some have pointed out that Poke was written in 12 days as evidence of the lightweight nature of Snapchat, and others have noted that Poke was at the top of the app charts within 24 hours as evidence of Snapchat’s peril. It’s not surprising that Poke got so much lift since it was promoted by the Facebook app, which has tremendous daily active usage.

Community 164
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This Holiday Season Entrepreneurs Need to Reflect

Startup Professionals Musings

It’s been a challenging business year, but I hope you are all taking some time off this long holiday weekend, to celebrate with the family. Even those of you who are not Christian and see Christmas as just another day should still enjoy the holiday spirit, take a break from work, and enjoy your loved ones. Yet there will be some entrepreneurs can’t seem to make the decision to take a break.

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Four Apps For SMBs For A Less Stressful 2013

YoungUpstarts

by Xenia von Wedel, VP at SocialRadius. In case you are thinking about New Year’s resolutions, here some new tech solutions for SMBs that would definitely help to make 2013 more efficient, time saving and altogether less stressful. 1. Voxeet. My personal top favorite No 1 is Voxeet , because I spend way too many hours on terrible conference calls, where I don’t even understand half of what the others say and it really aggravates me: After online phone services with peer-to-peer architecture like

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More New Renaissance

deal architect

On the innovation blog The technology skills shortfall Earth as art Eco-warriors Santa’s sleigh Simulate controllers at London airports For your car’s midlife crisis Megapixel surveillance Energy efficiency apps marketplace.

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17-Point Program to Have the Best Year of Your Life

Life Beyond Code

Happy New Year. 2013 is days away. Here is a 17-point program to make it your best year. 1. Get paid to move the needle: Quit thinking that you need to get paid for the hours you put into anything. If you get paid to move the needle, it will turn out to be a no-brainer value exchange. 2. Up your caring quotient: Instead of trying to reduce the cost of the sale, increase your level of caring.

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Find the Right Celebrity to Promote Your Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

Most startups dream of attracting a celebrity endorsement, and assume that it will take their startup to the stars. There have been some “famous” successes in this regard, such as Charlie Sheen using Twitter last year to promote Internships.com, as well as some failures, including Airtime , launched early this year as a star studded affair, without the star studded success.

Startup 214
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“Pay with a Tweet” and Other Growth Hacking Examples

VC Cafe

There are however, many clever ways to acquire users in the early stages, when your startup has no brand recognition. In the post, "Introduction to Growth Hacking for startups" we went through the. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog In politics, the era of Big Data has arrived Carbon Nanotube Yarn MindMeld me maybe? Santa’s Warehouse An event-ful year Wireless charging comes to Madison Square Garden The song of the Alien Birds The Hurricane Simulator.

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How to use Foursquare to market your business & reach a new audience

The Next Web

When we think of social media and business, the first few things to come to mind are Facebook and Twitter. Yet, there is one mobile app that tends to get overlooked by businesses: Foursquare. True, it doesn’t have the same numbers that the likes of Facebook and Twitter can boast, but what it does have is a dedicated audience which has made over three billion check-ins.

Audience 146
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boulder Startup Community

Feld Thoughts

David Cohen just put up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boulder Startup Community. It’s a short presentation that you can look at below and is a great way to get a lay of the land in the Boulder Startup Community. This will be an organic document so if you are doing something that you want us to add, just leave a note in the comments and we’ll update the doc.

Community 140
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Never Try To Motivate Employees With Money

Mike Michalowicz

Money Does Not Motivate Employees. I can’t think of anything I love more than being acknowledged, unless it’s rewarded at the same time I’m being acknowledged. Employees are the same way. They love to be rewarded. Heck, we all do! It makes us feel good for putting our hearts and souls into a task, even if it is our job. But, believe it or not, money probably isn’t the best way to reward employees.

Employee 119
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How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Startups

David Teten

Drew Hansen just posted a very interesting piece on Forbes on, “ How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Startups ”. He draws on the research study my coauthors and I are about to publish on best practices in how venture capitalists increase the odds of company success through operational assistance. ff Venture Capital is executing just about every strategy he discusses in this article.

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What’s really on entrepreneurs’ 2012 holiday wish list?

The Next Web

From the realistic and pragmatic to the hypothetical, members of the YEC have technology on the brain in 2012 — to improve their lives, make the office a little brighter and update “business as usual” while they’re at it. What is one high tech gadget on your holiday gift wish list that could radically help your biz in 2013? Why?

Detroit 117
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Maxims To Chew On From My Interview With 33voices

Feld Thoughts

A month or so ago I did an interview with Moe Abdou of 33voices. I do a lot of interviews, but this one stood out to me as Moe did a great job of moving the conversation around and pulling some great stuff out of me. Because it was a longish interview, Moe broke it into Part 1 and Part 2. If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, Moe compiled some of the maxims and one-liners into a nice slide deck.

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Making a list, checking it twice: Prepping for 2013

This is going to be BIG.

I run a weekly newsletter of tech events in NYC where I throw in some other musings as well. This week, I thought about the holiday break and some things people could think about to have the kind of 2013 they want to have--more positive, more interesting, more authentic. I suggested making some lists, and so I've published them here: Three people I’m actually friends with that I would like to be better friends with.

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How To Set Up A Stand Up Desk And Why It Could Save Your Life

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Tweet. Sitting Down Is Killing You. Recently in the news you may have heard some rather alarming data was released about the impact sitting down for long periods of time can have on your health. When I was younger I’d sit down in front of the TV for entire days sometimes, watching TV or playing Nintendo.

Restful 112
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Dying is Easy, Starting Creative Projects is Hard

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

Michael Flannery was a comedy peer of mine back in the day. I’m in Cincinnati visiting for Christmas and coincidentally have been invited to the First Annual Cincinnati Comedians Homecoming Show. I’ll be going to Funny Bone Newport, KY tonight and hope to see a few of my old colleagues from the early 80′s, back when I was doing stand-up.