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

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Is Going for Rapid Growth Always Good? Aren’t Startups So Much More?

Both Sides of the Table

I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. And of course on Twitter I’ve seen the Tweets, ReTweets and superlatives on what a great post it is. Viewing the article through the lens of a venture capitalist there’s much to agree with under the mantra of “growth!” And when you read the article carefully it allows for a period of discovery in your business.

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Too Many Small Businesses Still Ignore Social Media

Startup Professionals Musings

When my friend’s small business was struggling a while back, I suggested he add some social media marketing initiatives, and his answer was that he was “too busy.” His business has since closed, but his mindset is still out there. According to a recent Harvard Business Review article , only 60% of companies today use social media for marketing, and only 12% of those feel that they are using it effectively.

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Why The Future Of US High-Tech Is Bright

YoungUpstarts

by Enrico Moretti, author of “ The New Geography of Jobs ” Over the past three months, Facebook, Zynga and Groupon have lost between 33% and 52% of their market value. They are not alone. Other social networking, online marketing, clean-tech and bio-tech companies have fallen out of favor with some investors, fueling speculation regarding the future of the US technology sector.

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SkyDrive Is Great and No One Has Noticed

Feld Thoughts

In July I wrote a post where I was Searching For A Collaborative Writing Tool. I got a bunch of suggestions – some people suggested their startups, some suggested Google Docs, and one person (a friend who works for Microsoft) suggested Microsoft SkyDrive . Amy and I were deep in working on Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur.

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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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What Makes a Successful Startup Community? Is it Possible to Build One Where You Live?

Both Sides of the Table

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a Startup more inclusive than that to which Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, would sometimes like to attach to the word. Today I’d like to talk about what startup communities outside of Silicon Valley look like, how they emerge and what makes them take hold.

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How to Relate Your Technology to Business Values

Startup Professionals Musings

Presenting your startup vision as a founder to a potential investor, or presenting an idea as an employee to an executive, requires that you effectively communicate, or “translate”, the value proposition into terms that the receiver can fully understand and appreciate. If you fail, it’s your loss, not theirs, no matter what the reason. For example, if your investor has been a senior business leader, like Steve Forbes here, you need to transform your message so that it addresses the issues that s

More Trending

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Old Entrepreneurs Perform Better Than Their Young Counterparts?

Mike Michalowicz

Recently the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) and AARP announced they are teaming up to train entrepreneurs over the age of 50 who want to start a business. This got me thinking about the youth vs. old guy experience debate and how, after twenty years in entrepreneurship, my view on business, money and worth has changed. Old entrepreneurs are in fact the winners.

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We’ve come a long way since the Speak & Spell

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Like many parents, I rely on a set of tricks skills to get my 3 year old daughter to do the things I know are good for her like eating well, brushing her teeth, etc. – things like turning these activities into a game. That idea is the basis of the interactive educational apps market; take things that are educational and make them fun for kids to do so they want to go back and play over and over again while learning valuable skills in the process.

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How to Create a Culture Shift in the Age of Illogic

Startup Professionals Musings

I’m a very logical guy, so I still fondly remember when new solutions and technologies started trends on the basis of their logical strengths. In today’s world, it seems that emotion, not logic, sparks the new trends that become culture, and drives our devotion or disappointment in new products and brands. How does an entrepreneur best deal with that environment?

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State of Creativity Forum is an Innovation Accelerant

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

I’ve been involved* these past two years with a creativity conference in Oklahoma, now called the State of Creativity Forum. This conference has energy to spare, it feels like an accelerating fire of innovative energy. Last year’s event (for a summary look at this post ) exploded with dynamic speakers, cultural, and artist happenings. Even the governor, Mary Fallin, was there to support the notion that creativity and innovation is how Oklahoma moves forward.

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How and Why to Make Your WebsiteTablet and Mobile Friendly Now

Duct Tape Marketing

Talk about mobile and tablet usage dominates computer hardware conversations and the implications are one of the hottest topics in marketing right now as well. photo credit: waferbaby via photopin cc. Website visitors are now consuming content from our sites in a dizzying array of devices, formats and orientations. There was a time when browser compatibility was a designer’s primary concern.

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The Force at Salesforce

deal architect

Dreamforce was extremely enjoyable as I have written earlier – and a key reason was a chance to renew acquaintances with many previous Salesforce contacts and meet several new ones who continue the smart, charitable HR culture that defines the.

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“Stealth mode” and other f’ing brilliant strategies

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Here’s some of my super-secret winning strategies from fifteen years of building startups. Stay in stealth mode until the last minute. The last thing any startup needs is people finding out about it. You can get attention later — that’s not difficult. You don’t need the distraction of customers clamoring outside your office while you’re still refactoring your NoSQL database structures.

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Lagging Indicators

Rob Go

I’m always amazed at how much short term decisions are driven by lagging indicators. For instance, when Yammer was acquired by Microsoft, the tech market saw this as a major validation of “enterprise 2.0″ In the months leading up to the acquisition (and the months prior) I’ve seen a surge in companies and fundings in and around that theme.

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9 Keys to Adding Street Smarts to Your Book Smarts

Startup Professionals Musings

Creating a startup, or managing any business, is all about problem solving. Some people are good at it and some are not – independent of their IQ or their book smarts (there may even be an inverse relationship here). Yet I’m convinced that problem solving is a learnable trait, rather than just a birthright. Entrepreneurs who are great problem solvers within any business are the best prepared to solve their customers’ needs effectively as well.

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Vivek Ranadive: Give us your most complex challenges

deal architect

From a case study I wrote on BP’s CTO innovation Group in The New Polymath As the group ’ s stature has grown within BP, many business unit leaders insist on its involvement in many innovation areas. Darukhanavala cites a.

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Ten Reasons Entrepreneurs Keep Getting Younger

YoungUpstarts

Have you noticed? Entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger these days. It’s not at all uncommon to see entrepreneurs in college, high school, and even younger. But why does there seem to be such a boom in young entrepreneurship? It can’t all be about following in Mark Zuckerberg’s footsteps. We’ve discovered 10 big reasons why more and more young entrepreneurs are stepping out on their own.

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3 Quick Tips to Improve Your SEO Now!

Rembrandt Communications

The kids are back at school, and you are settling into a regular work-schedule for the fall. With this in mind, it’s time to think about your SEO processes and make improvements now… before the onslaught of year-end work and the holidays hit. With this in mind, ask yourself these questions: What are your SEO [.].

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How Many Startup Stock Options are Enough?

Startup Professionals Musings

Wouldn’t you like to be one of the lucky people who joined Google and Facebook when these were startups, and now be a multi-millionaire? So people ask me “How many shares should I ask for when I join a startup today?” In reality, the number of shares doesn’t mean anything – it’s your percent of the total that you need to negotiate. For example, 200,000 shares may sound like a lot, but if the startup has issued 20 million (a common starting point), that’s just 1% of the company.

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Next Up Oracle Open World

deal architect

After spectacular weeks at Dreamforce and TUCON, Oracle Open World has a high watermark to aim for. But thanks to my friends at Oracle like Susie Penner and Carol Sato, it is already shaping up well. I am looking.

Software 286
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7 Apps For The Mobile Businessman

YoungUpstarts

by Ronnie Chapman. Cell phones have come a long way in recent years. Now almost everyone has a smart phone; phones can do so much more than in the past. It is now at the point that having a cell phone is hard to avoid. With the global economy and travel, the businessman needs his phone to do a lot. That is why apps are even more important for businessmen.

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Entrepreneurs, Be Careful That Your Agility Doesn't Lead to a "Strategy du Jour!"

Small Business Force

One of the chief benefits of being a small business is the agility that being small enables. Smart entrepreneurs have learned to quickly "pivot" (total change of direction) when a strategy, or even a whole business model is not working. "Fail early, fail often," can truly help entrepreneurial innovation. However, this philosophy can be both the biggest asset and the biggest liability for a young business, if it becomes a mode of operation.

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Startup Communities is Shipping

Feld Thoughts

It’s hard to describe the satisfaction of “shipping” your product. I know many of you out there have done it many times and I expect you know what I’m talking about. Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City is officially shipping. The Kindle version is available immediately ; the physical copies are still on pre-order on Amazon but I know books are flowing.

Community 159
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Party like it is 1999 again?

deal architect

Last week at Dreamforce I had a deja vu moment. It felt like SAP’s Sapphire in 1999 with Deloitte and Accenture and Wipro logos on big booths, on conference bags, on party invitations. In the Marketing Cloud session, I wondered.

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[Infographic] Young Professionals And Risky Tech Behavior

YoungUpstarts

You may think that this new generation is all computer-smart and Internet-savvy, but the truth is that we all indulge in quite a bit of risky tech behavior when it comes to using tech devices. Yes, we’re actually pretty bad with security and password management. Too many of us let others use our computers unsupervised, don’t change passwords often enough, and access unauthorized – and potentially compromised – wireless networks (probably because it’s free).

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For Startups, Timing Trends Really Does Matter - Except When It Doesn't

ReadWriteStart

Now is the best time in history to start your own business. But depending on what kind of company you’re building, you have to figure out if your idea is poised to capture a trend - or doomed to miss one and face a much tougher road to success. To learn about the impact of properly timing a trend - or of missing one - we asked 8 successful young entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council ( YEC ) for their experiences.

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Have Every New Employee Do Customer Support For Two Weeks

Feld Thoughts

A few weeks ago an entrepreneur of a fast growing consumer-oriented company told me that he has every new employee do customer support for two weeks. Their approach is they onboard the new person, given the a one week “get settled into your role / get up to speed on the company” period and then they spend weeks two and three full time in the customer support organization.

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Is innovation moving back from consumer to enterprise tech?

deal architect

David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect” posed the question to a panel at the Tibco Tucon conference. I repeated the question one on one to Vivek Ranadive. CEO of Tibco and he said he is seeing it in three.

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Dhingana.com – Streaming Site And App For Indian Music

YoungUpstarts

When it comes to entertainment, India’s more known for Bollywood and its movies far more than its music. But it’s a huge lucrative market for those who dare – and the founders of Sunnyvale, California-based Dhingana.com may be poised to capitalize on that demand. Dhingana - which means “joy”, “zeal” and “frenzy” in the Indo-Aryan Marathi language – is an on-demand, in-streaming music site and application which carries more than 350,000

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Bringing interview best practice to VC pitches

The Equity Kicker

Pitching a VC has a lot in common with interviewing for a job. It’s a conversation where the entrepreneur is trying to convince the VC that he or she will perform excellently in their roll as CEO of their company and the VC is trying to convince the entrepreneur that they will be great to work with. There are some big differences as well, most notably that as well as selling him or herself the entrepreneur is also pitching the idea behind their business, but the similarities are enough tha

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FAKEGRIMLOCK’s Guest Lecture At Harvard Business School

Feld Thoughts

FAKEGRIMLOCK showed up recently at HBS to give a short lecture on Minimum Viable Personality. In Grimspeak, IT AWESOME. If you want more of FAKEGRIMLOCK, go check his post on my blog from a while ago – BE ON FIRE - which inspired my book Burning Entrepreneur - How to Launch, Fund, and Set Your Start-Up On Fire! Related articles. Here Secret @fakegrimlock Video About Minimum Viable Personality.

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More Innovation

deal architect

on the New Florence blog The death of cash – and credit cards A journey to the center of the Internet For the love of a bike Dallas Love Field renovation Beloit College’s “New Normal” The Planet of the Apps.

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[Infographic] Social Media Vs Salary

YoungUpstarts

And social media wins. That’s right – many young professionals and college graduates actually admit that they would sacrifice salary and attractive employment opportunities for social media and technology freedom. 62-percent of Generation Y confess that they cannot live without the Internet, and 1 in 3 actually say that the Internet is as important to them as air, food, shelter and water.

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Date-less at the prom: the challenges and solutions for a founder with no CTO [guest post]

VC Cafe

* Guest post by Elinor Kalina. So you thought of a brilliant idea, ran a quick market analysis and now you’re knee deep in initial spec drafts while also searching for the impossible – a good, [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

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Gust Startup Trend Map

Gust

Gust Startup Map & Trends Analysis – August 2012. Attention startup enthusiasts! Gust is thrilled to have nearly 7,000 new entrepreneurs creating startup profiles each month. To help us visualize the scale and global reach of these entrepreneurs we have put together a monthly startup map, which captures all new startup profiles on Gust. The map showcases new entrepreneur sign ups that chose to publish their startup profiles between August 1 st and August 31 st.

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Success And Significance

deal architect

KR Sridhar, co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, used that phrase during a panel at Tibco’s TUCON conference to suggest technology companies are increasingly focused on societal significance, not just commercial success. With his NASA background and company mission statement.

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