Sat.Dec 01, 2012 - Fri.Dec 07, 2012

article thumbnail

[Review] Return On Influence

YoungUpstarts

“I have become a number… And if you are even slightly active on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have become a number too…” So begins “ Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing “, a slim volume delving into the world of social scoring.

article thumbnail

Twitter Link Roundup #157 – 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!

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Who are the Good and the Lucky?

Growthink Blog

The saddest lament of entrepreneurs and owners of private companies seeking to sell and exit their companies is that they want their businesses to be valued on their future potential , and not its CURRENT profitability. Given that the typical, offered purchase multiples for smaller businesses – as in those with less than $5 million in EBITDA – can be as low as 1 or 2 times last year’s tax return profits, this is understandable.

article thumbnail

We Are Austin Tech: Mellie Price

Austin Startup

Today on WAAT we caught up with Mellie Price to talk about Entrepreneurship, Austin, and few companies that she started. Mellie founded the recently acquired Front Gate Tickets along with a web development firm called Monsterbit. She believes that the shared resources and collaborative attitude make Austin a uniquely supportive place for an Entrepreneur. “When [.].

Austin 69
article thumbnail

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

article thumbnail

Old People

Ben's Blog

Aww man, you sold your soul. Naww man, mad people was frontin’ Aww man, made something from nothing. —Kanye West, New God Flow. Your startup is going well and as your business expands, you hear the dreaded words from someone on your board: “You need to hire some senior people. Some real ‘been there, done that’ executives to help you get the company to the next level.

PR 78
article thumbnail

The Future of Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Steve Blank

Almost every large company understands it needs to build an organization that deals with the ever-increasing external forces of continuous disruption , the need for continuous innovation , globalization and regulation. But there is no standard strategy and structure for creating corporate innovation. We outline the strategy problem in this post and will propose some specific organizational suggestions in follow-on posts. —-.

More Trending

article thumbnail

Who the hell are these guys?

deal architect

I remember a meeting with a systems integrator while at Gartner. He wanted to know who would be the “next SAP” they should build a practice around. So I showed him an ERP magic quadrant. I still remember his face.

284
284
article thumbnail

10 Key Entrepreneur Success Drivers May Surprise You

Startup Professionals Musings

We can all dream about what it takes to make our startup a success. From recent survey feedback, it seems evident that the urban legends leading to success are wrong. The average entrepreneur is not the one who dumped a promising career, sketched his idea on the back of a napkin, and accepted millions from an investor to make billions of his own. I was just perusing an older but still very relevant report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship, titled “ Making of a Succes

article thumbnail

Old People

Ben's Blog

'Aww man, you sold your soul Naww man, mad people was frontin'' Aww man, made something from nothing —Kanye West, New God Flow. Your startup is going well and as your business expands, you hear the dreaded words from someone on your board: “You need to hire some senior people. Some real ‘been there, done that’ executives to help you get the company to the next level.

PR 51
article thumbnail

Why a 50/50 Split is Almost Never Right for Co-Founders by @DaveParkerSEA

fi.co

-->. About | Mentors | Companies | Curriculum | FAQ | Partners | Apply Now. Globalizing Silicon Valley - See the Worldwide Schedule - Lead a Local Chapter. -->. Email. Password. Location. Choose a city closest to you. Alexandria. Amsterdam. Bay Area. Barcelona. Berlin. Bogotá. Brussels. Charlotte. Chicago. Denver. Hanoi. Helsinki. Ho Chi Minh City. Hong Kong.

article thumbnail

Its beginning to look a lot like Enterprise 2.0

deal architect

Cannot be a fluke. He was using the same examples in yet another presentation. I had seen Andrew McAfee present at Cognizant Community on the possibility of the metric system as currently defined running out of definitions for things like.

Metrics 279
article thumbnail

More Entrepreneurs Embrace Conscious Capitalism

Startup Professionals Musings

I’ve noticed that most young entrepreneurs are more socially conscious today than ever before, which is a great trend. Unfortunately, some are so focused on this principle that they forget that every business, even non-profits, have to practice the basic principals of capitalism (build a business model to make money) to cover their costs to do good things another day.

article thumbnail

Business Plans Are An Historical Artifact

Feld Thoughts

This article ( Business Plans Are An Historical Artifact ) first appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal The Accelerators Column , which I’m contributing to on a regular basis. . In 1987 when I started my first company (Feld Technologies), I wrote a business plan for a course at MIT that I was in called 15.375: New Enterprises. The textbook for the course was Jeffry A.

article thumbnail

Electricity: The Weak Link for Emergency Services

Venture Chronicles

A few weeks ago I wrote about the consequences of services dependent upon electronic components that have a tendency to become unavailable in an emergency. It’s a fairly simple thesis, we depend on technology in such a broad spectrum of devices and services that when power is unavailable reliance on technology becomes a seizure point. Last night our power went out for a couple of hours, nothing major but right at dinner time so it ended up being more than a minor inconvenience.

article thumbnail

The Real Deal: Chris Jones on the Community Cloud

deal architect

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. This time it is my former Gartner colleague, Chris Jones, now EVP Marketing & Services at Descartes Systems. He has over 30 years.

Cloud 247
article thumbnail

6 Core Elements of Winning Startup Launch Content

Startup Professionals Musings

Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. Yet it is the one element that too many entrepreneurs focus on only as an afterthought. Everyone assumes their product or service is so great that “word-of-mouth” will carry the day for them. Even great products need great marketing “content” to fuel the ascent of their online message.

Startup 248
article thumbnail

My Smart Phone Is No Longer Working For Me

Feld Thoughts

I spent two weeks without my iPhone. I was completely off the grid for the first week but then spent the second week online, on my MacBook Air and Kindle, but no iPhone. I got home on Sunday and have had my iPhone turned on the past few days. I’ve used it as a phone, but I’ve largely stayed off of the web, email, and twitter with it. Instead, I’m only done this when I’m in front of my computer.

Mobile 187
article thumbnail

Craft Breweries Buck Discount Trend With Seasonal Releases

YoungUpstarts

Shmaltz Brewing Company’s holiday gift pack featuring eight seasonal beers. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Christmas and festive shopping – it’s the season for discounts! But even as retailers and brands cut prices to attract consumers, one industry (to be exact, a segment of that industry) is mostly standing apart. In fact, it’s even introducing products that can be more expensive that usual.

article thumbnail

Insight HCL

deal architect

I am spending the day at the HCL Influencer Day in Boston today. I have long been impressed with HCL’s Product Engineering practice, which still has unlimited runway as it goes after the $ 1.4 trillion annual global R&D spend.

Boston 246
article thumbnail

Smart Startups Never Let Negatives Bury Positives

Startup Professionals Musings

Managing and motivating a team in a startup is more than just using the right interpersonal skills. It’s more than providing recognition, tangible incentives, and clear work goals. A key influencer of satisfaction and motivation, top-ranked by employees, is positive progress and the completion of meaningful work. Sometimes you have to manage progress, not people.

Startup 241
article thumbnail

10 Perspective Checks on Your Startup Aspirations

Gust

Image via Facebook.com. Every entrepreneur needs to be honest about their strengths and weaknesses, and realistic about their reasons for choosing the startup route. For any entrepreneur, even the best business opportunities, if entered for the wrong reasons, will likely fail. Some of these reasons seem obvious, so forgive me for restating, but I still hear them too often.

Startup 181
article thumbnail

[Infographic] Why Employees Leave Your Company

YoungUpstarts

Facing high employee turnover and no idea why? There are many reasons why employees leave: too heavy a workload, lack of career advancement or promotion opportunities, or even unrealistic job expectations. In fact, many of the reasons cited by employees when they leave are down to factors you can actually control. Ultimately, 1 in 2 of them leave because they just don’t feel that they are being valued at the job.

Employee 167
article thumbnail

The Five Ts of Marketing

deal architect

When I went to college I learned from Philip Kotler and the five Ps of marketing – product, promotion etc In recent years, it has evolved to the 5 T’s of Marketing. Marketing is all about technology. If you look.

Marketing 239
article thumbnail

7 Success Principles From the Startup War Zone

Startup Professionals Musings

When you have been on the startup firing line, you quickly learn that any insight from experts and entrepreneurs who have been there before you can make the difference between failure and success. Yet, many new entrepreneurs brazenly assume they are bulletproof, and march blindly into the fray. The result is that half or more of startups fail in the first two years.

Startup 235
article thumbnail

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Rembrandt Communications

It’s that time of year when things are crazy. You are probably slammed at work trying to finish year-end projects while preparing for the holidays. But don’t let all of your work get in the way of enjoying this special time of year. To enjoy the holiday season more, here are a few tips… Review [.].

PR 159
article thumbnail

[Singapore] Golden Gate Ventures And JFDI Asia Form Strategic Alliance

YoungUpstarts

“*Limpeh gar lu gong…” (* Let me tell you…). Singapore-based technology startup accelerator Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI.Asia) today announced a strategic tie-up with Golden Gate Ventures , another startup accelerator also based in Singapore, that will see Golden Gate Ventures co-founders Vinnie Lauria, Jeff Paine and Paul Bragiel join JFDI.Asia’s “ bootcamp ” accelerator program as mentors with immediate effect.

Asia 162
article thumbnail

More New Florence

deal architect

On the innovation blog Learning innovation from a chef Big Data Drama A dairy farmer’s best new friend Mapping the ancient Afghan irrigation system Union Pacific as an “infotech company” The joys of seventh freedom MetaScale: Sears mimics Amazon Descartes.

article thumbnail

Build Social Media Into the Customer Experience

Startup Professionals Musings

As I visit the websites of many startups, as well as more mature businesses, I still too often see a “contact” page offering nothing but a sterile form for customers to submit, never to be heard from again. Social media connections, if they exist, are buried elsewhere or reserved for monitoring purposes only. Social media is here, and is the preferred mode of communication by a large segment of your customers, so make it a positive differentiator for your business.

article thumbnail

Startup Visa – One Step Forward, One Step Back

Feld Thoughts

On that same day the White House announced A New Front Door for Immigrant Entrepreneurs President Obama said that he was not supportive of the STEM Jobs Act of 2012. Infuriating. I’ve been working on making it easy for foreign entrepreneurs to get a visa to start a company in the US since September 2009 when I wrote the post The Founders Visa Movement.

Startup 165
article thumbnail

Most Overused Buzzword On LinkedIn Profiles? Creative.

YoungUpstarts

If there’s one word most people describe themselves with professionally, it’s creative. At least, that’s the consensus from professional network LinkedIn, who found that the description topped the list of the most overused words and phrases in its member profiles for 2012. Here’s a quick look at what the 2012 No. 1 buzzwords for countries in which LinkedIn fielded this study: Australia: Creative.

article thumbnail

More Innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog Ten things you may not know about DST The payback from LEED certification 50 ways to leave your lover – and to communicate with your smartphone Nice memories from Workday Rising The self-made bed Veterans.

article thumbnail

Users Guide to Startup Advisors

Gust

What’s an advisor to a startup deal? Technically, advisor is one of those bucket terms that means anything and everything, depending on context. Those names and faces and backgrounds that turn up in pitches and business plans might be deep and important relationships, somebody with options or equity who is going to be helping for the long term; or meaningless fluff, somebody who agreed once to have his or her name appear, but really does nothing. .

Startup 165
article thumbnail

The Things Successful People Don’t Do

Mike Michalowicz

Excuses are a dime a dozen, and successful people aren’t. Do you see the correlation? Here are the 35 things successful people don’t do (and you better not do, too). 1. Discuss The Struggle… Unless revealed in the media, reality television, online, or similar, many successful entrepreneurs never expose their struggle! Of course, you can read about all their accolades, countless amount of likes, lifestyle change allotted due to their financial gain-maybe even an entourage, HOW

LLC 164
article thumbnail

CoatChex – Changing The Bailment Industry With QR Codes

YoungUpstarts

Imagine this scenario – you check in your coat at a bar or restaurant, had a great time until you were about to leave. That’s when you find out your coat has gone missing, most likely stolen, and now you have to endure a freezing walk home. Most of us would be totally upset by this experience. But for 23-year old Derek Pacqué, who went through that exact experience, instead had an “Eureka!

article thumbnail

Whither Outsourcing Advisory Services?

deal architect

Phil Fersht has a sarcastic post on the Insight HCL event we both attended on Tuesday. To start with I think he is a bit too tough on HCL. I thought they did a fairly good job with the event.

Offshore 220
article thumbnail

How much stake (equity) is an idea worth?

Gust

It depends on the quality of the idea. I’m a firm believer in Derek Sivers ‘ calculus, which goes like this: AWFUL IDEA = -$1. WEAK IDEA = $1. SO-SO IDEA = $5. GOOD IDEA = $10. GREAT IDEA = $15. BRILLIANT IDEA = $20. The real value, of course (as other answers here have noted), comes from executing on the idea. And to see how that calculation works, check out Derek’s classic, seminal article on the subject: [link].

Equity 150