Thu.Feb 16, 2012

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Who Dares Wins – The 2nd Annual International Business Model Competition

Steve Blank

Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2 nd Annual International Business Model Competition , hosted by Professor Nathan Furr , and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The idea of a Business Model competition first emerged when I realized that Business Plan writing ought to be taught in English Departments – as they’re the best example of creative writing entrepreneurs will ever do.

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What happened to us?

deal architect

In the hundreds of interviews in the upcoming book were a couple of especially fascinating ones with Don Graham, CEO and Vijay Rajandran, Chief Digital Officer of The Washington Post Co. Not about political coverage but how the Post has.

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10 People Who Will Drain Energy From Your Company

Startup Professionals Musings

Every organization, no matter how small, has one or more people who are quite simply obnoxious, and they drain energy from everyone and can strangle your company. Sometimes they are also intellectually brilliant, or closely related to the boss, so there is no easy way out. In fact, they may even be the boss. So if you find this article taped to your desk, it may be time to look in the mirror.

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What Corporations Can Learn from Coworking Spaces

YoungUpstarts

By Liz Elam, founder/curator of Link Coworking. I don’t have anything bad to say about my time in Corporate America. I will tell you that I now enter my work day excited to go greet my members and provide a place for them to get their work done, whatever it maybe. I like to call myself a Curator and I’ll tell you why – it’s because I’m a keeper of a collection.

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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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You Can’t Motivate People

Feld Thoughts

I’m sitting on my balcony on the ninth floor of a hotel overlooking Miami Beach thinking about motivation. Specifically, mine. I’m deep into writing the first draft of Startup Communities and – with Amy – decided to plant myself in a warm place for two weeks as I finished up this draft. We got here late Monday night. Today is the first day I wrote any words on the book.

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Are You Committing the Seven Deadly Sins of Business Transformation?

YoungUpstarts

by Mohan Nair, author of “ Strategic Business Transformation: The 7 Deadly Sins to Overcome “ Every day millions of Americans arrive at work filled with low-level dread and resignation. Since the recession hit (or perhaps before), they’ve been overloaded, overstressed, and overwhelmed. The typical workday is a marathon of rushing from one task after another, with few breaks between these bursts of effort, and even fewer words of thanks from equally frantic managers and coworkers.

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[Infographic] How To Build A Dependable Workforce

YoungUpstarts

This may not come to you as a surprise, but 53-percent of job applicants list some sort of untruth on their resumes. That’s not even talking about what they choose NOT to list. As an entrepreneur and small business owner, it’s up to you to take certain steps when it comes to your hiring process so as to weed out the lemons… before they ruin your business.

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Kernel column: ADVISORS: THEY DON’T HELP VCS, BUT THEY CAN HELP START-UPS

The Equity Kicker

My latest column for The Kernel. It was published on Monday. Can, and should, advisers play a greater role in start-ups looking to raise funds, asks Nic Brisbourne? What role do advisors play for start-ups? Advisors are typically small partnerships, or individuals, who help startups raise money from venture capitalists. They usually charge some form of retainer, and then a success fee of a percentage of funds raised and perhaps some options.

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[New York] [Event] America Means Business

YoungUpstarts

Here’s a new New York-based entrepreneurship event to rival New York Entrepreneurship Week – America Means Business is a three day event, held on June 13-15, that will see various activities relating to entrepreneurship take place in New York. America Means Business aims to address the needs of entrepreneurs and assist and inspire those who have the dream of opening their own business.

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Work. Life. Balance.

Up and Running

Christiane Erwin is owner and CEO of Crestview Doors, Inc. Using more than a decade of experience spent designing and launching web-based e-commerce applications for businesses in a variety of industries, Christiane and her husband David started Crestview Doors in 2007. Crestview Doors has shipped thousands of products worldwide and been featured on television, in print, and on the web for their rapid growth despite the downturn in the housing market.

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Innovation Infarction #2 – Leaders Must Balance Perfection and Risk

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

I posted not to long ago about organizations that don’t stay fit with regards to innovation. This, I said, would lead to an innovation infarction when an emergency crops up. Consider this post a “Yes+AND” as I’ve spotted a great piece by Scott Anthony that looks at that problem through a slightly different lens. Do [.].

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What If You’re Not CEO Material? [Excellent article by David Cohen @davidcohen of TechStars]

Scalable Startup

[link].

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Unlearn While You Learn

Babbling VC

As you may or may not have heard , I've once again transitioned in my career. I note "once again" as I believe this is technically my sixth grown-up job. I am leaving out the multiple stops which were there in the run-up to my "career" (including newspaper delivery, landscaping, snow shovelling, bicycle mechanic, pool builder, bouncer/go-go dancer security.don't ask, office assistant, gym trainer, waiter and water company utility guy.

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Austin Tech Happy Hour SXSW Kickoff

Austin Startup

March 8th at Molotov, 6p – 8pm It’s hard to believe that we’re celebrating the 5th anniversary of our pre-SXSW kickoff happy hour! Come and share your tips for the best sessions and parties, what company will totally “break out” at southby, and how your company is dealing with the huge growth of the festival this year. As always, this is not an official SXSW event and no badge is required in order to attend. [.].

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Big think

Start Up Blog

Lately I’ve been totally loving the Youtube channel Big Think. Basically it is some of the worlds leading thinkers, scientists, artists, educators et al, giving their views on important questions in a global society. Heavy kind of social, geo techno political issues. Often they are in short soundbites of under 5 minutes. For me it a nice TED alternative for bed time watching on my iPhone, or car listening (also via my iPhone which is streaming it from Youtube) – which makes me wonder

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Innovation Infarction #2 – Leaders Must Balance Perfection and Risk

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

I posted not to long ago about organizations that don’t stay fit with regards to innovation. This, I said, would lead to an innovation infarction when an emergency crops up. Consider this post a “Yes+AND” as I’ve spotted a great piece by Scott Anthony that looks at that problem through a slightly different lens. Do read his excellent piece Negotiation Innovation and Control.

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There Can Be No Real Commitment Until You Surrender All Doubt

Duct Tape Marketing

There Can Be No Real Commitment Until You Surrender All Doubt This content from: Duct Tape Marketing. mirandiki via Flickr CC There can be no life, passion or purpose in a business that lacks commitment. It’s just too hard otherwise. I’ve stated here before that I believe commitment or failure to commit is one of the central themes of our lives. It is what drives us forward and drives us away.

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Here come the smaller, nichier social sites (Instagram, Path and Pinterest)

Jeff Hilimire

On the Internet, small is the new big. Instagram is “a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures.” And boy are they hot right now. In fact, Facebook tried to buy Instagram this past summer but the boys said no. If you’re curious why people love Instagram, here are two interviews I did recently with Instagram fanatics.

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The Complete Guide To Southern California Accelerators and Incubators, Part III

socaltech.com

Southern California. Silicon Valley. Rocky Mountains. Pacific Northwest. Texas. Socaltech.com. High Tech News and Information for Southern California. Log In | Sign up. Home. News. Headlines. Interviews. Insights and Opinions. Calendar. Jobs. Deals. Fundings. Exits. Member Network. About. Blog. Membership. Contact Us. Follow Us: Top News. Thursday, February 16, 2012.

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Blocking & Tackling ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Blocking & Tackling. February 16, 2012. They say the small stuff you do to accomplish a big goal is often the most important, even if a lot of isn’t glamorous or produces very small incremental benefit. The football analogy is blocking by the offensive line and tackling by the defense, as opposed to the more sensational touchdown pass or or diving interceptio

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Boundless Network Announces Patent on their Group Buying Technology

Austin Startup

Boundless Network today announced that a patent has been issued for their unique GroupBuy solution. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued Patent 8,065,192 relating to systems and methods to leverage organizational spending to realize cost savings on branded products across multiple buyers and entities. Boundless Network’s GroupBuy solution enables multiple buyers within a single organization and buyers across different organizations to purchase products together while still al

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An example of how I’m currently validating a project idea

The Startup Toolkit

This is a follow-up to Give it away in response to the question: “How do you validate interest before the product is built?” I’m going to walk through my thought process and strategy around a new project I’ve been playing with to [hopefully] show what’s happening under the hood. After failing at business blogging several times and then quasi-succeeding, I began to wonder whether many other people suffer from the same problems.

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