December, 2012

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Document Your MVP for a Developer

SoCal CTO

I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs?

Developer 354
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The New Breed of Startups Master These 5 Processes

Startup Professionals Musings

I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries , called “nail it then scale it” (NISI).

Startup 296
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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 228
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Bad Business Habits That Make You Hate Your Company

Mike Michalowicz

Bad Business Habits. There was a time that you loved your work. Maybe you started the business yourself, or you joined a company that was going to take you places. But things have changed, and you hate your company. You dread coming to work. The cause of all this loathing may not be them, it may actually be you. After all we have the sole control over what we think of things.

LLC 150
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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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Be the Startup I Want to Fund

This is going to be BIG.

The other day, I'm in a meeting where someone told me an industry magazine that would be relevent to one of my companies. I texted the founder and got the following response: " Yeah. We were in their last issue.". Oh, umm. yeah. well, carry on. A lot of times, I take meetings with companies that feel a lot more like they're on the outside looking in than they should.

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How important is a video pitch to investors for an early stage start-up?

Gust

There is no one thing (aside from integrity) that is an absolute, and what you need to have when fundraising for a startup will depend to some extent on how you are managing your funding process. A good list of just about everything you could possibly want to have in your arsenal is listed in the answer to What materials or software should I use to pitch a VC?

More Trending

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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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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!

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6 ways to monetize a user-based business model

The Next Web

How do you monetize a unique business model based on users rather than selling an actual product? We asked members of the Young Entrepreneurs Council for their thoughts. Giving it away at Contently. “At Contently, our core monetization strategy is through marketplace transactions. We’ve built (and continue to grow) a network of journalists and a corresponding publisher network.

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Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable

The Equity Kicker

Every now and again I come across a phrase which I wish I’d come up with myself and this is one: Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable. Chris Dixon used it as a title for a post yesterday, and at first I thought the credit was due to him (which wouldn’t have surprised me), but it turns out that President Eisenhower uttered these words in a 1957 speech.

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The Nike+ Accelerator, powered by TechStars

David Cohen

Today, Nike announced their first Nike+ Accelerator program, powered by TechStars. Ten companies will participate in a three-month, mentorship-driven program. The technology focus will be about leveraging the success of the Nike+ FuelBand, Nike+ Running and NikeFuel to support digital innovation. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m a quantified self geek and enjoy data.

Portland 131
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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.

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Three Hard Truths About A/B Testing

ConversionXL

Sometimes A/B testing is made to seem like some magical tool that will fix all problems at once. Conversions low? Well run a test and increase your conversions by 12433%! It’s easy! Setting up and running tests is indeed easy (if you’re using the right tools), but doing it right requires thought and care. 1. Most A/B tests won’t produce huge gains (and that’s okay).

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Twitter Link Roundup #158 – 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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Some Quick Sage Advice for Young Employees Early in Their Careers

Both Sides of the Table

My wife & I have a close friend who recently entered the workforce for his first-ever job. On his first day of work my wife was kind enough to write down words of wisdom from her years on the job. I don’t write about Tania very often – mostly at her request. Otherwise I’d shout from the mountain tops how smart & capable she is.

Employee 414
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New study: Britain leads the world in mobile data consumption, m-commerce and internet TV

The Equity Kicker

New research from Ofcom has found that Britain leads the world in usage of several key technologies: Most likely to access TV content over the internet: 23% of us do so every week (USA is second with 17%). Use more mobile data: In Dec 2011 the average mobile connection downloaded 424 megabytes of data (Japan was second with 392 megabytes). Spend more money online: Average per head spending on ecommerce in 2011 was £1,082 (Australia was second with £842).

Mobile 117
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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
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The City of Orlando and the Workday contract

deal architect

The Orlando Sentinel ran a story “Vendors complain after Orlando spends $ 8.7m on software without bids” I sent the reporter and the Editor this email “I read your article and would like to share some reactions. I am a.

Software 339
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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. —-.

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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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Would the Last Blackberry User Please Turn Out the Lights? I Already Left the Building

Both Sides of the Table

My Blackberry died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. It seems so long ago that we had to start hiding our Blackberry’s in our pockets to avoid always being chastised. If you were caught sending out an email on your Blackberry you had to quickly whip out your iPhone to show that – wait! – I have one of these, too. It is stunning to think about the blind spots that market leaders can develop.

Turkey 386
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10 Entrepreneur Qualities That Tag You as Fabulous

Startup Professionals Musings

To be successful as an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra, like Simon Cowell is searching for on the X-Factor , that you can’t quite put your finger on. But the entrepreneurs that have “it” seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

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Entrepreneurial Re-entry — Businesses for Moms

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Recently Gotham Gal opened the question: What does workforce re-entry mean for the modern mom? She observes that a completely structured environment is unlikely to be fulfilling: I am not so sure that someone who had spent the last ten years at home raising a family has any interest in re-entering at the same speed, level or capacity. I believe most want to re-enter but not after having the flexibility and life that have had for the past ten years.

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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.

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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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Lean startup intro (with no buzzwords)

The Startup Toolkit

Slides from “ Lean startup intro (with no buzzwords) ” by robfitz. Lean gets bogged down in tactics & tools. This presentation is about what are, in my opinion, the big principles behind lean startup. Things are nowhere near as bad as they were in the dotcom days. The typical startup spends little money, focuses on product, and tries to build traction.

Lean 54
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The Valuable Unsung Heroes of Startups

Both Sides of the Table

I got a call Sunday from a business colleague while I was sitting in the lounge at LAX waiting for yet another delayed flight. This colleague is a lawyer with whom I work on a deal and have done so for a couple of years. By all accounts I now consider him a friend. He caught me while I was sipping a Bloody Mary and thinking a bit a business situation that bummed me out.

Startup 363
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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

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Eight Year-End “Must-Dos” For Entrepreneurs And Small Business Owners

YoungUpstarts

by Bill McBean, author of “ The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows that You Don’t “ All year long you’ve been in frantic motion. You’ve put out fires. Solved employee snafus and issues. Juggled conflicting priorities. Fielded exhausting back-to-back meetings, telephone calls, and endless emails. Motivated yourself and others.

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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
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Customer Development in a Diagram

Steve Blank

Thanks to: Alexis Finch, Sketchnotes / UX Research Consultant @agentfin. Filed under: Customer Development.

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The Search For Product Market Fit

Seeing Both Sides

I continue to be fascinated with the changing art of product management. This week, I taught a class at Intelligent.ly on the topic. Intelligent.ly is a new start-up led by Sarah Hodges , who used to be an executive at Run Keeper and Carbonite (full disclosure: Sarah recently joined Flybridge Capital as a part-time advisor). The company is part of a new wave of companies, such as Skillshare, Boston StartUp School and others, to provide "over the top" professional education to help chip away

Search 46
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The Right Question(s) to Ask VCs about Their Availability of Capital

Genuine VC

Most first and second pitch meetings with VCs are fairly lopsided, where entrepreneurs spend the bulk of the time sharing their businesses, rather than being a true exchange of both parties in developing a relationship. However, there is typically (and should be plenty of) time for founders to ask VCs questions about their approach and working-style to help determine if there’s a mutual fit.

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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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[Singapore] Comparing Foreign Exchange Rates With GET4X

YoungUpstarts

Singaporeans travel overseas like there’s no tomorrow. It’s probably because the country is so tiny that traveling just 40 kilometers in any direction requires you to carry your passport. It’s a good thing that the Singaporean passport lets its holder travel to most countries without fuss, and there’s no lack of innovation when it comes to online travel services – social travel discovery and recommendation sites, for example, or airline comparison and booking engine

Singapore 237
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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