Wed.May 04, 2011

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Your Toughest Competitor May be Your Best Partner

Startup Professionals Musings

Companies today are paranoid, afraid that even their friends will steal their business. Yet a creative collaboration with your biggest competitor may be the best opportunity for revenue and survival. But remember that “dancing with the wolves” can also get you eaten for lunch. You have to take the risk, but keep your wits about you. Your goal is “ coopetition ” - to find a way to partner with your competitor in such a way that both parties can substantially benefit from the other's resources - w

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Jeff Bezos on Why You Should Have a Plan

Up and Running

Tweet I was happy to pick up this quick piece from Jeff Bezos last month on Business Insider. Jeff, founder of Amazon.com, ought to know. In Business Insider’s Instant MBA series, Jeff says Business Plans Are Important and Necessary. He says it’s not about being right and guessing the future correctly. It’s about guiding your business and managing better: “You know the business plan won’t survive its first encounters with reality.

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How Helping Newbies Led To Big Profits And A Closing Down Sale (Discount Price Ends Friday)

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

One the factors I like to hammer home to people when they create any kind of information, whether it’s blog or website content, membership content, or any kind of paid info product, is not to underestimate how much of your audience truly are beginners. Everyone starts as a beginner. If you are teaching something that requires any kind of practice or knowledge to become proficient in it, then you have a market of beginners ready to be helped.

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How to Say Thank You :: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct.

Duct Tape Marketing

SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND AFFORDABLE SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING Home About Consulting Products Programs Workshops Blog Resources Contact Subscribe by RSS Subscribe to Duct Tape Marketing by Email Small Business Week 2011 Our winners! Mon – Justin Severidt Tues – Elizabeth Frederick Wed – Denise Sheehan Thurs – Nicholas Hammernik Fri – Jennifer Nagel Books by John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – by John J

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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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More Innovation

deal architect

on the New Florence blog Chase mobile deposits Google: Big Data, Simple Algorithms Eggs – HighTech and Low-tech FastCompany’s version of innovation.

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May 18: Young Jewish Professionals Private Equity/Hedge Fund Summit

David Teten

On Wednesday May 18th, the YJP, I, and some other colleagues will be hosting our Young Jewish Professionals Private Equity and Hedge Fund Summit. Hundreds of hedge fund and private equity professionals, executives, and investors will be gathering in Chelsea to meet, mingle, and brew the future over the finest whiskey bar southside. Featured Keynote Panel Speakers are: - Dan Schwartz (CIO and Managing Partner, York Capital). - Scott Prince (Managing Parter, SkyBridge Capital). - Orin Kramer (Bost

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May 26- Capital Roundtable Deal Sourcing Conference

David Teten

The Capital Roundtable is holding a MasterClass May 26 on “ Best Practices for Sourcing Quality Deal Flow & Developing New Business for Private Equity Funds “, and I’m honored to be one of the speakers. The conference is being chaired by Bob Fitzsimmons, of High Road Capital Partners. It’s in Midtown Manhattan. Among the other speakers: - Robert P.

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Entrepreneurial Lessons from 6 Miles Through the Forest

Growthink Blog

Last weekend, I ran a 6 mile adventure race called the Leatherman's Loop. I had to cross three rivers and go through tons of mud. The mud was an issue for me. For a year now I've been running using the "Pose Technique," and this requires me to wear special shoes (similar to racing flats with low heals). Importantly I'm not supposed to tie the laces too tight.

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What It’s Like To Be An Entrepreneur – Mark Achler

crowdSPRING Blog

We’re thrilled to be part of a new web/TV reality series – Trep Life – giving audiences a unique, 360-degree view of what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. Each episode will focus on one company or organization. The first episode was about our friends Matt Maloney and Mike Evans from Grub Hub – a terrific place to find every restaurant that will deliver to you.

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Selling Companies: An Interview with Jeff Bowling

Growthink Blog

I recently interviewed one of my clients, Jeff Bowling. I interviewed Jeff since he has started and sold several businesses. I figured he had several great points to share with you (which he did). One of my favorites was his strategy of becoming a thorn in the sides of his competitors. In fact, he attributes this to his success in successfully selling his most recent company.

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Get Busy Doing and Stop Being Busy Reading

Babbling VC

I was reminded of the wonderful quote from Shawshank Redemption where the main character says to "Get Busy Livin' or Get Busy Dyin'!" . . Well, it isn't much different in the business world. One of the things that crossed my mind this morning when reading yet another blog post about how to do this or that as a successful entrepreneur I wondered how many people get caught up reading and not doing.

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Never get comfortable OR comfortability is the enemy of innovation

Jeff Hilimire

When I look back at my life and see the periods where I wasn’t creating “new&# , its because I became too comfortable. I think its a big reason why I decided a few years ago that I would never have my own office again. Being locked away in an office helped me to get comfortable in my routine, almost creating blinders to what was going on around me.

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Don't Underestimate the Impression Your Assistant/Receptionist Makes

Babbling VC

Here's a tip I give to all my companies. Hire the best damn assistant and/or receptionist you can get. By "the best" I don't mean "the hottest!" If they look good, great. If they are rude, dumb, unattentive or disrespectful, you're screwed. Crap, it doesn't even have to be a woman. We're out of the 50's! Yet, one thing you want to absolutely make sure.

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Horse Trading

ithacaVC

“Horse trading” is a bad phrase in the startup/VC community. It typically is used in the context of someone (often a VC) attempting to change deal terms between a signed term sheet and the closing of the investment. The typical time between term sheet signing and closing is 45 – 60 days so there is ample room (unfortunately) to revisit issues.

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Social Entrepreneurship Business Models

Campus Entrepreneurship

Inc Magazine lays out some social entrepreneurship business models. What do you think? (the article goes into more detail on each type of social venture). The Social Entrepreneurship Spectrum: B Corporations. To become B Corps, businesses must prove that they care as much about society and the environment as they do about profits. The Social Entrepreneurship Spectrum: Nonprofits.

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Twitter Link Roundup #84 – 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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I Love Google’s Style

Feld Thoughts

Today Google announced that they had now raised the limit on number of contacts to 25,000 (from 10,000) for all Gmail users (including Google Apps users.) Boom – done – deployed for everyone – and announced in a short and to the point blog post. 70 days ago I wrote a post titled Dear Google, I Have More Than 10,000 Contacts where I bitched loudly about this problem.

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Eyeview Raises $1 Million Round from Innovation Endeavors

VC Cafe

In 2008, VC Cafe covered the story of EyeView. Three friends won the Harvard Business School business plan competition, carried on with the venture to raise money from respectable VCs in Israel and land clients like Yahoo and eBay. But since then, very little was heard about the company until now. Beet.tv reported that Innovation Endeavors, the VC fund led by Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt, has invested an additional $1 million in Eyeview, bringing the total investment in the company to $

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Decline in Private Equity Deals in Israel for Q1 2011

VC Cafe

IVC Research Center has released the Quarterly Survey of Israeli Private Equity Deals for Q1 2011. Eleven private equity deals in Q1 2011, amounted at $216 million, a 68% decrease from the $668 million in Q1 last year, and a 74% decline from the previous quarter ($826 million). Three of the deals accounted for 65% of the deal volume, according to the report.