Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
Listening to my the family talk about dividing up the cooking chores for this Thanksgiving dinner, including who would peel the potatoes, reminded me that most careers start by peeling potatoes. KP – Kitchen Patrol. One of the iconic punishments in basic training in the military was being threatened by our drill instructors of being assigned to KP – Kitchen Patrol – as a penalty for breaking some rule.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 18, 2012
I know entrepreneurs who have suffered from the dreaded premature execution syndrome often associated with the ready-fire-aim approach. Yet I believe that many more have benefited from this approach, especially in early startup stages. If your product is highly innovative, and speed to market is critical, you won’t get it right the first time anyway, no matter how cautiously you plan.
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YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 20, 2012
Marketers in the Asia Pacific region are upbeat and optimistic about the future of digital marketing, but many confess they still struggle or aren’t confident enough to push forward with digital marketing initiatives especially with budget and talent constraints. According to a new study released today called APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard by the CMO Council in partnership with Adobe Systems – which surveyed 295 senior marketers from a range of industries across Austral
The Next Web
NOVEMBER 17, 2012
Self-employed. Freelancer. Entrepreneur. Business owner. However you label it, these people are making an independent living by themselves and their businesses they have built. These “labels” often blend into one another: those who are self-employed consider themselves business owners, business owners consider themselves entrepreneurs, freelancers consider themselves self-employed.
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
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Guest post by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. At a party in NYC recently, I was challenged by a VC to name the biggest company currently using Lean Startup practices. I think he expected me to describe a medium-sized startup or maybe some small, old-school media organization. So his eyebrows jumped when I said that GE is the largest company we know of.
crowdSPRING Blog
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
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!
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Up and Running
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
These days more than ever, as a business owner and entrepreneur, you need to innovate or die. This mantra is most true for any business in the technology sector. We constantly need to move forward, create new things, better and faster. The pressure that a small business owner has to leverage innovation into growth is only emphasized by the difficult economic climate.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Download the Text Transcript in PDF. Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. This is a good interview. Trust me. You’re not going to want to miss this. Just hit play now. Then grab a copy of Tim’s latest book – The 4-Hour Chef. Timothy Ferriss needs no introduction. I interviewed him previously about his 4-Hour Workweek book, a runaway … Read the rest of this entry » Download the Text Transcript in PDF Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 18, 2012
It’s 4.50am. Sunday morning. And I couldn’t sleep. I have much on my mind since I just returned from a week on the road. 5 days. 3 cities. Late night Mexican food. Beers. Airports. Delays. I left on a Sunday. I had to miss a full day with my family, camping in the mountains. I returned home Friday night at 10pm – too late to see my kids.
SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
One of the recommendations I make all the time to startup founders, is to find other founders who have tackled similar problems as yours and talk to them about how they solved these problems. As an example, I'm working with two sets of founders who are both going to be dealing with Getting Started with a Two-Sided Market Business - they are variants of two sided markets, but have similar characteristics.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 20, 2012
I was reading this weekend the editorial by Corey Powell in the latest issue of Discover magazine We live in an increasingly- quantified world. People know about movie grosses and YouTube views. They know exactly how many friends they have.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work. Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s a good start.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 20, 2012
Every so often I find myself caught up in a really hectic 3-4 week schedule where it seems like I float endlessly betweens meetings. Pitches. Intros. Board Meetings. Conferences. And I get flooded with legal docs, end-of-quarter financial administration, recruiting, whatever. I get sucked up in “Do” mode. Startups Are for Doers. Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 18, 2012
In a day and age where digital is heralded as bringing an end to good old print , perhaps its somewhat surprising that a technology company is looking to buck that trend. Evernote , which makes the note-taking app of the same name, has teamed up with notebook and accessory brand Moleskine to produce the Evernote Smart Notebook. The Evernote Smart Notebook is so named because it can be used like any regular notebook – in both ruled and squared page styles – where you pen down your dee
deal architect
NOVEMBER 20, 2012
John and Julie, in their 80s, die in a fiery crash. St. Peter apologizes for their last few minutes on earth, and promises eternal bliss – endless golf for John, and no more domestic chores for Julie. A month into.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 17, 2012
Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Non-organic growth would include OEM relationships, finding strategic partners, “coopetition,” as well as acquisitions.
Gust
NOVEMBER 18, 2012
Image via eHow.com. Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” Many entrepreneurs stumble at this point, losing the deal or most of their ownership, by having no answer, saying “make me an offer,” or quoting an exorbitant number. I’ve written about this before, but it’s a mysterious subject, and I’m always learning more.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
Think you can do as you will online without any thought about consequences? Well, think again. You may not realize that there’s a 90-percent chance that recruiters would have Googled your name to check out what kind of shenanigans you’ve been up to, and if they see something they don’t like you’re unlikely to get that phone call you may desperately be waiting for.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 18, 2012
on the innovation blog Hotels for the “tech savvy, design forward” The explosion of social analytics The Big Data of Oracle Team USA Google’s $ 249 laptop for everyone Newsweek’s 2012 Green Ratings The iPad Mini Spray Painted Battery Nice.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 22, 2012
Behind most great startup success stories is a long list of mistakes! Unfortunately, for every success story you see, there is an even longer list of failure stories with mistakes that you don’t see. But rather than dwell on the failures, I’ve tried to extract from them a list of practical action items that will improve your survival probability. Every startup mentor has his favorite list of basic strategies to avoid pitfalls, and I’m no exception.
Gust
NOVEMBER 22, 2012
In very general terms, roughly 1,500 startups get funded by venture capitalists in the US, and 50,000 by angel investors. VCs look at around 400 companies for every one in which they invest; angels look at 40. There are several million “startups” that are formed each year, so one way of looking at it is that there are several million “great people with a good idea who give up because they just cannot get initial funding” On the other hand, those VCs and angel investors sp
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Online marketing can be daunting for many small businesses, especially since many of them lack the right expertise and background in both marketing and technology. But a new mobile application may be what they’re looking for: Glyder , an iPhone application that lets small businesses create and share effective marketing messages for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, as well as email, text message, MailChimp and even Passbook.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 22, 2012
I recently saw a news item which had a buff looking Jabba the Hut (buff for Jabba) with a young looking Hans Solo. I racked my brains – was that from Star Wars 1,2…oh wait, that would be 4,5 …and.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 20, 2012
Many entrepreneurs forget that their success is more about helping other people than about personally becoming famous, or overcoming the odds and getting rich. A successful business has to satisfy customers with a strong team, by helping them solve problems, save money, or experience more pleasure. That means more focus on helping others achieve their goals.
The Next Web
NOVEMBER 21, 2012
The Namib Desert beetle lives in an area that only gets half an inch of rainfall per year, and so it draws 12 percent of its weight in water from the air to quench its thirst. NBD Nano co-founder Deckard Sorensen was inspired by the beetle to the point that he created a self-filling water bottle, which he hopes to bring to the market by 2014. Every morning, the beetle climbs to the top of a sand dune, faces away from the wind, and ensures that water condenses in hydrophilic areas of its back.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Get ready to be jealous – green with envy, to be more precise. Did you know that the combined net worth of the 25 wealthiest Americans is more than US$500 billion? Or that 14 of the 25 most wealthy people in the world actually live in the United States? But Americans aren’t exactly the wealthiest people on the planet (although it does have over 400 billionaires, the highest number in the world).
deal architect
NOVEMBER 22, 2012
On the New Florence blog The awesome slate at Cognizant Community Fan Conventions Technology and the 2012 World Series Media Room Makeover Vail Resorts EpicMax app Hawaii’s night of tsunami technology and terror Customer experience as a service Data encoded.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
“Will the dogs eat the dog food?” This rather crude expression weighs heavily on the mind of all good startup founders, no matter how confident they appear. We all know the products they give away, and the ones purchased by family and friends don’t count. The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy.
The Equity Kicker
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
I always enjoy reading Paul Graham’s essays and his latest one How to get startup ideas is another great read. If you are an entrepreneur looking for ideas then I highly recommend you read the whole thing, particularly taking note of the common errors (building for a problem nobody has and trying too hard to come up with startup ideas). I’m going to focus on one of the by-products of Paul’s essay which is a list of indicators that an idea might be good or an idea might be bad.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Technology is changing the face of education. The classroom that once consisted only of traditional teaching aids today is inundated with technology such as e-books and reading devices , and even employs cloud technology. Hell, you can even use QR codes for classroom purposes ! Here’s an interesting trend that’s also happening – tech giant Apple is dominating the tech war for today’s classrooms.
Lightspeed Venture Partners
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Season 4 of week 10 of Shark Tank was interesting because two of the pitches were for internet businesses that I could imagine seeing in my day job as a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalis t. I cover one of them, for Nearly Newlyweds, over at Entrepreneur.com. Tie Try. The other one was for a company that describes itself as Netflix for neckties. The two founders are attorneys in Mobile, Alabama, who found themselves wearing the same ties over and over again, and wanted to find a way to expand the
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 21, 2012
Women entrepreneurs are starting small businesses at approximately twice the national average for all startups. Despite some inaccurate stereotypes, the evidence is that they are in every industry, from small consulting firms to medical high technology. As a result, there have also been many new resources and mentors popping up specifically aimed at women.
The Equity Kicker
NOVEMBER 21, 2012
A new report out from the Startup Genome and Telefonica Digital ranks London as the seventh best startup ecosystem in the world. As you can see from the table above Silicon Valley comes out top and Tel Aviv is the only city outside the US that comes ahead of London. There are always questions over methodology with reports like this, but the research takes data from 50,000 startups and seems pretty robust, although it would be good to know how the different components were weighted to produce the
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 21, 2012
Feeling stressed at the workplace because you’re pressured to do more, faster, with less? Well, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey sponsored by business application platform provider TrackVia , a whopping 84-percent of non-executive workers reported that they feel pressured – at least occasionally – to do their work faster.
This is going to be BIG.
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
As we prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I think a lot about the future of the physical retail landscape. As I walk around my neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, I count every storefront whose products or services could be better delivered over the internet. The count is unfortunately high. Pretty much anywhere you buy items that aren't food, you could probably get them cheaper on the web, with a wider selection.
Life Beyond Code
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Think about this for a brief moment. What makes you happy? This seems like a million dollar question. Some of you may know the answer instantly and some of you may have to struggle with it for a while before you get a solid answer. I have asked this question to hundreds of people and the answers have varied from person to person. Two Influencing Factors.
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