Thu.Jan 24, 2013

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Seven Lessons The Business World Can Learn from The Downfall Of Lance Armstrong

YoungUpstarts

by Bruce Piasecki, author of “ Doing More with Teams: The New Way to Winning ” Over the past few months, sports fans around the world have watched the downfall of the most celebrated cyclist of all time: Lance Armstrong. Just last week his televised confession interview with Oprah Winfrey — where he admitted to doping, using blood transfusions, and more — riveted the public.

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Beauty Pays: Beautiful Websites (and People) Get Better Results

ConversionXL

Does beauty sell? Most people would intuitively say ‘yes’, but what evidence is there that supports the claim? In today’s article we’ll take a look at the world of beautiful people, products and design. How being beautiful has it’s upsides and sometimes, things to look out for. Welcome to the world of beautiful design, beautiful people, beautiful products, beautiful everything.

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7 Must Have Features If You Sell Products Online

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Tweet Last year I did a lot of online shopping, more shopping than I have ever done before. I suspect if you’re a net addict as I am, you spent more online last year than ever before too. According to Comscore, over $43.2 Billion was spent online in 2012. That’s up 15% from 2011. It’s a cliché to say now that online shopping is the real deal, and not just a fad.

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The missing element in Enterprise Clouds: Capex

deal architect

Listen to any IBM or Verizon or SAP cloud pitch and somewhere, somehow the old bullet “We will turn your capex into opex” will show up. The elephant in the room is “Where do that customer capex disappear?” It should.

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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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Don’t Let One Customer Kill Your Online Reputation

Startup Professionals Musings

These days, your online Internet reputation is your reputation. Of course, having no reputation is usually better than a bad one, but don’t wait for someone else to establish a good one for you. It’s time for every business and business person to proactively create a positive presence, before someone else puts you in a defensive mode that is hard to win.

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Canada announces new startup visa program to attract entrepreneurs starting on April 1

The Next Web

The Canadian government announced on Thursday it will launch a new program on April 1 to encourage startup founders who will (hopefully) create new jobs and spur economic growth in the country. As part of a series of transformational changes to Canada’s immigration system, the Start-Up Visa Program aims to link international entrepreneurs with private sector organizations in Canada that have experience working with startups to provide essential resources.

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More Trending

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Startups for Startups: The Top B2B Tools Used by Startups

VC Cafe

Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. – Paul Graham, Ycombinator. Picks and Axes. In his list of startup ideas for Ycombinator applicants, one category in particular drew my attention – “Startups for Startups” [.]. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more!

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Just Starting Up? Here Are Five Things You Should Look At.

YoungUpstarts

So your dormitory mates and you have come up a good idea, and have even started work on a prototype. Now you’re even thinking of taking the crucial next step – starting up as an official company. Congratulations! But now you’re asking yourself: what do we do next? Well, starting and building a new company is never easy, and you need to stack all the odds in your favor.

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Applications for Our 2013 Summer Fellowship Program Now Open

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed is excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for our Summer Fellowship Program. The program is designed to be a unique opportunity for student led teams to spend the summer experiencing what it is like to build a company with resources, mentorship and guidance from our team. We started the program 7 years ago because we wanted to provide an opportunity for entrepreneurial students to fully experience start-up life but still get paid what they would at a top internship

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We Are The Lucky Ones

Feld Thoughts

I participated in the lip dub of the song Lucky Ones, created by the gang at Undrip. They did this as a fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Sandy – I just contributed $900 to the effort ($300 each to Not Just Bagels , Jersey Shore Apparel , and Bungalow Bar & Restaurant ). I think you’ll enjoy the song – it’s fun and, if you are so inspired, help out the fundraiser.

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Your fundraising strategy depends on whether you’re startup is hot

The Equity Kicker

I spoke at a workshop this morning where most of the participants were CEOs and founders of early stage startups. We talked about the state of the market, what makes a good investor, and how to go about raising money and afterwards I was struck by how much of the fundraising advice given to startups is really only good advice for hot startups. The clearest example of this came from one CEO who had raised large rounds on multiple occasions who advised only talking to five investors and making the

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Cohen / Calacanis Interview on This Week In Startups

Feld Thoughts

A few weeks ago I did a long interview with Jason Calacanis on This Week In Startups. I got a bunch of positive feedback on it and thought it was one of the better long form interviews I’ve done in a while. The other day Jason released an interview that he recently did with David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars. I listened to it earlier today – it was also excellent.

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Shifting from a product company to a sales/marketing company

VC Adventure

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused. It seems worthy of a post (and hopefully getting some feedback on).

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Webinar: How to Write a Winning business Plan

Up and Running

If you missed the webinar on “ How to Write a Winning Business Plan ,” you can still watch it below. You get to see how quick and easy it is to create both a dynamic business pitch and a business plan that supports your brilliant business idea. We’ve also included answers to the questions we were not able to get to during the live webinar.

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Spredfast and Bazaarvoice Complete Integration

Austin Startup

Bazaarvoice has helped brands harness the power of consumer ratings and reviews since 2005 supporting over 30% of the world’s greatest brands like Best Buy, The Home Depot, Geico, Samsung, Walmart, and Brooks Brothers. Bazaarvoice helps these brands use trusted opinions from real product owners to help influence purchasing decisions. Spredfast helps many of those same brands build their social presence by sharing compelling content and engaging with consumers across social channels.

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Update your banker in good times and bad.

Berkonomics

You’ve heard the old one – that a banker always seems willing to offer a loan when you don’t need it. For small businesses, there is such truth in that statement that you can trust the story to be based in reality from experience. There are great exceptions for growing businesses and for businesses that have a track record with a banker. Working capital loans and lines of credit are needed for growth and during times of business stress.

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How To Build a Business People Want To Refer

Duct Tape Marketing

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Don Campbell – Enjoy! What if - instead of relying on expensive paid ad campaigns and direct sales, your business thrived on referrals from happy customers? That’s the promise of a book I read a few months ago that profoundly changed my business – The Referral Engine.

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Gregg Fraley on CANTV Tonight (Jan. 24, 2013)

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

An “out of the blue” telephone call has me appearing on cable tv in Chicago tonight at 7 PM CST. It’s the National Speakers Association program on cable channel 21, or “CAN TV” The title of the show is “Speakers on Speaking” with host Johnny Campbell. Campbell is the Chicago chapter NSA President (technically it’s NSA Illinois).

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3 insightful posts on entrepreneurship

Hippoland

I usually don’t spend a lot of time on consumer internet products — sometimes Facebook, sometimes Twitter and that’s about it. But in the last few months, I’ve gotten really sucked into this new service called Quibb. Its format is similar to Hacker News or Reddit. You can submit stories/links or write your own thoughts. And, you can vote on other people’s submissions. .

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Building Convertible Debt into the Premoney Valuation

ithacaVC

Having a relatively small about of convertible debt on your balance sheet prior to your Series A financing is not a bad thing. I am a big fan of convertible debt (with appropriate terms). Typically the convertible debt automatically converts in a Series A round of at least $X within Y time frame. So $X might be at least $1mm and Y time frame might be within 18 months of the convertible debt issuance.

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Shifting from a product company to a sales/marketing company

VC Adventure

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused. It seems worthy of a post (and hopefully getting some feedback on).

Sales 48
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3 insightful posts on entrepreneurship

Hippoland

'I usually don’t spend a lot of time on consumer internet products — sometimes Facebook, sometimes Twitter and that’s about it. But in the last few months, I’ve gotten really sucked into this new service called Quibb. Its format is similar to Hacker News or Reddit. You can submit stories/links or write your own thoughts. And, you can vote on other people’s submissions. .

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Sign up via email to receive my latest posts

Jeff Hilimire

A bunch of people have asked me to create a way for people to subscribe to this blog via email and I finally got off my lazy bum and set that up. You can see it right there on the right side of this blog, or you can click here. I personally prefer to use Google Reader to sign up via RSS for blogs I follow. Then I religiously use Reeder on my iPhone and iPad , and recently I’ve started to use the iPad Feedly app as well.

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Real Names Be Proof

aweissman.com

Sometimes I forget to appreciate how amazing Internet services can be. By that I mean how often they can expose the real world to us. Which is interesting because the criticism of our Internet-always-connected-society is that it removes us from the real world, it creates false virtual connections in place of real human ones. Not true. These services can bring the real world to us in ways we could never have imagined.

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The Killer Angels

Venture Chronicles

A few months ago I read the Civil War novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. A non-fiction work, this is a historical account of the battle of Gettysburg that is written in the style of a novel where characters develop and intimacy, flaws, and achievement are revealed as the novel progresses. After having read it I can understand why historians call this book one of the greatest novels about the Civil War.

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28 Ways To Wake Up Earlier

Mike Michalowicz

You know the saying: “The early bird gets the worm.” Now, I don’t know if you are in the worm business, or if you are even a bird for that matter. But, if you are an entrepreneur, the early time of the morning is when you can get a lot of work done. Here are twenty eight ways you can wake up earlier. 1. Leave The Shades Open. Its simple.

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The 3 Critical Ways To Build Trust Via Your Website

Mike Michalowicz

There are many different types of websites. Marketing (think brochure), E-commerce (think eBay), Informational (think Wikipedia), Data Collection (think of the countless forms you fill out with those annoying required fields), etc. Regardless of the type of site you have, the key to a successful user experience is trust. They must trust that your site is safe, secure, effective, reliable, friendly, the list goes on and one.