Wed.Feb 06, 2013

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How to Configure Your Startup Team

Both Sides of the Table

I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. Final startup grind from msuster. How you build out your team in the first few years can have a huge impact on the trajectory of your company.

Cofounder 388
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Tips To Keep Your POS System Running Smoothly

YoungUpstarts

by Tony Alverez. The last thing any business owner wants to worry about is whether the point-of-sale (POS) system is working. For a seamless POS experience, it’s important that you choose a good system, and that you maintain it properly. By proactively maintaining both the hardware and the software as outlined below, you can avoid the headache caused by malfunctioning hardware and software. 1.

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Why Women Make Better Business Leaders

Up and Running

I like this video from OnlineMBA.com. And here’s the intro for it, quoted from that site: There’s no question that women are making large strides in U.S. business and technology fields. Today’s generation of women professionals are more likely than any other to found, lead or advise a major U.S. firm. But while women continue to secure increasingly high-level leadership positions, there are still some glaring imbalances.

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The Small Business Content Marketing Paradox

crowdSPRING Blog

“Content marketing” refers to creating information (content) that has value to others. The creator of the content ultimately wants to sell a product or service to prospective buyers who benefit from the content, but the goal of content marketing is rarely to sell directly. Instead, the goal of content marketing is to encourage people to read and perhaps engage with the content, and to begin developing a relationship with the person or entity that created that content.

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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 data heroes

deal architect

In my post So you want to be a (Big) Data Hero I highlighted several examples of impressive payback from projects around predictive maintenance of railcar wheels, hurricane tracking, crop insurance, water leakage etc. As I continue research on my.

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JFDI.Asia Announces 2013 Startup Lineup

YoungUpstarts

Singapore-based technology startup incubator Joyful Frog Digital Incubator – better known locally as JFDI.Asia – today unveiled a lineup of eight technology startups set to participate in its 100-day accelerator program this year. This is the second time the initiative is being run – last year, JFDI.Asia ‘s JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp saw some 11 local and regional technology startups undergo a similar program that saw them attempt to turn a prospective idea into a potentially sustainable d

Singapore 157

More Trending

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If you don’t “get” why Snapchat is growing so fast, read this

Lightspeed Venture Partners

When we invested in Snapchat a year ago it had a few hundred thousand installs, but incredible retention and frequency of usage. Evan and Bobby painted a compelling story of how ephemeral messaging created a more real and authentic mode of communication, one where you weren’t “performing” for the every present audience in most social media, from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter.

Viral 167
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Never, ever outsource your core

Version One Ventures

It’s inevitable that any startup will lack expertise in some key areas needed to grow their business. The question is: should you hire and bring that expertise in-house or outsource it? Just last week, two startups reached out to get advice on this hire vs. outsource dilemma. The first startup, a vertical SaaS company, wondered if they should bring someone on board to run their paid search marketing campaigns or outsource it to an agency.

PR 165
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The Art of Graceful Disagreement

Life Beyond Code

Disagreement is hard and graceful disagreement is an art that you MUST master. Have you been in a situation where: You want to disagree but you don’t know how the other person will feel so you end up agreeing to something that you don’t buy-in. You want to be a good sport so you go along even if you don’t agree to a proposition. You don’t have the courage to disagree so you end up agreeing to something.

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A Problem With Gmail When The Machines Take Over

Feld Thoughts

In general, I love Gmail. While Amy likes to complain to me about how ugly it is, I don’t even see the UI anymore as I just grind through the endless stream of email that I get each day. My biggest struggle is figuring out how to keep up, without the email ending up dominating everything I do. In the past year, this has gotten a lot harder, but I continue to try new things.

Email 140
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How to Run Faster (as an Entrepreneur)

This is going to be BIG.

The other day I set a personal best in the 4mi NYRR Gridiron classic, coming in at 26:16 for a pace of 6:34min/mi. I finished 203rd out of over 5600 people who ran. One of my Twitter friends asked me for tips on improving pace. My answer "Run faster." :). Ok, so it was a wiseass answer. Obviously, people are looking for the answer to "How do I run faster?

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What does a COO do and should you hire one?

The Equity Kicker

A number of our companies have been addressing this question recently, so it’s been on my mind, and having just read some thoughts on the question on Elad Blog I thought I would get my own thinking straight. These two posts from Vinod Khosla are also a good resource on COOs and the evolution of senior management teams generally. In companies with under 100 people COOs typically do some or all of the following: finance.

Hiring 116
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Feb. 28, Stamford, CT: HBS Event on Angel Investing 101 – Best Practices

David Teten

I hope you can join us 6:30 pm EST, February 28th in Stamford, CT for a HBS Alumni Angels event on Angel Investing 101 – Best Practices. Click here to make a reservation. Speakers: - Bob Dahl, HBS Alumni Angel, formerly head of Global Healthcare for the Carlyle Group. - Susan Balloch, Managing Director, Golden Seeds; formerly Executive Director and Principal, The Blackstone Group. - Karen Bantuveris, CEO of VolunteerSpot ( ff VC and angel-backed startup with 2.5m moms). - David Teten, Part

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How to Use Personalized Content and Behavioral Targeting For Improved Conversions

ConversionXL

500 different people go to Amazon.com. Each one sees a different version of the home page. How come? It’s personalized! It’s no secret why Amazon does that: content personalization makes money. A new survey by Adobe and Econsultancy finds that 52% of digital marketers consider the ability to personalize web content to be fundamental to their online strategy.

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We're not crushing it

Hippoland

Photo credit: lejoe. Last year, I ran into an acquaintance of mine, a fellow entrepreneur. “Hey, how’s it goin?” I asked. “Great! We’re crushing it. We’re about to sign 3 deals” he replied exuberantly like so many other entrepreneurs I run into. ”How’s LaunchBit doing?” . “Pretty good.

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Articulating the Problem is the First Step Toward Solving It

OnlyOnce

Articulating the Problem is the First Step Toward Solving It. A while back, we were having some specific challenges at Return Path that were * really * hard to diagnose. It was like peeling the proverbial onion. Every time we thought we had the answer to what was going on, we realized all we had was another symptom, not a root cause. We’re a pretty analytical bunch, so we kept looking for more and more data to give us answers.

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What The Rails Security Issue Means For Your Startup

www.kalzumeus.com

Kalzumeus Software. Patrick McKenzie (patio11) blogs on software development, marketing, and general business topics. Blog. Greatest Hits. Standing Invitation. Start Here If You’re New. About. What The Rails Security Issue Means For Your Startup. Posted on January 31, 2013. by Patrick. in security , startups. January has been a very bad month for Ruby on Rails developers, with two high-severity security bugs permitting remote code execution found in the framework and a separate-but-related

Security 101
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5 Quick & Easy Things That'll Make You a Better Manager

Growthink Blog

This is a true and pretty ridiculous story that happened to me at my first job. It was about 20 years ago and I was working at a market research firm. After working in the job for nearly 6 months, I had an idea for a new product. You see, our company had been selling access to a large database of information to our clients. My idea was to better package the information.

Stealth 83
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Thomas Smale, Professional Website Broker, Explains How To Value Your Website, How To Find A Buyer And Everything You Need To Know About Website Flipping

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Tweet Download the Text Transcript in PDF. Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. Thomas Smale is a website broker, who founded Flipping Enterprises. He helps connects buyers and sellers of websites and has been involved in more than $5 million in deals last year alone. Before starting out in brokering, Thomas bought and sold websites himself, which is how … Read the rest of this entry » Download the Text Transcript in PDF Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes Thomas Smale is a website br

RSS 85
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Hiring Advisors or Finding Mentors

Babbling VC

As a VC and even now, I have a pet peeve about hired advisers (or board members) at very early stage businesses. In general, start-ups should not be paying for advice up until a certain point. Sure, there comes a time when you have to pay external professionals. Early on you're most likely going to need legal advice and here I urge you to work with the best.

Hiring 75
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How I Bargained To Save $200 On An iPad

ReadWriteStart

You know the feeling you get when your 2-year mobile contract is up and you start thinking about what kind of new smartphone or tablet you can justify buying? It’s almost like being a kid in November knowing Christmas is coming soon. That was how I felt as the service contract for my Motorola Xoom tablet was set to expire in January. I thought I wanted an iPad this time, but the cost seemed too high.

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Will Facebook Remain Relevant?

Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Ekaterina Walter. With over a billion users, a place in the everyday life of over 60% of Internet users and a track record as one of the fastest growing companies in history, the title of this post may seem odd. photo credit: Anirudh Koul via photopin cc. But, like every white-hot phenomenon, Facebook must continue to evolve to remain relevant in the lives of those that built it.

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We're not crushing it

Hippoland

'Photo credit: lejoe. Last year, I ran into an acquaintance of mine, a fellow entrepreneur. "Hey, how’s it goin?" I asked. "Great! We’re crushing it. We’re about to sign 3 deals" he replied exuberantly like so many other entrepreneurs I run into. ”How’s LaunchBit doing?” . "Pretty good. Just chugging along…" which is my standard response for this question.

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Getting pretty excited about the Fitbit

Jeff Hilimire

After attending CES in January and getting more exposure to all of the wearable, fitness-based type of devices (such as the Jawbone UP which I tried for a little while ), I decided to go all-in with the Fitbit. I had played with the Fitbit previously and for several reasons, including boredom, lack of bluetooth syncing, and as Louis CK jokes about weighing himself, “I wasn’t doing anything with the information”, I eventually put it down and never picked it back up.

Mobile 55
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What to Consider When Starting a Company With Your Spouse

Business Plan Blog

'Starting a business can be a risky endeavor (quitting your job, spending your savings, good potential for failure, and the list goes on). Starting a business with your spouse can be even riskier when you consider your shared finances, your retirement funds, your relationship, your mental health and happiness. Before you risk everything, ask yourself the following questions: Are you willing, able and ready to work together?

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Leadership Lessons for Entrepreneurs from Jethro (Moses' Father-in-Law)

Seeing Both Sides

I was in synagogue last weekend for a cousin's bat mitzvah and was struck by the entrepreneurial lessons from the weekly Torah portion. The portion was Exodus 18 , where Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, sits down with him and gives him some mentorship: What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening.The thing that you do is not good.

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[Hong Kong] Make a Difference Venture Fellows: A New Generation of Asian Entrepreneurs

YoungUpstarts

A new Make a Difference (MaD) Venture Fellows Programme took place in Hong Kong from 24-27 January. The Programme aims to celebrate and support a new generation of ‘doing good’ and ‘doing well’ entrepreneurs who seek to change the world for the better. “We take a very board view of what make a difference can mean, because we believe ‘doing good’ should go mainstream and sustainability should be an integral part of every business,” explains Rachel Chan, Conveno

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12 Questions: Meet Sandie (USA)

crowdSPRING Blog

In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.

Indiana 60
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Microsoft Office 2013, Google Users Not Apply

Venture Chronicles

Like a lot of people I depend on Office to do my job. I have tried a range of personal productivity applications and nothing comes close to Office in terms of depth of features and overall completeness of the product. It is nothing short of a stunning achievement that changed the way we work. When I switched to a Mac a decade ago I continued to use Office with one exception, Outlook on the Mac is okay but not great.

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Not All Entrepreneurs are Cut From the Same Cloth

Startup Professionals Musings

Anyone who works with entrepreneurs will tell you that all are different. Some are really inventors, who view the challenges of building a business as a necessary evil. Others are really marketers out to make money fast, and believe that they can entice customers to any offering. Some just want to change the world and make it a better place. But none have any lock on success.

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Use The Phoenix Effect To Make Customers Raving Fans

Mike Michalowicz

If your customers feel someone or something is superior to them, they will envy it. And if you are that “superior” thing, envy is not good. When customers envy something, they will try to pull it down. For example, if you envy Donald Trump (you shouldn’t) you may try to pull him down by saying he was given his business by his father and couldn’t have done it on his own, or that he doesn’t deserve it and is just lucky, or that he is likely doing shady deals.

Phoenix 76