SoCal CTO
APRIL 2, 2012
Using my StartupRoar as a radar, I came across a great post by Gabriel Weinberg Do you really need a full-time hire for that? Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. The problem is you don't yet have product/market fit, and until you do, you don't really know what to build.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 2, 2012
After struggling to create your business plan for months, every entrepreneur likes to think that their document is inspirational and will reach someone who is smart enough to see the brilliance of the idea, intuitive enough to recognize their business acumen, and enthusiastic enough to offer the money required to make it happen. Every serious investor, on the other hand, has a stack of these in their in-basket (email or real plastic) awaiting review, and is looking for the flaw or less-capable e
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YoungUpstarts
APRIL 5, 2012
by J. Clint Anderson Ph.D., founder and president of J. Clint Anderson Company. Between increased diversity, growing workload, geographic dispersion, and organizational changes, who has time to worry about a corporate culture? Research shows that when people connect well, organizations succeed. So, the real question is: Can you afford not to invest in your team culture?
ConversionXL
APRIL 4, 2012
If you run an online store, you’re always trying to boost your sales. Here’s how to increase the conversion rate of your ecommerce site. What’s the conversion rate I can be happy with? Don’t worry about ‘average’ rates. A good conversion rate to strive for is better than the one you have right now. There are just too many variables that affect conversions, so its very difficult to have apples to apples comparisons between different sites.
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
ReadWriteStart
APRIL 5, 2012
Two events this week in St. Louis show how vibrant the startup ecosystem has become there. On Wednesday, a group of 13 companies presented to 50 investors, looking to raise an aggregate of $16 million in capital. The companies were all part of Capital Innovators, an accelerator venture fund that has been operating since last fall. Capital Innovators put on the event, called Demo Day, at the cherished Pageant Theater, which normally is a concert venue.
David Teten
MARCH 31, 2012
(An aerial view of Parliament House in Singapore. Photo credit: Wikipedia). I’m exceptionally excited to announce that I’m now Chairman and lead investor with some other angels in a new company, Spright Governance Inc. Spright is a spinoff of the Singaporean government, which will leverage their proven expertise and technology to run other cities, states, and nations globally.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Feld Thoughts
APRIL 2, 2012
I spend all of my working time in the domain of software, Internet, and entrepreneurship. Over the past few years I’ve gotten increasingly involved in a handful of political situations – local, state, and national – that directly impact companies either in the ecosystem I’m part of or that I’ve invested in. Many of these political situations stifle entrepreneurship, innovation, or opportunities for these companies.
ReadWriteStart
APRIL 1, 2012
Are people born innovators, or can they learn to become that way? An interesting new book, "Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World," by Tony Wagner, a member of Harvard's Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, explores this question in detail. It is a must-read for anyone who is thinking of taking the lonely road toward starting one's own venture.
This is going to be BIG.
APRIL 3, 2012
For a solid six or seven minutes, I was pretty pissed at Fred Wilson for his last post on the age of venture capitalists. I even started writing a post defending the new crop of younger investors and why they can be value-add to investors. I was writing against his argument that it's better to take money from an investor over 40. Only. that's not what he wrote at all.
SVPG
APRIL 3, 2012
I have written earlier about the differences between user prototypes (simulations intended to test the user experience), and live-data prototypes (actual code intended to send live traffic to in order to test real behavior). See [link]. We use a live-data prototype (usually in the context of an A/B test) to prove something works, and we perform user testing to understand why it doesn't work, and what we can do to correct.
crowdSPRING Blog
APRIL 1, 2012
Attribution on the web is a controversial topic; ideas, stories, videos, graphics are copied and pasted over and over again, propagating their way across the virtual universe. As an entrepreneur and blogger, I am always pleased when I see my articles shared on other sites, or linked to in the social media. While I would prefer for all of those readers to come over to our blog to read the piece, I certainly understand the value of additional reach that can be gained when my posts are re-published
Growthink Blog
APRIL 2, 2012
This week, the President is expected to pass H.R. 3606 - the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) bill, which includes provisions that for the first time legalize investment-based crowdfunding. While the crowdfunding portion of the bill still needs to go through SEC rule-making, the die is clearly cast that a whole new social networking – based world of start-up and small business investing and financing is coming fast upon us.
viniciusvacanti.com
APRIL 2, 2012
I remember reading the first few pages of Steve Blank’s book, Four Steps to Epiphany , and thinking two things: This is not exactly a page-turner. This is a really smart way of thinking about startups. Soon after, I started attending the Lean Startup meetup in New York and reading Eric Reis’s writings. I was believer. One of the main principles is to release an early prototype of your idea to potential users to get their feedback.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 31, 2012
Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. If you haven’t read Adam Lashinsky’s awesome new book about Apple , you should. It takes on many of the lessons MBA programs and Corporate America have been teaching about business for the past 50+ years and questions whether lessons from Apple might be more applicable in thinking about the future.
Steve Blank
APRIL 3, 2012
Epiphany e·piph·a·ny noun ?/i?pif?n?/. A moment of sudden revelation or insight. We now know how to teach entrepreneurs how to think about business models and use customer development to turn hypotheses into facts. But there is no process to teach how to get an epiphany. We can only try to create the conditions where this might occur. ————-.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 31, 2012
As an entrepreneur, your personal integrity is critical for getting and keeping the support of investors and team members, and your company’s integrity is critical for getting and keeping customers and vendors. But in a practical sense, what does that really mean? Most definitions of integrity include something like “the quality of being honest and morally upright.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
APRIL 3, 2012
This is a guest post by Jarrod Drysdale — a web designer and bootstrapper who recently broke five figure sales for his ebook that teaches bootstrappers do-it-yourself design principles and strategies. He’s worked for startups, financial companies, movie studios, and consumer brands at agencies and as a freelancer. Here, Jarrod analyzes why his value pricing strategy earned more money with fewer sales than the pricing strategy described in last week’s post.
deal architect
APRIL 4, 2012
As she enters her second quarter as IBM’s CEO, Ginni faces a tricky scenario which frankly could qualify her for Veep consideration this summer. What to do about Augusta? Readers?
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 3, 2012
You’re young, strapped for cash, and totally busy with school. It sounds like a terrible time to start a business, but really, things couldn’t be more perfect. We’re seeing a boom in businesses started in tiny dorm rooms, and there’s a really good reason why: college is an ideal time to get your venture off the ground. With incredible support and resources, a low cost of living, and your life spread out before you, right now is when you should be making the leap.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 3, 2012
If your startup desperately needs an investor, you may not care if the investor is a so-called “angel” investor, or a venture capitalist (VC). The money is the same color in either case. But I have found that making the right choice at the right time can have a major impact on your long-term valuation, and the decision process is complex. The basics are simple.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
APRIL 1, 2012
Dateline April 1, 2012. Austin TX. Today WP Engine proudly announces a new WordPress page-caching technology which actually delivers pages before the user clicks the link! In a joint venture with CERN, WP Engine has developed a TCP/IP layer on top of a faster-than-light neutrino beam, delivering page content in negative time. Page state and web analytics is preserved forward in time using quantum-entangled cookies.
deal architect
APRIL 3, 2012
A colleague told me about an outsourcing firm which refuses to adopt SaaS for internal operations because they do not external eyes having access to their data. The irony is seemingly lost on them that their own staff can eye.
entrepreMusings
APRIL 5, 2012
For some reason today was a weird day. It started out with me dragging myself onto the treadmill at 6:00 a.m. Then I sorted through a bunch of email and set up some meetings. I had a good meeting with one of my clients. I even had a good lunch with a potential client. Then it got mixed up in a few ways that illustrate the complexity of us humans and machines as follows: I called my insurance agent to discuss car and homeowners premiums.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 6, 2012
One of the biggest impediments to starting a new venture is the “terror barrier,” as popularized by Bob Proctor , a 75-year-old millionaire and world renowned entrepreneur. This is the imaginary barrier that always seems to appear at the critical point where we would step out ahead of peers or competitors, but fear causes us to stop short. Everyone has a comfort zone, or level of risk, where they feel in control.
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 4, 2012
Small businesses need to learn to be like David when fighting against Goliath ( source of image ) What can Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and independent freelancers do to build their reputations, enhance their businesses, and strengthen their reach? With limited resources and finances, how can these entities carve a space for themselves in an increasingly crowded market with competitors possessing deeper pockets, greater resources and fuller teams?
deal architect
APRIL 5, 2012
Chris Murphy at InformationWeek is one of my favorite technology editors ( He also kindly wrote a blurb for the back cover of my new book.) He has a nice gallery of CIOs each expressing something in their career they.
Feld Thoughts
APRIL 5, 2012
I was going to write something about a new book I’ve just published but I woke up this morning and that felt trivial so I’m going to save it for next week. Instead, I’m going to talk about my day yesterday. My long time friend (dating back to the mid-1990′s) Andy Sack has testicular cancer. Before I get into things, he’s in the middle of chemo, has a 95%+ cure rate, is open and public about what he’s going through, and has an incredibly positive attitude.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 4, 2012
Every dark cloud has a silver lining. Driven by the recent recession, smart entrepreneurs of all ages are jumping into the fray with new ideas, new recovery strategies, and discarding outmoded business models. I see it most in the newest generation of entrepreneurs (Gen-Y), who were shocked out of entitlement into action by the recession. Donna Fenn, in her book from a while back, “ Upstarts!
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 1, 2012
Money talks, but what it has to say happens to be grimmer than, “Timmy is trapped in a well.” Sadly, people tend to turn clogged ears toward its intricacies, and as a result wind up compromising their homes, businesses , and even surrounding neighborhoods. Proper financial education, on a macro and a micro level, helps translate some of what dollars and cents can really do, and their potential to make life as amazing as it does hellish.
deal architect
APRIL 4, 2012
My wife asks me “Is Cisco an innovative company?” And I respond “Yes”. “Wow, they make great robots and cars and music.” And I go, “not the Cisco I know” So, she shows me the commercial below. Hey, if AT&T.
ReadWriteStart
APRIL 6, 2012
Sure, cloud computing offers benefits to companies of all sizes. But the clouds' advantages apply even more dramatically the smaller and newer your company. At the same time, the standard objections to cloud computing matter less to small companies than to large ones. On the plus side, the cloud's economies of scale naturally make a bigger difference when your company is too small to generate similar savings and capabilities on its own.
Occam's Razor
APRIL 2, 2012
A wise person said: "To guarantee success, spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% of the time solving it." I believe deeply in that quote. In my life I spend an extraordinary amount of time understanding the problem and attempting to define it clearly. As if by magic, I find that it is then much easier to find the optimal solution (or realize none exists!).
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 2, 2012
Everyone has bad habits that have a way of showing their face while you’re at work. You may not be the loud talker or the office flirt, but maybe you have a bad habit about coming to work late or spending too much time on Facebook. These habits may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but one thing’s for sure – they drive your co-workers crazy.
deal architect
APRIL 2, 2012
The stats in the Infograhic from Intel below are striking, but it’s easy to dismiss what companies as a whole are doing. Nothing smacks you more than the intensity of individual executives. In my book, Tony Prophet who heads operations.
ReadWriteStart
APRIL 3, 2012
Last week, Amazon welcomed the 1000 Genomes Project data to Amazon S3 as part of the Obama administration's big data initiative (PDF). The initiative is far-reaching and likely to have an impact on a number of businesses. Focusing just on the 1000 Genomes Project, though, I wonder if this might be an opportunity for startups to provide tools or services around the data.
Feld Thoughts
APRIL 6, 2012
At this point I’m literally getting invited to a conference a day. I’ve never enjoyed going to conferences so I pick them carefully and am particular about the kind of things I go to. I regularly get asked how I choose which conferences to go to and I rarely have a good answer. So, after getting asked for the 4,317th time, I sent an email to Eric Norlin, who puts on three conferences that we have helped create and participate in ( Defrag , Glue , and Blur ) how he thinks about it.
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