Mon.Dec 05, 2011

article thumbnail

Pound Around the World – My Thoughts from Random Hacks of Kindness

VC Cafe

This weekend, I took part in Random hacks of Kindness, a social enterprise hackathon taking place all around the world (Google is one of the sponsors). I usually attend these things as a mentor, but this time I decided to roll up my sleeves, pitch an idea and get a project done in one weekend (48 hours). Time flew by and it didn’t feel like ‘work’ Since the organizer in London was a charity call Mybnk (teaching youth financial literacy), the problem we focused on was financial

article thumbnail

I Want Someone to “Amazon” Health Insurance

Andrew Payne

We pay about $1600/month for family health insurance. It’s a pretty good HMO plan from Blue Cross/Blue Shield of MA (BCBSMA), and we’ve been generally happy with their benefits. However, we miss ten years ago, when it was $600/month, with better benefits. Of course, rising health costs is a national debate topic, and BCBSMA prides itself in paying out relatively a high percentage (90%) of premiums for member medical services.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The unimportance of product names

37signals.com

This is Signal vs. Noise , a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products. Jobs: See more on our Job Board. The unimportance of product names. Matt. Apr 27 2010. 43 comments Latest by Johan Strandell. Don’t waste too much time on picking a perfect name for your product.

article thumbnail

Easy to criticize, hard to create

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

(Powered by LaunchBit ). I can rip any business idea to shreds. Take NetFlix: The costs of inventory logistics, millions of non-technical customers, the Postal Service, and loss from wear and delivery will make profit impossible with a reasonable retail price. Movie-watchers are accustomed to the immediate gratification of browsing and selecting. People will copy movies, pissing off suppliers.

Lean 281
article thumbnail

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

article thumbnail

6 Tips to Choosing a Great Company/Product Name

www.startupnextdoor.com

Startup Next Door. Venture without Capital. home. coming soon. about. contact. « Don’t Let Them Know You’re Alone. The Self-Serve Startup » 6 Tips to Choosing a Great Company/Product Name. 2010. February. 25. Jump to. Comments. When naming your company you’re naming your baby. So give your baby a name that will still be a good name when she’s all grown up.

article thumbnail

Substitute S for Z?

deal architect

TechCrunch brazenly had a URL of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz about the SAP announcement of its SuccessFactors acquisition. I must admit I had an Animal House moment: “They cannot make fun of our enterprise vendors, only we can!” Then I saw Peter Goldmacher.

More Trending

article thumbnail

More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Popular Science Best of 2011 The magic of diasporas Martin Scorsese on creativity The fascinating history of Zero

170
170
article thumbnail

[Singapore] SingTel Innovation Exchange Introduces myBusiness Techblog

YoungUpstarts

SingTel Innovation Exchange (Six) – the partner development program of Singapore-headquartered Asia telecommunications provider SingTel – has launched myBusiness techblog , an online information resource on business, innovation and technology, targeted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Many SMEs tend to find it difficult to identify useful technology solutions that are relevant and applicable to their businesses, and SingTel Innovation Exchange (Six) hopes to plug that gap wit

Singapore 160
article thumbnail

Investors Fund Solutions Rather Than Technology

Gust

Too many entrepreneurs develop a new product without regard for market demand , then build an entire strategy based on creating a need, rather than acting on an existing market need. Investors characterize this approach as a “solution looking for a problem.” These don’t get funded. The best startups find a way to drive the market with their technology, rather than push their new technology-driven ‘solution’ on the marketplace.

article thumbnail

Retrofit – Data Driven Weight Loss

Feld Thoughts

If you’re a regular reader, you know about my interest in the quantified self and exercise. You also know my struggle with losing that “last 20 pounds” which I’ve finally decided I am going to do once and for all. As part of this, I’m using a new program called Retrofit which was created by Jeff Hyman, a long time friend and entrepreneur, and some of the leading weight loss experts in the country .

article thumbnail

Check Your Tech – How to Avoid Unnecessary SEO Surprises

Rembrandt Communications

It’s been months since you did extensive, search engine optimization (SEO) keyword research and added the appropriate tags to your site. Lately, you’ve been focusing on other things like landing pages, newsletters, case studies, and more. But as you scan the Web one day, you notice that your site is not showing up in the [.].

SEO 113
article thumbnail

Boulder’s Entrepreneurial Weakness – Space

Feld Thoughts

I’ve talked a lot on this blog about the great things about the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem. Over the past five years it’s been awesome to see things really blossom. But there are always problems of some sort. And we have a few here in Boulder which – in the spirit of helping understand how entrepreneur ecosystems work over time – are worth pointing out and talking about.

Community 132
article thumbnail

Reverse Engineering a Career

This is going to be BIG.

I run into a lot of people trying to switch careers and join a startup. They're trying to get product positions and marketing jobs in particular, but they don't have any prior experience. That leaves them in the infinite loop of not being able to get the job because you don't have experience, but not being able to get any experience, etc, etc. It's a solvable problem.

Engineer 119
article thumbnail

Objective Logistics & Keeping Things in Perspective ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Objective Logistics & Keeping Things in Perspective. December 5, 2011. NextView’s most recent investment was announced last week , and we’re excited to be investors in Objective Logistics. Objective Logistics is taking a pretty sexy approach to a less than sexy, yet massive problem… namely how do you optimize the scheduling of service industry work

article thumbnail

Amazing Aviation Facts

Start Up Blog

I recently did an Ignite talk on Amazing Aviation. People were blown away with some of the facts I presented. Many of them are very surprising. Here’s some of the doozies in a top 10 list! Only 5% of the worlds population have ever been on an airplane. Flight is not the safest form of travel. The bus is on all measures. The motorcycle is the most dangerous on all measures.

New York 112
article thumbnail

Direct From Google: How To Build A Quality Website In 2012

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

I hear a lot of webmasters complain day in and day out about all the changes that Google constantly makes to its algorithm and how they affect our search engine placement. Let me break it to you: it’s not all about what Google has done and will do to update its algorithm. It’s about what you SHOULD BE doing.

Algorithm 111
article thumbnail

The Secret to Creating Raving Fans: Good Customer Service Isn’t Enough

Up and Running

I’m old school. I came up in a time when the customer was always right (even when they weren’t!). In my first job at Dunkin Donuts, I learned quickly what that meant. I was 14, given the job because my mother, who managed another store by the same owner decided I needed something to “keep me out of trouble”… and I had an attitude.

article thumbnail

NYC 3.0

thebarefootvc

Now that I’m back full time in NYC, I decided to run for the Board of NY Tech Meetup, a dynamic community of 20,000 entrepreneurs, investors, developers, designers and people interested in tech. Founded in 2004, it has grown in leaps and bounds along with NYC’s tech sector. My view is that it’s time to harness the incredible enthusiasm and talent of these individuals to drive impact, locally in NYC as well as nationally and globally.

Ghana 84
article thumbnail

Forget About the Numbers

Growthink Blog

As any venture capitalist worth his salt will tell you, there is a chasm of difference between the mostly grounded-in-reality financial forecasts offered by public companies, and the almost never do come true "rosy scenario" projections offered as a matter of course by emerging technology companies. Correspondingly, while large public company CEOs and CFOs are judged as a matter of the highest honor on their ability to deliver on projections, exceedingly rare is the entrepreneurial executive tha

article thumbnail

The December cS Award and The November cS Award Winner

crowdSPRING Blog

Earlier this year, we announced that we would issue a monthly cS Award to honor quality work by designers and writers in the crowdSPRING community. December cS Award. This month we want to celebrate the newcomers to crowdSPRING and will give a special cS award to a creative who joined our community in 2011! So get your computer warmed up and submit your very best work this month; the award will go to the Creative who joined the site in 2011, and receives the highest average buyer score for the m

article thumbnail

End of a Business Does Not Have to be Failure

The Entrepreneurial Mind

Sometimes an entrepreneur reaches a crossroad. While the business that they have started shows potential, they may come to the realization that the only chance it has of being sustainable will require raising money to grow it to the next level. Bootstrapping is always a good path to start a business, but sometimes a certain level of funding is still needed to get to a sustainable scale that can earn the owner an acceptable income.

article thumbnail

Micro innovation – Little Printer

Start Up Blog

Here is another great example that technological change only brings more opportunities for creative minds. There is no reason why the video below could not have been an innovation launched by anyone in the struggling publishing industry. In fact, it should have been. The reason such innovation rarely comes from the incumbent, is because they are too often in love with their infrastructure and not in love with their customers.

Video 67
article thumbnail

How to Select a Company or Product Name

www.developer-resource.com

Ask. Developer Resource. Design. Developer. 101. E-commerce. File. Hosting. General. Marketing. Licensing. Resellers. Search. Engines. Software. Conferences. Software. Organizations. Software. Store. Statistics. Support. Tool. box. RSS. Feed. General Marketing. Search: [advanced search] -->. How to Select a Company or Product Name. When building a business there is little more. important than selecting an appropriate company. or product name.

article thumbnail

How to Use Instagram to Tell and Sell Your Marketing Story

Duct Tape Marketing

How to Use Instagram to Tell and Sell Your Marketing Story This content from: Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing is about telling stories and few things tell a story faster than a picture. In fact, images are growing faster than any other form of shared content online due in large part to the tremendous growth of camera equipped smart phones. Facebook is the world’s largest photo sharing site, but others sites such as Pinterest and, the popular iPhone app, Instagram have also attracted large followi

Brazil 72
article thumbnail

My dad’s chevy

Start Up Blog

Every now and again a brand crosses the chasm. A brand goes from being a thing, to being an emotional ingredient. These moments are usually personal, they are hard to capture and share. But occasionally it is captured, and it takes us to an entire new understanding of what is possible when we create things with the end user in mind. In this instance, the car was first created with driver in mind.

article thumbnail

What Do Customer Success Managers Need?

Guy Nirpaz

The research of The Customer Success Management Initiative is revealing that while many SaaS/Cloud companies are hiring individual Customer Success Managers , or even establishing entire teams of them, there is a wide range in the understanding the role. Given the lack of clear cut definitions, lines of authority and accountability, it’s no surprise that there would be an equally broad range in how the individuals and teams are equipped.

article thumbnail

Broken heart v Broken back

Start Up Blog

A colleague has embarked upon a new property start up over the past 3 years. During this time he has been incredibly successful. Starting and completing many small projects, to deliver what he believed to be a massive profit. In fact, at least double what he could have earned in his previous paid employment (which was at the executive level). The projects were complete, chickens hatched and it was time to count them.

.Net 54
article thumbnail

Walker Twitter Highlights: November 28th – December 4th

Scott Edward Walker

I’m using Twitter as a form of micro-blogging to share interesting blog posts, articles and podcasts relating to entrepreneurship and startups, M&A and legal issues. Below are my five most popular tweets (via bit.ly ) for the past week and a couple of blog-related tweets. If you’d like to see all of my tweets (or an RSS feed of them), you can do so here.

article thumbnail

10 tips for naming your company, product, or service

www.thenameinspector.com

Home. About. Compliments. In the Media. Phonetic Visualization. Portfolio. Naming and Verbal Branding Services. Pay the balance on your naming package. 10 tips for naming your company, product, or service. Hosting that Biznik workshop on naming has inspired The Name Inspector to post some tips about the actual naming process. First, to get an idea of how much money and time big corporations spend on name development, check out Valleywag’s post about how AOL named its new search service (th

Naming 44
article thumbnail

What would you do if your company killed off email for internal communication?

Jeff Hilimire

Here’s a tech company that is looking to completely eradicate his company of using email for internal communication, instead opting for instant messaging and a “Facebook-style” interface. I kinda thought it was going to say he wanted more face-to-face meetings of his employees, but to each his own I guess. Oh yeah, and they have 74,000 employees.

Email 44
article thumbnail

How to name your product, service, or startup

www.volkside.com

Volkside. Skip to content. Services. Products. Clients. Blog. Archives. Articles. Usability rules of thumb. Project worksheet. Recommended reading. About. Founder bio. About this site. Licence. Privacy. Contact. « Create easier navigations using Naview – Sign up for Early Access now. Great ramp-up experience on the new Flickr photo page » < Blog < Home How to name your product, service, or startup.

Naming 40
article thumbnail

Go Vertical

Seeing Both Sides

Start ups are great barometers for the future. Those of us who spend our time immersed in the world of young companies are priviledged to get a glimpse of what's coming around the corner by meeting with entrepreneurs who are trying to bring the future forward. In that context, I enjoyed USV's Christina Cacioppo's blog post, What Comes Next , where she summarized a few trends that are coming out of some of the start up incubators.

article thumbnail

Communication Shapeshifting, the USPS, and Atos Banning Email

Venture Chronicles

I read this morning (and heard on the news while driving in) that the USPS is asking Congress to let it relax the requirements for first class mail delivery. Aside from the obvious observation that the USPS being tethered to Congress is in no small part a factor in their deteriorating financial condition, the other thought I had is why this is getting so much attention.

Email 36
article thumbnail

Self-referential business models (aka. channel I N C E P T I O N)

The Startup Toolkit

During a workshop the other day, we spent 10 minutes as a group coming up with a business model providing daycare for busy professional moms. We decided that working moms have the biggest need for daycare, and that their bosses receive the most financial value out of having good daycare arrangements, since that means mom can get back to work sooner (slightly cynical, but we’ll go with it).

article thumbnail

Lousy Products Might Break Your Bones – But A Name Will Seldom Hurt You

infochachkie.com

About Who the Heck is Uncle Saul? Be The Beatles Not The Flock Of Seagulls John Greathouse’s Bio ConTraps Part 2 ConTrap Part 3 ConTrap part 4 Startup Children Pt 2 Startup Children Pt 5 Startup Children Pt 3 Startup Children Pt 4 Decision Making 101 Talks: Jason Nazar on how to Persuade Kawaksaki Interview Upcoming Mark Cuban Post Hands-on Techniques For Hiring Entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg Goes Both Ways Bank Robber or ATM Operator Page. infoChachkie.

Naming 40
article thumbnail

Get Creative with Credit Cards and Allow Your Business Ventures to Thrive

Growthink Blog

By Odysseas Papadimitriou, founder and CEO of CardHub.com. Card Hub is the leading online marketplace for the best credit card deals for both small business owners and consumers. As an entrepreneur, you're most likely accustomed to thinking outside the box. You're also probably pretty familiar with the importance of funding and debt stability to a growing business venture.