Tue.Jul 26, 2011

article thumbnail

Startup Founders Need a Timely Decision Process

Startup Professionals Musings

Every so often a promising entrepreneur seems to freeze in the oncoming headlights and gets run over by his competition. Why is it that his idea which seemed so fundable only months ago fails to dazzle investors today? The team is the same. The company's market is the same. The only difference might be the start of another recession like the last one, resulting in a lower valuation for Internet ventures, and that makes all the difference.

Founder 232
article thumbnail

Venture Deals

Startup Lessons Learned

I was very pleased to receive an advance copy of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist the other day. After reading it, I've concluded that it's like having a super-mentor on your shelf. I have been extraordinarily fortunate throughout my career to have been blessed with amazing mentors. Men like Will Harvey and Steve Blank have been there to help me, encourage me, and push me to do better.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

Competing on Service: Eleven Ways to Beat the Competition by “Hugging” Your Customers

YoungUpstarts

by Edward D. Hess, author of “ Growing an Entrepreneurial Business “. The U.S. economy is still in a deep funk, and for many small business owners that means business isn’t exactly booming. Forced to do more with much less, the small businesses that have managed to survive and even thrive during these tough times have recognized one important factor: You can’t always compete on price, but you can compete on service.

Customer 113
article thumbnail

Why I Won’t Game AngelList

Feld Thoughts

I think AngelList is awesome and I’m a huge fan of what they’ve done. Nivi wrote a great post celebrating their 1.5 year anniversary today: 1.5 Years Of AngelList: 8000 Intros, 400 Investments And That’s Just The Data We Can Tell You About. One of the powerful constructs of AngelList is social proof. It’s become an important part of the seed / early stage venture process as very early stage investors pile into companies that their friends, or people they respect, are investing

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

Startup Q&A Site Sprouter to Shut Its Doors

ReadWriteStart

We've covered Sprouter several times here at ReadWriteStart , recommending the Toronto-based startup as a great resource for entrepreneurs - as both a professional social network and, more recently, as a Q&A site. So it's sad to hear the news today that Sprouter will be closing its doors. According to the Sprouter blog , the site will close on August 2 due to what founder Sarah Prevette describes as "capital constraints.

Startup 122
article thumbnail

Who can build the marketing machine?

This is going to be BIG.

This is just a theory, but it feels to me that there's a talent gap in the marketing space--or a few of them. To begin with, there seems to be a serious shortage of customer acquisition experts--particularly given how hot subscription services have gotten. Fab.com (First Round portfolio company) just announced a new round of funding and that they reached 350,000 subscribers.

More Trending

article thumbnail

Does Entrepreneurship Age Like Wine? [guest post]

VC Cafe

By Chaim Zucker*. In one of many great scenes of the movie Pulp Fiction Marcellus Wallace, a gangster king, tries to make Butch sell off the last fight of his boxing career. Marcellus tries to explain Butch why he is too old to succeed: “I think you’re gonna find – when all this shit is over and done – I think you’re gonna find yourself one smilin’ motherfucker.

article thumbnail

4 reasons they will buy your startup

Start Up Blog

As far as I can tell their are 4 main reasons that a company will buy your startup. Particular in the web / tech fields: Talent buy out. Technology buy out. User buy out. Revenue buy out. What’s interesting is that these buyouts happen in that order as well. The reality is that it’s rare to be the focus of a talent buyout unless you and your team have an incredibly unique set of skills.

Startup 89
article thumbnail

How My Biology Blog Landed Me My Dream Job

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Yeah, I know. It’s not what you want to hear about on a blog about Blogging and Entrepreneurship. Who comes here to know how to land a job? Isn’t the entrepreneurial dream never to have to work for anyone but yourself? Isn’t it all about working smart and not hard? Can you be an entrepreneur and still have a full time job ? The fact is, for some “entrepreneurs&# , the end goal isn’t ONLY to work for yourself.

article thumbnail

Simple Formula to Propel Your Business

Duct Tape Marketing

Simple Formula to Propel Your Business This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Mike Stelzner (Click to play or right click and “Save As&# to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen) For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I interviewed Mike Stelzner – founder of the wildly popular Social Media Examiner and author of Launch – How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition.

RSS 58
article thumbnail

Time Keeps On Slipping…

entrepreMusings

Where does it go? Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future… (you tube). So much going on but so little time to write about it. My daughter lost her first tooth when she was almost a year older than when my son lost his and the tooth fairy came to visit. I know this because I did a blog post about it and if I hadn’t, I’m not sure I would have remembered when he lost it.

Mexico 34
article thumbnail

Bigger is not Always Better

The Entrepreneurial Mind

One long standing aspect of American culture is that bigger is better. We seem obsessed with having the biggest city, the tallest building, the busiest airport or the largest house. When I went to business school in the 1970s, we were trained to pursue one goal: maximize market share. Even today when students in my classes describe the businesses they want to start, many feel the need to explain, justify, rationalize or even apologize if they do not plan to grow the venture to meet its full mark

Salary 72
article thumbnail

An inspiring quote on leadership and confidence

Jeff Hilimire

I recently read the book Onward by Howard Schultz. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone that has sold his/her business or works for a company that is trying to refocus and get back that entrepreneurial spirit, remembering why the company was started in the first place. Or if you’re a fan of Starbucks you’ll love this book, obviously.