Sat.Feb 13, 2010 - Fri.Feb 19, 2010

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73.6% of all Statistics are Made Up

Both Sides of the Table

How to Interpret Analyst Reports. The headlines in the media are filled with that latest stats. Stats sell. The stats are often quoted from the latest reports. People then parrot them around like they’re fact when most of them are complete bullsh*t. People throw them around at cocktail parties. Often when they do I throw out my favorite statistic: 73.6% of all statistics are made up.

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Patents Are A Weak Measure of Innovation Activity

Feld Thoughts

After not seeing the word patent in my daily information routine for a few weeks, I saw it twice today – first in an article titled Turning Patents Into ‘Invention Capital’ (in the NY Times) and then in Region Sustains Robust Patent Production in the WSJ. Both stirred me up early this morning, but for different reasons. If you are interested in patents, I encourage you to read Turning Patents Into ‘Invention Capital’ as I’m very interested in your reaction.

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Call in the Next Ten Minutes…

Life Beyond Code

You’ve probably seen those thirty-minute, late-night television infomercials that tell you a story about a product in all its glory. After about twenty minutes into the commercial, you have been repeatedly told that your life is incomplete without this latest gizmo. You’ve heard others enthusiastically state how the item changed their lives and brought them health, wealth, happiness, and love.

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MyEdu Banks $5.5M Series B

Austin Startup

MyEdu , the definitive online source to increase success and save money in college, today announced $5.5 million in series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of Bain Capital, one of the largest and most respected private investment firms in the world. Bain Capital has a long history of funding successful companies such as DoubleClick, LinkedIn, Princeton Review, SurveyMonkey, and The Learning Company.

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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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I Would Only Fund an Entrepreneur with High Integrity

Both Sides of the Table

Back in November I agreed with Nivi over at VentureHacks to do a series on the ten most important attributes of a successful entrepreneur. This is the last post in that series. This is actually an addendum to my list rather than “on&# my list. That in itself will be controversial, I know. When Nivi published the series he titled it “the top 10 things I look for before I write a check.&# As a result I felt compelled to add this final attribute because it matters a lot to me.

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Sunk Costs: An invisible, pervasive peril

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Many of my mistakes can be traced back to a failure to recognize and appreciate "sunk cost.". The term comes from economics: "Sunk Cost" is money you've already spent and cannot get back no matter what. A " rational actor ," as economists say, will completely ignore sunk costs when making decisions because the money is gone no matter what action is taken next.

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Death By Revenue Plan

Steve Blank

In my last post I described what happened when a company prematurely scales sales and marketing before adequately testing its hypotheses in Customer Discovery. You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan. They don’t.

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App is Crap (why Apple is bad for your health)

Both Sides of the Table

Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely. I was living in Europe in 2000 when the first WAP phones (Wireless Access Protocol) were introduced. These phones were so over hyped. They were going to bring the Internet to your mobile phones ushering in the era of “m-commerce.&# Gag. I had just returned from living in Japan where I witnessed the hugely successful launch of i-mode by NTT DoCoMo so I knew the potential that the mobile web would ultimately bring, but I saw so many flaws in the launch

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New moderators and flair on Answers OnStartups

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

The startup community over at Answers OnStartups has really taken off! Dharmesh and I started it just a few months ago and it's already helped thousands of people. And vice-versa: For every question I've answered, there's another where I've learned something too. It's a total blast — you should come check it out. It's like being in a room with 200 people in various stages of doing startups, all eager to listen to your problems and questions and ready with experience and advice.

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More Verizon asterisks

deal architect

For a fleeting moment I got excited about the Verizon-Skype announcement. Then I read it will not work on Wi-Fi. WTF? Only on its 3G network, marginally better than AT&T’s, and the likely risk we get slammed soon with some. Tags: Telecommunications.

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Startups Need a Grand Vision but Micro Focus

Startup Professionals Musings

It’s great to dream big, but your startup needs a laser focus in the beginning to get market and investor attention. Google did it with search engines, Apple did it with a personal computer, and even Wal-Mart did it through low prices. A business plan I saw recently to combine all the good features of several popular social networks on one site does not do it.

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What Seems Like A Fundamental Flaw in Microsoft Outlook Social Connector

Feld Thoughts

I’ve been obsessed with the notion of email as the ultimate social network for a while. I wrote a post in 2007 titled Social Networks In Obvious Places that catalyzed me to thing harder about this as an investor. I eventually decided that the email address is the ultimate reference id for one’s current online identity and that it was ludicrous to ignore this notion.

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10 Questions Never to Ask a Reporter

Rembrandt Communications

When you prepare to contact a reporter, it is essential to conduct some research first. Media members receive hundreds of calls and e-mails each week, and you want to make a good, first-impression without being annoying. To stand out and get your story heard, here is a simple reminder of ten questions you should never [.].

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More Innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog It’s a small world, after all IDEA 2009 Winners The Hospital of the Future Technology at the Vancouver Opening Ceremonies.

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Be Part of the Entrepreneurial Revolution

Startup Professionals Musings

I come from a high-tech software background, and only a few years ago, it would cost at least a million dollars ($1M) for a team of professionals to produce any commercial software product. Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. Even for low-tech startups, the scope of information available on the Internet, and its global reach, has had a similar financial impact on the many other challeng

Burn Rate 125
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Water Equals Food Equals Income

Feld Thoughts

Innovation happens all over the place. While I typically write about innovation in software and the Internet (which are the two areas I invest in), it’s useful to occasionally step back and tell a story about innovation in a different area that I’ve been exposed to. Peter Frykman was 15 years old when Muhammad Yunus proposed alleviating poverty through the innovation of the social-objective-driven entrepreneur , one who “competes in the marketplace with all other competitors but is inspired by a

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10 Questions Never to Ask a Reporter

Rembrandt Communications

When you prepare to contact a reporter, it is essential to conduct some research first. Media members receive hundreds of calls and e-mails each week, and you want to make a good, first-impression without being annoying. To stand out and get your story heard, here is a simple reminder of ten questions you should never [.].

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A tale of two cities: Bewildered by the city government's continued cluelessness on NYC's innovation scene

This is going to be BIG.

I generally like NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. I think she's smart, hardworking, and I think she'd probably make a good mayor someday. However, her take on the NYC innovation economy during her recent State of the City Address confirmed my thinking: Most of what the NYC government should be doing to support technology entrepreneurship in NYC is to try and stay out of the way.

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Entrepreneurs are Survivors, Never Victims

Startup Professionals Musings

People with a victim mentality should never be entrepreneurs. We all know the role of starting and running a business is unpredictable, and has a high risk of failure. For people with a victim mentality, this fear of failure alone will almost certainly make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m sure you all know someone who is the perennial victim. The problem is that most of these people aren’t likely to accept your assessment, so it’s hard to help them.

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Phenomenal Essay On Why Software Patents Are The Problem

Feld Thoughts

If there is one thing you read today, go read Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures excellent essay titled Software patents are the problem not the answer. Several years ago when I first started saying things like “software patents are invalid constructs” or “software shouldn’t be able to be patented” or “software patents are a huge drag on innovation”, I was told by many people (lawyers, journalists, patent trolls, and other VCs) that while I might be right, no other venture capitalist would ag

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5 thoughts for startups and small business on managing the work vs. home wrestling match

crowdSPRING Blog

Well today is Valentines Day and, being the tool that I am, I’m sitting at the computer writing tomorrow’s post. Like many startup entrepreneurs I gave up much to follow the dream, and friends and family have definitely taken a hit. Ross and I work seven day weeks, have little vacation time, and have essentially given up any semblance of a social life in favor of building the company and pushing it to success.

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Industry Shift: What The Armada Music Label Can Teach Us About New Media Marketing

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

You may not know this about me (unless you follow me on Twitter where I tweet music video clips from time to time), but I’m a huge fan of the progressive and vocal trance scene. That’s dance music for the uninitiated, although the genre of dance is massive in terms of all the categories and sub-categories, which includes genres like techno and rave music, which you might be familiar with.

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Business 2010 – A Time for Optimism and Work

Startup Professionals Musings

Even though it has been a long haul, it’s nice to see some optimism on the horizon for 2010. Just yesterday, a new study “ U.S. Small Business Outlook 2010: Lessons Learned – A Case for Greater Optimism ,” was published by CIT Group, Inc., in conjunction with Forbes Insights. It shows that small business owners feel more confident and better positioned than ever.

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Oblong Dazzles More Than Just Me

Feld Thoughts

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know that I’m a huge believer that the way we interact with computers in 20 years will be radically different than how we interact with them today. I’ve put my money where my mouth is as Foundry Group has invested in a number of companies around human computer interaction , including Oblong. For the past few years, every time someone talks about next generation user interfaces, a reference to the movie Minority Report pops up.

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How I Stay Efficient – My Three Hour Rule

crowdSPRING Blog

Some people are more efficient than others. There are many reasons for this: ability to focus, complexity of the work, distractions, etc. But while some have unique skills and intellect to get things done quickly, most people must develop systems to help them improve their efficiency and balance many diverse tasks. Some rely on to-do lists to stay efficient and focused.

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Why scoreboards matter

Start Up Blog

Humans are compelled to count. We count everything. Days, weeks, months, years, birthdays, money in the bank, salary levels, years of experience. It’s part of the human condition, maybe it helped us evolve to a civilised existence. As startup entrepreneur we need to let our people count something. Whether it’s the savings they made or they friends they have, there needs to be a way for them to keep track.

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Entrepreneurs Better be Young, or Young@Heart

Startup Professionals Musings

To be an entrepreneur, you have to be navigate lots of unknowns, and the path is fraught with risk. Once you are past a certain mental age, you know too many of the things that can go wrong, so you never start. Sort of like the old saying that if we didn’t have young men to fight our wars, we could achieve world peace in no time. People who are young, or young at heart, don’t know all the negatives, or don’t worry about them.

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Love A Little Today

Feld Thoughts

Megan Sweeney , the awesome person who put together the TechStars Founders video series , put up a beautiful video of her golden retriever Owen explaining his Rules of Love. Owen’s rules of love are (1) Don’t limit your love, (2) Let yourself be loved, and (3) Never give up. Good lessons for all human beings. Now, while I know it’s Valentine’s Day (and I’ll behave appropriately), I am very much looking forward to Valentine’s Day for Guys which happens in a month.

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12 Questions: Meet Janis Aydelette (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.

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Perishable goods & websites

Start Up Blog

Our websites are no different to perishable goods at a supermarket. It’s not surprising given how well trained we are to check everything is up to date. From milk to computer hardware we want the latest version available. So when someone finds your website via Google and the last blog entry is from last year, or the Copyright legal date is 2008, it’s a bit like the milk which got lost at the back of the fridge.

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AustinStartup.com Refresh

Austin Startup

This morning we launched a redesign of AustinStartup.com incorporating a lot of the feedback we have received from the community since overhauling it last year. With SXSW 2010 just around the corner we felt it was the ideal time to push out the new design. Please let us know if you run into any bugs, and expect more changes over the next few weeks as we tighten up the design and add a few of the features missing from the old site.

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Are We Already Working For The Computers?

Feld Thoughts

After spending the last seven hours in front of my computer, a phrase came to mind that my brother Daniel recently said to me in response to reading The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Daniel said: “What if we we are already working for the computers?”. While The Matrix and Horton Hears a Who! come immediately to mind, his comment was subtler than that.

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Thirst!

Life Beyond Code

Photo Courtesy: Tsja! on Flickr. You drink water when you are thirsty. But the doctors say that you need to drink at least eight glasses of water everyday to stay healthy. Most people ignore the advice and stick to drinking water only when they are thirsty. While they can ignore the advice they can’t avoid the consequences of ignoring that advice.

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Medical Device M&A Activity Up 154%

Growthink Blog

Medtronic. Cardinal Health. Guidant. Becton, Dickinson. St. Jude Medical. Hospira. Fresenius. Varian Medical. All of these medical device manufacturers had greater than ONE BILLION DOLLARS in sales last year. Sector Funding Activity Remains Strong While overall venture investment is down substantially, funding in the medical device sector remains strong.

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Logos: Watch Out! A Real-World True Story

Up and Running

Leaders get copied. Artists copy each other and we package it all up and call it a trend or a movement, like the impressionists, or baroque, or whatever. Poets and novelists do the same thing. Television producers copy good shows to make better show or bad shows, until we get sick of them. Buddy cop movies? Reality TV shows? Kids learn sports by copying: the learners copy the experts.

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Have You Used Our Term Sheet Series In A Course?

Feld Thoughts

Over the years my partner Jason Mendelson and I have heard from numerous people that they’ve been exposed to our Venture Capital Term Sheet Series as reference material in a college course. We are delighted by this and whenever we’ve been asked, we’ve always said (and will continue to always say) “with our blessing.” However, we haven’t kept track of any of this over the year and have a few ideas for things we can do to update the material now that five years have passed.