Sat.Feb 18, 2012 - Fri.Feb 24, 2012

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Startup Runway Length Depends on Your Burn Rate

Startup Professionals Musings

Cash is the fuel of every startup. Your burn rate is the rate at which that money is being spent, and allows an estimate of how long you can go before refueling (runway). That refueling is when you will need more investment, or when you will break even and begin that steep profitable growth curve. Investors also look at your burn rate to see how efficient and effective you are at running the business.

Burn Rate 232
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Enterprise Vendors: Big Hat, No Cattle

deal architect

From MIT Technology Review: “"Customers are coming to us and saying 'I'd like a Watson,' " says Stephen Gold, IBM's director of worldwide marketing for Watson. Eventually, that might be possible, but first they need to have the right data.

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On founders and professional CEOs and the difference between innovators and executors

The Equity Kicker

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I am reading Clayten Christensen’s new book, Innovators DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. I’m still really enjoying it, and I now have a second major takeaway. As I wrote last time, the first take away was that to a large extent innovation is a learnt skill that can be self taught. The new insight is that the skills of a good innovator – associative thinking, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking are very different to

Founder 144
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The Single Most Important Word In Any Business

Duct Tape Marketing

The Single Most Important Word In Any Business This content from: Duct Tape Marketing. I want to ask you to take a little test. Go out and grab five or six of your best customers and pose this question to them: What’s one word you would use to describe how you think about our organization? The ability to capture and hold one word in the mind of your intended market is perhaps the most telling measure of marketing success.

Metrics 63
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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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How This Entrepreneur Raised $28,000 Using Airbnb to Fund Her Startup

Both Sides of the Table

Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. She’s a painter and a self-proclaimed Bohemian. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. And she didn’t start her company in Northern California. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. She hasn’t raised any venture capital. She drove her company to profitability before paying herself a modest salary.

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7 Ways and Why to Treat Your Career Like a Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

The days when you locked and loaded your career in school, and then blasted away down that same narrow path the rest of your life, are gone, never to return. Career survival today requires thinking and acting like an entrepreneur starting a business, staying nimble and resilient, willing to pivot, and supersensitive to the market realities of supply and demand.

Cofounder 271

More Trending

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How to convince a startup to hire you

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is part of an ongoing startup advice series where I answer (anonymized!) questions from readers, like a written version of Smart Bear Live. To get your question answered , email me at asmartbear -at- shortmail -dot- com. Ambitious Sailor writes: How can a former navy officer with twelve solid years of overseas defense contracting experience convince a tech startup to hire him as their business guy?

Hiring 230
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10 Things You Need to Know (Now!) About Successful Networking

YoungUpstarts

by Vickie Milazzo, author of “ Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman “ In the business world, we’re often advised to network. Interested in changing careers? Network! Need to attract some new clients? Network! Wish you had a knowledgeable mentor? Network! The fact is, networking is a valuable and effective tool that can enrich and advance your career… when you use it properly.

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How to Give Your Startup Idea The Sniff Test

Startup Professionals Musings

I have a certain friend who called me a while back, all excited about his latest revelation. “What if you could go to a web site and find all the recipes you could make today, with just the ingredients you already have in your kitchen? I’m going to start a website to offer this service!” I’m sure you all realize that there could be quite a distance between a great idea and a great startup.

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How can you not promote your own book?

deal architect

Read this post by Joe Konrath, and you will think that relations between book authors and publishers make those between spouses and mother-in-laws look cordial:) I have had a less tempestuous relationship with my publisher for two reasons: a) As.

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ff Venture Capital raises $27 million fund

David Teten

We are excited to announce that as of November 30, ff Venture Capital closed on a $27 million fund, ff Silver. TechCrunch broke the news and Betabeat also covered it. Our investment philosophy – part of what makes us successful – is our search for sustainable long-term growth areas. Our fund’s strategy is to look past the popular momentum and search for new areas of untapped growth potential.

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5 Apps You Can Use To Customize Your Facebook Timeline

YoungUpstarts

Social networking giant Facebook launched Facebook Timeline last December as a new way for people to share their (entire) lives online. Perhaps people are just resistant to any kind of change; there are entire Facebook groups dedicated to sharing their hate for Timeline. But for those of you who actually like or don’t mind it, there are various apps you can use to improve your Timeline profile.

Customer 172
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Here is Why You Need a Good Startup Exit Strategy

Startup Professionals Musings

If you startup is your dream, why would you want to think about an exit? It’s going to be so successful and so much fun that you don’t need to think about what comes after. Wrong. There are two very real and practical reasons why you need to plan an exit: Outside investors want to collect their return. Remember that equity investments are not like loans with interest.

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Introducing a New Sponsor: LumenData

deal architect

I am excited to welcome LumenData to the past and present gallery of innovators and disruptors who sponsor this and the New Florence. New Renaissance blog. LumenData is a Product Development and Services firm, focused on Enterprise Information Management. They.

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Book: Inside Apple

Feld Thoughts

I expect many of you have read at least one book on Steve Jobs and Apple since Jobs’ death. If you, like me, grabbed and consumed a copy of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, I have a recommendation for you. Go buy a copy of Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky. It’s much better, much more interesting, and in many ways, more revealing.

America 133
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SocialGoodies.com – Daily Deals For Social Good

YoungUpstarts

There’s a daily deal site for almost everything – from generic ones like Groupon and Living Social , to those that focus on a niche like CouponTrade and DoggyLoot. But here’s one with a heart: Social Goodies ( www.socialgoodies.com ), launched last May, is a daily deal site that aims to benefit non-profit and charitable organizations.

Cofounder 167
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NextView Ethos – Tribe

Genuine VC

When we started NextView Ventures, we deliberately took time during our first offsite together to define a shared sense of “Ethos” which we are going to use as guiding principles in building our firm. All five of them (Authentic, Blank Canvas, Golazo, Invited Guest, & Tribe) we’ve listed on our website since it went live a little more than a year ago, and my partners in recent blog posts have discussed in more detail two qualities of our Ethos, Invited Guest and Golazo.

Portfolio 114
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A telecom Happy Hour?

deal architect

I was at a restaurant recently which had an every day/all day 2 for 1 happy hour. And it occurred to me how bars and telcos share a common trait: awkward hours for convenient pricing. Well this restaurant – Chili’s.

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Retrospective Addiction Of A Madman Post Board Meeting

Feld Thoughts

I love getting post board meeting emails that are retrospectives from execs in the meeting. This one came a week ago from Jeff Malek, the CTO and co-founder of BigDoor. They’ve been on a tear lately and are in the process of a massive set of Q1 launches for new customers. . We had a solid board meeting, but I suggested they were being too casual about a couple of things, including communication about what was going on.

Cofounder 130
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[Infographic] New Grad’s Guide To Personal Finance

YoungUpstarts

Recently graduated? Not sure how to handle your own finances? You’re not alone. Many college graduates are saddled with credit card debt, crushing study loans and sustained unemployment after graduation – coupled with poor financial literacy and management, can potentially mean financial doom down the road. You can avoid all this by careful financial management – all you need to start with is by setting a budget.

Finance 167
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Why Isn’t Your E-Mail Campaign Working?

Rembrandt Communications

You just spent a lot of time, effort and money creating an e-mail campaign. But when you sent it out, a ton of people unsubscribed, you received complaints and no one purchased your new product. It was a failure. But don’t despair! Use this opportunity to learn from your mistakes, and to create a more [.].

Campaign 113
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What happened to NASSCOM?

deal architect

For a while, the annual Leadership Forum in Mumbai was the IT equivalent of a pilgrimage to Mecca – you had to go at least once in your career. But, last week’s event came and went without a whimper. It.

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Collaborative Consumption is Creative

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

I don’t plug a lot of videos on this blog — how many video’s are all that relevant to creativity and innovation? This is the exception, I have one I’d really like you to watch, after you read this Jay Leno style “set up” Growing up in anti-communist America the world was black and white. [.].

America 131
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[Infographic] The Learning Power of Lego

YoungUpstarts

I love Lego. As a child I used to build almost anything with these little plastic toy bricks, and I bet many of you did too. You’d think that Lego was an American invention, but did you know that it first started as a range of construction toys in the 1940s designed by Dane Ole Kirk Christiansen? These stackable, interlocking toy blocks are now so popular with children that teachers are using them in classrooms to teach students as part of class curriculum.

Design 166
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50 Questions: What financial information does a VC want to see?

The Equity Kicker

Forty first in a series of weekly posts by myself and Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief which answer the fifty questions you should ask before raising venture capital. We expect the series to run for a year after which we will collate the posts into a book. You can find the rationale behind the series here , and the list of questions here. We welcome your comments on any and every aspect of what we are doing. —————————————.

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A Historic Day

deal architect

This is one in a series of periodic posts to recognize articles, blogs, books, videos interviews I think are worthy of sharing. The category A Rare Medium Well Done says it nicely This time it is Sam Fuld of the.

Video 186
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NextView Ethos – Tribe

Genuine VC

When we started NextView Ventures, we deliberately took time during our first offsite together to define a shared sense of “Ethos” which we are going to use as guiding principles in building our firm. All five of them (Authentic, Blank Canvas, Golazo, Invited Guest, & Tribe) we’ve listed on our website since it went live a little more than a year ago, and my partners in recent blog posts have discussed in more detail two qualities of our Ethos, Invited Guest and Golazo.

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Want To Get In The Game? You’ll Need A Coach.

YoungUpstarts

By Marsha Friedman, CEO of EMSI Public Relations and author of “ Celebritize Yourself ” We recently lost a legend, boxing coach and trainer Angelo Dundee, the cornerman for world heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali. I’m a huge fan of world championship boxing – and boxing doesn’t get huger than Ali! He was one of the great athletes who relied on “Angie” to advise him in the ring.

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Final Close: The Story Behind NextView's Own Fundraise ? 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. Final Close: The Story Behind NextView’s Own Fundraise. February 21, 2012. We recently completed the final close of NextView Ventures, LP and we’re excited about both our progress to date and our plans for the future.

LP 100
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More innovation

deal architect

On New Florence Talk about rapid implementation The Crunchies awards Flying Men over Manhattan “The Hacker Way”.

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Why SOME smart people give bad advice?

Life Beyond Code

Once I attended a conference where a serial entrepreneur was sharing his advice on what works now. The people in the audience were employees from high tech companies who wanted to be entrepreneurs. The speaker shared a lot of things that were counterintuitive but lot of it was plain bad advice. The speaker was very passionate and also totally believed in what he was sharing.

Vesting 117
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[Review] Poke The Box

YoungUpstarts

“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” With a secondary title like that, you can bet that “ Poke the Box ” – Seth Godin’s first title under The Domino Project – is going to be all provocative and punchy. And boy, the renowned marketing cum motivational blogger sure doesn’t disappoint in that department.

Marketing 145
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Design Like Jagger

ConversionXL

Two weeks ago I announced that I will start doing ‘Product Fridays’, highlighting products sold well. I decided to change that to ‘Rant Friday’ Since I usually write how-to posts, I’ll use Friday as the day to rant on stuff I believe. Here goes. Design like Jagger or why you shouldn’t design your own website (unless you’re a designer).

Design 119
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More New Florence

deal architect

On the innovation blog Insight-as-a-service The Social Media Bowl Lighting Design Super Bowl: The Monday morning quarterback.

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Knowing your startup like the back of your.napkin.

This is going to be BIG.

When Chantel Waterbury came to pitch me back in August of 2010 for chloe + isabel , she started off the conversation with a simple description--that there were four other companies in her space each doing over a hundred million dollars of revenue and that, in total, they still made up a small percentage of the overall market. She told me a few assumptions about how much each of her merchandizers would sell, and within a couple of minutes I was super psyched about the potential for her business a

Startup 112
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Demystifying Billing And Receivables Solutions For Your Small Business

YoungUpstarts

There are many issues that keep entrepreneurs and small business owners up at night, but amongst the most pressing must be financial ones. The recently released Small Business Barometer from Western Union Small Business Payments gives us an interesting insight into financial matters faced by small businesses. According to the survey: Worrying over revenue generation (46-percent) and positive cash flow (17-percent) keep small business owners up at night, 55-percent report forgetting to invoice a