Sat.Feb 09, 2013 - Fri.Feb 15, 2013

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Beware of Ballers on a Budget

Both Sides of the Table

The other day I was at a Mercedes dealership. Unfortunately my wife was hit head on in December by a woman who lost control of her car. It was time to get a new car and my wife’s requirements were: The safest thing on the road. As many air bags as possible. I researched the pricing of the car at TrueCar – not because we’re an investor – but because it gives you complete price transparency over what other people in your area paid for a car.

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Pragmatism with Flavor

TechEmpower

We build web and mobile applications, and we've been doing so for a little over fifteen years. To our delight, technology has evolved and improved in many ways over that time. Technology evolution can be cyclical, with some branches looping back to the past with surprising vigor and without much self-awareness. Platforms eschew threading and then re-invent threading anew.

Guinea 200
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How Pertino is reinventing the future of business networking

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Almost a year ago, my partner Barry Eggers and I met with Craig Elliott and Scott Hankins to talk about their vision for a new company, Pertino. Over a coffee in a small office in Cupertino (yes, their name is related to their founding hometown), we talked about how it was the right time to build a new networking company due to the confluence of three major trends: cloud, software defined networking (SDN), and the consumerization of IT.

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[Infographic] Silicon Valley Engineering Salaries In 2012

YoungUpstarts

2012 has proved to be a great year for developers – at least as far as financial compensation goes. The continuing tech boom has resulted in strong competition for top engineering talent, resulting in a subsequent upward surge in salary scales as well. But how much has it grown? Despite a year-on-year fall of 3.6-percent in the final quarter of 2012, overall average annual salaries has increased 3.7-percent year-on-year to US$118,900, according to an infographic from Silicon Valley technic

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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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Twitter Link Roundup #166 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

crowdSPRING Blog

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

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The Innovation State of the Union

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

Pamela Menges, Phd CEO of Aerospace Research Systems, Inc. President Obama made mention in his state of the union address that he wishes to expand the National Netowrk for Manufacturing Innovation concept. I wholly applaud the idea, AND, there might be a more fundamental challenge that needs addressed first. I’ve made the acquaintance of a thought leader with her finger on the pulse of where the nation sits in terms of technological readiness to innovate.

More Trending

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[Review] Enchantment

YoungUpstarts

Keen to change the world? Want to transform your “caterpillars” into “butterflies”? Well, former Apple chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki’s “ Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions ” may show you a trick or two. Authored by the bestselling author of “ The Art of the Start “, ” Enchantment ” is a multi-layered book.

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Programming Resources

Spencer Fry

I started learning to program in earnest at the beginning of February 2012. Since then, I've compiled the programming resources that got me to where I am today. Various books, screencasts, online documents, and forums have helped me along the way. I've listed them in the order in which I read them over the course of my development. I hope you find them as useful as I did.

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The Real Deal: Chip Coyle on Rebranding a Software Company

deal architect

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. The software industry is relatively young and there are few John Deeres which have revised its logo every few decades. So when I.

Software 377
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I’m embarrassed by this comment out of Silicon Valley about race

Jeff Hilimire

Jason Calacanis just doesn’t get it, and I’m afraid his opinion is unfortunately not just his own but rather that of most successful white people (not just limited to those in the technology sector). All due respect to those of you that do get it, but my guess is if you look around at your other successful white friends, they’d likely share Jason’s feelings.

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How do you tell a non-technical person that they can’t understand?

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. Frustrated Engineer writes: I’ve been writing code for ten years, recently promoted to a position where I have to talk to our non-technical customers.

Software 294
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5 Tips for Writing Survey Questions that Don’t Yield Statistical Garbage

Duct Tape Marketing

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Josh Pigford – Enjoy! While the end result of a survey might make the conclusions look cut and dry, there are many ways that data can be manipulated or misrepresented to change the truth. However, the sloppiest (and probably most common) method of fumbling the truth is when data is simply misunderstood.

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Why is HP such a punching bag?

deal architect

Stupid question, right? From Apotheker to Autonomy,the p **g contest over Itanium and now the ill-advised shot about Dell – the wounds at HP appear self afflicted and never ending. But….talk to CIOs about their really unpopular vendors and about products.

Product 306
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7 Steps to Achieving Entrepreneurial Lifetime Goals

Startup Professionals Musings

Successful entrepreneurs are usually hard-driving, and highly focused on some specific goals, like being the dominant player in a given domain, or the low-priced provider of their product. Yet other entrepreneurs will talk for hours about all their ideas, and how they intend to change the world, but I don’t hear any specific goals or milestones. Many people are very hesitant to set specific goals, due to lack of self-confidence or whatever.

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Equity basics: vesting, cliffs, acceleration, and exits

The Startup Toolkit

false As a cheatsheet, the “normal” equity structure is: Founder terms: 4 year vesting, 1 year cliff, for everyone, including you. Advisor terms ( 0.5–2.0% ) : 4 year vesting, optional cliff, full acceleration on exit. Getting equity structures right. When it comes to equity terms, there are only 3 things to understand: vesting, cliffs, and acceleration.

Vesting 56
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Back to School – VC Homework Assignments

Genuine VC

VCs like to give out homework. They won’t call it that, though. But rather they use words like “diligence” and “information requests.” Just like in school, the homework can actually be productive, as in this case it can lead to a new customer or advisor. But just like bad teachers did in grade school, VCs sometimes assign completely useless busywork.

Affiliate 236
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The Incumbents Advantage

deal architect

I am a big fan of Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma”. and his other writings. My blogs and books similarly celebrate disruptors and innovators. But, “Dilemma” first came out in 1997, and I think we need to acknowledge how companies which.

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10 Sage Quotes From $100M Entrepreneur Winners

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs are a notoriously stubborn (some say confident) group of people, so I see many of them making the same mistakes that predecessors have made. Thus I’m convinced that it’s useful for all of you to step back from time to time, and listen to some sage advice from people who have been there and enjoyed success. Recently, as I was perusing a book by Robert Jordan, titled “ How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights ” I saw some wisdom and inspiration that made sense.

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YSN Launches Global “Build Your Own Virtual SUBWAY® Store” Campaign

YoungUpstarts

The founder of of international sandwich chain SUBWAY® , Fred DeLuca, started his business with a US$1,000 loan when he was just 17. That was in 1965. Today SUBWAY® is the largest restaurant chain in the world with over 38,000 stores in more than 100 countries. DeLuca has proved that one can start a successful business when young without the need for massive amounts of capital… and you can too.

Global 220
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Trust Can Scale

Feld Thoughts

Following is a guest post from Chris Moody. Chris is president and COO of Gnip , one of the silent killers in our portfolio. Once the main stream tech press starts noticing Gnip, they will be blown away at how big they got in such a short period of time by just executing. Chris is a huge part of this – he joined Gnip when they were 10 people and has been instrumental in working with Jud Valeski, Gnip’s founder and CEO, to build a mind blowing team, business, and market leadership pos

Portfolio 195
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Outsourcing: The Seismic Changes

deal architect

As Nasscom kicks off its flagship Leadership Forum event in Mumbai and seeing the vendors and analysts presenting, I am reminded of a meeting with a group of outsourcing execs last year. I asked them who they thought was their.

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10 R’s of Motivation Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the keys to maximizing the productivity of your team, as well as yourself, is motivation. It has been estimated that the average team member at any given time works at less than 50% of his capacity. Thus mastering the art of employee motivation could double your chances of success over the average competitor. While there are many books written on this subject, most entrepreneurs I know simply assume that their own vision, motivation, and drive will be adopted and maintained by partners an

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5 Ways To Save Money When Starting A Small Business

YoungUpstarts

by David Bakke. If you don’t think that saving money is important when you launch a small business, just take a look at the statistics: More than 30% of small businesses fail within the first two years, and insufficient funds is one of the top reasons why. Fortunately, there are ways to save on startup costs when launching your venture, and it’s in your best interests to investigate them.

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My New FiberHouse in Kansas City

Feld Thoughts

I bought a house in Kansas City on Monday. It’s next door to the Homes for Hackers and KC Startup Village. It will have Google Fiber in it. I hope it becomes an integral part of the nation’s first Google Fiberhood. I’m not going to be living in it. Instead, I’m going to let entrepreneurs live / work in it. Rent free. As part of helping create the Kansas City startup community.

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More Innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog The Future of Higher Education The WEF 2013 Technology Pioneers My Micro NY Space Scavenger Hunt Shiver me timbers A scanner for the TSA to consider?

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Even Virtual Startup Teams Must Work Closely

Startup Professionals Musings

Almost every startup is a virtual team these days, since most don’t start out with dedicated office space, and some or all members of the team work part-time or out of their own home. It’s a small world, so these team members may not even be in the same town, or the same country. Outsourcing is just another extension of the virtual team concept to people you don’t even know.

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6 Tools To Help Make Inspiring Presentations

YoungUpstarts

By Alexa Garthwaite, Business Development Manager at Executive Offices. Not too long ago fancy clipart and animated text was enough to make your presentation stand out. Nowadays using default Microsoft presentation tools and art often ends with a presentation looking cheap and uninspiring. Here are a number of tools that offer alternative ways to create and share stunning presentations: 1.

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Don’t Let Early Adopters Distract Your Market Focus

Gust

Image via Stock.xcng. For most new high-tech products, the first customers are always “early adopters.” The conventional wisdom is that early adopters are the ideal target for new products, to get business rolling. I see two pitfalls with any concerted focus on early adopters; first, the size of this group may not be as large as you think, and secondly, their feedback may lead you directly away from your real target market of mainstream customers.

Marketing 178
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Are You Guilty of These 7 Press Release Sins?

Rembrandt Communications

Save Money and Get Better Results with your PR Efforts If you look on the Internet, you will see some horrible press releases. And the businesses that distributed them probably thought they would be inundated with media and sales inquiries as soon as the press releases went live. Has this happened to you? If so, [.].

PR 145
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Government Grants Cost No Equity, But are Not Free

Startup Professionals Musings

In the US, many entrepreneurs see grants as “free money,” since they are not loans and don’t have to be repaid. A grant is not an equity investment, so the entrepreneur doesn’t have to give up a stake in the company either. Typically they can be used to fund product development and commercialization that would otherwise require outside investors. A good place to start looking is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is a lifeline for high-tech startups.

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Recovering From Mistakes

YoungUpstarts

By Trevor Blake, author of “ Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life “ As human beings, we are bound to make mistakes. They are embarrassing, to say the least, and your first instinct, especially within leader positions, might be to cover your tracks. One of the clear signs of emotional maturity however is the ability to admit to a mistake and take responsibility.

LLC 173
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Create the Best Product

Feld Thoughts

I’m mid 2011 I wrote a post titled Competition. Things in my universe had heated up and many of the companies I was an investor in were facing lots of competition. It’s 18 months later and there’s 10x the amount of competitive dynamics going on, some because of the maturity, scale, and market leadership of some of the companies I’m an investor in; some because of the increased number of companies in each market segment, and some based on the heat and intensity of our busi

Product 155
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How To Get Photographic Memory Instantly

Mike Michalowicz

Before you read this post I need you to make me a promise. I need you to promise that you will share this post with at least one friend if you are able to achieve something that you knew (believed) was impossible. Then, I want you to promise me that you will never again believe anything to be impossible, that you will commit to finding a way, no matter what.

Restful 154
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Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Founder

SoCal CTO

I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. It had a passionate group of 50 people attending. I promised to do this post as a follow-up to the session to provide additional links and information. It should also give a sense of what I covered to people who were not there. Here is the outline of the talk and some links from prior posts that talk to the issues that I discussed in the talk.

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Four Technologies That You Absolutely Need In Your Office

YoungUpstarts

by Halit Bozdogan. Smaller companies who are on the up, or just starting out, usually have a finite amount of resources. So finding ways to ensure that you get the best bang from your buck is crucial. There are things that every office is going to need. Desks, chairs and the like are common sense. From a technology standpoint, what can you afford to leave off the shopping list and what is right up there at the top?

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Engine. Where Startups Come Together

Feld Thoughts

I’ve regularly blog about patent trolls harassing startups and impeding innovation, the experiences of immigrant founders, and the battle for a free internet. While I’m fortunate to have this blog, and other writing opportunities as a platform to give voice to these stories, I also realize that to really have a meaningful impact, we need the startup community to be involved in government.

Engineer 148