SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
I was just asked about a particular startup situation (seed stage, CMO hire, non-founder) and particularly what compensation and equity is appropriate. I know a lot more about CTOs specifically CTO Salary and Equity Trends 2009-2011 , Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data , Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data , but I've previously written about the issues with Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
The Japanese edition of The Startup Owner’s Manual hit the bookstores in Japan this week. The book has been shepherded and edited by a great Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Takashi Tsutsumi, with help from Masato Iino. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. ————-.
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Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 10, 2012
Everyone in the business world has heard of the old bestseller by Geoffrey A. Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ,” but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 11, 2012
The Ontario, Canada-based Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) earlier this month launched LMBA Singapore, its new regional chapter focused on promoting and supporting Asian companies working on location-based services (LBS) market through collaboration, education and research. According to a statement from LBMA , Singapore was chosen as its new Asia hub due to the country’s high smartphone penetration and rich cross-section of LBS players from retailers, agencies, advertisers and media b
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
crowdSPRING Blog
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
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!
ConversionXL
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
People make snap judgements. It takes only 1/10th of a second to form a first impression about a person, and websites are no different. It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave. This number comes from specific studies.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 12, 2012
Software engineers are extremely high in demand, and over the past few years the growth in their salaries has shown exactly how much in demand they are. California-based executive search and technical recruiting firm Riviera Partners recently crunched some numbers by aggregating salary figures from the highest paying tech companies and from a recent report covering the correlation of tech skills in demand and expected salary ranges.
abovethecrowd.com
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
Since Benchmark’s investment in Ebay 15 years ago, we have been fascinated by online marketplaces. Entrepreneurs accurately recognize that the connective tissue of the Internet provides an opportunity to link the players in a particular market, reducing friction in both the buying and selling experience. The arrival of the smartphone amplifies these opportunities, as the Internet’s connective tissue now extends deeper and deeper into an industry with the participants connected to the marketplace
David Cohen
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
Here I am interviewing Fake Grimlock. I'm the human on the right. I just got back to Boulder from an amazing week in Boston and I wanted to reflect on it while it is fresh in my mind. Of all of the things I’ve helped build in my career as an entrepreneur and investor, I think the thing I’m most proud of is the network of amazing entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors around TechStars.
The Equity Kicker
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
UK broadcaster ITV announced their results yesterday and the differing fortunes of the two halves of their business show the way forward for traditional TV companies everywhere. The two parts of the ITV business are content production and content distribution. The production business is doing well with shows like Downton Abbey getting large audiences in the UK and selling well abroad, but revenues at the distribution business declined.
ReadWriteStart
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
Guest author Jonathan Barouch ( @jbarouch ) is founder and CEO of location-based startup Roamz. Roamz is a mobile app that intelligently curates location-based social content to show people what’s going on nearby. Now, before you jump up and down to disagree, hear me out. I have two beautiful children for whom I am grateful every single moment of the day.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
I wrote this post a long time ago. When I did it was a little too close to home for a company to have me publish it. Much time has passed. And I felt it was instructive still so I thought I would publish. I decided to water down some details to protect the innocent. But both stories are still accurate. I hope it still resonates. A while back I received a frantic phone call from the CEO of a company in which I invested.
Rob Go
NOVEMBER 12, 2012
I got this question on a panel last week, and coincidentally, I had a couple folks on Twitter tweet out the same question. Generically speaking, the question is “how do I get in touch with a potential investor about my company?” I don’t know for sure if this is true, but I have the impression that early stage VC’s as a whole have gotten more accessible than probably any time in the past.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 11, 2012
It was a striking sight. It was end of day in last week’s Technology Summit after Workday had showed us countless demos of new functionality, when under non-disclosure they announced plans to develop a Recruiting module.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
Entrepreneurs have no trouble focusing on how to build a product, and the good ones know how to find and nurture those first critical customers. Many, however, don’t know how to take their small business to the next level. What I’m talking about here is a level of discipline and skill necessary to collect and analyze the relevant business data, known as metrics.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
Many people reading this will be digital natives. These are people who don’t remember an era in which we were unconnected. There is no doubt that technology brings benefits to our lives and I have been a heavy user of tech since I was 13 (in 1981). I was connecting to online communities as a teenager on a 9,600 baud modem which is considerably slower than you can even imagine connecting today.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
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. Burgeoning Startup Founder writes: After a year of work, my startup is now doing about $6,000/mo in revenue and $3,000/mo in profit.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 12, 2012
Dennis Howlett has a nice quote from Vishal Sikka of SAP in this blog post. During a recent conversation with Vishal Sikka, exec board member SAP on what might happen as a result of being able to cost effectively mashup.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 12, 2012
Every entrepreneur should spend plenty of time thinking about competitors, and how they relate to your business, but you need to be very careful what you say out loud about them to your team, your investors, and your customers. What you say speaks volumes about how you think about your startup, how smart you are, and your personal integrity. I’ve spent hours talking to startup founders, and heard a thousand startup pitches, and I always listen carefully to what is said (or not said) about compet
The Startup Toolkit
NOVEMBER 10, 2012
Spoiler: You can’t hire out sales because in the early days it’s about learning, not selling, and hired guns can’t bring back bad news. At their peak, Groupon sales reps made 1250 calls per week to close 4 sales[1]. Once Groupon knew the math of that equation, they could throw money at the problem and scale a sales team. Until you have the roadmap nailed down, you can’t scale sales (it would be like throwing money at a big search campaign before you know your lifetime val
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
One of the greatest challenges faced by entrepreneurs is raising sufficient funds to start, continue or even expand the business. Whether it’s finding the cash through your own pocketbook, obtaining a loan from a bank, or approaching investors, without money it’s near impossible to get on the road to success. If this is a challenge you face, you may want to know around 31-percent of small business owners actually borrow money from friends and family.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
4 years ago when I interviewed Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho for The New Polymath, the prime driver in the marketplace for SaaS adoption was better economics compared to on-premise. But Sridhar also spoke about agility in SaaS delivery Feature.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 11, 2012
Throughout my career in small companies and large, I’ve always been appalled by the number of people who seem to complain all of the time. These people don’t seem to realize that they are hurting themselves, as well as other people’s productivity, and the company they are working for. I’ve always thought that I might be overly sensitive, until I saw an old survey done by badbossoloy.com , which claims that a majority of employees spend 10 hours or more a month complaining or listening to others
Gust
NOVEMBER 11, 2012
Google's Larry Page image via Coolspotters.com. A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work.
Rembrandt Communications
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
It’s almost Thanksgiving, and that means we are getting ready for the upcoming holidays. Things will get hectic with year-end deadlines, sales and meetings… not to mention all of the activities you have planned with family and friends. But while all of this is going on, don’t forget this little word that can mean a [.].
deal architect
NOVEMBER 10, 2012
I was taken aback by the modesty of Stan Swete’s question “Would you invest multiple days in a future Workday technology summit?” My answer was an easy yes. Workday, with a consistent track record of 3 releases a year and.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 16, 2012
The first question most people seem to ask when contemplating a new startup is where they will get investor money. That’s certainly a valid question, but all the money in the world won’t make your business a success if you hate what you are doing, and you don’t have a plan to use it. I suggest that there are several other questions even more important than the money one.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
by Monica Shepherd, TradeGecko. For SMEs (small-medium sized enterprise), efficiency and integration are key to managing time and processes. Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, integrates internal and external information across your entire organization. It allows for the transfer of information between all areas or departments of your business, from finance, manufacturing and HR to sales and service, through a single streamlined system.
Agile VC
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
[ This also appears as a guest post at PandoDaily ]. Over the weekend, I read Sarah Lacy’s PandoDaily article that the VC shakeout is taking too long. It’s rather thoughtful and definitely worth reading if you haven’t had a chance to yet. There are some obvious structural reasons why a shakeout in the venture capital industry takes a long time.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 12, 2012
On the New Florence blog Do you see the irony in this? K-Pop The awesome slate at Cognizant Community The journey of an email message The Arctic gold, oil, tourist, shipping, fishing rush Aviation Jet Biofuel The glorious desert Thwarting.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
For most business leaders, their current role is not where they intend to stay until they die. At the right time, they all intend to make a graceful exit, and leave while still perceived to be on top of their game. The challenge is how to know and exit gracefully when the right time has come, without trauma to either the company or themselves. I haven’t seen much insight on this subject, so I was intrigued by a new book “ Leaving on Top: Graceful Exits for Leaders ,” by David Heenan, a business
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
When I was growing up, my childhood dream was to be a general. Yes, in the military, commanding soldiers in the fight against the enemy. My childhood hero was General George S. Patton, who once famously said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Little did I know that would involve plenty of marching and crawling in the mud, and a health problem put paid to that dream.
Up and Running
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
Whether you are trying to raise money for your business or just want to perfect your business strategy, a solid elevator pitch is an essential tool for achieving your goals. An elevator pitch can be delivered either verbally, ideally in 60 seconds or less, or as a one-page overview of your business. Think of the elevator pitch as an executive summary that provides a quick overview of your business and details why you are going to be successful.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 16, 2012
As an author, I love flowery, poetic language, so I admired how Jamie Anderson of SAP opens his column at Forbes celebrating The Doors I can hear Ray Manzerek’s analogue keys (pounding bass notes) reverberating through my subconscious as I.
Feld Thoughts
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
I just found out that Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City made the Amazon Top 10 Business Books of 2012. I’m not a huge “made that list person” but as a writer this is a very cool thing, especially when I look at the other books, and writers, on the list. I’m downloading all of the other books right now and taking them on my two week vacation which is coming up.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
by Christopher Wallace, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Amsterdam Printing. For years, the most desirable exit strategy for startup companies was to go public through an initial public offering. A volatile stock market and economic recession have since changed much of this thinking. Today, many startups are succumbing to the temptation to sell their companies early.
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