Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 8, 2012
Many aspiring entrepreneurs are looking to the Internet as an opportunity to get rich quick, instead of a place where you can start a business you love, for very little capital and minimal technical expertise. The reality is that if you build a business you love, you may in fact make big money, but if you start a business to get rich, you will probably fail.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 6, 2012
This article originally ran on TechCrunch. Chris Anderson wrote a really influential book some years ago called “ The Long Tail ” that shaped how many people think about emerging Internet markets. If you haven’t read it you should consider adding it to you library. It was especially influential in my mind in thinking about media. At the simplest level you can think about markets in terms of the number of times media is consumed and/or purchased by people plotted against the tot
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Gust
JUNE 19, 2012
Blog. Thoughts on startups by investors that fund them & entrepreneurs that run them. Subscribe by email. RSS Feed. Invested Interests. Who Makes the Money on an Inevitable Shoe Dropping? Last weekend I caught Mashable announcing that Ebook Sales Surpass Hardcover in the U.S. , something I’ve expected since I first bought a Rocket ebook reader about 10 years.
Feld Thoughts
JUNE 22, 2012
Today’s post is a guest post from William Hertling, author of the award-winning Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears and A.I. Apocalypse , near-term science-fiction novels about realistic ways strong AI might emerge. They’ve been called “frighteningly plausible”, “tremendous”, and “thought-provoking”. By day he works on web and social media for HP.
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
ReadWriteStart
JUNE 14, 2012
So many tech startups begin the same way: One founder, one dream and a plan to make it happen. Most businesses stay that way - there are many more solo entrepreneurs than business owners with employees. But to succeed, most startups need a much broader set of skills and experience. If you intend to build a scalable business, you know you can’t do it alone.
YoungUpstarts
JUNE 12, 2012
Unemployment can strike unexpectedly and leave you feeling frustrated, stressed out, and upset. Yet it doesn’t have to be an entirely bad experience. Aside from the financial woes it might create, unemployment can sometimes be a blessing in disguise, helping you take care of things you’ve been putting off, building career skills, or even pushing you in a totally new direction in life — that is, if you choose to use your time away from the workplace wisely.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
VC Cafe
JUNE 18, 2012
There hasn’t been such a full list of Israeli startups coming to Europe since Barcelona’s World Mobile Congress. Innovate Israel 2012 aims to connect Israeli web, mobile & digital entrepreneurs & businesses with their UK & European counterparts. The UK is Israel’s second largest export market following the US, but Israeli startups often ‘forget Europe’ when it comes to Internationalizing their product.
Occam's Razor
JUNE 25, 2012
Privacy is a very important issue when it comes to digital. The way data is collected online and what happens to it is a much-scrutinized issue (and rightly so). Digital data collection is also exceedingly complex, perhaps a reflection of the organic nature, and subsequent explosion, of the internet. Hence even sophisticated users find it difficult to know everything, one can hardly expect normal digital users to know what's really happening.
Gust
JUNE 17, 2012
Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. Don’t believe the urban myth that you can sketch your idea on a napkin, and professional investors will throw money at you. In reality, only 3 out of 100 companies who apply are successful with Angels, and the success rate with VCs is even lower. A large percentage of startups never apply to either.
ConversionXL
JUNE 14, 2012
What if there was a method – a process – that you could apply to (pretty much) any website to increase sales? Wouldn’t that be swell? Well, there is. This method works across all categories, it doesn’t really matter what business you’re in. I’ve turned it into a checklist. So the way to use it is you take your website, compare it to any item on the list, make improvements, and your online sales will increase.
YoungUpstarts
JUNE 11, 2012
by Kent Campbell, SEO expert and founder of InternetReputationManagement. com. They’re here. The sites that even your genius SEO guy and tech savvy PR team are often powerless against. Unmanaged, these sites can sink your company online. Here’s my top five (actually eight) villainous sites for businesses looking to protect their precious online reputations.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 25, 2012
Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. Don’t believe the urban myth that you can sketch your idea on a napkin, and professional investors will throw money at you. In reality, only 3 out of 100 companies who apply are successful with Angels, and the success rate with VCs is even lower. A large percentage of startups never apply to either.
The Next Web
JUNE 15, 2012
From Silicon Valley to Peoria, Illinois, cash-strapped startups look for inventive way to finance their business – often handing out equity to employees, consultants, vendors, and other service providers. It’s a logical solution. After all, cash may be in short supply, but there’s a virtually endless amount of work to be done, from coding and web development, to PR, sales, general operations, or sage advice from an industry veteran.
David Teten
JUNE 25, 2012
I have a great idea for a product. I’m looking for an entrepreneur to start a company to provide this product, or a development shop which wants to bid on this project. The big vision: one of the reason for the high valuation of Box and Dropbox is that they render the underlying hardware irrelevant; you trust them with their data. I envision a software tool which makes your underlying software irrelevant, by standardizing the UI across all different products.
Gust
JUNE 3, 2012
Many entrepreneurs I know feel guilty about not quitting their day job when initiating their startup, worrying about not giving their all to an employer, juggling the multiple roles, or even a legal conflict of interest. I’ll try to offer some guidelines to address these issues, but I generally recommend you keep the day job until your new company is producing real revenue.
ReadWriteStart
JUNE 6, 2012
Founding your startup with your closest buddy might seem like a dream scenario. Here's how to keep it from turning into a nightmare of dashed hopes and broken friendships. “We should start a business doing (fill in the blank)!”. Who hasn’t brainstormed with their friends trying to come up with the next great million-dollar idea? It’s easy to find inspiration when you’re hanging with a close friend (maybe downing some beers) and since you both see eye-to-eye on almost everything, you can change t
Feld Thoughts
JUNE 25, 2012
Last night Amy and I watched the first episode of Aaron Sorkin’s new TV show The Newsroom. It started out strong but by about 30 minutes in I said to Amy “this isn’t going to last for us – this is Sports Night, but less interesting.” By the end I realized Sorkin was simply following “The Formula” which many people, both creatives and professionals, fall into.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 29, 2012
If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded due diligence process. This is the last step of the process, where surprises in the evaluation of the management team, documentation, and personnel problems can derail the investment. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the due diligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.
Up and Running
JUNE 22, 2012
In order to run a business in the service industry, you’ll need a wide skill set to attract and satisfy customers. A single mistake or lapse in people skills can cause a drastic change, turning your reputation from good to bad. While a variety of factors plays a role in the success of a business, there is one quality that stands out above others – emotional intelligence.
crowdSPRING Blog
JUNE 1, 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!
techcrunch.com
JUNE 30, 2012
Late Thursday, an extraordinary thing happened: Adobe announced in a blog post that it would not provide Flash Player support for devices running Android 4.1 , and that it would pull the plugin from the Google Play store on August 15. The retreat comes five years after the introduction of the iPhone, the device which thwarted Flash’s mobile ambitions, almost even before they began.
The Next Web
JUNE 19, 2012
Under the relatively fresh ‘TNW Profile’ banner, we regularly shine a light on great European entrepreneurs and startup founders, to learn more about their journey and their business, and what drives them personally. We kicked off our series of Q&A-styled TNW Profile interviews with Unity co-founder and CEO David Helgason and followed up with Wooga co-founder and CEO Jens Begemann (and interviewed Soundrop CEO Inge André Sandvik ).
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 26, 2012
I always get asked how to get into VC and so I think a lot about what it takes to do the job well. I'm way early in my career, so I won't say I've perfected anything yet, but after 8 years on the investing side and 3 in startups, I've come up at least one thing: Be open. In venture capital, you say "no" a lot. When you say no a lot, you get good at it.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 22, 2012
The average length of a funding pitch to angel investors is ten minutes. Even if you have booked an hour with a VC, you should plan to talk only for the first fifteen minutes. The biggest complaint I hear from investors is that startup founders often talk way too long, and neglect to cover the most relevant points. Or they get sidetracked by a technical glitch due to poor preparation.
David Teten
JUNE 22, 2012
HBS Angels of NY and the NAIC have named the finalist women and minority entrepreneurs of the Venture Capital Access Program; check out the press release below. If you’re from a major media outlet, please contact me to attend as a guest the pitch night in midtown Manhattan on June 27. Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York and the.
crowdSPRING Blog
JUNE 7, 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!
techcrunch.com
JUNE 22, 2012
Home. Startups. Mobile. Gadgets. Europe. Video. More. Enterprise. Venture. Social. GreenTech. Gaming. Opinion. Drama. Guides. Smartphones. Tablets. Digital Cameras. Laptops. Headphones. Events. CrunchBase. Hot topics. Facebook. Apple. Google. Android. Disrupt SF. Startup Battlefield. startups. Comment. Free Startup Docs: How Much Equity Should Advisors Get?
The Next Web
JUNE 29, 2012
Like every startup out there mine is also after the holy grail of finding our viral loop — our interpretation of “invite a friend and get 1 GB free” of DropBox. I cannot stress enough the importance of finding the viral loop. It’s the moment that every user or customer is bringing another one; the moment when your analytics graphs start to be exceptional and you go around and show them to everyone.
VC Cafe
JUNE 29, 2012
Google I/O: It’s a startup world. In my previous post, I covered the funding aspect of entrepreneurship, but there’s more to innovation than money. To achieve the trifecta of startup success (money, talent, ideas), a vibrant startup community can make the difference between success and failure. In this Google I/O session, “ It’s a Startup World “, moderated by my talented colleague Bridgette Sexton, a panel of international startup community leaders shared some of t
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 11, 2012
Many entrepreneurs I know feel guilty about not quitting their day job when initiating their startup, worrying about not giving their all to an employer, juggling the multiple roles, or even a legal conflict of interest. I’ll try to offer some guidelines to address these issues, but I generally recommend you keep the day job until your new company is producing real revenue.
David Teten
JUNE 25, 2012
I have a great idea for a product. I’m looking for an entrepreneur to start a company to provide this product, or a development shop which wants to bid on this project. The big vision: one of the reason for the high valuation of Box and Dropbox is that they render the underlying hardware irrelevant; you trust them with their data. I envision a software tool which makes your underlying software irrelevant, by standardizing the UI across all different products.
crowdSPRING Blog
JUNE 29, 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!
mobile.smashingmagazine.com
JUNE 11, 2012
- select -. Books. eBooks. Job Board. Shop. Books. eBooks. Job Board. Shop. RSS. Facebook. Twitter. Newsletter. Search Go! - select -. Books. eBooks. Job Board. Shop. Coding. Design. Mobile. Graphics. UX Design. WordPress. Coding. CSS. HTML. JavaScript. Techniques. Design. Web Design. Typography. Inspiration. Business. Mobile. Responsive. iPhone & iPad.
K9 Ventures
JUNE 12, 2012
I’ve written before about how Capital Efficiency doesn’t exist and is an oxymoron. However, there is an important corollary to the non-existence of Capital Efficiency and that is The Curse of Over Capitalization. Some days in Silicon Valley it feels like there are more investors than there are entrepreneurs. And there absolutely are more investors than there are good deals.
Scott Edward Walker
JUNE 26, 2012
INTRODUCTION I just finished reading the book Venture Capitalists at Work , which is a collection of solid interviews by Tarang Shah of certain highly-successful investors. I have set forth below some nuggets for entrepreneurs. This is part one of a three-part series. I hope entrepreneurs find a few of the quotes helpful and get a better understanding of how VC’s think.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 9, 2012
Many entrepreneurs actually refuse to do financial projections beyond the first year, insisting that no one can predict the future. They need to realize that investors ask for projections, not merely as predictions, but more as commitments from the founder and his team. If you are not willing to commit, don’t expect anyone to back you. In reality, you need to set these projections as goals for your own use, to convince employees as well as investors that you have a business which is challenging,
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