June, 2012

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7 Success Principles From Internet Millionaires

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Internet 249
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Gust Blog - Thoughts on startups by investors that fund them

Gust

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.

Startup 180
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How To Predict The Future

Feld Thoughts

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.

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6 Skills Every Startup Team Needs

ReadWriteStart

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.

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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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100 Smart Ways To Invest Your Time When You’re Unemployed

YoungUpstarts

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.

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EU Cookie / Privacy Laws: Implications On Data Collection And Analysis

Occam's Razor

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.

Analytics 130

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The 10 Best Sources of Cash to Start Your Business

Gust

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.

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Startup Idea/Seeking Developers to Bid on a Project

David Teten

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.

Developer 144
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How to Keep Starting a Business from Ruining a Friendship

ReadWriteStart

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

Taiwan 144
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Five Sites Reputation Management Experts Fear

YoungUpstarts

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.

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The Formula

Feld Thoughts

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.

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The 10 Best Sources of Cash to Start Your Business

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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Entrepreneurs: Don’t Quit Your Real Job Too Early

Gust

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.

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Steve Would Be Proud: How Apple Won The War Against Flash

techcrunch.com

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.

Flash 110
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Finalist Women and Minority Entrepreneurs Named in VCAP Program

David Teten

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.

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The Curse of Over-Capitalization

K9 Ventures

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.

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How to Create a Total Online Presence When You Really Don’t Have the Time

Duct Tape Marketing

As marketing your business online continues to evolve it’s become essential to look at how you view your online presence in a global, integrated and strategic manner. Ernst Vikne via Flickr. From this view, I believe you can gain the greatest coverage with the least amount of chasing your tail. I believe there’s a bit of a hierarchy to what must be done first and by adhering to this loose order you’ll always know what comes next.

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Prepare Your Startup Team for Investor Due Diligence

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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The Real Deal: Sukumar Rajagopal on a CIOs Pursuit of Employee Delight

deal architect

When I interviewed Sukumar, CIO at Cognizant for my book last year, he teased me with his vision of “social design,” and his quest to deliver 500 percent productivity on Cognizant projects. I wanted to profile a lot more in.

Employee 303
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Free Startup Docs: How Much Equity Should Advisors Get?

techcrunch.com

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?

Equity 94
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Startup Idea/Seeking Developers to Bid on a Project

David Teten

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.

Developer 114
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The Curse of Over-Capitalization

K9 Ventures

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.

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Entrepreneurship for the 99%

Steve Blank

This is a guest post from Jerry Engel, the Faculty Director of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (and the Founding Faculty Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley.). ———– The 99%. As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C.

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10 Tips on Making a Memorable Investor Pitch

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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Four Building Blocks for the New “Second Industrial Revolution”

Rob Go

There is a dark cloud over the internet sector due to the weak performance of the Facebook IPO. It’s not horribly dramatic by any means – Facebook is clearly an important company (even if it’s not worth $90B+). But a lot of entrepreneurs and investors were hoping for a really strong showing to drive more liquidity in the market and continue the surge in hype around internet companies (both start-ups and later stage companies).

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5 Ways to Be More Human in Business

Duct Tape Marketing

One of the greatest things about technology is that it can make us more efficient, allow us to automate interactions, be on every corner and remain open twenty-four hours a day without the need for a human attendant. thisisbossi via Flickr CC. And, it can wall us off from our customers and prevent us for building the kinds of relationships that help us get better at what we do, help us understand the true needs of our customers and help us build the kind of community that can sustain us through

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Finalist Women and Minority Entrepreneurs Named in VCAP Program

David Teten

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.

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When do I *stop* doing customer interviews and start writing code?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Robert Graham of WhiteTail Software (and this awesome guest post on cold calling ) asks: @whitetailsoft When do you stop #custdev efforts and build the product? I’ve been wrestling with the details of #leanstartup. (from his blog post ) …some civil engineers think the world of project management in their field is ripe for revolution, but do I know enough of them?

Customer 252
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Making a Dent in the Universe – Results from the NSF I-Corps

Steve Blank

Our goal teaching for the National Science Foundation was to make a dent in the universe. Could we actually teach tenured faculty how to turn an idea into a company? And if we did, could it change their lives? We can now answer these questions. Hell yes. ———– The Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Lean 248
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Entrepreneurs: Don’t Quit Your Real Job Too Early

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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Are Banks Simply Too Big To Innovate?

Seeing Both Sides

Mary Meeker's periodic review of the Internet industry is always a must-read presentation. This year was no exception - chock full of data, insights and thought-provoking charts. There is a theme that Mary espoused that I have become a big fan of ever since I read Marc Andresseen's article in the Wall Street Journal " Why software is eating the world ".

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What A VC Orders for Breakfast Says

Genuine VC

One of the things that surprised me most about venture capital when I got into the business is how much VCs seem to like to meet for breakfast. VCs usually typically reserve dinners for portfolio companies’ CEOs and board members. And “doing lunch” doesn’t happen that often because VCs don’t like going out of the office mid-day much. But breakfast for venture capitalists is an open free-for-all for all sorts of networking meetings and conversations.

Portfolio 248
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The 25 Best Leadership Bloggers

YoungUpstarts

Anyone who has ever tried to lead people will tell you leadership is more like art than science. And as with art, perfecting the craft of leadership requires studying under a master. Of course, an aspiring leader must have a foundation of communication, decision-making, and problem-solving skills, but owning the tools and knowing how to use them to maximum effect are two different things.

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Stop claiming you’re profitable

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

My company is profitable, and has been from day one. – every high-tech bootstrapped founder I know what you really mean. What you mean is that the only business-related charges on your PayPal MasterCard — aside from those on intentional detour for tax-deduction like the external DVD drive you needed to rip CDs after you realized the MacBook Air in all its luxurious, silent, thin, sexy glory still cannot import “The Best of Pat Benatar” without

Salary 246
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3 P’s to PR Success

Rembrandt Communications

While many new entrepreneurs still think “PR” means “press release” instead of “public relations,” or that public relations is all about sending out press releases, this is only a small part of the big picture. Today, public relations represents getting your message out to the right people at the right time in the right format… [.].

PR 200
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8 Attributes of a Real Entrepreneur That Run Deep

Startup Professionals Musings

Business success begins in the mind of the startup founder and his team. A winning startup is a team of entrepreneurs who build and run the business as an extension of who they are, rather than some extrapolation of the Google or Facebook model. It’s not so easy to fake the important attributes when the going gets rough. So before you risk it all by jumping into a startup, do a reality check on your own mind to see if you can find a majority of the following attributes, summarized from the book