Thu.Feb 07, 2013

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Announcing a Deal I’ve Wanted to Talk About for a Year

Both Sides of the Table

Let me not bury the lede. I’m super excited to announce that GRP Partners led the investment in Ethan Anderson’s new company MyTime (link has LA-based merchants but will give you a good feel for the product). I am taking the lead from GRP and we also invested alongside a number of friends including Dave McClure, Dave Tisch, Ben Smith (Merchant Circle), Brian Lee (ShoeDazzle, LegalZoom), Jason Calacanis, Evan Rifkin, Jennifer Lum, Jay Weintraub and a whole host of other angels.

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Don’t Let the Peter Principle Kill Your Dream

Startup Professionals Musings

Most people think that the Peter Principle (employee rises to his level of incompetence) only applies to large organizations. Let me assure you that it is also alive and well within startups. I see startup founders and managers who are stalled transplants from large organizations, as well as highly-capable technologists trying to start and run a business for the first time.

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Twitter Link Roundup #165 – 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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My guiding Magic Quadrant

deal architect

I often get nice compliments like “where did that insight come from?” or “how could you rattle off so many case studies around that technology trend?” In reverse, I find myself disagreeing with fellow bloggers and analysts and when I.

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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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Did You Forget These Communication Tools for Success?

Rembrandt Communications

We all know that communicating with your associates, customers and team members is a key to success, but with taxes, events, monthly meetings, and everything else going on at your organization right now, your communications efforts may be lagging. Here are three, key questions to ask yourself to help stay on track with your business [.].

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The Real Deal: Narinder Singh on The Davos Excitement about Technology

deal architect

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. Narinder Singh and the firm he co-founded, Appirio (and where he is now Chief Strategy Officer) have graced the pages of this blog.

More Trending

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The Lean Entrepreneur is here

Startup Lessons Learned

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. That new book is about to hit bookstores everywhere. I was honored that they asked me to write the foreword, and with their permission I'm posting an excerpt below.

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Dressing For Success

YoungUpstarts

Whether you’re looking for work or are seeking a promotion at your current job, dressing the part can make all the difference. Though it’s easy to say that appearances shouldn’t matter and that a candidate should be judged on their merit and accomplishments rather than their chosen style of dress, the truth is that your wardrobe choices do reflect upon you and speak to your character in the professional world.

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How To Get Refocused On Work

Mike Michalowicz

It happens to us all. We are working away, and then that email chime goes off. Two hours later we finally realize that we drifted off from the work we needed to do. I reached out to the entrepreneurial community to learn how they refocus on work after a distraction sets in. Here is what they shared: 1. Dance Like You Don’t Care. It’s easy to lose focus when you spend all day in a chair.

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I’ve made all the content on this blog identifiable by category

David Teten

I’ve been maintaining this blog for almost a decade, and a lot of helpful content is now hard to find because I had been lax about tagging it with categories. So, I’ve just added categories for all of my past blog posts, which you can see in the right column. This should make old content much more findable. I’ve tagged all my posts by industry , investing type , startup management tools , personal productivity tools , company , location , and/or other categories as appropriate

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Big Data Meetup at CU on 2/13 @ 6:00

David Cohen

Are you in Boulder and interested in Big Data? It’s way better than medium data or small data if you ask me. Are you amazed at how the big data technologies of the last few years have transformed the way you look at data? Are you interested in what the next “big thing” is in big data? If you answered yes then you have to come to the Februrary Boulder / Denver Big Data meetup on 2/13 @ 6:00 PM at CU ( ECCR 265 ).

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A story from Sir Tim

Start Up Blog

I had the good fortune this week to meet the inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners Lee. He is currently touring Australia and after he gave a public lecture at Melbourne University, I was lucky enough to attend a private session thanks to the AUDA and meet him personally. Firstly, I’d like to say he was a total gentleman, who is very humble for all that he has given us.

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Setting your moral compass

Berkonomics

Almost all of us in our leadership roles are looked upon to provide clues for behavior by those who look up to us, whether family members or subordinates in the workplace or even those we associate with as peers, suppliers, or customers. In your business and personal life, there will be moments that will define you forever in the eyes of those you might not be aware are watching.

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100 grams (Instagrams that is)

Eric Friedman

I noticed recently that I have posted 100+ Instagram photos since I started – [link]. It’s been quite a ride for them and I will leave commentary on the Company up to others. On the personal side it’s been a fun ride as well and I thought I would take stock. I find myself browsing and interacting (read “liking”) way more than I am posting.

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The Simple Truth That Everyone With a Coach Understands

Duct Tape Marketing

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Robert D. Smith – Enjoy! Image Credit: marcello99. After over 30 years in the artist management business, I’ve come to learn something about the difference between successful artists—whether they’re authors, speakers, singers, musicians, etc.—and unsuccessful artists. The successful ones know a little secret that applies to much more than just artists and stage personalities.

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The State of Human Resources

Spencer Fry

Back office work is one thing I've had a lot of experience in doing while running TypeFrag , Carbonmade and other companies. I've set up and managed payroll, benefits, and on-boarding employees more often than I care to remember. It's always a painful process that you put off to the last minute because you just don't want to deal with it. Paperwork is distracting.

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Will No Saturday Mail Delivery Hurt Business?

Duct Tape Marketing

As you’ve likely heard the U.S. Postal Service has proposed ending 1st class mail delivery on Saturdays. It’s also no secret that the Post Office is hemorrhaging money and needs to find ways to stem the losses. Reaction to the idea was both swift and in some cases emotional. Opponents cite the negative impact on small business. (As they always seem to do when it suits the cause.).

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10 Essentials for Setting Up Your Accounting Function

Early Growth Financial Services

If your company is in the early stages, pre-funding, now may not be the right time to worry about 409A valuations or top-down financial projections. But it is the time to set up your simple accounting function—if you haven’t already. You don’t want to get too far in the game without establishing a simple accounting system, but you also don’t want to make it too complicated.

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The State of Product Management

Rob Go

I moderated a really excellent panel last week on the State of Product Management. A really nice summary (with photos) was posted on VentureFizz by Greg Rublev. Check it out. [link].

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Designing for viral growth

The Equity Kicker

I don’t post many infographics here, but this is a great one. It covers concepts like the viral co-fficient and time through the viral loop and lists out a bunch of tactics for increasing virality. None of this stuff is new, but this list is comprehensive and it’s great to have it in one place. Additionally, not many businesses have the characteristics that make viral growth a possibility and the other thing I like about this infographic is that it can be used as a kind of check list

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Entrepreneurs Experience – Do It and Learn It

Steve Blank

In 2012, in partnership with Stanford University , U.C. Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the adjunct entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

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Entrepreneurs Experience – Do It and Learn It

Steve Blank

'In 2012, in partnership with Stanford University , U.C. Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the adjunct entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

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