Sat.Jan 01, 2011 - Fri.Jan 07, 2011

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250 Developers

This is going to be BIG.

Back in the 60’s, JFK make a bold proclimation that we were going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The details of exactly how this was going to happen were a bit sketchy, but having a big hairy audacious goal galvanized the innovation community into achieving something spectacular. In today’s world, one of the bottlenecks we have to innovation is the lack of software development talent.

Developer 114
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Twitter Link Roundup #68 – 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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Working with Other Cultures: How to Do Business in India [guest post]

VC Cafe

E ze pinged me few weeks back saying he’s going to visit India. I wished him good luck knowing he’s going to have a great time there. India is a great place to visit and also a great place (although highly challenging) for doing business. The key, though, is to know how. Few facts: it is believed that the Indian art of trading goes all the way back to 2800 BC.

India 87
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Bad Reasons *Not* to Start a Business

Up and Running

I just read Neil Patel’s Business isn’t fun! on his QuickSprout blog. It’s a great case of being very right but explaining very wrong. Try this on: I hate to break it to you, but business isn’t fun. People start and join businesses to make money. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the New York Stock Exchange; companies are purely based on their financial performance.

Stock 80
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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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I Love Starting The Year Off With CES

Feld Thoughts

After a two-fer of deeply annoying arrogance demonstrated by two different VCs on the first business day of 2011 that I’m still pondering (a mix of conflict avoidance behavior and passive aggressive behavior) I’m really looking forward to CES. Several years ago, my partners and I started going to CES together. Jason and Ryan had being going for a while.

Las Vegas 104
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Calling Vince Lombardi: Four Mega-Trends for 2011

Growthink Blog

When seeking breakout companies to back, here are four mega-trends for 2011: 1. Look for Companies That Harness the Power and Avoid the Danger of “Corporations of One.” Never before in human history has the world afforded more opportunities for talented individuals to work for themselves, by themselves. Tools of virtual collaboration – email chief among them but also Skype, Google Apps, and inexpensive “cloud” project management software like Basecamp - have eliminated most of the collaboration

SMS 69

More Trending

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How To Prepare A Media Release To Generate Press Coverage – Case Study

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

In my previous article I took a look at contacting and communicating with the print media through the creation and distribution of a media release. In this post, I thought I would give an example of a media release so that you can see the format at work, and then show you the results of the campaign. Just as a reminder, a media release is the document, taking a specific format, that you prepare to share your news with your chosen media outlet.

Media 80
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Macroeconomics for Startups

OnlyOnce

Macroeconomics for Startups. I’m not an economist. I don’t play one on TV. In fact, I only took one Econ class at Princeton (taught by Ben Bernanke, no less), and I barely passed it. In any case, while I’m not an economist, I do read The Economist , religiously at that, and I’ve been reading so much about macroeconomic policies and news the past 18 months that I feel like I finally have a decent rudimentary grip on the subject.

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When Smart People are Bad Employees

Ben's Blog

And I always find, yeah, I always find somethin’ wrong. You been puttin’ up with my sh#t just way too long. I’m so gifted at findin’ what I don’t like the most. So I think it’s time for us to have a toast. Let’s have a toast for the douchebags, Let’s have a toast for the a@%holes, Let’s have a toast for the scumbags, Every one of them that I know.

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Startup CEO New Years Resolutions

Lightspeed Venture Partners

'I asked the CEO’s of the companies that I work with, ”What are your company related new years resolutions?” Each had a different spin, but they mostly fell into a few themes of: Great people. Improve the product. Stay Lean. Grow fast. Internalize culture and values. Lisa Marino of RockYou , a leading developer of social games and advertising solutions for social media, is focused on building a great team with more gaming DNA to improve the quality of the games it publishes:

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Invodo Driving Higher Conversion Rates at Golfsmith.com

Austin Startup

Invodo , the only full-service eCommerce video partner for online retailers, today announced that Golfsmith has leveraged Invodo’s video solutions to increase sales conversions and SEO on Golfsmith.com. Golfsmith made the choice because Invodo offered the three key elements of any online video initiative; content production, technology platform and delivery network.

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How Twitter Got Me into The White House & Saved My Son’s Birthday

Both Sides of the Table

It’s clear that if you use Twitter wisely it can have an impact on how you physically experience your world. You have to put effort into building meaningful connections and contributing back but if you do the rewards can be handsome. Here’s my story. Every year I spend the December holidays in Annapolis with my in-laws. My second son Andy’s birthday is December 28th so we spend his birthday Back East every year.

Baltimore 299
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A new decade: From consumerization to commercialization of technology

deal architect

“I would rather compete with Sony than compete in another product category with Microsoft.” Steve Jobs said that to Time magazine soon after launching the iPod in 2001. It signaled the start of a trend Gartner would later call “consumerization.

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This year, take the risk

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Still debating whether this is the year to take an outsized risk, to make a strong decision, or whether “start a company&# should be your New Year’s Resolution? What’s stopping you? What are you afraid of? Is it better to be embarrassed or to do nothing worth judging? Is it better to make an argument and be wrong or to be complacent and thoughtless?

Stock 270
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11 New Year’s Resolutions to Work Happy in 2011

Startup Professionals Musings

Welcome to the New Year 2011! You’ve probably already made your resolutions, but if not, I suggest a renewed commitment to finding happiness and satisfaction in your work. After all, most of us spend more hours in this role than any other, and life is too short to spend most of your life unhappy. If you haven’t tried it, one way to be happier at work is to be an entrepreneur, according to a recent survey in the UK , and an older one in the US.

Restful 262
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Now Hear This

Steve Blank

Much like my career, in the last two years this blog has traveled a serendipitous path. I orignally wrote it with four goals in mind: First, to explain to my kids, then just graduating from High School, stories about their dad’s life when he was their age. And with the 30-year statute of limitations now passed, stories about who I worked for (and the names of agencies.).

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Time passages

deal architect

"Well I'm not the kind to live in the past The years run too short and the days too fast The things you lean on are the things that don't last Well it's just now and then my line gets.

Lean 231
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Dilbert on Cloud Computing

SoCal CTO

Some days it does feel this way:

Cloud 235
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Startup Exits Should Be Positive and Planned Early

Startup Professionals Musings

If you startup is your dream, why would you want to think about an exit? It’s going to be so successful and so much fun that you don’t need to think about what comes after. Wrong. There are two very real and practical reasons why you need to plan an exit: Outside investors want to collect their return. Remember that equity investments are not like loans with interest.

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The Numbers Reset To Zero

Feld Thoughts

Most of the companies I’m an investor in have a fiscal year that lines up with the calendar year. As a result, with a few exceptions, the 2010 numbers are done and the 2011 numbers have reset to zero. When I was running my first company (Feld Technologies) this was a big moment each year. I still remember it vividly – we pushed and pushed and pushed an increasing revenue (and profit) number each year with the goal of exceeding the previous year.

Revenue 124
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The realistic cloud?

deal architect

Purists will scoff but I liked this interview with Hyatt’s CIO Mike Blake as he commits to Microsoft mail/Sharepoint in the cloud “Cloud is a direction we’re already at. We don’t have any apps or solutions that aren’t hosted by.

Cloud 218
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Funding Lessons from a Successful Kickstarter Campaign

ReadWriteStart

Crowdfunding your startup through sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGO has become an interesting, and in many cases, quite viable way of financing your project. A number of individuals and companies have been able to raise pretty substantial amounts of money through these services, going well beyond what they initially set as their funding targets. Most notably of late, was the success of Lunatik/TikTok iPod Nano wristwatch, which set the record for the most money raised via Kickstarter to-date:

Campaign 124
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Align Your Startup With Today’s Customer Paradigm

Startup Professionals Musings

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

Customer 229
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Does Me-Too Stuff Bore You?

Feld Thoughts

As 2011 kicks off, I think we are in for a ton of innovative software and Internet stuff this year. Yeah, some of it will be “just like everything else but different.&# However, of the areas we invest heavily in – human computer interaction – has an incredible amount of activity going on. I’ll be at CES in Las Vegas this week so I expect to have a dose of nerd-eye-candy (e.g. the latest TV sets) along with a bunch of cool / amazing / clever / intriguing new HCI things.

Las Vegas 123
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HP: At the crossroads?

deal architect

Reading about the HP webOS event in February I wonder where Palm fits in its future. Reading about the marketing change at HP – trading ex-Disney exec Michael Mendenhall for SAP exec Bill Wohl – especially during CES week I.

Marketing 199
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Resolution, Shmezolution! How to Reach 2011 Biz Goals

Rembrandt Communications

Woo Hoo! It’s the New Year. Did you make a resolution to lose weight, stop smoking, or get in better shape this year? Maybe you want to start your own business? Well, as most of you know, it can be very difficult to keep a resolution. I always like to think of resolutions as long-term [.].

SEO 100
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How to Find a Job at the Right Startup for You

Startup Professionals Musings

For those of you who want to get in on the ground floor of a new venture, but haven’t yet worked up the nerve to start your own, begin with a job at a startup. But first you should ask yourself if you are prepared for the realities. Working for a startup is not a career choice, but more of a lifestyle. The long-term opportunities may be large, but near-term paychecks will be small, compared to large companies in the same industry.

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Orbotix Sphero at CES

Feld Thoughts

Today’s fun “company at CES that Foundry Group has invested in&# is Orbotix. They’ll be in their booth #4419 in the North Hall iLounge. Orbotix makes Sphero, the world’s first robotic ball controlled by a smartphone. Here’s Sphero in action. .

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Eight Biggest Areas of Risk for Buyers of Outsourcing Services

deal architect

Nice title to this article, but a bit misleading since no buyers appear to have been actually interviewed. It does provide a variety of vendor perspectives - cites executives from 9 service providers. Ironically, in a fragmented outsourcing sector where.

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Exit Activity Up 25% in 2010, as Signs Point to 2011 as "The Year of the IPO"

ReadWriteStart

Exit activity for venture-backed companies moved closer to levels seen prior to the recent economic downturn, according to figures released today by industry tracker Dow Jones VentureSource. 514 companies achieved liquidity in 2010, netting $39.3 billion, a 25% increase in exits from 2009. 46 venture-backed companies went public in 2010, raising $3.4 billion.

IPO 118
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Funding a Startup from Advertising is a Vain Dream

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the biggest red flags I see in many Internet-related business plans today is advertising as the initial revenue stream, or a key part of it. If challenged, the founder usually cites the Facebook business model (free service to users, revenue from ads), but forgets that Facebook has had several hundred million in funding, and has been profitable only in the last two years.

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The Adjacent Possible

This is going to be BIG.

In Where Good Ideas Come From , Steven Johnson writes about expanding your possibilities simply by moving forward: “Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Those four rooms are the adjacent possible. But once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original star

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Consumerization: Pushing the limits at CES?

deal architect

I have celebrated last decade as that of consumerization of technology and I dedicated a chapter to the topic in my book. But I must admit this time of the year, when CES convenes, the noise around consumer tech gets.

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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends For The Decade

ReadWriteStart

On Jan. 6, 2011 we hosted our 64th free One Million by One Million (1M/1M) strategy roundtable for entrepreneurs, and the first for this year. We started this week's roundtable with a discussion of all the resources we have brought together over the last three years to help entrepreneurs, including a comprehensive curriculum for entrepreneurship development on a large scale.

Vertical 115
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Government Grants are Not as Free as You Think

Startup Professionals Musings

Now that President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has been out for a while, including $50 billion aimed at alternative-energy initiatives, applying for grants has become the rage for high-tech startups. I applaud the initiative, and encourage startups in this direction, but there are costs. In the US, many entrepreneurs see grants as “free money,” since they are not loans and don’t have to be repaid.

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24 Hours In Las Vegas With My Dad

Feld Thoughts

Last night during my two mile post dinner walk from the Hard Rock (where I had an awesome dinner at Nobu) to the Venetian (where I subsequently had a very short night of sleep), my mind wandered around about the great time I had with my dad at CES. My dad and I have developed several annual traditions including a really delightful father-son weekend.

Las Vegas 109