Sat.Jan 12, 2013 - Fri.Jan 18, 2013

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GRP Excited to add Sam Rosen to Its Ranks. How Did He Get the Role? Hustle. Here’s the Story.

Both Sides of the Table

I’m very excited to be finally be able to announce that this week we’ve added Sam Rosen to our ranks at GRP Partners in the role of entrepreneurs-in-residence – EIR. It’s the first EIR that we’ve had in the years that I’ve been with the firm and I hope will be the start of our investment in this program. And it’s the latest in a series of investments we’ve made in building out our practice as the LA technology market continues to grow robustly and

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Top Entrepreneurs Have Follow-up, Not Ideas Alone

Startup Professionals Musings

When someone introduces me to an “idea person,” I automatically jump to the down-side conclusion that this person doesn’t do follow-up. Of course there are people who are great at getting things done, but haven’t had an original idea in their life. Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both. I was with IBM in the early PC days when Bill worked with us to provide PC DOS and other software.

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Twitter Link Roundup #162 – 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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TIME.com Redesign: a Responsive Global News Site | TIME.com

techland.time.com

fixed above the page and still position correctly -->. Skip to Content. TIME. Tech. Sections → NewsFeed U.S. Politics World Business Tech Health Science Entertainment Style Sports Opinion Photos Magazine Video LIFE.com Lists TIME Home. Home. CES 2013. Gadgets. Video Games. Apps & Web. News. Reviews & Features. Videos. Lists. Magazine. Video.

Global 68
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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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Sandy Hook Promise and Tech Activism

Both Sides of the Table

The tech community has become more politically active over the past 5 years and this is a good thing. We live in a representative democracy and organizing, having a voice and expressing views is critical to our functioning democracy. One of the most visible, active and admirable leaders of this movement is Ron Conway and he describes this in this post on TechCrunch.

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Do Job Specs Matter?

Seeing Both Sides

Today's post is brought to you by my friend, Paul Blumenfeld , a recruiter who is one of the most thoughtful people I know when it comes to hiring processes. Since the topic is so fundamental to the company-building process, I am pleased Paul agreed to share his thoughts. When my wife and I got engaged, we had barely clinked champagne glasses when a friend asked when we would be visiting Crate and Barrel to register for wedding gifts.

More Trending

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10 Tests of Your Modern Entrepreneur Lingo Savvy

Startup Professionals Musings

Many entrepreneurs I know don’t realize that the language they learned in the corporate world, or even their recent MBA class, won’t get them ahead in the startup world today. Even if you have heard some of the new terms, but can’t explain how, when, and why they are relevant to your startup, you may be in jeopardy. As a reality check, try this quick test of your entrepreneur savvy.

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I’m Back. Why I Love January

Both Sides of the Table

It’s January. Happy New Year! My last post was December 17 – nearly a month ago. I miss blogging because it serves as a great repository for me of my current thinking, as a way of organizing my thoughts and clarifying what I think and as a conversation started with so many of you (as Hunter Walk elegantly said, “Blog not to show how smart you are, but in the hope of soliciting feedback from smart people.

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Austin in San Francisco

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

When people can devise their own lifestyle, career, and mobility more than at any other time in history, it’s interesting to ask how a startup can support and encourage its employees beyond a paycheck. When job-hopping is a badge of honor instead of a scar of disloyalty, it’s interesting to ask how a company can retain talent over significant stretches of time.

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For god and country, Geronimo

deal architect

It is one of the most poignant quotes ever in the heat of the moment, and to me ranks with Neil Armstrong’s “One small step…” among others. And it only shows up in passing in the last 15 minutes of.

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5 Startup Marketing Actions to Impress Investors

Startup Professionals Musings

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment. When questioned, founders usually mention word-of-mouth, viral marketing, and a top quality product.

Marketing 265
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From Dreamliner to Nightmare

Venture Chronicles

Complex systems fail in complex ways not anticipated by engineers. You can over-engineer the systems, test every imaginable scenario, build redundant system coverage, test again. and you can still fail. Boeing’s nightmare is just beginning, their latest generation airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, has been grounded because of fire danger in the lithium ion batteries used to replace many of the hydraulic systems a plane requires.

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Elephanti – Stomping Into The Mobile Marketing Space

YoungUpstarts

Brick-and-mortar businesses – large and small – are increasingly looking towards the online and mobile spaces to boost flagging retail sales. The problem, of course, is that many of them are traditional outfits with nary an idea of how to approach this challenge. This trend has also sparked the onrush of online and mobile marketing startups eager to answer this need.

Mobile 188
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May the math and stat majors inherit the tech world

deal architect

I started my career at PW as an accountant. I have a long since expired CPA certificate as memory. It was good business grounding for an MBA and required experience back then before you could move into PW’s consulting arm.

CPA 252
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Seed and Later Investments for Startups are Booming

Startup Professionals Musings

The number of startups getting seed funding in 2012 jumped by 65% over the previous year to a total of 1749, according to a recent report by CB Insights. “Seed investments” are early stage financings (typically less than $1.5 million) made by either Angels or venture capitalists, or both. This is great evidence that the recession drag on funding new startups is behind us.

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The Importance Of A Monthly Cadence With Close Friends

Feld Thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot about Aaron Swartz the past few days. I didn’t know him, but knew of him and have a lot of friends who knew him. I’m still processing it, especially the dynamics around his suicide, and expect I’ll have plenty to say in the coming weeks about depression and entrepreneurship. In the mean time, I thought the USA Today article, Activist Aaron Swartz’s suicide sparks talk about depression , by Laurie Segal, is particularly good.

Portfolio 186
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Amsterdam’s Rockstart Accelerator Sees Good First Year, Announces 2nd Edition

YoungUpstarts

Amsterdam-based startup accelerator Rockstart last year launched a program to find and support ten teams of startup founders in Europe. It recently announced the results of its incubator program – and the results look promising. Of the ten startups in the inaugural 2012 class, four have raised follow-on funding to date, and one even reached the break-even point and expanded to Silicon Valley.

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CIOs and social networks

deal architect

Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer at Enterasys Networks, a unit of Siemens Enterprise, lists who he considers the 50 most social CIOs on Twitter. In a side conversation, I asked him if tech sector CIOs dominated his list. You would.

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Nurture 5 Top Entrepreneur Success Characteristics

Startup Professionals Musings

Every startup wants to be a predictable success, yet so few ever achieve this enviable position. In reality, getting there is not a random walk, and requires an understanding of the stages that every business must navigate and the organizational characteristics necessary at each stage. Les McKeown, in his book “ Predictable Success ” outlines these stages and characteristics for any business.

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Build Entrepreneur Credentials Early and Wisely

Gust

Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard via ShinyShiny.tv. Many believe that entrepreneurs are born, not made. While I agree that successful company builders usually have a natural inclination to be entrepreneurs, a good education helps polish that apple. There are people who are natural musicians, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to teach them music.

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Six Tips For Firing Compassionately

YoungUpstarts

by Rob Wilson, CEO of Employco USA. As many companies slowly recover from the down economy, even large corporations are still being forced to downsize. Most recently, American Express will be cutting their travel business, with thousands of employees being laid off as a result. Since most businesses will face the unpleasant reality of firing an employee at some point, companies can implement measures for handling this dilemma correctly and offer assistance during a difficult time.

Salary 175
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50 shades of independence

deal architect

I had been at Gartner two years, having moved there from Price Waterhouse. A partner at a Big 5 competitor of PW called “I thought you left PW a while ago” suggesting I was biased towards PW. A year later.

Partner 220
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Get A Domain Name Without Bankrupting Your Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

I’m sure you have all been frustrated at least once by not being able to get the Internet domain name you want for your company. Who owns all of these names, and should you ever buy one for a premium? The simple answer is that if you want to be found on the Web, the perfect domain name can be well worth a few thousand dollars, but don’t pay a fortune for one.

Naming 219
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What Does Your Website Say?

Rembrandt Communications

Do You have the Right SEO Copy in Place? When new people visit your Website, what’s the first thing they see and click on? If you don’t know, it’s time to find out. Check your Google Analytics and see what is going on. This is important. Why? While you may think you have a great [.].

SEO 159
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Find Local Service Providers With Aladom.com

YoungUpstarts

Frenchman Guillaume Thomas, a father of five young children, had a problem. He was finding it incredibly difficult looking for babysitters to care for his kids while living in France and wasted much time doing so. In fact, he was so frustrated he did something any problem-solver would have done – come up with the solution himself. Thomas started Aladom.com in 2007, a French website that started by providing a babysitter matchmaking service – they were given free listings – and

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Google, Kurzweil and AI frontiers Kinect+Coke+AI+2PM = Japan’s Got Talent Pharma companies and beauty products Here’s looking at you kid Tech leverage of lower limbs 2013 CES Trends to follow Technology and auto accidents The New.

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Startup Map & Trends Analysis – December 2012

Gust

December update and insights about new startups: India became second last month as the country with the highest count of new Startups, right below the United States. India’s average position for the year has been fourth, it came up to third in February and between June to August, but only reached second for the first time this past month. Top 5 Us states remained steady this month and were consistent with their yearly averages.

India 171
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Concentrate Mostly On One Company

Feld Thoughts

This first appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Accelerator series. A few our entrepreneurial heroes work on more that one company at a time. Steve Jobs (Pixar, Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock). And we regularly hear of entrepreneurs who are working at companies that acquired their first company who are now working on new companies while still at their acquirer.

Community 167
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[Singapore][Event] How To Start And Own A Successful Business

YoungUpstarts

by Elisha Tan, founder of Learnemy. The biggest problem that all entrepreneurs face is that there is no fix way of doing things – there are just too many ways things can go wrong. Customer acquisition, fund raising, hiring the right person… the list goes on. So what do you do? You learn from entrepreneurs who have been there and done that. And you start by attending in this one-day seminar on “How To Start and Own a Successful Business” by Boyd Au on the 16th Jan (6.30pm – 9.30pm) or

Singapore 155
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More Innovation

deal architect

on the New Florence blog Santa’s Mobile/Social Gifts Technology and Christmas Eve The Santa Math Project Waterford Arbitrage The Foti Fire Show Never Stop Searching Tim Cook: Time’s Runner-up for Person of the Year The Mobile Apps economy.

Mobile 207
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SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters

For Entrepreneurs

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin This article is a comprehensive and detailed look at the key metrics that are needed to understand and optimize a SaaS business. It is a completely updated rewrite of an older post. For this version, I have co-opted two real experts in the [.].

Metrics 168
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The Early Stage VC Decision Making Process Infographic

VC Cafe

Interesting infographic from Anna Vital in San Francisco, from the Kickstarter campaign "Becoming an Entrepreneur" Kickstarter campaign. Trying to get inside the mind of an early stage VC investor. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

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[Singapore][Event] Echelon 2013

YoungUpstarts

Echelon is back for its 2013 edition – it takes place on 17 and 18 June this year – and it’s currently on the hunt for more of Asia’s most promising startups. If you’re an Asia-based startup looking for an opportunity to showcase your product and would like to pitch to Asia’s top investors, industry thought leaders and the media, you need to be at Echelon.

Singapore 150
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What does not kill you makes you stronger?

deal architect

I have long been a Quickbooks user. Once you are set up, it is a low maintenance path to keeping books, quarterly and annual reporting. But 2-3 times a year I get irritated with Intuit, the publisher. a) One of.

Software 191
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14 startups we predict will go even bigger in 2013

The Next Web

What if you could invest in any startup on the map right now? It’s an irresistible “what if,” isn’t it? After all, savvy entrepreneurs spend just as much time eyeballing other successful — and up-and-coming — companies as they do evaluating their own market position. To get a sense of which companies are (or will) be making the biggest splashes this coming year, especially in terms of technology, I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs the following

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Top five typical frustrations and confusions in the fundraising process

The Equity Kicker

If you’ve been paying attention you will know that Nicholas Lovell and I are writing a book for entrepreneurs who want to raise venture capital. It’s tentatively titled Get Funded. We are now preparing to shoot a promotional video which opens with five frustrations that entrepreneurs frequently encounter when they embark on the fundraising process, expressed as questions.