Mon.Sep 15, 2014

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Why We’re Looking to Fund Stuff With More Meaning

Both Sides of the Table

'Venture Capital is a tricky industry. If you’re funding the same stuff as everybody else and if you started your activities when the clues were obvious you’re much less likely to drive enormous returns. When Fred Wilson funded Twitter I guarantee you it wasn’t obvious that it was a billion dollar idea. Far from it. Many questioned whether it could survive under the fail whale, inevitable competition from Facebook, founder fighting, fights with 3rd-party developers let alone be

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10 Tips for Finding Venture Funding

Up and Running

'How to find venture funding? I have to start with a major negative: if you have to ask if your startup can get venture capital, then it almost certainly can’t. Venture capital is a very rarified atmosphere of high-end startups and emerging businesses with experienced management teams, high potential growth, secret sauce, and so on. People without track records don’t get venture capital.

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Quick & Dirty Innovation

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

'Many companies started 2014 with the good intention of “getting after innovation” this year. Was that your organization? How’s that going? Are you jumping for joy or singing the blues? Some companies have worked hard and consistently at innovation all this year. They started the year running and got things done. Look at the slew of announcements Apple just made (to be fair the watch took years ).

Lean 112
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Acxiom Opens Austin Office, Plans To Hire 150 People

Austin Startup

'AcxiomAcxiom Logo, a publicly traded enterprise data, analytics and software-as-a-service company, today announced that it will be opening a new office in Austin, Texas, to accommodate growing demand in its technology, engineering and operations. The company intends to fill up to 150 positions in technology fields including network engineers, security engineers, systems engineers, security architects, network architects, infrastructure architects, software engineers and project managers.

Hiring 69
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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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Startups Need To Capitalize On Every Conversation

Startup Professionals Musings

'Whether you are trying to motivate your team, close a deal with a customer, or get funding from an investor, a casual conversation is usually a waste of your valuable time. These result is a founder who is always “too busy,” but never seems to get the business done and the team moving. All real business is conversations focused on creating results.

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HANA and her siblings

deal architect

'As the SAP Economy book shifts to editing phase I have been looking at book covers, titles etc. One title which will not make the cut is “HANA and her siblings” My wife liked it, then preferred some other ones.

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Why every founder should work for someone else in between startups

The Next Web

'Daria Shualy is Don Draper/product marketer at daPulse. All entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs. It’s a personality trait, some might even call it a condition. Serial entrepreneurs don’t like to stop. They sell one startup (or more likely shut it down) and shortly after, they’re telling you how they’re “working on something new, it’s still in stealth mode.

Founder 167
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Setting Kids Up to Fail

This is going to be BIG.

'The nature of work is changing--we all know that. You''re required to be a lot more entrepreneurial, which requires you to build your own networks in order to get customers and collaborators, since these functions won''t be under the roof of a big company anymore. You''ll need to be more mobile, nimble, and able to go where the work is. You''ll need to think globally.

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13 Tips to Open a Successful Coffee Shop

Up and Running

'Radio Coffee and Beer. Are you the type who loves their morning coffee? A lot of people combine their love of coffee with their entrepreneurial spirit and open a coffee shop. In fact, in the U.S. there are more than 50,000 coffee shops—52,684 to be exact. According to Statista, that number will jump by about 5,000 within two years. And with 183 million coffee drinkers all buzzing for their next caffeine fix, it’s no wonder the industry is booming.

Hiring 158
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How advocate marketing can change the trajectory of your company

The Next Web

'Cassandra Jowett is the Content Marketing Manager at Influitive. This article originally appeared on the Influitive blog. We know the power that one person can have on our lives. We each have heroes, villains and role models who permeate into our lives and indirectly guide the way we behave. Steve Jobs introduced the world to the love of design. Sheryl Sandberg inspired many to “Lean In” (and many others to “recline”).

Marketing 129
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A cambrian explosion in AI – but how will new services surface?

The Equity Kicker

'Dag Kittlaus, founder of Siri, wrote on Techcrunch yesterday to predict that A Cambrian explosion in AI is coming. He notes that there has been “massive uptake of assistant services spurred by Apple’s Siri, Google’s Now and Microsoft’s Cortana” but says these services are still in their infancy. The missing piece is an ecosystem of services that work with these assistants.

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NASA’s On Track to Build the Most Powerful Rocket Ever

SiliconHills

'By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News NEW ORLEANS – In a former sugar plantation on the eastern outskirts of New Orleans sits one of the city’s hidden gems. NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility is known as the gateway to space. Although most people know New Orleans for Mardi Gras, great Jazz music, art, Bourbon […] The post NASA’s On Track to Build the Most Powerful Rocket Ever appeared first on SiliconHills.

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Customers Don’t Buy What You Do

Mike Michalowicz

'Customers don’t buy chimney cleaning services. They buy safe, roaring fires. Customers don’t buy Terry Cloth, sponges, soap and wax. They buy bragging rights for their shiny car. Customers don’t buy legal services. They buy protection or vengeance or ego or money (or all of the above). Customers don’t buy what you do. They buy the benefit it derives.

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Cratejoy Builds a Better Box Subscription Service

SiliconHills

'By LESLIE ANNE JONES Reporter with Silicon Hills News In our era of multitudinous, fragmented e-commerce, there’s a box subscription service for just about anything – baby clothes, lingerie, gluten-free food, gourmet candy. But until Cratejoy, there was no one-stop platform where box curators could get their businesses off the ground. Cratejoy founder Amir Elaguizy […] The post Cratejoy Builds a Better Box Subscription Service appeared first on SiliconHills.

Curation 100
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Magnificent Mobile Website And App Analytics: Reports, Metrics, How-to!

Occam's Razor

'Nothing I can tell you about the importance of having an incredible mobile strategy will surprise you. Mobile devices (phones, tablets, wearables) are transforming how we behave, how we buy, how we consume content, and dare I say how we become happy or we become sad. You after all have all of the aforementioned devices, and it is likely that at some level you are looking at traffic to your company's digital existence.

Analytics 141
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Bob Metcalfe Tells Startups to Build Their Networks to Succeed

SiliconHills

'Bob Metcalfe, professor of Innovation at the University of Texas, spent some time talking with Jason Seats, managing director of Techstars, during a virtual fireside chat at Foundercon in Austin recently. Metcalfe has held many careers including educator, publisher and columnist, venture capitalist, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com. He has spent the past […] The post Bob Metcalfe Tells Startups to Build Their Networks to Succeed appeared first on SiliconHills.

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recent thoughts

Start Up Blog

'I’ve been publishing a few thoughts for the good people at Pollenizer – two recent articles are below: History repeats: The seminal article written in 1960 by Theodore Levitt of the Harvard Business School called the Marketing Myopia is having a sequel. I wrote about it here and why startups are eating the lunch of many fortune 500’s.

Finance 76
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Acxiom Opens Austin Office with 150 Jobs

SiliconHills

'Acxiom, a Little Rock-based software company, announced Monday that it will be opening an Austin office and hiring 150 new employees. Acxiom is a data mining, analytics and marketing company. It recently launched a site, Abouthedata.com that lets consumers view the details the company has collected about them, according to this story in the New […] The post Acxiom Opens Austin Office with 150 Jobs appeared first on SiliconHills.

Austin 84
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20 Free and Low Cost Tools for Everyday Productivity

Duct Tape Marketing

'20 Free and Low Cost Tools for Everyday Productivity written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Every so often I sit back and take inventory of the tools I’m using with an eye on weeding some out and adding some in. Technology can be a tremendously useful thing when it comes to getting more productivity, but you must continually monitor what’s working and what’s not.

Cost 76
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A Simple Message Brings Success

The Entrepreneurial Mind

'The Entrepreneurial Mind : Belmont alum Brock Fuller talks about his new business. A simple message brings success. Tweet Facebook LinkedIn Tumblr Stumble Digg Delicious The post A Simple Message Brings Success appeared first on Dr Jeff Cornwall.

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A contrary view on getting into business with your friends

Jeff Hilimire

'As is the case with every post on this blog, I can only speak from my personal experience. But in my experience, getting into business with friends is the best way to do it. I started my first company (Spunlogic) back in college with two of my best friends. We were such good friends that we were all groomsmen in each other’s weddings. We added a fourth partner about 5 years later and today he’s also one of my best friends.

Partner 57
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Facebook ownes 3 of the Top 5 most addictive apps on.

Bryce Dot VC

'Facebook ownes 3 of the Top 5 most addictive apps on mobile. Full report on mobile habits here.

Mobile 45
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Nasty Gal hits the wall? An E-Commerce Follow Up…

Scalable Startup

'As many of you know, I’ve been a big fan of the company Nasty Gal for a lot of reasons: an L.A. story. Outsider non-techy female makes good. They’re Profitable!! They have (had?) the chance to help define the next gen of startups. However, they seem to be in the predicament that many successful startups fall into. They may not want to be called a start up, but they are, because they never made it past PHASE 1 successfully into PHASE 2… see Nasty Gal Lays Off Up To 10 Percent

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Six Myths That Undermine Customer Satisfaction

YoungUpstarts

'by Liz Jazwiec, author of “ Service Excellence is as Easy as PIE: Perception Is Everything “ Whatever your industry, you know it’s more important than ever to provide excellent service. Competition is fierce, and in this economy, you can’t afford to lose a single customer. But precisely BECAUSE money is so tight, you can’t shower every customer with rose petals and champagne.

Customer 171
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Hospitals- The Key to Healthcare Reform [Guest Post]

VC Cafe

'Interview with Chip Kahn, CEO of Federation of American Hospitals. US elections are six weeks away and “Obamacare” is the wedge issue of the 2014 campaign. The Republican controlled majority in the House has voted 55 times in four years to repeal the Affordable Care Act. However, the $3 trillion (and growing) American healthcare system absorbs nearly 1/5 of total GDP, triple the allocation of some other OECD countries.

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The Right Lights To Beat The Home Office Blues

YoungUpstarts

'This home office lighting design relies on light wall, floor and cabinet fronts to reflect ambient light throughout the space. It has a bright, crisp, highly energetic feel. By Michael Chotiner, construction expert at Home Depot. Among the many blessings of being able to work from home is the privilege of setting up an office lighting scheme that works for you.

Design 150