Mon.Apr 13, 2015

article thumbnail

The Long Lost Myth of Capital Efficiency

Feld Thoughts

'I miss capital efficiency. It seems like you were our best friend just yesterday. Were you a myth? A lie? A justification by VCs to explain away their lack of capital to invest? A rationalization by entrepreneurs to explain away their inability to raise capital? Do you remember all the blog posts about how companies needed so much less money? All the articles about how capital efficient businesses were a result of AWS, better software development tools, easier starting points, better scaling te

article thumbnail

A Brief Guide to Choosing a Hosting Solution for Your Business Website

Up and Running

'Having a stable website has long become an imperative for almost any organization, company, or one-person business that aims to expand its online authority and reach connected consumers. As digital marketing strategies become commonplace in businesses of all sizes, the demand for reliable web hosting services increases and the choice of a web host becomes one of the critical decisions.

Hosting 103
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Small Business and Startups: Management for the Joy Of It

crowdSPRING Blog

'Business owners and managers tend to focus on business. This is right and this is good; it is our responsibility to our stakeholders to responsibly lead our companies towards success and to prioritize operations and profitability. We work hard every day to improve efficiency, acquire customers, increase margins, analyze results, craft strategy, execute tactics, and track growth.

article thumbnail

Realistic Strategies For Funding Product Development

Startup Professionals Musings

'Angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for startups with real products and a proven business model, ready to scale. Yet I still get too many business plans that clearly are looking for money to do research and development (R&D) on a new and unproven technology. If you need funding for these early stage activities, I have some suggestions on better strategies to follow.

article thumbnail

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

article thumbnail

Fear Factory: Five Signs You May Be Letting Fear Drive Your Leadership

YoungUpstarts

'by Dan Prosser, author of “ Thirteeners: Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy – and How Yours Can Be One of Them “. As iconic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” But here’s the harsh truth: No matter how much you plan, no matter how many rules you put in place, no matter how much risk you avoid, you’ll never control all t

article thumbnail

Getting feedback from customers when security is an issue

Startup Lessons Learned

'This is the second of several early excerpts I''ll be sharing from The Leader''s Guide, a 4-color, 250-page, hardcover and digital book which will be offered exclusively through Kickstarter--according to my agreement with my publisher, Crown, the book can never be sold in stores. As usual, I''m leaving out important details like company names in order to respect their privacy while the book is still in early draft form.

Security 130

More Trending

article thumbnail

How can a marketplace start-up disrupt the incumbent?

Version One Ventures

'Last week, my post on “ Marketplace dynamics: buyer mindshare is key to building a moat ” generated good discussion about the best strategies to disrupt existing marketplaces and get past the incumbent’s moat. It’s certainly an important topic to any founder or entrepreneur looking to break into an existing market. The discussion was sparked by Jonas’ question: “If the first marketplace that reaches liquidity earns a moat (justifying large A rounds for marketplaces), what paths might new entran

Vertical 126
article thumbnail

Ten Hidden Gems In Google Analytics: Do Smarter Web Data Analysis!

Occam's Razor

'The 80/20 rule applies to our use of web analytics tools as well. Most of us use just a small amount of power our tools contain. This hurts my feelings! Ok, not so much hurts my feelings and more that I'm sad you are not taking advantage of all of the features at your disposal to drive smarter decisions by your leadership teams. Regardless of the tool you have, it is always prudent to take a fresh look at a familiar tool every once in a while and see what you've been missing.

Analytics 123
article thumbnail

Big companies pull back on investment – great news for startups

The Equity Kicker

'Reading this front page of the Financial Times this morning made me feel great about the future for startups. Innovation is happening faster and faster yet big groups are reining in capex and distributing $1tn to shareholders in the US alone. The only way to read this is as a tacit admission that they can no longer live with the pace of change. Moreover, even when the management of these companies get it they are often hamstrung by shareholders who are overly focused on the short term.

Startup 99
article thumbnail

You don’t need an investor

Start Up Blog

'Yesterday I got an email from Sam Birmingham from Pollenizer , and it’s message was so compelling, I had to share it here: It is something we hear all too often… “I was wondering if you could help me find an investor?” You don’t need an investor. You need customers. You don’t need an investor. You need to prove that you are developing a sustainable business model.

article thumbnail

Where are the greenfield opportunities in SaaS?

Lightspeed Venture Partners

SaaS is no longer a new business model. One look at any of the market maps for marketing tech, sales productivity apps, HR tech or other functional areas within enterprises would tell you how crowded these traditional enterprise software landscapes have become… Is there another billion dollar company to be built in some of these areas? Sure, and I’m actively looking for those.

article thumbnail

Israeli White Wines of Note: Sphera and Jezreel

Pascal's View

'Winemaker Doron Rav Hon of Sphera White Concepts has pioneered an Israeli winery that makes only white wine—the portfolio includes Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, the First Page blend, and the White Signature blend. Doron believes in minimal intervention with the grape in making the wine, from the moment that the juice is expressed from the berries, its cold fermentation process in steel tanks, to the bottling.

article thumbnail

Technology Leverage

Rob Go

'I hosted a group of HBS students in a tour of startups in downtown Boston a couple weeks ago. It was a fun trek, that had us visit Dataxu, Localytics, and near-unicorn DraftKings. We ended the trek chatting with Paul English, the co-founder of Kayak at his venture foundry Blade. It was great to hear the inside story of some really interesting companies, including two that have just raised substantial dough and are looking to expand their business and teams significantly in the coming years.

article thumbnail

What Defines the “New Wave” of Israeli Winemakers?

Pascal's View

'A key thing to keep in mind is that the New Wave of Israeli wine really is new, with some of the more interesting wineries no more than five years old. Many of them currently have no estate fruit, though they are developing estate vineyards. While these new vineyards mature, wineries buy grapes from selected established vineyards. Visiting the wineries, it is easy to sum up several of the crushing, fermenting, and bottling operations as Garagistes who are going to the next level.

article thumbnail

Some Things Are Better Off Left Unsaid Or Unwritten

entrepreMusings

'I remember a time in high school where I was trying to tell someone who was about 5 years older than me “something about my life” (just like the Indigo Girls Closer To Fine song begins). He was a college aged Sunday school teacher. I was in awe of him for some reason that I can’t exactly recall why now. When he saw that I was struggling, he said “some things are better off left unsaid.” I figured he was older and wiser, so after he said that I decided not to te

article thumbnail

Episode 23: Pricing and Profitability With Matthew Perosi

Mike Michalowicz

'Show Summary. Matthew Perosi, Chief Thinker at Sapphire Collaborative, joins Episode 23 of the Profit First Podcast. Matthew shares his story of when his company went into financial struggle and how he turned it around to become a profitable success. Our Guest. Matthew Perosi is an internet analyst who examines existing and emerging technologies and figures out if they will be useful for business marketing; then acts as an individual consultant for people who want their business correctly posit

article thumbnail

What is your favorite kind of cheese?

Scalable Startup

'Answer by Sarah Amalie Lerstrøm Margolin: This is probably a matter of availibility more than preference. I can easily get many cheeses here in Denmark, but I rarely get as excited about them, as I do about cheddar from Humbird Cheese Mart in Wisconsin. The last time we were in Chicago, we found out we could order online. The final order (split between my grandmother, my father and I) was of 17 pounds of cheese, I got some 3 and 6 year cheddar… And now that I think about it, I absolutely

Denmark 21
article thumbnail

An Irresistible Offer: 4 Tips to Personalize Your Sales Funnel

ConversionXL

'What is an irresistible offer? Simply put … an irresistible offer is one that your audience cannot help but respond to. It’s compelling, it’s powerful and it drives action. So, how do you craft an irresistible offer? The answer comes down to personalization: presenting information that applies directly to each customer in a one-on-one, emotionally charged, and above all customized manner.

Sales 103
article thumbnail

Maximize Your Content Creation Efficiency

Duct Tape Marketing

'Maximize Your Content Creation Efficiency written by Alex Boyer read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Tapping a Pencil via photopin (license). I get it, great content is difficult to produce. It is even more difficult to consistently produce day after day and week after week. But consistent content production is critical to reaching your content marketing goals.

article thumbnail

From Napa to Jerusalem: Levensohn Vineyards Goes to Israel

Pascal's View

'I recently returned from an extraordinary trip to Israel with the four winners of the Levensohn Vineyards Auction Napa Valley 2014 live auction lot. Joined by my friend and Israeli wine collector Yitz Applbaum , we co-hosted the first ever Napa Valley Vintners tour of Israel’s wine country. Our group visited important religious and archaeological sites in Jerusalem and Galilee that are not generally open to the public and met with some of the driving forces who are at the leading edge of the Is

Hosting 28
article thumbnail

“Belligerently Benign” Is Not An Oxymoron

YoungUpstarts

'by Dr Geoff Crook, co-author of “ The Dream Cafe: Lessons in the Art of Radical Innovation “ There’s a downside to old school belligerence that hard to detect. At first encounter belligerent people appear to possess many of the attributes of success that self help books for the insecure encourage. Successful entrepreneurs like Donald Trump, or Steve Jobs seem to confirm that an ability to override their own and other’s capacity for respectful behaviour is an important pe

Global 131