Thu.Jul 31, 2014

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our Recent Seed-Stage VC Investments

View from Seed

'Two weeks ago, my partners and I here at NextView Ventures announced our second fund. And since we will continue to look proactively at new seed-stage tech startups over the next few years, the question becomes: What, then, will these companies look like? Rather than merely speculate, a more interesting exercise is to examine what we’ve actually seed funded at NextView recently as a reflection of our current investment interests.

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How to Grow Your Business by Setting Goals [Webinar]

Up and Running

'We all have goals for our business, but sometimes we forget how important it is to clearly define these goals. This is especially true when it comes to financial goal setting for small businesses, where often financial goals are only vaguely defined or based too heavily on assumptions. Many small business owners may keep a mental list of goals, but in order to learn from your goals and build your business through goal setting, it is important to understand why you should set goals, what sort of

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High Road

deal architect

'When I started to write the book on the SAP economy I had counted on customer, market watcher and competitor input. What’s been surprising – and actually inspiring – is how restrained competitor executives have been in their critique of.

Customer 191
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Work Experience You Should Have Before Starting Your Own Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Kelly Smith of Career FAQs. We all like the idea of running our own business. We value the freedom, the possibility of unlimited income and the idea of spending our time working for ourselves – not for someone else. With owning a business, however, comes the kind of risk you will never experience at your regular job, which compared to running a business seems much less demanding.

Australia 189
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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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Why Social Media is a Must for all Companies

Duct Tape Marketing

'Why Social Media is a Must for all Companies written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest post is from Margaret Dawson – Enjoy! While younger demographic groups are higher users, all ages are on social media. Source: comScore. Social media is all around us and has become a daily part of people’s lives.

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Getting Paid No Matter What, For Your Online Business

YoungUpstarts

'As a society that lives, works, shops and even socializes online it’s hard for most of us to imagine that there are some banks and other financial institutions that see e-commerce and all that goes with it as “high risk.”. To be fair, there are some types of e-commerce businesses that raise more eyebrows than others. That “adult” themed websites are considered high risk is not exactly a surprise.

eCommerce 165

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[Review] DownBeats

YoungUpstarts

'So this is not the type of gadget that we normally review - targeted at music lovers who attend concerts regularly than those meant for small business owners - but the DownBeats is a company that makes earplugs that helps concert goers get a full audio experience without having their eardrums blasted into painful submission. DownBeats is a set of innocuous-looking plastic and silicone earplugs that’s engineered to deliver a pristine and balanced sound experience while filtering out the

Audio 157
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When VCs Don’t B t You

Feld Thoughts

'I know many entrepreneurs who feel that VCs have played them, gamed them, deceived them, or bullshitted them. But this doesn’t only happen to entrepreneurs. VCs play this game with VCs all the time. One of our deeply held beliefs at Foundry Group is that there is no value in b *g anyone. We screw up a lot of things, make plenty of mistakes, and often look back and say some version of “oops.” But we never b t each other or b t anyone we work with.

LP 155
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10 cash-strapped PR strategies you can adopt to improve ROI by tenfold

The Next Web

'Dmitry Davydov is a Chief Marketing Officer for Bitrix24, worlds fastest growing free CRM, project management, private social network and online collaboration platform created specifically for small businesses. PR is hard. And expensive. Most of the time, you get nothing out of it. And when your company finally is mentioned in an article, even in a big publication, the results can be disappointing.

PR 146
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5 Creative Ways to Save Your Business Money

Up and Running

'As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to cut costs and raise your profit margin. There are some obvious ways to save money. You’ve heard them all before—suggestions like shopping around for the best prices on everything from office furniture to cell phone contracts, barter for services with clients, and keep hiring to a minimum. They are all valid tips, but we wanted to generate a list of creative ways to save money, ways that even experienced business owners could learn from.

Ruby 110
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The three legged stool of marketing excellence

Berkonomics

'Marketing is a science devised to help drive customers to your door. There are lots of ways to define how to market well, including the four P’s of marketing (1): product, price, promotion and place. This is considered to be the producer-oriented model. These are still the driving focus behind most marketing courses, and deserve to be so. Then there is the four C’s, the consumer-oriented marketing model (2).

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The Art of Good Inventory Management

Up and Running

'Inventory is generally defined as the raw materials a business has available to manufacture finished goods or merchandise available to sell to customers. Too much inventory uses cash ineffectively, while too little inventory holds up production in a manufacturing environment or gives customers a reason to shop with the competition. Additionally, having the wrong inventory uses resources without providing a profit opportunity.

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Whom Do You Lean On When Nothing Is Working?

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'I’m at a party. The pretext is simple, people drinking and chatting, attempting to form meaningful connections, to bond over shared interests. As expected, everyone asks what I do. When I answer that I “work online” the response is an expression like I just said something in another language. I. The post Whom Do You Lean On When Nothing Is Working?

Lean 81
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It’s time to get away

VC Adventure

'As we approach August, and having recently taken some time off myself (some real time off this time – more on that experience in a different post) I thought it might be a good time to talk about the importance of vacation. No – this isn’t going to be a post that waxes poetic about the importance of recharging and how the startup culture is totally f *d up in its crazy work ethic.

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Book Short: Best Book Ever

OnlyOnce

'Book Short: Best Book Ever. The Hard Thing About Hard Things , by Ben Horowitz, is the best business book I’ve ever read. Or at least the best book on management and leadership that I’ve ever read. Period. It’s certainly the best CEO book on the market. It’s about 1000 times better than my book although my book is intended to be different in several ways.

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The Biggest Gamble of Your Career

Software By Rob

'I’m in the midst of the biggest gamble of my career. The thing is, every chance you take feels like your biggest gamble while you’re taking it. When I left salaried employment for consulting in 2006 it felt like a big gamble. When I left consulting for product in 2008 with a wife, kid and a mortgage, it felt like a huge gamble. When I spent most of the money I had in the bank on a broken-down SaaS app few people had heard of, called HitTail , I was downright scared.

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How to Create a Startup Pitch Deck

Early Growth Financial Services

'One question I get asked often is “how do I craft a pitch deck that will get me funded?” A great deck is obviously only one element in getting startup funding, but it’s a crucial piece in instilling confidence in potential investors. Your deck should be 10-12 pages max, with any supporting documents (financials, management bios, etc) included in an appendix.

Equity 68
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It’s time to get away

VC Adventure

As we approach August, and having recently taken some time off myself (some real time off this time – more on that experience in a different post) I thought it might be a good time to talk about the importance of vacation. No – this isn’t going to be a post that waxes poetic about the importance of recharging and how the startup culture is totally f *d up in its crazy work ethic.

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Marketing Techniques Every Small Business Should Use

Duct Tape Marketing

'Marketing Techniques Every Small Business Should Use written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest post is from Kristin Hovde – Enjoy! photo credit: iStock. Having the best, most innovative product on the market is not enough to drive traffic to your office or store.

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Being a Small Company Doesn't Mean You Have to Think Small!

Small Business Force

Entrepreneurs and small business owners often face daunting odds trying to compete with larger adversaries to win over customers. They are usually resource-constrained, have way less market awareness and credibility than existing market leaders. Yet many not only succeed, but end up carving out a niche of their own that they control. How do they do it?

Agile 33
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The Biggest Gamble of Your Career

Software By Rob

I’m in the midst of the biggest gamble of my career. The thing is, every chance you take feels like your biggest gamble while you’re taking it. When I left salaried employment for consulting in 2006 it felt like a big gamble. When I left consulting for product in 2008 with a wife, kid and a mortgage, it felt like a huge gamble. When I spent most of the money I had in the bank on a broken-down SaaS app few people had heard of, called HitTail , I was downright scared.