Wed.Nov 12, 2014

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Designing Products from Scratch: An Interview with UX Leader Josh Porter

View from Seed

'Josh Porter is the founder of What to Wear Daily , a service that helps you prepare for your day. He is best-known as the creator of 52 Weeks of UX and was also head of UX at HubSpot, by way of being co-founder of Performable (acquired in 2011). Below, Josh talks about designing features from nothing and how to make important design choices during the pre-seed and seed-stage phases of startup growth.

Design 330
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Enterprise Messaging Comes Of Age With sqoope

YoungUpstarts

'Everybody’s on an instant messaging app these days. Fast, convenient and almost idiot-proof, they allow us to communicate quickly with each other via text, photos, videos and more. Tapping on our data connections – be it 4G or WiFi – data-based messaging is just as instantaneous as SMSes without incurring higher mobile charges. However, messaging on a consumer platform becomes a little dicey when it comes to work.

Singapore 207
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Are You Ready for Equity Based Crowdfunding?

Up and Running

'Are you an emerging entrepreneur with an underfunded venture? Could your business flourish with a gush of money and hype? Then, the unveiling of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed equity crowdfunding rules reveals a panacea for growing your business’s coffers. The SEC’s proposed rules (mandated by the JOBS Act of 2012) amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to allow the offer and sale of securities through an internet crowdfunding campaign, simil

Equity 125
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Gossip At Work Undermines Every Business Leader

Startup Professionals Musings

'As an entrepreneur, you should treat gossip among the members of your team as a reduction in productivity at best, and at worst, an indication of unhappy, un-empowered, or non-collaborative employees. As a leader, you should be asking yourself if you are the problem, and working hard to improve the situation before it gets out of hand, causing lost clients as well as lost productivity.

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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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Planning for the Future: Your Exit Strategy

Up and Running

'Even if an island in the Maldives isn’t in the cards, if you’re seeking outside investment, an exit strategy is essential. What is an exit strategy? An exit strategy is a method by which entrepreneurs and investors, especially those that have invested large sums of money in startup companies, transfer ownership of their business to a third party, or by which they recoup money invested in the business.

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The hidden benefits of Uniform Culture

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

'This article originally appeared on the WP Engine Blog. I don’t mean “uniform” as in “identical.” (Although, that’s not a bad definition of culture : The attributes that we all share.). I mean “uniform” as in, “Wearing the same clothes, thereby reducing individuality.” We have a swag culture at WP Engine, particularly in T-shirts.

Engineer 229

More Trending

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Are You Ready for the Holidays or Just Overwhelmed?

Rembrandt Communications

'Time to Get your Content Strategy and Priorities in Place! It’s already mid-November and time to prepare for the holidays. And while things get super busy over the next, few weeks, here are a few things to keep in mind… Remember to celebrate! With all of the preparations for the holidays and getting things done […]. The post Are You Ready for the Holidays or Just Overwhelmed?

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15 ways to test your minimum viable product

The Next Web

'Chris Bank is the Growth Lead at UXPin, the UX Design App. Though the MVP provides a means to test hypotheses as a starting point, it does not imply that it is easy to build. The idea behind this exercise is not to see if the product can be built in terms of technical feasibility. Rather, it is to see whether you should be building it in the first place and, more importantly, whether it’s solving a problem other people find worth paying for.

Product 167
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Designing For The Mobile Experience

YoungUpstarts

'As a small business owner, you’re happy enough to have your website up and running. The thought of optimizing your site for mobile devices may have never crossed your mind. It may seem like something small; but believe it or not, it can make a huge difference given that 60 percent of Internet access is via mobile devices. Not sure if you should get a web designer to optimize your site for mobile devices?

Mobile 145
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Ride the Wave

Version One Ventures

'In the course of your career or start-up, nothing is more powerful than catching a big wave at the right time. I was reminded of this as we celebrated the 25 th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th. I was 16 and living in (West) Germany when the wall was torn down. The reunification that followed less than a year later brought tremendous optimism to Germany.

Germany 152
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Why economic uncertainty is not a bad thing for entrepreneurs

The Next Web

'Gregg Schwartz is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Strategic Sales & Marketing, an industry-founding lead generation company specializing in major account B2B lead generation. The past few years have seen a lot of economic turmoil. Ever since 2007, we’ve witnessed the bursting of the real estate bubble, the stock market crash of 2008-2009, the Great Recession, high unemployment and a few years of painfully slow economic growth.

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FAQ Re: Dr. Alan Black

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

'Greetings from gray and chilly Three Oaks, Michigan. As gloomy as it is, I’m grateful to be here and free. Freedom is not something we should take for granted. Later this morning I’ll take a walk outside around my pond and say prayers for my friend Alan Black. I might take a photograph. When he’s released I hope he’ll come visit me here so we can enjoy a walk outside together — and photograph whatever catches our eye.

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Designing for experiences

The Equity Kicker

'Difference between a product focus and a customer experience focus in a nutshell. Mark Turner @ibminteractive #MIICMO pic.twitter.com/PQTJwVUSot. — Mark Henry (@Mark_J_Henry) November 12, 2014. I love this tweet! It sums up the opportunity for new product and service development beautifully. Here at Forward Partners we often talk about backing companies building amazing products and brands that people will love, and when we’re talking with companies we always ask how they know customers w

Design 102
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Under-Do Your Competition

Mike Michalowicz

'In the world of business, competition seems to be everything. But knowing where to draw the line regarding how you strive to live up to, or surpass, that competition can be tricky. While the traditional rule of thumb is to surpass the competition, there are plenty of reasons why you should aim to fall short of it, instead. Falling short can actually be a smart move and can set you much farther apart from the competition – in a good way.

Sales 112
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Book Short: Continuing to make “sustainability” a mainstream business topic

OnlyOnce

'Book Short: Continuing to make “sustainability” a mainstream business topic. The Big Pivot: Radically Practical Strategies for a Hotter, Scarcer, and More Open World , by my friend Andrew Winston, is a great book. It just got awarded one of the Top 10 business books of 2014 by Strategy+Business , which is a great honor. Andrew builds nicely on his first book, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage ( post , book

Green 80
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Fresh from the SPRING: greenblack

crowdSPRING Blog

'When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project. Let us start the slow clap for greenblack. Check out more great work on greenblack’s profile page. Nicely done, greenblack, nicely done! Related posts: Fresh from the SPRING: bokomoslav. Fresh from the SPRING: ?

Design 78
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Online Courier Service Dropoff Launches in Austin

SiliconHills

'About a year ago, Sean Spector needed to get some important documents to downtown Austin by 5 p.m. He hired a local courier service and they arrived late for the pickup, got lost on the delivery, and ultimately arrived late for the delivery and didn’t get a confirmation signature. Spector investigated the industry and decided […] The post Online Courier Service Dropoff Launches in Austin appeared first on SiliconHills.

Austin 75
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Khorus Launches iPad App for On-the-Go Business Management

Austin Startup

'Khorus has launched an iPad version of its business management system designed to help align entire organizations with corporate strategy, predict performance, and deliver on company objectives. To facilitate this mission, this on-the-go version of Khorus software helps both leaders and their employees quickly view and manage corporate, department, and individual goals.

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Top Lessons Learned From Great Angel Investors

Rob Go

'We held an awesome Angel Bootcamp yesterday at MIT. It was an amazing collection of speakers sharing their experience and wisdom around angel investing. It including folks like David Tisch, David Cohen, Paul English, Diane Hessan, Katie Rae, Andy Palmer, and many others. The full speaker group was here: [link]. Even though we are a seed-focused VC fund, we were very excited to help organize this event because of our belief that increased angel activity is critical to keep propelling the Boston

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How to Create Buyer Legends

Duct Tape Marketing

'How to Create Buyer Legends written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Bryan Eisenberg. photo credit: Anna Fischer via photopin cc. Like many marketers I’ve trumpeted the virtues of something called buyer personas for years. A persona, borrowed from the theater, is a thorough description of a character in a play.

Metrics 65
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Question from a startup CEO: What are the top 3 books you would recommend I read right now?

Jeff Hilimire

'The CEO of a young company asked me this week what the three books I’d recommend he read right now. Without hesitation, I said: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis - And no, it doesn’t count if you’ve seen the movie. This book will make you think differently about everything, but certainly business. If you want to attack an industry from a new angle, this is the book for you.

Startup 44
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There are No Gatekeepers

This is going to be BIG.

'One of the underlying dynamics I see in the venture capital, tech, and startup world--and where some of its worst behavior comes from--relates to underlying assumptions about power and influence. Founders put up with bad VC behavior because they think a check from a certain investor is going to make or break their company. VCs bend their rules with certain founders because they think this will be the one deal that got away--rules about oversight, governance, valuation, etc.