Wed.May 21, 2014

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Why I Dropped Out Of Georgetown… And Started 2 Successful Online Businesses

YoungUpstarts

'by John Accardi, founder of Partyhousepong.com and Collegebox.com. 6 months ago, I dropped out the neuroscience PhD program at Georgetown University. Not only was I granted a full scholarship, but I was being paid a generous stipend to attend. So why did I drop out and how did I subsequently create 2 profitable online businesses with barely any startup capital?

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A New Approach to The Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

'Post by Lean Startup Conference co-hosts Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries We’re excited to announce this year’s Lean Startup Conference , December 8 – 12 in San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now, at the best price we’re offering this year, so we recommend registering today. But that’s not really what we’re here to talk about. Instead, we want to focus on the themes of the conference.

Lean 165
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Nine Tools You Must  Apply To Create Highly Successful Teams Over The Long Term

YoungUpstarts

'by Matt Tenny, author of “ Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom “. We all know the types of people who make great leaders, right? They’re the brilliant, talented, wunderkinds who are poised to change the industry. The persuasive, outgoing schmoozers who get along with just about everyone. The industry veterans who have done it all and seen it all.

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What should I include in an investor provisions summary?

Gust

'From the question it sounds to me as though this is a case of both a novice investor and a novice entrepreneur, with neither one having much experience with or as an angel. I would therefore *strongly* advise you to get an experienced startup attorney to advise you during the negotiation/term sheet discussions. Here are some thoughts that immediately come to mind: 1) The only types of US companies that have “Operating Agreements” are Limited Liability Companies (LLCs), and this stru

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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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40% Of Best Performing Companies In Asia Are US- Or UK-Based Businesses: Telstra Global

YoungUpstarts

'If you think that being an Asian company in Asia automatically conveys you home ground advantage, you may be in for a surprise, as the results of a recent study conducted by Telstra Global would show. In its new Connected Countries report , it found that the companies that have managed to do well in the past three years in this part of the world are those that tended to have a global footprint, that is, those who operate both in Asia as well as those outside Asia.

Asia 162
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Beyond analytics: Understanding humans while scaling your business

The Next Web

'Jonatan Littke is the CEO and co-founder of Lookback. When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook, there were eight million WhatsApp users for every employee. Eight million. Traditionally in business, when you scale up your company, you grow your number of employees along with your number of customers. If Target opens up a new store, it will hire more people to interact with new customers, listening to their needs and desires.

Analytics 133

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The Android vs iOS paradox facing startups

The Equity Kicker

'Benedict Evans wrote an interesting yesterday about Android fragmentation (tl:dr 75% of devices that hit the Play Store run Android 4.x meaning Google has reduced the impact of fragmentation, additionally they’ve sidestepped the issue for their own services by moving them out of the OS and into a software layer that can be updated over the air).

Startup 115
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Do Your Own PR

Mike Michalowicz

'Let’s get this straight right now: PR stands for Public Relations. Too many entrepreneurs think it is simply a different word for marketing. It’s not. Marketing is marketing. Public Relations is how you relate to the public. Where marketing screams for the attention of people to buy your stuff, PR highlights the personality of your business and looks to connect with people.

PR 108
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3 Things I Learned From an Apple Executive

Up and Running

'The Apple Pippin, a failed gaming console, illustrates how a successful company sometimes strikes out. As a student and young aspiring entrepreneur, I make an effort to learn as much as I can about how to succeed in the business world, and frequently look to prominent people in business for their advice on innovation and success. I recently attended an event where Jim Bean, the Vice President of Retail at Apple, gave an insightful talk to a group of about 30 students and staff from Drexel Unive

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How to Craft the Perfect Pitch

SiliconHills

'By LAURA LOREK Founder of Silicon Hills News A good pitch can determine whether a startup lands money from investors to expand. But few entrepreneurs know how best to pitch. Texas State University’s Small Business Development Center held a special training session Wednesday afternoon at its Round Rock campus to help entrepreneurs titled “Pitching to […] The post How to Craft the Perfect Pitch appeared first on SiliconHills.

Texas 78
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The early money & the long money

Start Up Blog

'When we hear about startups that have gone on to be huge successes the mind often gravitates to all those early investors. Those who had a seat at the table in the angel rounds, those who knew the founders and got in early enough to make some serious money. It’s a natural reaction when companies go on to reach the unicorn level. It is true that people who get in early always make more money.

Stock 73
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Improved Liquidity, Investment Flexibility, and Labor Arbitrage

Growthink Blog

'There were some great responses to my post last week as to the poor returns experienced by venture capital fund investors. Some suggested that the blame for this lied more with the very difficult market and deal conditions of the past decade than with the VC investment model itself. Typical was this comment submitted by a San Diego VC: " I agree that the VC fund industry is guilty as charged when it comes to being opaque as to real returns data, but I challenge you to revisit your analysis in 2

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Invodo Puts New Lens on Sigma’s Online Video Program to Focus on Sales

Austin Startup

'To capitalize on the growing power of online video, Sigma, a leading researcher, developer, manufacturer and service provider of some of the world''s most impressive lines of lenses, cameras and flashes, enlisted Invodo, the business video experts, to expand its portfolio of online video.

Video 67
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Nobody Gets Consumer in Boston

Rob Go

'Everyone knows that nobody gets consumer in Boston. If you want to invest in the next great consumer company, you better be in Silicon Valley or New York. It’s just a given. It turns out that claim is total BS. Boston has amazing consumer companies, but the region gets no love for some reason. Case is point are three really interesting companies that have come to prominence over the last year or so.

Boston 57
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Syndicate Funding on AngelList – A Company’s Perspective

VC Adventure

'A few months ago AngelList announced Syndicates - enabling investors on AngelList to create fund-like groups of investors to invest together in AngelList companies (following a single lead investor). It’s a great idea and at Foundry we quickly decided it would be an interesting experiment to form our own syndicate. We were the first formal venture fund to do this.

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Leaders in the Trenches podcast

Jeff Hilimire

'Podcasts are some of my favorite things to do. So when Gene Hammett asked me to be on his Leaders in the Trenches podcast, I quickly agreed. The podcast is live and in it Gene and I discuss the following topics (I pulled these from Gene’s site): What role does vision play in the work he does? How he has become very good at delegating tasks that are not growth-oriented.

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Syndicate Funding on AngelList – A Company’s Perspective

VC Adventure

A few months ago AngelList announced Syndicates – enabling investors on AngelList to create fund-like groups of investors to invest together in AngelList companies (following a single lead investor). It’s a great idea and at Foundry we quickly decided it would be an interesting experiment to form our own syndicate. We were the first formal venture fund to do this.

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Milestone Swarming

SVPG

'In my last article, I discussed the power of milestones and I promised I’d talk about one of my favorite techniques for rapidly delivering on milestones. First, as a reminder, by milestone I mean delivering on some significant achievement for your business. This might mean achieving a meaningful improvement to a key KPI, or meeting the needs of a new type of customer, or getting the results of an important A/B test.

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Think Like A Marketer, Sell Like a Superstar [WEBINAR]

Up and Running

'John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and the best-selling author of Duct Tape Marketing , Duct Tape Selling , The Commitment Engine , and The Referral Engine. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing System and Duct Tape Marketing Consulting Network that trains and licenses small business marketing consultants around the world. He is the featured marketing contributor to American Express OPENForum and is a popular presenter of workshop and webinars for organizations such as Ameri

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Why Smart Employers Care About Work/Life Balance — And How To Help Your People Find It

YoungUpstarts

'by Dr. Carmella Sebastian, author of “ Sex and Spaghetti Sauce: My Italian Mother’s Recipe for Getting Healthy and Getting Busy in Your 50s and Beyond “ The line between “work” and “personal life” has become really (really!) blurred for most American workers. Thanks to evolving technology and an unforgiving economy, we’re under constant pressure to perform.

Employee 157