Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. I visited Bend last year and caught up with his progress. Today with every city, state and country trying to build out a technology cluster, following Dino’s progress can provide others with a roadmap of what’s worked and what has not.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Picking a VC is hard. You don’t really have much to go on to decide who would make a good fit. Reputation of firm? Of partner? Deals done in your industry? It’s a bit of all of these. I had an enjoyable conversation this morning with a young team straight out of college this morning and they were calling to ask advice on how to approach fund raising (angels vs.

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2014

'We know that new careers being invented every day due to the evolution of the workplace as well as technological innovations that can totally disrupt entire industries. Think about the iOS developer, the big data architect, the UX/UI designer, social media intern or even the zumba instructor – these are incredibly popular jobs today seeing explosive growth that just five years back saw a bare handful of people with such job titles.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Social Media Technology Developer 166

The Next Web

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Our report last week on the salaries that startup founders pay themselves stirred up a lot of discussion here on The Next Web, Hacker News , Twitter and beyond. Now startup benchmarking firm Compass , the source of the original data, has provided us with further information that helps answer some of the questions you had about it. While most readers saw it as a good thing that founders of early-stage companies tended to pay themselves low salaries, some readers pointed out that the self-reporte

Salary 152

Salary Founder Entrepreneur Burn Rate 152

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

Startup

Gust

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Academic snobs such as myself often place a lot of value on hard skills when hiring. No news here. Of course, we also look for great attitude and fit, given that so much – if not all – one conquers at the workplace nowadays is the result of collaboration and teamwork. While most people in managerial positions agree with this approach at a hiring moment, there are often different perspectives when it comes to a potential firing moment.

Management 137

Management Employee .Net Hiring 137

Up and Running

JANUARY 22, 2014

'True Story: Lately I’ve been working with very good friends to develop a new startup. It’s not ready to go yet and it’s not the subject of this post, so I’ll offer no more detail on that here in this post. What it’s done for me, and my partners, is a reminder of how much I like the basic idea of business planning to help define a new venture. . We live in four different places to we meet a lot by phone and via online meetings.

Forecast 91

Forecast Startup Web Development Business Plan 91

Up and Running

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Jessie Seaman, a tax attorney, offers tips to help startups avoid common tax pitfalls. As a new business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. From creating a business plan to hiring employees , your to-do list is a hefty one. But while you’re juggling startup tasks, you’ll also want to think about how taxes will impact your business.

Entrepreneur 123

Entrepreneur Software Review Security Employee 123

The Entrepreneurial Mind

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Great opportunity for you to pitch your ideas/ventures. The Nashville Social Enterprise Alliance Business For Good Competition provides potential and serial social entrepreneurs with a unique forum for submitting novel ideas to solve various social problems. Teams or solo social entrepreneurs from across the USA can apply to pitch their idea at the Social Enterprise Alliance 2014 National Summit in front of a national audience of leading entrepreneurs, funders, policy makers and educators.

Nashville 64

Nashville Technical Review Entrepreneur Incubator 64

Jeff Hilimire

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Yesterday I was on a panel at an AMA (American Marketing Association) event with Del Ross , Mike Racic, and Rick Radermacher, moderated by the great Glen Caruso. The topic was (and I’m paraphrasing), “Why is the advertising agency and client relationship so screwed up?!” At least that’s what I would have called it. Having been in the agency world for 15 years ( started my first agency building websites for companies in 1998 , sold that in 2008 and stayed with the new age

Advertising 67

Advertising Technical Review Demand Mobile 67

Agile VC

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Change Collective announced their seed round today , in conjunction with their broader launch of the company. I thought I’d share a little of what makes us enthusiastic to partner with Ben, Derek, and their team to help them as they build their business. I first met Ben about 5-6 years ago. This was before we started NextView and at the time Ben was still building Zeo, the prior company he co-founded.

Term Sheet 173

Term Sheet Cofounder Mobile Cloud 173

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2014

'by Geoffrey Tumlin, author of “ Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counterintuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life “ Bad news is no fun to deliver. That’s why even distinguished leaders and otherwise successful people will go to great lengths to avoid doing it. For example, you might tolerate a longstanding, but mediocre, vendor instead of giving the contract to another company.

LLC 155

LLC Leadership Conversion Demand 155

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 22, 2014

'I''m announcing two things today. First, I''ve finished raising the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures fund--tallying $8.3 million. This is what I set out to do just about two years ago when I first broke out on my own and started raising, so I''m thrilled to say that it has finally happened. I''m not going to do too much of a victory lap, though, because it bugs me a little when startups do it, and I''m a startup, too.

Portfolio 162

Portfolio Partner Founder Startup 162

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2014

'by Nathan Parcells, co-founder and CMO of InternMatch. The new year is upon us! While you may be formulating new business plans or trying to find funding for your next venture in 2014, you likely have a new intern or two on your hands as well. Long thought to be paper pushers or errand runners, interns can actually contribute to the success of your organization.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Programming Hiring Operations 155

Gust

JANUARY 22, 2014

'This is obviously a softball question that I’ve been Asked to Answer, as I’m the Founder/CEO of Gust. The answer, of course, is Gust —because that’s exactly the purpose behind the platform! Gust is the infrastructure that underlies much of the professional world of early stage finance. It is used by hundreds of thousands of companies in 195 countries to organize all of their investor relations material; it is used by over a thousand angel investor networks, venture capital

Angel Investor 150

Angel Investor Angel Groups Accredited Investor Early Stage 150

Rembrandt Communications

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Make Business Goals Your Priority Instead If you go to the gym, you may have noticed that it was a lot busier over the last few weeks. It seems like lots of people had “get into better shape” as a New Year’s resolution. But this week tells a different story. I noticed that class sizes […].

Sales 124

Sales 124

VC Cafe

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Every year, world leaders from both the public and private sector, meet at Davos Switzerland to discuss the biggest issues facing our society at the World Economic Forum. Their mission is to shape global, regional and industry agendas. For 2014, the main themes are: Achieving inclusive growth. Sustaining a world of 9 billion. Embracing disruptive innovation.

Switzerland 136

Switzerland Japan Internet Leadership 136

Genuine VC

JANUARY 22, 2014

'My partner Rob wrote bit more on his blog about our motivations for adding our first new team member at NextView Ventures — a Director of Platform and Community. All three of us are excited to expand our efforts and are currently in the process of seeking an exceptional individual to fill a unique role in building our firm together. To expand on Rob’s outline, I’ve pasted a full job description for the position below.

Community 113

Community Seed Stage Boston Venture Capital 113

The Next Web

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Kate Cooper is a social business thought leader and managing director of BLOOM Worldwide , a social media agency powered by insight. As with the arrival of Twitter, many brands and businesses will be left scratching their heads as they try and figure out if or how they should be using Jelly , the latest new social media application everyone’s buzzing about.

Social Media 125

Social Media Community Media Cofounder 125

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

JANUARY 22, 2014

'The Golden Triangle of Inanity. I’ve resisted the urge to write an enraged post about the inflammatory comments made in recent weeks by Ted Nuget , Sarah Palin, and Duck Dynasty guy, Phil Robertson. I call them The Golden Triangle of Inanity (GTA). Many writers and observers have responded to their words in kind, so, I guess that base is covered.

America 113

America Government Design Media 113

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 22, 2014

'PandoDaily has an article up entitled The Series B trap , that’s about the dangers of premature scaling. It perhaps happens most at Series B, but can certainly happen earlier. In my experience this is one of the hardest points for many entrepreneurs to grasp. Everyone gets the idea in theory, but many fall into the trap of thinking that they are different and it won’t happen to them.

Venture Capital 102

Venture Capital Down Round Valuation Lean 102

Gust

JANUARY 22, 2014

'This is obviously a softball question that I’ve been Asked to Answer, as I’m the Founder/CEO of Gust. The answer, of course, is Gust —because that’s exactly the purpose behind the platform! Gust is the infrastructure that underlies much of the professional world of early stage finance. It is used by hundreds of thousands of companies in 195 countries to organize all of their investor relations material; it is used by over a thousand angel investor networks, venture capital

Angel Investor 89

Angel Investor Angel Groups Accredited Investor Early Stage 89

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 22, 2014

'“Let’s get a coffee and catch-up.” It’s a throwaway line but if you say it to David Bowman , CFO of Blue Bottle Coffee, you’ll get invited over for a tour along with your cup. Satya and I visited Blue Bottle’s Oakland HQ a few weeks back and I love talking with retailers about the way technology is changing their business (such as this previous post with a SF-based bakery owner ).

Technology 94

Technology Oakland Harvest Architecture 94

SiliconHills

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Today South by Southwest Interactive announced the finalists for its 2014 Accelerator competition, the sixth annual event. SXSW officials selected 48 finalists in six categories, including five Austin startups. In the enterprise and big data category, the Austin finalists are EvoSure and Shelfbucks. In the entertainment and content technologies category, sonarDesign made the list.

Austin 94

Austin Technology Startup 94

Diego Basch

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Dogecoin is a unique phenomenon in the fascinating world of cryptocurrencies. It’s barely six weeks old, and as I write this post its network has more computing power than any other cryptocurrency except for Bitcoin. It made headlines this weekend when its community raised enough money to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Internet 78

Internet Community Finance Software 78

SiliconHills

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Music and technology go hand in hand like bananas and cheerios, coffee and biscotti and alligators and a swamp. And the music and tech industry in Austin work together in such perfect harmony like Paul McCartney’s Ebony and Ivory lyrics. “Ebony, Ivory Living In Perfect Harmony Ebony, Ivory, Ooh” So it just makes sense, so […] The post SpareFoot Launches Battle of the Storage Bands Contest in Austin appeared first on SiliconHills.

Austin 63

Austin Technology 63

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 22, 2014

'How to Make Your Plan Their Plan: 7 Tips for Motivating Your Employees written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing It is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Amy Daniels – Enjoy! The most effective managers recognize the importance of motivating their employees. As you head into what will hopefully be your most successful year yet, consider the following advice to get your employees truly on board with your pla

Employee 62

Employee Small Business Security Management 62

Rob Go

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Today is an exciting day at NextView. Earlier this morning, we announced our investment in Change Collective (our first investment of 2014). Just as exciting, I am also pleased to announce that we are looking to add to our team for the first time since NextView was founded several years ago. The venture capital industry is one that is experiencing unprecedented change.

Portfolio 51

Portfolio Boston Venture Capital Community 51

The Next Web

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Adam Benzion is the founder of Entirely —a Seattle startup focused on social innovation, keen on connecting more people in more places to create special things together. . I needed a logo for my new startup. I’ve tried telling myself it doesn’t really matter, it’s just a logo, but the truth is that I’ve been obsessing about it for weeks now. Every company needs an eye-catching, memorable logo, and my main issue was never the design.

Seattle 167

Seattle Design Portfolio Internet 167

VC Adventure

JANUARY 22, 2014

'When the JOBS Act was finalized, one of the rule changes that had a lot of fanfare around it was the increase in the number of shareholders a private company could have. Prior to the JOBS Act, it was 500, after which point the company had to register and report to the SEC just like it was a public company (even if it hadn’t gone public.) This was a major issue for many fast growing companies that either went through strange contortions not to have 500 investors, or filed with the SEC to g

Syndicate 111

Syndicate Syndication SEC LLC 111