Mon.Jun 16, 2014

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How early should you connect to a VC? Here's some data.

This is going to be BIG.

'How long does it take from first meeting a VC to getting cash in the bank? That''s an interesting question. Theoretically, someone could meet you, sign your document, and write you a check for deposit that day, but that''s not how it usually works. It''s also not the best way to create a helpful syndicate of investors that share the founder''s vision for the company.

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What do investors REALLY want?

Up and Running

'This week, begins the first in a series of question and answer posts. You ask a question related to starting a business and for the next few weeks, every Monday, we will provide the answer. Simply leave a comment below or get in touch on any of our social media accounts – Twitter , Google+ and Facebook. QUESTION: Should I send out market research surveys prior to approaching an investor?

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Natalie MacNeil: Emmy Award Winning Founder Of “She Takes On The World” Blogs Her Way To Half A Million Dollars A Year

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Natalie MacNeil , founder of She Takes On The World , a graduate of my Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind programs. She’s won an Emmy award, and today is in charge of a half a million dollar a year blogging business. You can listen to this interview right now to hear the … Read the rest of this entry » The post Natalie MacNeil: Emmy Award Winning Founder Of “She Takes On The World” Blogs Her Way To Half A Milli

Founder 108
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Has The Bar For Series A Changed?

Rob Go

'(Note: The majority of this post first ran on BetaBoston. This version goes a little deeper into some of my more nuanced thoughts). There has been a lot of discussion recently about the bar required to raise a series A. A few notable excerpts: Kyle Alspach’s commentary on seed and series A at BetaBoston; Brad Feld’s tweet a few weeks ago that “$100k MRR [monthly recurring revenue] used to be interesting.

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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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High Performing Virtual Teams Have 8 Key Attributes

Startup Professionals Musings

'Almost every startup is a virtual team these days, since most don’t start out with dedicated office space, and some or all members of the team work part-time or out of their own home. It’s a small world, so these team members may not even be in the same town, or the same country. Outsourcing is just another extension of the virtual team concept to people you don’t even know.

Global 252
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Elon Musk Makes Right Decision Over Tesla Patents

YoungUpstarts

'By Topher Morrison, author of “ Collaboration Economy: Eliminate the Competition by Creating Partnership Opportunities ”. Tesla Motors announced yesterday it has opened its patent portfolio in hopes of encouraging other companies to create new electric vehicles. In a blog post, CEO Elon Musk said this was done “In the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

More Trending

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16 Companies That Care… And How They Show It

YoungUpstarts

'By Jon Gordon, author of “ The Carpenter: A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All “. “Caring” isn’t just another feel-good word — it’s a strategy that many of today’s most successful companies are using to differentiate themselves from the competition. Plus, demonstrating through your company’s actions — not just your mission statement or website copy — that you care about employees, customers, and society in general will help you to build tremendous customer loyalty.

Oregon 157
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Fixing our relationship with the Millennial generation

The Next Web

'Ben Huh is the founder and CEO of The Cheezburger Network. The Millennial Generation (commonly defined as those born in the 1980’s and mid-1990’s) make up 27 percent of the US population and outnumber the Baby Boomers. Already, their economic clout is massive, and is projected to eclipse their parents’ generation in 2018. Brands are either desperate or salivating, depending on their current market positioning.

Design 145
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Promote Your Organization At Local Events This Summer

YoungUpstarts

'With summer finally upon us, local communities are busy getting geared up for annual carnivals, village fetes and music festivals. Not only do these give residents the chance to enjoy themselves in the sunshine – well, hopefully! – they also provide businesses and charities based in the area with the perfect opportunity to promote their services.

Naming 157
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Six Ideas for Creative Action

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

'What kind of action can you take, today, to advance your dream? What action can you take today to make real your invention, your new business idea, art project? This is a post about taking creative action. All the great ideas in the world, all the wonderful concepts, all the ground-breaking thoughts we have are useless unless we get into real world action.

Lean 116
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Startup employees: judge your company on the high notes it’s hitting

The Equity Kicker

'There’s a great thread on Hacker News this morning which offers advice to a young developer trying to figure out whether he should stay at the startup he works at. The following advice from pfitzsimmons is spot on: “My intuition would be that functional startups are visibly functional; they feel awesome.” It is a lot more complicated than that.

Employee 106
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4 Social Media Mistakes Your Business Should Avoid

Up and Running

'Hannah Meuser, a social media strategist, shows you what not to do on your social sites. When it comes to social media, many entrepreneurs are self-taught. You’ve learned your way around Facebook and Twitter with personal accounts, so you figure you’re good to go when it comes to a business account. Your experience will help, but there are some unspoken rules in the social media world that you might have missed while using the sites to dig up pictures of your old high school friends.

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Going from One Employee (You!) To Many

Mike Michalowicz

'If you are like most small-business entrepreneurs, you started out with just one employee – yourself. And you may still be the only employee. But at some point, in the interest of being able to grow your company and your bottom line, you will probably want to begin hiring employees. The trick to growing a business, however, isn’t to hire employees when you need them.

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GroupDesk and Personal Concert Win Grand Prizes at School’s Out Hackathon

SiliconHills

'By Jonathan Gutierrez Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News GroupDesk and Personal Concert won the grand prizes at the inaugural School’s Out Hackathon for high school students last Saturday. The GroupDesk team created an online collaborative platform to “nourish productivity and teamwork.” The web application helps teachers and students collaborate on school projects.

Austin 80
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Relearning what we already know

Start Up Blog

'I was recently in an office where there happened to be a couple of Rubik’s cubes laying around. Once upon a time I wasted an inordinate amount of time learning how to solve it. So I said: “Oh, I can solve that.” Adding further that I could do it in 3 minutes, but my best time is under 2 minutes. The cube was quickly handed to me to prove my lofty statement.

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Franchises Finding International Niches

The Entrepreneurial Mind

'ENTREPRENEURIAL PROFILE : Tony Chew: KFC Vietnam. One of the more active regions for international franchising is Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia and Laos are all seeing rapid growth in American franchise restaurants. One of the most popular franchises is KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken first came to Vietnam in 1997 through the vision of Singapore entrepreneur and franchisee Tony Chew.

Myanmar 64
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Turning a lack of talent into a competitive advantage

Jeff Hilimire

'Jim Courier and Andre Agassi were both at Bollettieri’s tennis academy when they were junior tennis players. In a recent article I was reading, Courier talked about how he resented the fact that he was up at 7am for the mandatory practices and Agassi was allowed to stroll into practice at 11am. Yet even with the four extra hours of practice a day that Courier was getting, he and Andre were always neck-and-neck in matches back then.

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Walker Twitter Highlights: May 26th – June 15th

Scott Edward Walker

'I’m using Twitter as a form of micro-blogging to share interesting articles, posts and podcasts relating to entrepreneurship and startups, M&A and legal issues. Below are my five most popular tweets for the past three weeks. Cheers, Scott. . Top 5 Tweets. Kudos to @bijan & @sparkcapital : Put away your wallet, startup. Spark decides to cover its own legal fees bit.ly/1ilAKLu.

Sales 55