Mon.Mar 30, 2015

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Every Entrepreneur Dreams Of A Startup Without Risk

Startup Professionals Musings

'Outside of dreams, there is no real business opportunity without risk. Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active Angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.

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10 Crowdfunding Tips & Tricks: WePay

YoungUpstarts

'by Bill Clerico, CEO and co-founder of WePay. Crowdfunding continues to grow in popularity, creating endless opportunities for inventive commerce and fundraising opportunities. In addition to the old-school general purpose crowdfunding sites, new platforms are emerging to serve specific verticals or sets of verticals. These niche platforms in turn are leading to even greater opportunities in small business categories from technology to food and beverage.

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The Coming Zombie Startup Apocalypse

This is going to be BIG.

'Are we in a bubble? And if so, when will it burst? Everyone likes to debate it, and statistically, almost no one gets it right. Not only is it notoriously difficult to time the market, but even if you did, you''d miss out on individual winners. Sam Altman of YC recently pointed out that pulling back during the downturn in 2008 would result in several big misses: In October of 2008, Sequoia Capital—arguably the best-ever in the business—gave the famous “RIP Good Times” presentation (I was there)

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Solving The Chicken And Egg Equation In A Marketplace Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Jay Barnett, founder of Priority Pickup. I still remember the hot summer of February 2012 – it had just been days since I had launched my business. Priority Pickup was a marketplace that connected private chauffeurs with commuters to the Perth airport. I identified a need and got the website built. But the bigger question was how am I going to get customers to the service?

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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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The Candy Queen Store: A Story of Struggle and Perseverance for Entrepreneurs

Up and Running

'Have you ever noticed that children have a universal desire to play dress up? Kids love to be creative with their sense of fashion: they cover themselves in stickers, wear tutus with rain boots, adorn their heads with flowers and princess crowns. Mel Buchanan, owner of the Candy Queen Store, took notice. With drive and vision, Mel responded to this need by creating the Candy Queen Store to serve fashion-adventurous girls ages three to 10.

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Successful marketplaces evolve away from transaction revenue

The Equity Kicker

'Hand crafted goods marketplace Etsy recently filed for IPO and Techcrunch has a great analysis of it’s S1. As you can see from the chart below much of the recent growth has come from seller services. The post also looks at Homeaway, Grubhub, and Shutterstock, three other marketplaces that have similarly diversified away from transaction revenues to drive growth and profitability.

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Leonie Dawson: What Do Rainbows, Unicorns, A Hippy Mommy Blogger And A Million Dollars Have In Common?

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'Warning: This podcast is the first I have ever published that features the F-Word, in multiple places… and unicorns. That says a lot about my guest today. Leonie Dawson is one of the most unconventional and unlikely entrepreneurs I’ve ever had the pleasure of interviewing. Everything about Leonie seems incredibly. The post Leonie Dawson: What Do Rainbows, Unicorns, A Hippy Mommy Blogger And A Million Dollars Have In Common?

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EyeQ Lands $1.2 Million in Funding

SiliconHills

'In 2012, eyeQ won the Texas Ventures Labs Investment Competition. And it has come a long way since then. The company, founded by two Texas MBA students, Michael Garel and Harish Jayakumar, just announced Monday it has landed $1.2 million in funding. Corsa Ventures, DreamIt, Houston Angel Network, South Coast Angel Network and other angel […] The post EyeQ Lands $1.2 Million in Funding appeared first on SiliconHills.

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Small Business and Startups: Sustainability and Your Company

crowdSPRING Blog

'A wonderful project posted to crowdSPRING recently has got me thinking lately about the role of sustainability in the context of small business. Iggesund Paperboard , a leading producer of high quality virgin fiber paperboard, issued a challenge to improve existing consumer packaging. The idea was simple: take a look around you at your local grocery, pick out a package, and reimagine how that packaging made of plastic, glass and metal could be redesigned using sustainable materials.

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Student Entrepreneur Pursues Product Development

The Entrepreneurial Mind

'The Entrepreneurial Mind : Grace McCaw- McCaw Industries. Tweet Facebook LinkedIn Tumblr Stumble Digg Delicious The post Student Entrepreneur Pursues Product Development appeared first on Dr Jeff Cornwall.

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10 Best Practices for Better B2B Website Experience

ConversionXL

'Best practices are starting points: if you have no data, start with these. They are not what you should end up with, but it’s where you start (the optimization). That’s an important distinction. Here are some ideas about of how you can apply 10 Jakob Nielsen Usability Heuristics to lead generation websites in the B2B or high consideration B2C realm, where there isn’t necessarily any transactional functionality, e.g. e-commerce, user registrations, etc.

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Where Does Social Media Fit into the Customer Journey?

Duct Tape Marketing

'Where Does Social Media Fit into the Customer Journey? written by Alex Boyer read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: FACEBOOK(LET) Back via photopin (license). Businesses know that they must have a presence on social media, but they don’t know how to use it. The wonderful thing about social media is that there are multiple platforms and countless ways to use them.

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Walker Twitter Highlights: March 2nd – 29th

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 four weeks (three of which are Quora-related). Cheers, Scott. Top 5 Tweets. Solid interview of Peter Thiel by @Jason : [link]. My favorite Thiel quote: “All trends are overrated.

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Choosing The Right Mobile Application Architecture

YoungUpstarts

'By Nuno Pereira, Director APAC, OutSystems. The idea of mobile application development for the enterprise is rapidly catching on, as mobile apps are now an obvious (and critical) path to both generate revenue and improve the customer experience for today’s modern businesses. However, churning out mobile apps isn’t really as simple as 1-2-3. According to a study by Opinion Matters, 85% of companies have a mobile backlog of between one and 20 applications, with half having a backlog of between 10

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4 Sports Lessons That Can Increase the Odds of Entrepreneurial Success.

Small Business Force

"March Madness" puts a three week spotlight on sports in America. With it comes the frenzy of background noise like "picking brackets" and relentless prognostication, big-time rivalries and the "rah-rah" of college cheerleaders and pep bands. But at the end of the day, it's the athletes on the court, who are in that spotlight, and who will take with them not only memories of being one of the best 64 teams in college basketball, but life lessons that they will carry with them in whatever they do.

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[ADV] Understanding Payment Protection Insurance

YoungUpstarts

'Before regaining or abandoning PPI you must check the notes and understand what kind of PPI you have. Constantly deliberate all the particulars and statistics before hand and before the initial claim. There are essentially 2 types of Recompense protection Cover rules. The first one is the once-a-month Funded Premium these rules must not be an immense difficulty to stop; usually they will stop this kind of rule if you inscribe to them.

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Episode 21: Customer Service and Profit Growth with Angie Strader

Mike Michalowicz

'Show Summary. Angie Strader, CEO of 360 Wraps, joins Episode 21 of the Profit First Podcast. Angie explains the profitable benefits of keeping you customers happy. Our Guest. Angie Strader has a business degree from Texas A&M and has 20+ years of professional management and leadership experience. Her career began as a police officer and hostage negotiator for eight years in the United States Air Force, as well as time spent as an entrepreneur and in corporate America.