Wed.Feb 18, 2015

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How To Take Your Idea From A Startup To A Movement

Startup Professionals Musings

'To build a startup, entrepreneurs need a laser focus on providing an innovative solution to a real problem. Once they achieve that initial traction, the focus needs to change for quicker growth. Most entrepreneurs dream of achieving the exponential expansion of a Google or Amazon, but few investor pitches I see outline any strategy beyond simple marketing to make this happen.

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The art of the possible

deal architect

'The Preface to SAP Nation starts with “I first thought about writing this book five years ago.” In the weeks since the book has come out, I have had a chance to spend a bit more time on my innovation.

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6 Ideas To Engage Your Customers Emotionally

YoungUpstarts

'By Dianna Booher, author of “ What More Can I Say?: Why Communication Fails and What to Do About It “ When customers identify with you emotionally, you have a greater opportunity to influence them. As with family and friends, when they know you more intimately, they care more deeply and trust you more fully. Consider these ideas to strengthen the emotional connection: 1.

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Customer success is important, but sometimes it’s just too late

Version One Ventures

'In recent years we have seen a big focus on establishing customer success teams across the SaaS B2B industry. The goal is about both (initial) conversion and (subsequent) retention. Make sure your customer understands and is as successful as possible in using your product, and your conversion rate will go up and your churn will go down. There’s no doubt that customer success plays a vital role, but there’s also a huge number of customers they will never reach, no matter how strong your customer

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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 Trick To Balancing Student Debt And Retirement Planning

YoungUpstarts

'Debt and retirement planning are where your financial past and future meet. Many people stave off or take a break from starting or contributing to retirement savings funds because they are dealing with debt. This is especially an issue with graduates who have high student loan debts during the time in their life they should start a retirement fund.

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The Agony and Ecstasy of Selling My First Company

Feld Thoughts

'Several years ago, Alex Iskold wrote a great overview of What It Is Like To Sell Your First Company. I thought it was a great description and encourage every entrepreneur who has never been through the sale of a company to read it. Rereading Alex’s post inspired me to write my first person account of selling my first company. I’m sure I’ll get stuff wrong since it was over 21 years ago (I was 27.

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Building the Sales Machine Event: Bryan Rutcofsky from Yext

Eric Friedman

'We recently hosted another Building the Sales Machine event at Foursquare HQ and it was great to see so many people working on building sales and revenue from NYC and other great places. A big thanks to Bryan Rutcofsky from Yext for coming out for a great Q&A session about the early days, and getting tactical for the audience about how to build and retain a sales team.

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Mini Saga #136 – Preconception

Life Beyond Code

'Mini Saga #135 – Preconception. Mark was shocked and amused when his three-year old son screamed, “Dad, I suck.”. “What?” he asked. “I suck, Dad, I suck” the boy repeated. “Where did you learn that?” Mark asked. “Don’t know, Dad. I suck and can’t get out, “ the boy said. “Oh, you’re stuck.” smiled Mark. Sometimes, our preconceptions take over. They can lead to humorous situations like the above or they can lead to misjudgments that can have a negative impact on our life, career or business.

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Confronting Our Conventional Wisdoms…through Research

Growthink Blog

'Last week, I wrote about the peaks to valleys to peaks flow of a typical strategic planning session, and how without this Breakdowns leading to Breakthroughs flow it is difficult to attain truly actionable projects and to-do''s from the discussion. Now, planning sessions run like this are always good, but to make them great a critical ingredient needs to be stirred in.

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Option Grants over Time

OnlyOnce

'Option Grants Over Time. Several people have asked me over the years how we think about subsequent option grants (e.g., not the employee’s initial grant when hired), so I thought I would just share my standard answer here. We give the following kinds of grants other than new employee grants: promotion grants – employees get the incremental grant between their existing grant and what someone being hired into the new position would get. performance grants – once a year we give

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Ten Acre Organics Wins the Food Challenge Prize at UT

SiliconHills

'By LAURA LOREK Reporter with Silicon Hills News A crowd turned out last Saturday to cheer on food industry innovators at the Norman Hackerman Building at the University of Texas. The top 20 finalists in the first Food Challenge Prize, put on by the Food Lab at UT, displayed their wares throughout the room. It […] The post Ten Acre Organics Wins the Food Challenge Prize at UT appeared first on SiliconHills.

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Fresh from the SPRING: 5IVE_STAR_CREATIVE

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 5IVE_STAR_CREATIVE. Check out more great work on 5IVE_STAR_CREATIVE ’s profile page. Nicely done, 5IVE_STAR_CREATIVE, nicely done! Related posts: Fresh from the SPRING: SUJITHFAB.

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The Biggest Misunderstanding About Indie.vc

Bryce Dot VC

'Yesterday Pando Daily published an article about indie.vc. I wasn’t contacted for the piece, but I think they did a reasonably good job summing up the terms and timelines I outlined here last week. One thing they did not get correct were the kinds of companies indie.vc has been created to fund. The misunderstanding is clear from the very first paragraph: While most VCs are busy searching for Unicorns, the mythical $1 billion and up startups that can define a portfolio, there’s a new firm

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Bootstrapping Entrepreneur in the Music Industry

The Entrepreneurial Mind

'The Entrepreneurial Mind : Ben Cooper, Ben Cooper Productions, bootstraps his way through the music industry. Tweet Facebook LinkedIn Tumblr Stumble Digg Delicious The post Bootstrapping Entrepreneur in the Music Industry appeared first on Dr Jeff Cornwall.

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How Big Things Are Getting Done Today

Duct Tape Marketing

'How Big Things Are Getting Done Today written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Erica Dhawan. photo credit: Borneo in the Morning via photopin (license). There was a time when people toiled away in remote suburban garages hammering out their big idea. Many of the world’s greatest companies and innovations happened this way, but today there’s a decidedly different option available known as connectional intellig

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The Biggest Competitive Advantage Goes To Small Businesses

Mike Michalowicz

'Every entrepreneur knows that starting and growing a small business is a challenge. We don’t have the enormous resources – financial and otherwise – that the big guys do, and we don’t have the benefit of name recognition. Being the underdog is tough, and there’s no denying it. But small business does have one huge advantage: we’re able to act much more quickly than a big business with layers of formal procedures that are required for any decision.

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A Nonprofit’s Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing

Up and Running

'You can set the perfect tone right from your own office. When it comes to marketing, nonprofits have a few things in common. First and foremost, every nonprofit relies on marketing efforts to attract donors and volunteers. Every nonprofit, no matter how well staffed, could use more marketing resources. And, last but not least, there are never enough hours in the day to accomplish every task on the marketing to-do list.