View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2015

Editor’s note: Local tech media company BostInno (a division of the American City Business Journals) hosts an annual Boston State of Innovation conference. Leading up to the event, they published an article listing questions VCs never answer , as submitted by the community. These are all worth asking … and therefore worth answering. . I was recently asked to sit on panel with my fellow VC peers and some top entrepreneurs from the Boston tech community.

Boston 235

Boston Syndicate Syndication eCommerce 235

Brandanew

JUNE 16, 2015

It doesn’t matter if you’re a LeMans fan, or moved by the brilliance of Porsche’s 1-2 in Hulkenberg (loaned from @ForceIndiaF1 only for a weekend) or Webber (displaying true @AussieGrit). The 17-time champion and brand Porsche has reinvented itself on multiple occasions and LeMans was no coincidence. It was years of motorsport excellence.

Campaign 168

Campaign Channel Design Video 168

View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2015

Ask any VC what they look for in an investment opportunity, and they’ll tell you that the people are at the top of their list. Extraordinary companies can’t be built without extraordinary entrepreneurs , especially at the earliest stages. I’d argue that successful founders must actually possess a superpower to make the nearly impossible task of getting a startup off the ground become a reality.

Founder 200

Founder Entrepreneur Early Stage Portfolio 200

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 16, 2015

By Darius Maxwell Fisher, President and Co-Founder of Status Labs. If you are anything like John Hammond (Jurassic Park’s founder and CEO), you will face challenges in the midst of turning your brilliant business idea into reality. There is a science to creating a successful startup, whether you are cloning dinosaurs, or trying to avoid the hiccups that come with establishing a thriving business.

Social Media 149

Social Media Startup Cofounder Reputation 149

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

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 16, 2015

Today Techstars announced that it has acquired UP Global , including the organization’s Startup Weekend , Startup Week , Startup Next , and Startup Digest programs. This is great news for entrepreneurs everywhere. Both organizations have a deep seated community-centric ethos that aims to accelerate the pace of innovation through community-focused, entrepreneurial-led business creation.

Global 123

Global Merger Community Early Stage 123

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 16, 2015

by Jackie Barretta, author of “ Primal Teams: Harnessing the Power of Emotions to Fuel Extraordinary Performance ” . You see detrimental team norms in business everywhere. The practices of most teams contradict basic human nature. They deny individual team members’ emotional needs and disregard the fundamental wiring of their brains. There’s a better way.

Leadership 149

Leadership Partner Channel Technology 149

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 16, 2015

Twitter last week announced that it has opened its office in Singapore, officially designating it as its headquarters for the Asia Pacific region. The company is also looking to add over 100 jobs over coming years to “meet the growing demand from its users, partners and advertisers” in Asia Pacific, signalling that it is hedging its bets that continued growth – in terms of users and revenue – is likely to come from this part of the world.

Singapore 147

Singapore Asia Design Japan 147

David Cohen

JUNE 16, 2015

Today we announced that Techstars has acquired UP Global, which includes Startup Weekend and many other fantastic events and programs. Startup Weekend is my absolute favorite global event for entrepreneurship. If you’ve never been to one, you’re really missing out. At these events (there about 1,000 per year from Boulder to Mongolia to Chile to New Zealand), entrepreneurs and the community gather to build startups in 54 hours.

Mongolia 105

Mongolia Chile New Zealand Startup 105

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 16, 2015

For most, tax season is done for quite a little while, although it’s never too early to start for next tax season. If you’re an independent contractor, then you probably feel like you are never quite out of tax season. But if this is going to be your first time filing taxes as an independent contractor, it can be hard to know where to begin. Here are a few basics: Independent Contractor Tax Responsibilities.

Dividend 145

Dividend Cost Security Employee 145

YFS Magazine

JUNE 16, 2015

How would you like to join the 221,815 entrepreneurs that are making between $500,000 to $999,999 as a non-employer businesses, a.k.a. one-person businesses?

Entrepreneur 108

Entrepreneur Startup 108

ConversionXL

JUNE 16, 2015

Here’s another presentation from ConversionXL Live 2015 (sign up for the 2016 list to get tickets at pre-release prices ). While optimization is fun, it’s also really hard. We’re asking a lot of questions. Why do users do what they do? Is X actually influencing Y, or is it a mere correlation? The test bombed – but why? Yuan Wright, Director of Analytics at Electronic Arts, will lead you through an open discussion about the challenges we all face – optimizer to optim

Video 84

Video Analytics SCRUM Metrics 84

YFS Magazine

JUNE 16, 2015

If you want your business to compete and grow locally, I offer these suggestions to you.

Social Media 104

Social Media SEO Media Engineer 104

Eric Friedman

JUNE 16, 2015

The folks at Andreesen Horowitz and Benedict Evans put together this great presentation on The State of US Tech Funding. It is embedded below and a lot of it rings true for what I am seeing. U.S. Technology Funding — What’s Going On? from a16z. I also agree strongly with Slide 39, that more smaller rounds are happening. With the companies I advise, I have seen more of them raising a higher quantity of rounds at the so called “seed” stage.

Distribution 69

Distribution Software Mobile Programming 69

YFS Magazine

JUNE 16, 2015

While online marketing has gained noted traction over the years, don’t discount offline marketing just yet.

Marketing 94

Marketing Sales 94

SiliconHills

JUNE 16, 2015

Verb announced Tuesday that it has raised $2.3 million in seed stage funding. The Austin-based social enterprise connects large corporations and foundations to thousands of social entrepreneurs worldwide through competitions and its platform. It plans to use the funds to fund global expansion and for platform development and to hire key employees. Investors included Tom […] The post Verb Lands $2.3 Million in Seed Funding appeared first on SiliconHills.

Seed Stage 56

Seed Stage Austin Global Hiring 56

YFS Magazine

JUNE 16, 2015

The question is: Is it really the government’s job to ensure that everything is on a level playing field?

Internet 94

Internet Sales Entrepreneur eCommerce 94

Early Growth Financial Services

JUNE 16, 2015

This guest post was contributed by BJ Lackland, CEO of Lighter Capital. Fundraising can be an arduous and time-consuming process for entrepreneurs. To survive this process, it’s critical that you stay focused on what you’re passionate about. What drove you to launch your company? Perhaps it was the lure of financial independence. Or perhaps it was a desire to be your own boss and have a flexible schedule.

Entrepreneur 43

Entrepreneur Customer Startup Equity 43

Up and Running

JUNE 16, 2015

Billboards: definitely offline. Most of us believe that these days, digital marketing is the only way to get results. While this may be true for a specific target market, some of the best marketing ideas happen offline. The best marketing strategies are those that combine both online and offline ideas seamlessly, in one complete package. If you haven’t been putting much effort into your offline marketing tactics, then it’s time that you give your start-up a boost with the following tips.

Marketing 110

Marketing PR Non-Compete Software Review 110

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 16, 2015

Will Amazon Put You Out of Business? written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Let me start by saying, I have nothing against Amazon. In fact, I’m a user and fan, but don’t look now, they are coming after your business. They already own some pretty big market share in many categories beyond books and recently made real a proposed plan to add same day shipping.

eCommerce 61

eCommerce Small Business Community Engineer 61