May, 2016

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Why Solving Big Food & Healthcare Problems Will Yield Spectacular Companies

Both Sides of the Table

I’ve spoken before about our desire at Upfront Ventures to fund really big ideas that solve hard problems, are science led and if successful will both have a positive effect on people’s lives as well as make great financial returns. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on simple Internet products or mobile apps and while great companies are built doing this, our goal as a fund is to try and fund things that can be 100x returns if they wor

Cofounder 207
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NYU Commencement Speech 2016

Steve Blank

NYU Engineering Commencement Speech. Thank you for the opportunity to address you on your graduation from this esteemed engineering school. I’m honored to help you celebrate this important milestone. Your life is already full of milestones: Your first steps, your first kiss, passing a driving test, this graduation. And there are more to come: your first job, getting married, buying a house, having a child, becoming a manager, starting a company, retirement – and eventually commencement speaker.

Lean 221
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Second Startups: Why Founders Often Struggle to Find Their Second Act

View from Seed

Investors love the idea of backing second-time founders, especially if they have had success in their last company. The reasons are fairly obvious: It’s easy to reference them and understand their track record; they’ve made a ton of mistakes already that they have hopefully learned from and are unlikely to make again; they are probably more adept at raising and managing capital, which reduces financing risk down the road, etc. etc… In addition, first-time founders I speak to often talk abo

Founder 159
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[Interview] Jason and Jodi Womack, Authors of “Get Momentum”

YoungUpstarts

Husband and wife team Jason Womack and Jodi Womack recently launched their first co-authored book, “ Get Momentum: How to Start When You’re Stuck “ Unlike the promise of many self-help books, their book isn’t a typical one-size-fits-all recipe for success, but instead provides valuable insights into the psychology of change and how to direct focus to experience fulfillment. “ Get Momentum ” aims at coaching individuals on the mindset, skill set, and toolkit require

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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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New Meetup on Building Tech Tools for Private Equity+VC Investors

David Teten

My colleague Sebastian Soler, software engineer at ff Venture Capital, is leading the launch of a new Meetup with me. I asked him to write a guest post: Hi! I’ve just launched a new Meetup and online community I’m heading up with David. Our meetup is focused on how to use technology to enhance investing in private markets, including VC, growth, buyout, and distressed.

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9 Leadership Initiatives To Ramp Up Team Engagement

Startup Professionals Musings

Most new entrepreneurs have great ideas, and many are highly skilled in building their solutions. Unfortunately, far fewer have the focus and experience of building and maintaining a highly engaged team. They don’t realize that strong team engagement leads to even stronger customer engagement, which can more than double your startup revenue and growth, according to experts.

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Hacking for Defense @ Stanford – Weeks 8 and 9

Steve Blank

We just held our eighth and ninth weeks of the Hacking for Defense class. Now with over 917 interviews of beneficiaries (users, program managers, stakeholders, etc.), the teams spent the last two weeks learning what activities, resources and partners they would need to actually deliver their solution. And they’re getting a handle on what it costs to build a company to deliver it.

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Behind Every Stunning Startup Website, You’ll Find This

YFS Magazine

Your website is where people learn about your business on your terms. It’s where they first come to grasp the value of what you’re doing. Your website is your digital calling card.

Startup 66
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Beyond the.COM! New Domain Names Are Perfect For SMBs And Startups

YoungUpstarts

By Taryn Naidu, CEO of Rightside. One of the first and most important decisions any CEO, founder, or startup is going to make is what to name the company. It’s a decision that will inform every phase of your business’ future. And for years, entrepreneurs struggled between their desire for the perfect name and a rapidly diminishing supply of.COM domains.

Naming 124
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Book: Neon Fever Rising

Feld Thoughts

Neon Fever Rising by Eliot Peper was outstanding. But you can’t read it yet as it’s still in draft form. Eliot’s last book Cumulus was published a few weeks ago and has gotten awesome reviews. He’s turned into a writing machine and already had a draft of Neon Fever Rising ready to go when Cumulus was finalized. I first met Eliot several years ago when he emailed me a few chapters of the first book he was working on about a fictional tech startup in Boulder.

Oakland 74
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7 Team Attributes That Can Make Any Idea Come Alive

Startup Professionals Musings

There is an old saying in the startup investor community, “Smart investors invest in the team, not the idea.” As an angel investor, I’ve learned to believe in this approach, since I have seen great ideas go astray, due to poor execution and I have seen apparently marginal ideas make millions, managed by a savvy entrepreneur. Giving the wrong people money doesn’t help at the idea level.

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How to Start a Home Health Care Business

Up and Running

Do you find yourself driven by both entrepreneurial and humanitarian interests? Is it important to you to build a business you can be proud of, knowing you are making a positive difference in people’s lives? If any of this speaks to you, you could be an excellent candidate to start a home health care business. There’s never been a better time to do so— home health care is one of the largest growing industries , not just in North America, but around the globe.

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How User Generated Reviews Affect Conversion Rates

ConversionXL

Almost all business owners hate Yelp, but they understand its power. User generated reviews in general are tremendously influential in persuading people to buy. One study found that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and 72% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust businesses more. Millennials, in particular, trust user-generated content 50% more than other media.

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15 Entrepreneurs Share What Makes Their Business Unique

Hearpreneur

Share In the current generation of business being unique is a top priority to getting noticed. Each day some new story comes out about some creative marketing plan that takes the cake and drives huge traffic to a business. The Taco Liberty Bell April Fool’s joke or Verizon’s real life ‘Can You Hear Me Now?’ promo can only be described as unique. If a business is to survive and thrive making an effort to be unique is a must.

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The Importance Of An Innovative Website

YoungUpstarts

We are living in a time when everyone is connected almost 24/7. The onslaught of mobile devices and computers is not going to end anytime soon, which means that companies that don’t change with the times will find themselves falling behind the competition. The good news is that web design and online presence can really help to catapult your business to the front of the pack, providing you do it right.

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New Week, New Jobs!

Transformify

Have you experienced that sweet, intense anxiety just before turning up the first day at a new job? The expectations, fears and big plans? You have searched for this job, engaged your network to refer you to the right people, have been through the nightmare called ‘’job interview’’ and now you have it. Your dream job is yours!

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How Clutter Affects Your Productivity, And What You Can Do About It

crowdSPRING Blog

I read many blogs to get inspired, learn, and to see what other people are doing. I’ve noticed that over the past few years, more people have been writing about productivity. This makes sense because as entrepreneurs and business owners, we are always looking for ways in which we can improve our productivity – or get more done in a shorter amount of time.

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How to Start a Bed and Breakfast

Up and Running

It’s an image that puts you in an instant state of relaxation—a roaring fireplace in a cozy rural bed and breakfast, sharing stories with fellow travelers while enjoying a glass of brandy or your favorite red wine. The romantic notions so closely associated with a bed and breakfast have made owning one a popular dream for many people. This is one of the reasons the bed and breakfast (B&B) industry has grown so significantly in recent years.

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Top 5 Business Benefits Of SaaS Products

YFS Magazine

Software as a Service (SaaS) provides an alternative for the.

Product 61
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15 Entrepreneurs Share Their Favorite Inspirational Business Quote

Hearpreneur

Share André Gide wrote that,”Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Quotes are an important part of motivation, though many of them are repeats of another turn of phrase. Business owners are particularly partial to famous quotations. Reading a motivational speech from a business legend or famous creative mind can give you a spark.

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Why Web Presence Is A Necessity For Your Business

YoungUpstarts

There is no business or company who doesn’t have a website as it has become the most favourable marketing plan for everyone. Having a website doesn’t mean you will succeed in your business. Your website has to be decent and clean for your customers to navigate through the website easily. But, if your website is not up to the mark, that means having a below par website would just ruin marketing plan.

Web 122
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How to Turn Your Browser Into a Marketing Tool

Duct Tape Marketing

How to Turn Your Browser Into a Marketing Tool written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. I use the Chrome browser and judging from the data I get from Google Analytics so do 60.12% of my site visitors. Chrome is certainly winning the browser war at the moment and this is due in large part to the growing set of tools, plugins, and extensions that extend the power far beyond basic search.

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The Psychology of Hiring Great People

crowdSPRING Blog

Building a great team is nearly always the key difference between the success or failure of a business. Each person we hire contributes to not only the development of the product, but also to the productivity of the team and overall company culture. When we make a bad hiring decision, we not only affect the product, but we also affect the team, the company’s culture, and the potential success of the business.

Hiring 65
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The David S. Rose Reading List for High-Growth Startups

Up and Running

Reading lists are dime a dozen, but reading lists that focus on rapid-growth startup businesses? Not so much. Below, you will find a list of books recommended by serial entrepreneur David S. Rose. If you’re planning to start and build a scalable, high-growth business, get ready to fill your bookshelves. Alongside each description, you’ll also find a few words from David.

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How I Invest

Both Sides of the Table

I was speaking recently to the team at NuOrder , an LA-based company we’re an investor in about “realism in startups” — an impromptu talk I have given to any of our portfolio companies who ask. During the Q&A I was asked about how I make investment decisions in early-stage businesses. I was asked again in an LP meeting later in the week and then again at a founder breakfast gathering we hosted yesterday.

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NetSuite and the Year of the Vertical Cloud

deal architect

I wrote in January I expect this to be the year of the vertical for cloud applications. There are too many horizonatal cloud apps in accounting, hr and crm, not enough in industry specific functionality. Every event I have gone.

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5 Monumental Legal Mistakes Made By Startups

YoungUpstarts

by Laura Costello. It is important for all startups to ensure that they fulfill all necessary legal requirements before beginning operations. Fulfilling these requirements early, ensures that your startup will not be subject to serious and business ending legal ramifications later. Consultation with legal experts in the field, such as experienced business lawyers in Melbourne , can ensure that you avoid these 5 monumental and costly legal mistakes commonly made by startups: 1.

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The Most Important Metric for Customer Success – Part 2

Guy Nirpaz

I’ve written recently that MAU and DAU are the most important metrics for Customer Success. I’ve received in an email with the following comment: “ How does MAU and DAU, which measure interactive consumption of a service, are applied to products and services that are inherently revenue share models such as Ad-Tech and Fin-Tech?” That is a great question and I’d like to answer it in this post.

Metrics 47
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How to Avoid a Cluttered Board Room

View from Seed

Many folks have discussed the role and value a board of directors can bring to a startup, even very early in the company’s lifecycle. The purpose of a board is not simply to be the founders’ friend… it is to help govern the company and provide input into its strategic direction. Directors have a responsibility to act in the best interest of all shareholders/stakeholders in the company.

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A Guide to Facebook Video Ads: Can a Small Business Benefit from Them?

Duct Tape Marketing

A Guide to Facebook Video Ads: Can a Small Business Benefit from Them? written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: facebook. When Facebook officially promoted auto-play video ads in 2015, most users were confused by the videos playing out of nowhere. Although there was a certain dose of resistance during the beginnings, we all got used to the auto-play feature; and business owners agreed that Video Ads were a great opportunity for them to market their brand to the right

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Half Lives. Social Media. And Snapchat Stories.

Both Sides of the Table

I’ve been online for nearly 30 years (yes, there was CompuServe and Prodigy before the www), blogging for 10 and using social media tools since the earliest days. I love to watch networks evolve, see how crowds gather and communicate and curate and share. Twitter was the most unique social sharing platform that had emerged in my experience because it unintentionally innovated on a constraint of 140 characters (initially so that it could send messages as SMS, which it self had a size constraint).

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SapphireNow: Too Little, Too Late?

deal architect

I was in California last week relishing NetSuite’s SuiteWorld – and its two decades of cloud maturity and growing industry functionality as I summarized here. I happened to see a 8 page color SAP insert in the Wall Street Journal.

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3 Ways Structure Can Take Your Tech Startup To New Heights

YoungUpstarts

by Gadiel Morantes , chief revenue officer at Early Growth Financial Services. A Jenga tower is a precariously built one. Just as likely to crumble from the pulling of an important piece as it is from being breathed on, the structure of the blocks determines the game’s outcome. Think of a tech startup the same way. Its long-term health relies on a multitude of factors, some evident and others completely out of left field.

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 30: Guido Kovalskys and Doris Korda

Steve Blank

There was a time when having the information gave you the power. That’s no longer the key. The problem isn’t getting information or data; it’s knowing what to do with it. Founders will always encounter naysayers, shut out the voices and listen to the customers instead. It gets you to a business faster. Two lessons from the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

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How To Take Your Idea From A Hobby To A Business

Startup Professionals Musings

As a startup investor, I often see business proposals looking for funding that really look like expensive hobbies looking for donations. I recognize that entrepreneurs tend to substitute vision and passion for formal processes, but no discipline or process in building something new is a sure way to spend money, rather than see any return and build a self-sustaining business.

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Small Businesses Must Make Data Privacy a Priority

Duct Tape Marketing

Small Businesses Must Make Data Privacy a Priority written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Creative Commons Five Data Privacy Principles from Mozilla by Ann Wuyts is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Society’s concern with data and privacy (or the lack thereof) has been brought to the forefront due to the FBI-Apple controversy.