July, 2016

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Why Acceptance of Failure is Critical to Startup Success

Both Sides of the Table

I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer

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Finding The Right HR Tech Solution For Businesses

YoungUpstarts

by Ashley Walsh, Director of Marketing for Formstack. Human resources management is a key component in any successful business, no matter the size. All companies have fundamental human resources tasks, including payroll, benefits, and taxes. All those tasks can seem overwhelming, but if you have the right human resources technology solution, those tasks suddenly become significantly simpler.

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7 Common Staffing Mistakes That Doom Many Businesses

Startup Professionals Musings

Business success is all about having the best team, yet the average entrepreneur has little prior experience with hiring people and building top-notch teams. It’s no wonder that half of startups fail in the first five years , and an even smaller percentage ever see a return for their years of effort. Most new entrepreneurs assume their passion will attract and motivate the right team members.

Hiring 144
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Microservices Essentials for Executives: The Key to High Velocity Software Development

For Entrepreneurs

“Software is eating the world” – Marc Andreesen Companies thriving in the new world order have technology as a core competency. They build complex cloud applications. They constantly bring new capabilities and features to the market. And despite the constant iteration and updates to their cloud application, their software is rock-solid reliable. How do they.

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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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How to Learn Programming and Launch Your App in 3 Months—with No Programming Experience

Up and Running

If you’ve ever tried to start a software company or build a mobile app, you’ve probably come across these options for getting it out there: Find a technical cofounder. Hire a freelancer to build your app. Learn programming and build it yourself. When it comes to finding a cofounder, if you don’t already know someone with technical abilities, it’s going to be a very long, difficult process to find someone to work with you—if you can successfully do it at all.

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Suck Less | A Plea For User-Centric Design: Powered By You!

Occam's Razor

Analysts, honestly, make the world go round when it comes to any successful business – yes, data is that important. As you might expect from any role, they also make a handful of important mistakes. I've written about the biggest mistake web analysts make. Today's post is an adjacent mistake: The cardinal sin of spending too much time with data and in reports!

Design 86

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Top Considerations When Selecting A Cloud Backup Provider

YoungUpstarts

by Amy Anderson, principal owner at Anderson Technologies. In the past two years, 63 percent of small and medium businesses (SMBs) began using an online or cloud-based backup service. Clutch , a B2B research firm, recently surveyed 304 SMBs who use cloud-based, online backup solutions to determine how businesses use the technology and what they think about it.

Cloud 109
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9 Distinct Strengths Which Position You As A Leader

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs inherently understand that they have to be the initial leader of their startup, but often they don’t have the experience or the training to know where their leadership competencies lie, or how to build a leadership team. For new entrepreneurs, leadership development efforts may be more valuable for achieving startup success than business skills development.

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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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How and Where to Write About Technology in Your Business Plan

Up and Running

Often, a business plan introduces a new technology that requires some explaining. On one hand, as a reader of business plans for investors, I see way too many business plans that ask a reader to wade neck-deep through technology to get to the business. That’s a great way make your reader run in the other direction! It’s a business plan, not a term paper or thesis.

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A Review of Skytop Lodge: The Collapse of an Icon

Mike Michalowicz

I realize that you may be reading this article because you are considering a stay at Skytop Lodge in Skytop, Pennsylvania. I provide a full review below. But if you want the Cliff Notes version: Don’t go. The fees approach that of a Four Seasons resort, yet Skytop provides you with the cleanliness of a truck stop and the service attentiveness of a Motel 8.

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Mangling JSON numbers

TechEmpower

If we have a long (64-bit integer) that we serialize into JSON, we might be in trouble if JavaScript consumes that JSON. JavaScript has the equivalent of double (64-bit floating point) for its numbers, and double cannot represent the same set of numbers as long. If we are not careful, our long is mangled in transit. Consider 2 53 + 1. We can store that number in a long but not a double.

Java 294
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Is Your Business Making The Most Of Modern Technology?

YoungUpstarts

2016 is certainly an exciting time to be alive. It seems that every other day there’s some new software or gadget that the whole world raves about. Everyone’s feeling the rapid pace of technology, and as a business owner you should be too. There are countless ways you could be utilising modern technology to improve every aspect of your business. From HR to marketing to R&D, you’re at risk of falling behind the competition if you don’t use all the tech at your disposal.

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8 Business Professional Types Will Test Every Leader

Startup Professionals Musings

The most valuable assets of a new startup are the people on the team, and the most challenging task of the entrepreneur and team leaders is to spend their leadership time and energy productively. Cash isn’t always the scarcest resource startups have to invest – more often it’s the leadership capital of under-experienced and over-stretched entrepreneurs and co-founders.

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15 Female Entrepreneurs Share What Changes They Would Most Like to See in Their Industry

Hearpreneur

Share A census in 2012 found that 36% of all businesses were owned by women – a number which has steadily increased. Female entrepreneurs and business owners are no longer taken with a grain of salt. In 2015, businesses owned by women brought in more than $1.5 trillion in sales. Women no longer hold lowly positions in favor of keeping the peace. Female CEO’s of S&P 500 companies include Mary T.

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The 10 Best U.S. Cities to Start a Business in for 2016

Up and Running

While we may think of a major hub like Silicon Valley as a prime example of an entrepreneurial city, the reality is that these epicenters of growth may not always offer the most supportive climate for new businesses. So, where should you stick your flag in the ground? To find out, I turned to WalletHub’s report on the best (and worst) cities in the United States to start a business in for 2016.

St. Louis 105
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Brexit - The Turning Point

Transformify

The United Kingdom has held two referendums on its membership of the European Union or, in its previous incarnation, the European Economic Community. In 1975, voters overwhelmingly chose to remain on the inside. On June 23rd, however, the country chose to bring its 43-year membership to an end. What began under one Europhile Conservative prime minister has been handed its notice under another.

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“WHAT WAS ALL THIS VIDEO???” Five Questions with Magic & Loss Author Virginia Heffernan

Hunter Walker

Oh I was so intimidated to meet Virginia Heffernan for the first time. She was a cultural critic at the New York Times and writing about YouTube in a way that no one else was. About its communities, content niches, the aesthetic of the first wave of user content. In a manner which was academically-informed but not stuffy. Critiquing but not judging.

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Optimize Your Toolset To Tackle Today’s Network Issues

YoungUpstarts

By Leon Adato, Head Geek, SolarWinds. Software defined networking (SDN) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are key technology trends sure to affect the future of networking. As such, they currently enjoy the lion’s share of broad industry attention. Now, there’s no harm in devoting time to thinking about and planning for cutting edge, on or slightly beyond the horizon trends such as these, and in fact, it’s smart to start doing so.

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Startup Marketing: 5 Startups that changed their name (and why)

crowdSPRING Blog

A lot of time can be spent choosing the perfect startup name. Conventional wisdom says that the name should be less than 10 characters, easy to remember, and the.com has to be acquirable. Startup names can be descriptive (PayPal), suggestive (Amazon), or even fanciful (Apple). Once you find the perfect name for your startup, it’s hard to think that any other name could fit the company you are building.

Naming 68
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The Corrosive Nature of Over-Introducers

Both Sides of the Table

In modern society we’re all over-worked and over-loaded with information and tasks and to-dos and obligations. Nowhere is this more apparent than working in a startup where you are definitionally under-resourced and trying to make big accomplishments in compressed periods of time. That’s why focus is critical. Saying “no” often to people who want to divert you from your mission becomes obligatory if you want to make progress.

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How to Use Growth Hacking to Increase Revenue 20x in Just 12 Months

Up and Running

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. I’m going to go over the approach that we followed and the most successful growth tactics that we implemented during this period. If you’re interested in figuring out how you can growth hack your way to success, keep reading! Just for reference, Slidebean is a SaaS presentation software where users can add content, and a finished presentation is designed automatically.

Revenue 73
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Next Book: Silicon Collar

deal architect

My new book is nearing the end of the editing process and is headed to the design agency. It should be released by middle of September. Here’s a synopsis: “Never before have people had such a broad choice of occupations.

Design 231
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What YouTube Taught Me About Facebook Live & Violent Footage

Hunter Walker

“A technical glitch.” That’s what Facebook stated was the cause of the temporary removal from their service of the video capturing Philando Castile’s shooting. Ben Thompson has a smart Stratechery column today about Facebook’s emerging role as a Journalism Company. And the internal discussions (debates?) which are likely occurring.

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How To Improve Employee Satisfaction

YoungUpstarts

Dissatisfied employees are a problem. Either they’ll quit and take their talent elsewhere, (leaving you with a gap to fill), or they’ll “quit and remain”, meaning that they’ll physically remain in your office but will have ‘mentally’ handed in their notice. Want to avoid both these outcomes? Try these methods for improving employee satisfaction: Give pay rises where you can.

Employee 113
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7 Keys To Signing Business Advisors That Add Value

Startup Professionals Musings

In my role as an angel investor to startups, I’m struck by the broad variety of advisor strategies I see in investor presentations and business plans that cross my desk. Some entrepreneurs are “lone rangers,” never mentioning any outside guidance, while others tout dozens of advisors. In my experience, both of these approaches will likely have minimal value for your venture.

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How to Stay in Control of Your Meetings

Both Sides of the Table

Meetings. The bane of many of our existence. They suck up time and are often unproductive or don’t yield the results we expect. I want to talk about a specific type of meeting today — a Board Meeting — but this could easily apply more broadly. A find many board meetings highly unproductive in that they are often just a date in the calendar where management is set to update its investors and other board members of its performance over the past time period.

Metrics 196
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[Workshop at Ann Arbor] How To Create An Awesome Blog

Brandanew

July has begun, and the year seems to be whizzing past us. The good news is that we’re planning amazing things for the rest of the year, which have already rolling. The first event I’m speaking at this summer is with the WriteOn group at Ann Arbor. I’m a group regular and as you’d remember had previously shared some digital marketing insights with them last year.

SEO 154
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The next 100 days

deal architect

I hardly ever write political posts on this blog. This is an exception – somewhat. For starters, I am middle of road politically. Right leaning economically as many small businesspeople are, left leaning socially. I tend to fall in line.

Lean 230
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“WHAT WAS ALL THIS VIDEO???” Five Questions with Magic & Loss Author Virginia Heffernan

Hunter Walker

Oh I was so intimidated to meet Virginia Heffernan for the first time. She was a cultural critic at the New York Times and writing about YouTube in a way that no one else was. About its communities, content niches, the aesthetic of the first wave of user content. In a manner which was academically-informed but not stuffy. Critiquing but not judging.

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Why A Product Catalogue Can Help You Increase Sales

YoungUpstarts

Your website is your digital shop window, in the same way as high street stores have actual windows through which shoppers can take a look at what they are selling and start to make decisions about what they want to buy. It’s your opportunity to entice people to your product and keep them engaged. Most websites work best if they are uncluttered , simple to read and understand and easy to navigate.

Sales 100
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You Need A Motivated Startup Team To Change The World

Startup Professionals Musings

I was shocked to read an old Gallup study that indicates only 13 percent of employees worldwide are actively engaged at work, and more recent data shows only a small change in the right direction. In my own experience as a startup advisor and mentor, I find that entrepreneurs who can’t attract and maintain a highly motivated team rarely even get off the ground.

Startup 147
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How to Build a Startup & Understanding Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Many first-time founders seek advice when thinking about what ideas would be great for a startup company and receive the wrong advice that you need to focus on a billion-dollar idea. There are very few ideas that are obviously a billion-dollar idea from the start. So what should you do? I advise founders to focus on what I call “basecamp,” which is the first level of success or validation at a startup.

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The 5 Key Parts to Startup Landing Pages That Convert

View from Seed

In episode 22 of our podcast, Traction , Unbounce co-founder and marketing keynote speaker Oli Gardner shared five key parts to well-optimized startup landing pages. It’s a common tactic, the use of landing pages, all thanks to the power of building an email list. Your email list can be used to get real-world feedback as you validate the market.

Startup 136
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Congratulations, NetSuite

deal architect

Oracle is buying NetSuite for $ 9.3 billion. I have long admired NetSuite. They are cloud pioneers going back nearly two decades. CEO Zach Nelson helped in countless ways when I wrote The New Polymath I was hoping they would.

Cloud 233
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How to Create an Ideal Creative Writing Space

Brandanew

Recently, I attended a great workshop by editor and all round creative Jeannie Ballew who presented us with her ideas on how to create an ideal creative writing space. The reason I decided to bring it to the blog here for marketing folks, is simply because, all of us are writers. Whether you're writing 1000 words in your marketing blogpost, 140 characters on Twitter or a further 700 on LinkedIn, we're all looking at getting more creative with our copies and craft!

Green 140