November, 2013

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The Code is your Enemy

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

'You’re a builder, a creator — whether a back-end programmer, a Linux hacker, a Javascript ninja, a UX magician, a designer. You make stuff. That’s great of course, because in a new startup everyone needs to be either making stuff or selling stuff — there’s no room for managers and executives and strategists. But this also produces a natural weakness , and when I look at what made me a successful entrepreneur — not just a great coder — it’s that I

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Becoming A Part-Time Entrepreneur Is Easier Than You Think

YoungUpstarts

'By Sean C. Castrina, author of “ 8 Unbreakable Rules For Business Start-Up Success “ You have a respectable, steady job. You provide for your family. You do home improvement projects on the weekends and even find the time to coach your son’s Little League team. But as you slog away at your 9 to 5 and go through the motions of daily life, in your own mind, you feel that true success is still eluding you.

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8 Startup Gaps That Will Frustrate Funding Efforts

Startup Professionals Musings

'A while back I received a discouraging note from an entrepreneur with a patent and a medical software application who couldn’t find a dime of investment, and was grousing that seed funding just wasn’t available anymore. After exchanging a couple of notes, I concluded that she was more likely a victim of item #1 on my reject list below, rather than a drought on seed funding.

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How to launch a startup without knowing a line of code

The Next Web

'Tal Raviv is the co-founder of Ecquire. This post was originally published on OnStartups. There is an unspoken rule: to launch a startup, you need to build a product, and to do that you need someone that can write code. Whether that means chasing down a technical co-founder, learning to code, or even building that “Lean MVP” – the conventional wisdom is that without tech abilities you’re nothing more than a dude (or dudette) with a Powerpoint.

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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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Courting Content, Not Controversy

Startup Lessons Learned

'This post co-written by Sarah Milstein and Eric Ries, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. Our goal in hosting The Lean Startup Conference —which starts in just over two weeks—is to help entrepreneurs learn absolutely useful things from each other. For our participants to stay open to the unique ideas we’re presenting and to share the advice they each have, we need an environment that’s dynamic, professional and respectful.

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Create Structure out of the Gate and You’ll Thank Yourself Later

Feld Thoughts

'Ari Newman is an entrepreneur, mentor, investor, and a friend. He works at Techstars where his responsibility is to ensure that the connections between alumni, mentors, and staff are as robust as they can be – helping entrepreneurs “ do more faster ” day in and day out. His most recent company, Filtrbox, participated in the inaugural Techstars class (Techstars Boulder 2007) and was a win for all parties involved; Filtrbox was acquired in 2010 by Jive Software (NASDAQ: JIVE).

Burn Rate 152

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Why You Should Get Good At Failing Fast

YoungUpstarts

'by Mike Deck , CEO of EchoVantage. Failure as an entrepreneur is inevitable. Not all entrepreneurs hit rock bottom, go bankrupt, and are forced to claw their way out of the gutter, but you should not expect a linear path from finding that first idea to developing a tangible finished product. There will be problems, pivots, and, yes, failures along the way.

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7 Entrepreneur Oversights That Will Crash Profits

Startup Professionals Musings

'Many startups fail before reaching that magic “cash-flow positive” position they have been striving for, despite seemingly reasonable financial projections. A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. These mistakes are usually masked by excuses, like the economy turned on me, or my competitors played dirty.

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Does your startup really need to hire in-house developers?

The Next Web

'When it comes to scaling your startup’s Web development resources (or lack thereof), it seems like you can never have enough assistance. But for startups, which is really better: in-house talent or outside agencies? And at what price? In order to find out, I asked a panel of 12 successful founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question: What are the pros/cons of hiring an agency to do development work, vs. having all your technical talent in house?

Hiring 145
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Nine Webcasts to Learn From

Startup Lessons Learned

'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Our fall webcast series concluded on a high note with three extraordinary conversations about the origins and implications of Lean Startup. If you missed these when they went out live, we encourage you to watch them now , as they lay a strong foundation for The Lean Startup Conference , December 9 -11 in San Francisco—less than two weeks from today.

Lean 165
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Bitcoins Bitcoins Everywhere

Feld Thoughts

'I woke up this morning to several articles about Bitcoins. From Dave Taylor’s explanation in the Boulder Daily Camera to a paywall article that you can’t buy with bitcoins (ironic) in the NY Times ( A Bitcoin Puzzle ) to Fred Wilson’s blog ( A Note about Bitcoin ), I was surrounded by words about them. We have an awesome CEO list that covers plenty of topics.

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Tough Questions

This is going to be BIG.

'In a seed or friends and family round, tough questions, in the eyes of many founders, signal an investor that will either a) never get to the writing a check part or b) be such a pain in the ass afterwards that it might not be worth taking their money. Especially if you already have the round circled, without anyone giving you a hard time, why bother stopping for that one investor who wants more detail on how you''re going to scale?

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The Five Most Common Legal Mistakes New Companies Make

YoungUpstarts

'by Tricia Meyer, managing attorney at Meyer Law. Although it’s impossible to know exactly what will happen as your business grows, many issues can be avoided, and many others made easier to overcome, if your company has carefully laid its legal foundation. Too many startups expose their business to unnecessary risk by making some common legal mistakes.

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7 Keys To Business Success Learned From The Street

Startup Professionals Musings

'As a mentor and advisor to entrepreneurs, I find it’s easy to recognize “street smarts” when I see them, but it’s hard to explain the specifics to someone on the other end of the spectrum, even if they are willing to learn. Some people argue that street smarts are only a natural born skill, but I disagree. I believe they are disciplines that can be taught and learned.

Partner 247
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We crowdfunded $1.7 million for a new online news publication. This is our story so far.

The Next Web

'Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor in Chief of Internet at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. He also served as The Next Web’s blog’s first blogger and Editor in Chief, back in 2008. At De Correspondent, Ernst-Jan serves as publisher, fostering the expansion of the platform. He originally published this post on on Medium.

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Hands-on Lessons for Advanced Topics in Entrepreneurship

Startup Lessons Learned

'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for T he Lean Startup Conference. We’ve posted the full program for The Lean Startup Conference , and it includes more than three days of events for Gold pass holders and six days of events for VIP pass holders. We wanted to give you a rundown of what’s in store, along with particular insight into two of the workshops we’re most excited to have lined up for Gold and VIP attendee s—one session with Jez Humble on implementing continuous delivery and one with Alist

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An Outsider’s Perspective Can Drive Innovation

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

'I’ve been researching an industry (coin operated vending) in preparation for a speech I’m giving. I make an effort to tailor my keynotes, as much as is practical, in order to deliver more specific value to my audiences. Who Says Elephant’s Can’t Dance? In doing my research some obvious (to me) opportunity areas for innovation have become apparent.

Guerilla 106
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Structuring Your Projects For Passive Income And The “Holy Trinity” That Leads To The Perfect Business

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. This edition of Everything Entrepreneurship with Walter and Yaro focuses on passive income. We also review what I call the “holy trinity” of concepts necessary to feel completely satisfied with your business, especially as a lifestyle entrepreneur. Here are some of the subjects we discussed -. Can buying a website lead to true … Read the rest of this entry » The post Structuring Your Projects For Passive Income And The “Holy Trin

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Ego Metrics: What Measurements Matter?

Duct Tape Marketing

'Ego Metrics: What Measurements Matter? written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Andy Crestodina – Enjoy! photo credit: samuiblue. There are lots of ways to measure results. There are just as many ways to compare ourselves and our businesses to others.

Metrics 69
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How to Deal with Pure Recruiting Mistakes

Both Sides of the Table

'One of the unavoidable realities of building a startup is having to fire people. In a normal business you can often sweep bad performers under the rug and not deal with them. When you have millions or billions of dollars of revenue you can suffer a few bad performers or bad apples. You can miss a quarter’s target and not cull the inefficiencies.

Hiring 338
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Building iPhone apps for the ‘Internet of Things’? Here’s how to get prepared

The Next Web

'Jeremy Rappaport is a writer at Fueled , the leading iPhone application developers and masters of mobile design in New York City. This post was originally published on the Fueled blog. What exactly is the “Internet of Things”? It’s a popular phrase used to describe a category of physical devices like home -monitoring devices, lamps, watches and cars that now connect to PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

Internet 132
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12 Things Really Respected People Do #blindpost

Jeff Hilimire

'This article, 7 things really respected people do , was suggested to me from @gumboshowjoe for a blindpost. I decided to write a list of some of the people that I respected the most and then ponder what it is about them that I respected so much. Below is that list, with the name of the person following the thing I respect the most about them. I had to force myself to stop at a dozen people!

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If this is "content free", please give us lots more

deal architect

'15 years ago, I made a trek to Fargo, ND to the Great Plains (now part of Microsoft) Stampede user conference. Doug Burgum, the CEO used his entire keynote to tell the story of an English clockmaker, John Harrison who.

Software 329
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A New Way to Look at Competitors

Steve Blank

'Every startup I see invariably puts up a competitive analysis slide that plots performance on a X/Y graph with their company in the top right. The slide is a holdover from when existing companies launched products into crowded markets. Most of the time this graph is inappropriate for startups or existing companies creating new markets. Here’s what you need to do instead. ——-.

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Boston Unicorns

Seeing Both Sides

'Last week, I used Aileen Lee''s excellent TechCrunch article on Unicorns as a jumping off point to analyze the role of the MBA in creating these unusually valuable companies. This week, I want to take a local lens and analyze these special companies that have been created in Boston. As was the case last week, I was ably assisted by HBS 2nd year MBA student Juan Leung Li.

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On Launching a Brand – Upfront Ventures Four Months In

Both Sides of the Table

'Nearly four months ago we rebranded at Upfront Ventures. You can watch the video above for a very brief overview of why we rebranded and where we see our place in the VC ecosystem along with what has changed in our industry. The link for the video is here and if you want a short firsthand view on our changes it’s a great resource. I often advise startup companies not to try and pin all of your brand equity into an announcement.

Ireland 324
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A beginner’s guide to launching an e-commerce site in a day

The Next Web

'Rameet Chawla is the founder of Fueled , an award winning development and design company based in New York and London, and the Fueled Collective , a co-working space in downtown Manhattan. This post was originally published on his company’s blog. With the rise of e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Squarespace, and now Weebly , the painstaking process of setting up an e-commerce website no longer takes months, but just a few hours in a day.

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Hummingbird and Hashtags: Keeping Your Google Plus Content Strategy Alive

Duct Tape Marketing

'Hummingbird and Hashtags: Keeping Your Google Plus Content Strategy Alive written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Lauren Hogan – Enjoy! Photo credit: misspixels. With Google’s recent Hummingbird update, anyone who does online marketing was forced to review & revamp their marketing strategy.

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A passion for manufacturing

deal architect

'4 years ago, in The New Polymath, I quoted Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE “I believe that a popular, thirty - year notion that the U.S. can evolve from being a technology and manufacturing leader to a service leader is.

Cloud 329
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When Product Features Disappear – Amazon, Apple and Tesla and the Troubled Future for 21st Century Consumers

Steve Blank

'One of the great innovations of the 21 st century are products that are cloud-connected and update and improve automatically. For software, gone are the days of having to buy a new version of physical media (disks or CD’s.) For hardware it’s the magical ability to have a product get better over time as new features are automatically added. The downside is when companies unilaterally remove features from their products without asking their customers permission and/or remove consumers̵

Product 335
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No Startup Founder Was Born With All Skills Needed

Startup Professionals Musings

'I have met several young people in business recently who believe that they are natural born entrepreneurs, and actually seem to feel that traditional training and experience may be a detriment to their success in this new world. I concede that some natural born skills do exist, but more often I tend to agree with Peter Drucker , who said “It’s not magic, it’s not mysterious, and it has nothing to do with genes.

Founder 281
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How to Grow Sales By Not Selling!

Small Business Force

I started my career, "carrying a bag," as a marketing representative for IBM.I had some decent success. But in my most successful year, I didn't make one sale until May of that year, yet won a half dozen district and regional awards and was recognized as one of the top sales people in the entire division of more than 20,000 sales people. I had spent the first four and half months of the year researching each and every customer in my territory as well as some key prospects.In those days, that mea

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How clutter affects your productivity (and what you can do about it)

The Next Web

'Mikael Cho is the co-founder of ooomf , a creative marketplace connecting mobile and Web projects with vetted, handpicked developers and designers from around the world. This post originally appeared on the ooomf blog. Cleaning out your closet, emptying your inbox, putting things where they “belong.”. A few years ago, I worked at a Web design agency as a product manager.

Product 167
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Overcoming The Kiddo Factor

YoungUpstarts

'By Dana Kaye, owner of Kaye Publicity. I’m used to being the youngest person in the room. I graduated high school at seventeen, couldn’t legally drink at my college graduation, and launched my company before I could rent a car without a co-signer. As a publicist and owner of a PR company, my youth comes with its advantages: I grew up in the age of the internet, technology comes easy to me, and I have the creativity and energy needed to execute unique publicity campaigns.

Agile 252
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A new world of ERP service providers

deal architect

'NetSuite has a ERP Consultant Certification program. In reviewing the announcement it struck me they are doing customers so much better than their on-premise peers have done for the previous generation of ERP customers. a) They are recognizing integrators are.

Cloud 307
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Well They “Should” be Our Customers

Steve Blank

'When scientists and engineers who’ve been working in the lab for years try to commercialize their technology they often get trapped by their own beliefs - including who the customers are, what features are important, pricing etc. ——– One the key tenets of the Lean LaunchPad class is that every week each team gets out of the building and talks to 10+ customers/partners to validate a new part of their business model.

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