Steve Blank
MAY 19, 2015
Startups focus on speed since they are burning cash every day as they search for product/market fit. But over time code/hardware written/built to validate hypotheses and find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. These shortcuts add up and become what is called technical debt. And the size of the problem increases with the success of the company.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 16, 2015
Even in this age of globalization and virtualization, the geographic area where you choose to live and work can still make or break your startup business. I still have to tell some entrepreneurs that even with the best idea, they have to move to Silicon Valley to find the investors they need, or they need to move to the U.S. get the attention of the market they choose.
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YoungUpstarts
MAY 24, 2015
Twitter, which originated as an accidental side project of a failing Internet startup, first launched into prominence in 2007 when it landed best start-up in the blog category of the technology portion of annual festival SxSW that year. That winning announcement would catapult them into the Internet big league – whether the service, or the co-founders behind it, were ready or not.
View from Seed
MAY 14, 2015
Accidental VC is a series of short posts written by me, Jay Acunzo. Though I never planned it, I somehow wound up working in VC as NextView’s VP of platform. As an operator, not an investor, I’m amazed at how many casual, throwaway comments that happen inside a VC’s office would be genuinely useful to entrepreneurs building their businesses. So this series is my attempt to share that knowledge beyond our walls … one overheard lesson at a time.
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
Brandanew
MAY 29, 2015
Startups need PR, publicity and proof of visibility for investors and while you may have a PR agency, many struggle with producing enough or high quality content. The all encompassing Internet does provide opportunities but not when we create a content stealing epidemic. Content marketing and growth hacking are not mere buzzwords in hopes of fast movement but need time investment (and therefore money) on creating originality or quality experiences.
Feld Thoughts
MAY 28, 2015
Congrats to my friends at Rally Software on the announcement that they’ve signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by CA Technologies for $480 million. Part of the fun of having a blog for a long time is that it captures some of the history – in the moment – of what’s going on. For example, from a post in 2008 about Rally’s $16.85m financing , I riffed on the origins of the company.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Mike Michalowicz
MAY 21, 2015
It’s not uncommon for business owners who aren’t particularly tech savvy to hear about running their business on the Cloud and go full-steam ahead heedless of the costs – both the financial costs and the risks involving security and company resources. The Cloud isn’t new; it’s just a new term that describes storage and application hosting that’s web-based, rather than based from your business’ computer systems.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 13, 2015
Your website may be your most effective tool to engage prospects and convert them to customers. An effective website, however, has to be tailored to the needs of your customer and your industry. Your web design has a huge impact on the number of prospects you convert to clients. How do customers use your website? To implement a plan for web design, you need to know how customers are using your website.
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 29, 2015
Too weird, right? Metallica? Mellow? But perhaps a great way to start the weekend, am I right? A hard act to follow, perhaps, but get yourself ready, because it’s time now for our weekly Roundup! This week’s set of lovely links and attractive articles that we shared with you over the past week on our crowdSPRING Twitter account (as well as my own Twitter account ) is keyboard perfection!
Hunter Walker
MAY 15, 2015
You meet a lot of interesting folks on Twitter. Sara Chipps , cofounder/CEO of Jewelbots was one of them although most enjoyably, she reached out to me initially because she thought I had something to do with Homebrew, the Mac package manager and not Homebrew the venture fund. Once that was resolved it turned out we still had things in common and got together in NYC last year.
TechEmpower
MAY 28, 2015
By Jeffrey Papen, CEO and Founder, Peak Hosting. At Peak Hosting , we're big fans of TechEmpower's Framework Benchmarks, an open source project the company has been coordinating since early 2013. Covering a wide variety of web application frameworks, this project gives developers useful data that can help them find the framework that will provide the performance and features they need for their application.
Up and Running
MAY 22, 2015
When first starting your business you do it all—you oversee every aspect of your company. But as things grow, you eventually have to admit that trying to do everything yourself is no longer effective. However, it’s hard to let go. We asked 12 founders from the YEC to share with us when they knew it was time to hire a manager (or a few managers) to oversee the day-to-day activities of their business.
Scott Edward Walker
MAY 22, 2015
Last week, my client closed the sale of his company for approximately $65 million. Like most M&A transactions, it was a difficult and tricky ordeal. Indeed, we started the sales process nearly two years ago — so when the wire hit, he was a happy man. He even sent me a very gracious email: “There is no way this could have worked out so well without your hard work, experience, and persistent attention to detail.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 13, 2015
by Todd McDaniel, Vice President at Dynavistics Inc. Historically, the interaction between the credit collections department and the sales team has been an adversarial relationship. The credit collections team believes that salespeople have no concern for collections and just want to sell to anyone to make commissions and meet quotas. The sales team sees the credit collections department as an obstacle to opening new accounts and closing deals.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 30, 2015
I’m so tired of seeing young entrepreneurs get screwed by their angel investors on convertible notes and I know I can’t convince you not to do it so I’d like to offer one simple bit of advice to help you avoid getting screwed (at least on one part of your note). When you do a convertible note with a cap that converts into the next round of funding one of the unintended consequences is that if you’re successful and raise at a larger price than your cap the early angels oft
deal architect
MAY 28, 2015
This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. This time it is Jason Prater who leads product and platform development teams, from design to deployment at Plex Systems, the manufacturing cloud.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 28, 2015
How Customer Photos Improve Mobile Shopping written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. Mobile commerce is expected to grow nearly 50% in the next four years. But even with the rapid rate of tablet and smartphone technology, there are still many advantages of web over mobile for creating a seamless online shopping experience.
Up and Running
MAY 21, 2015
Most every organization will benefit from even the most elementary market research. If it does not provide new information, it will confirm what is known. Market research is the process of gaining information about your market. Preferably, this is specific information about your target market and the key factors that influence their buying decisions.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 31, 2015
Image via @_DataTsunami on Twitter A tidal wave of valuable data is surging from the Internet and connected devices today, and the volume is growing exponentially each year. It’s enough to drown any business which tries to fight it or ignore it, and it’s an opportunity to ride higher and faster than even the successes of Google and Facebook, for those startups that use it as their driving force.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 28, 2015
The Internet has become an enormous platform for businesses to advertise and communicate to existing and potential customers. It is also where consumers first turn when looking for any kind of product or service, and this means that businesses in every industry need a strong online presence as well as a flawlessly-conceived internet marketing campaign.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 20, 2015
Anybody who reads the blog regularly will know that I’m long video. I’ve made 5 investments in the sector and I hope to make 5 more. Between the US & Europe alone the video sector is worth around $500 billion. And TV / Film / Video Games / Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality and frankly the Internet will all merge. Western countries watch > 5 hours of TV per day.
deal architect
MAY 26, 2015
To me, the most enjoyable part of writing a book is the initial research/interviews phase. In the last few weeks working on the sequel to SAP Nation, I have had invigorating conversations with several professionals in SAP world and beyond.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 22, 2015
The Minimalist Guide To Managing Your Brand Reputation Online written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. A dissatisfied customer, on an average, tells 25 of his friends, while a happy one tells only 15. Seems like if good reviews spread like wildfire, bad reviews would be rushing with light speed. Reviews, and how the masses consume them, are human nature, but this human nature can be fatal for online businesses especially at a time when 8 out of 1
Up and Running
MAY 29, 2015
First, allow me to deal with a very common problem: Business owners are often afraid to forecast sales. But, you shouldn’t be. Don’t think there is some magic right answer that you don’t know. Don’t think that it’s a matter of training you don’t have. It doesn’t take spreadsheet modeling, much less econometric modeling, to estimate units and price per unit for future sales.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 30, 2015
Image via Flickr by SideWages.com These days every new entrepreneur understands that an innovative product or service is necessary, but not sufficient, to start a business. You have to build a web presence with marketing content to get visibility above the almost 300 million other new websites created last year, and attract the customers you need. But most entrepreneurs don’t know where to start.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 27, 2015
By Brian Sutter, Director of Marketing, Wasp Barcode Technologies. Unless you’re Kimmy Schmidt, you probably heard some buzz (or as the case may be, panic) about Mobilegeddon over the past few weeks. On April 21, Google launched its new algorithm update , designed to alter the ranking of its mobile search results to favor mobile-friendly sites and ultimately, to provide a better search experience for mobile users.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 14, 2015
*. Unicorns. The most overused word in the technology industry today. And they aren’t even f **g real. That is how absurd thing have gotten. No, I take that back. THIS is how absurd things have gotten: “I have to raise at a billion-dollar valuation” “Why? You don’t have the revenue or profit to support that valuation.” “But if I don’t I won’t be able to recruit the best people in the market.
deal architect
MAY 21, 2015
Analyst relations at vendors is never an easy job. Sitting between big egos of analysts and just as big egos of their executives is always uncomfortable. They are supposed to be mind readers: “Why did he write this?” or even.
View from Seed
MAY 19, 2015
Over the past few years, I have been involved with and close to a number of both successful and unsuccessful startups. To me, the most exciting (and most perilous) times in a company’s lifecycle are the early first stages when it is just getting off the ground. At the seed stage, the founder’s or co-founders’ role in the company is essential and therefore carries a great deal of risk for missteps.
Up and Running
MAY 19, 2015
Don’t leave the drawing board without some clear tactics. It happens all the time. You take your team away from the routine for a few hours, brainstorm, and develop a brilliant new strategy. And when you all get back into the routine, the routine wins and strategy loses. Nothing changes. The strategy was brilliant on the whiteboard, but never got to the real world.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 29, 2015
Image via Pixabay.com Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Non-organic growth would include OEM relationships, finding strategic partners, “coopetition,” as well as acquisitions.
Brandanew
MAY 31, 2015
We are now sharing another monthly post of Brandanew around the web- as we help brands spend time in creating memorable brands. It has been a busy month and we do have content and social media insights that we’ve shared with interested readers all across. This is a regular post where we share small snippets of those posts curated for you to get all the tips at one place.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 29, 2015
by Andy Roe, General Manager of SurePayroll, Inc. Perhaps almost as exciting as starting a new business is making your first hire. The feeling of actually being able to employ someone is very gratifying. So the last thing you want to do is have it all go wrong by hiring someone who’s a bad fit, making mistakes with their paperwork or paycheck, or failing to do your proper due diligence on the candidate.
deal architect
MAY 20, 2015
This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. This time it is José Duarte, CEO of Unit4. José developed most of his professional career at SAP where he held multiple leadership.
Rembrandt Communications
MAY 28, 2015
Your tactics depend on your target market You are busy running your business and know that you should be posting blogs on a regular basis, but who has time? Ugh! It’s just another thing on your giant, “To Do” list that is stressing you out. But in reality, you may be worrying for nothing. Remember, […]. The post Are Blogs Part of Your BtoB Content Marketing Strategy?
Up and Running
MAY 19, 2015
An expense budget is part of the bread-and-butter basics of good management. Set your budget as a goal, then review and revise often to stay on track. Being right on budget is usually good, but good management takes the regular review to check on the timing, efficiency, and results of what your business spends. See Also The Key Elements of the Financial Plan.
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