SoCal CTO

JUNE 13, 2011

We had an interesting presentation at the LA CTO Forum by the CTO of a startup who chose Groovy / Grails as the framework for their startup. t prompted a good discussion around how CTOs go about choosing the programming language and framework for their startup. Some common themes from the discussion: Know Where You Are Going Before you can possibly make a choice around language and framework you need to ask all the important questions that are talked about in Startup Software Development – Do Yo

Framework 330

Framework Programming Ruby Fractional CTO 330

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This post originally ran on TechCrunch. I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. I asked what the audience most needed to hear. He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2011

A while back I talked about how and where to find a co-founder in “ Ten Steps in Choosing the Right Startup Partner ”. The feedback was good, but some readers asked me to be a bit more specific on attributes that might indicate an ideal startup partner. Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.

Partner 240

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

We recently underwent a Cinderella-like transformation: A total redesign of the WP Engine website from despicable steaming pile of hideousness to a designed, thematic — dare I say artistic? — sleek new look. Does it matter? It must have mattered. Look how bad it was. Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups: Just look at us now , sporting a grayscale 1950′s automotive motif playing off the “engine&# concept using the lates

Design 253

Design Lean Database Cofounder 253

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

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 17, 2011

Wireless music sharing must be the “hot new thing&# – right after we wrote about MyStream , Singapore-based mobile application developer Bitsmedia announces and launches Frenzapp Music , an application that allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to share and discover music. Like MyStream , Frenzapp Music users can mutually share favorite tunes and allow friends to browse their favorite song library.

Fractional CTO 174

Fractional CTO Germany France Singapore 174

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 14, 2011

Something interesting is happening in Washington, DC right now. It's not the usual partisan fights about the budget or the deficit. In fact, it doesn't fit any of our stock ideological categories very well. The Federal government is being transformed - initially, in small ways - by people I think should be recognized as entrepreneurs. They are leveraging the same kinds of new technology, management thinking, and big data to improve lives that we routinely use here in Silicon Valley.

DC 167

DC CTO Hire Fractional CTO Silicon Valley 167

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “ good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. “ We need to learn from doing, by trial-and-error. If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory.

Early Stage 380

Early Stage Stealth Marketing Startup 380

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have been working 20 hours a day, and spent your last dollar, but have no results to show, investors will be sympathetic, but will probably tell you that your dream doesn’t have wheels. Traction means forward progress. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 28, 2011

A few days ago, Christian Jung, a designer and consultant from Germany wrote an interesting post – Goodbye Basecamp, This Is The End Of A True Love. My Heart Is Broken , explaining why he would no longer use Basecamp , popular project management software created by 37signals. Christian decided that after six years, his needs changed and Basecamp was no longer the best solution for him.

Customer 117

Customer Germany Software Developers Software Development 117

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 9, 2011

By Nigel Collin, LeadingCreatives. Being Creative is Sexy. Being creative is sexy. Everybody is talking about it and everybody is doing it. Being creative is the new black. And in business, being creative is even sexier. Why? Because being creative drives business. It adds real value to a business. Value to its people, value to its customers, and value to its bottom line.

Leadership 225

Leadership Singapore Florida Dividend 225

David Teten

JUNE 14, 2011

I am delighted to announce that I’m joining ff Venture Capital as a Partner. Official blog post and more details here. In addition, Michael Yavonditte , CEO of Hashable , is joining as a Venture Partner. Since 1999, ff has made over 100 investments in over 35 companies , and from the beginning has been highly focused on generating industry leading returns.

Venture Capital 122

Venture Capital Technical Review Early Stage Portfolio 122

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 23, 2011

We have done almost 90 roundtables so far and, based on this extensive experience of learning directly from entrepreneurs about their core issues, 1M/1M has just launched a new assessment tool for entrepreneurs. It is a quick self-assessment that you can apply to calibrate where you are in your business-building process. We have also provided relevant 1M/1M curriculum modules that you can use to bridge the gaps in your knowledge and understanding of a robust entrepreneurship methodology.

Spain 115

Spain Entrepreneur India San Francisco 115

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. 2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. I acknowledged this in the article. You can be pissed off, but I don’t set prices.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 28, 2011

Presenting your startup vision as a founder to a potential investor, or presenting an idea as an employee to an executive, requires that you effectively communicate, or “translate”, the value proposition into terms that the receiver can fully understand and appreciate. If you fail, it’s your loss, not theirs, no matter what the reason. For example, if your investor has been a senior business leader, you need to transform your message so that it addresses the issues that senior business leaders h

Agile 230

Agile Startup Architecture Distribution 230

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 8, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

Social Media 96

Social Media Small Business Design Media 96

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 13, 2011

by Edward D. Hess, author of “ Growing an Entrepreneurial Business “ For many, achieving the American Dream means taking control of their destiny, quitting their 9 to 5, and opening the doors to their very own business. These brave entrepreneurial souls have shaped American enterprise, and today, they’re playing the very important role of helping to drive the nation’s economic recovery.

Indianapolis 219

Indianapolis Minneapolis Kentucky Virginia 219

Growthink Blog

JUNE 30, 2011

Do you still have your high school yearbook? I do. I don't look at it very often. But when I do, it's pretty cool to see the pictures of me and my friends. And to read all the comments my friends wrote in it. But I recently learned that yearbooks have gotten a whole lot better. I learned this when my son Max graduated from the fifth grade last week.

Entrepreneur 109

Entrepreneur Social Media Customer Product 109

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Our society puts a lot of emphasis on the college degree as a key step towards job readiness. In doing so, we tend to overlook the other ways in which knowledge and expertise can be shared. These can include internships and mentorships, both of which place student-learners in situations where they can hands-on experience and advice from actual practitioners in their field.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Cofounder Matching Video 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2011

This is the final part of a 3-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software & the venture capital industries. The series started here if you want to read from the start. Or the Cliff Note’s version: Open Source & Cloud Computing (led by Amazon) drove down tech startup costs by 90%. The result was a massive increase in startups & a whole group of new funding sources: both angels & “micro VCs&#.

Venture Capital 289

Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation Angel Investor 289

K9 Ventures

JUNE 23, 2011

It’s been a busy week folks! I’m pleased to announce the developer launch of K9 Ventures’ portfolio company, card.io (pronounced card-I-O). As the name suggests, card.io is the simple and secure way to accept credit cards in mobile applications. A huge congrats to the founding team of Mike Mettler , Josh Bleecher Snyder and Brent Fitzgerald on the launch!

Cofounder 93

Cofounder Mobile API Portfolio 93

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 24, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

Social Media 91

Social Media Small Business Design Media 91

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 13, 2011

The only thing worse than having no customers is having non-paying ones. And small businesses, with limited credit and cash flows, suffer from non-paying customers more than most. After all, it sucks doing a whole bunch of work and rack up a large number in your receivables column, but have your business go under because you can’t collect on them to pay off your own bills.

Technical Review 215

Technical Review Small Business Social Media Sales 215

Ben's Blog

JUNE 18, 2011

This post originally appeared as my opening statement in my debate with my friend Steve Blank in The Economist. We are not in a technology bubble. We have not even taken a major step towards a technology bubble. Predicting such things is a bit like predicting the end of the world; the prediction will eventually come true, but almost everyone who listens to you in the meanwhile will regret having done so.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Software Review Valuation Internet 76

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 2, 2011

Judy Estrin is a serial entrepreneur, having started seven tech companies since 1981. She was the former CTO of Cisco Systems from 1998-2000, and is on the boards of Disney and Packet Design and was a board member at Sun and FedEx for many years. She wrote Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy back in 2008 and now runs her own firm JLabs speaking and advising businesses on innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship.

CTO Hire 118

CTO Hire Startup Algorithm Leadership 118

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

Overnight success. It’s one of the biggest myths in the tech industry. It’s a ongoing struggle to overcome this bias. I say “struggle to overcome&# because I care about young people entering our industry with a set of realistic expectations about what “normal&# is. If you take a snapshot during an extraordinary surge in valuations, M&A activity, IPOs and thus wealth creation you’d echo John Doerr’s famous quote from 1999 that, “The Internet is the gr

IPO 391

IPO Finance Valuation Naming 391

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

JUNE 7, 2011

In the first article in this series – Ask Yourself This Important Question: Is Your Business Growing Or Dying? – I talked about why the ‘be the best’ mindset is so important and why it has been the ultimate success factor for many businesses. There were, however, a number of misunderstandings, prevalent in the comment section, which I would like to clarify.

Internet 77

Internet Technical Review Networking Search 77

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 15, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

Social Media 91

Social Media Small Business Design Media 91

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 26, 2011

Inventor and entrepreneur Stephen Key is a man who’s spent most of his working life cooking up ideas for a living. With his new book “ One Simple Idea: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work “, the developer of products like Michael Jordan’s Wallball , the Spinformation rotating label and HotPicks guitar picks shares his blueprint of how you can also look for ways to turn your creativity into profit.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Intellectual Property Jordan Distribution 207

Scott Edward Walker

JUNE 30, 2011

Introduction I’ve been helping entrepreneurs raise capital as a securities lawyer for 17+ years, and there are certain fundamental legal mistakes that I’ve seen entrepreneurs make over and over again. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to share three basic tips for entrepreneurs in connection with raising capital. (Note: this post was originally published on The Huffington Post.

Securities and Exchange Commission 76

Securities and Exchange Commission Accredited Investor Private Placement Finder 76

Ben's Blog

JUNE 28, 2011

Lost some real n%^$as I knew from a long time ago. But Heaven or Hell, I’m hoping that they be where I’m a go. —Lil Wayne, Swag Surfin. Before my partner Marc Andreessen and his friends at the University of Illinois invented the browser in 1993, most people thought only scientists and researchers would use the Internet. The Internet was thought to be too arcane, insecure and slow to meet real business needs.

CTO 78

CTO Internet Illinois Cofounder 78

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JUNE 6, 2011

That’s right, I prefer writing code than writing words and yet it’s been two months now that I started outsourcing the development of TaskArmy to someone in Ukraine. I spent the first 8 months developing the website myself until I proved to myself that my idea was a viable business idea. I was then ready mentally to spend more money into my idea. Anton is working full-time with me and I wouldn’t look back on that decision.

Developer 78

Developer Ruby Philippines Intellectual Property 78

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

In this three-part series I will explore the ways that the Venture Capital industry has changed over the past 5 years that I would argue are a direct result of changes in the software industry, not the other way around. Specifically, Amazon has changed our entire industry in profound ways often not attributed strongly enough to them. I believe the changes to the industry will be lasting rather than temporal change.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 1, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

Social Media 87

Social Media Small Business Design Media 87

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 8, 2011

By Brian Tracy, Author of “ Full Engagement!: Inspire, Motivate, And Bring Out the Best In Your People “ It is important that you never trust to luck when you plan a project. Hope is not a strategy. Remember the words of Napoleon, when he was asked if he believed in luck. He said, “Yes, I believe in luck. I believe in bad luck. And I believe that I will always have it, so I plan accordingly.&#.

Management 203

Management Canada Audio Internet 203

SoCal CTO

JUNE 15, 2011

Branchout , often called LinkedIn meets Facebook, has done a lot in their application to provide users motivation and opportunity to spread the word about the service. The purpose of Branchout is helping people to network their way to jobs. However, funny enough, I don't see the job search and showing you who you know at the company as being particularly well done.

Viral 331

Viral Startup Networking Social Network 331

Ben's Blog

JUNE 18, 2011

This post originally appeared as my rebuttal to my friend Steve Blank’s opening statement in our debate in The Economist. In reading my friend Steve Blank’s arguments, I found the bubble definition quite compelling: “A tech bubble is the rapid inflation in the valuation of public and private technology companies that exceeds their fundamental value by a large margin.&#.

Technical Review 74

Technical Review IPO Silicon Valley Valuation 74