Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Nearly every successful tech startup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. An alternate outcome that I also unfortunately observe in some cases are companies who had extreme early success with an initial product adoption but failed in key areas that limited the growth and therefore the ultimate financial outcomes.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

This article first appeared on the Harvard Business Review blog. Jeff Immelt ran GE for 16 years. He radically transformed the company from a classic conglomerate that did everything to one that focused on its core industrial businesses. He sold off slower-growth, low-tech, and nonindustrial businesses — financial services, media, entertainment, plastics, and appliances.

Institutional Investors 233

Institutional Investors Dividend Stock Technical Review 233

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Trust a techie to reinvent how we do winter. That’s what former software engineer Jamil Khan has done with his new company, North Aware , in manufacturing its Smart Parka. North Aware’s Smart Parka is a high-tech coat that has everything covered: Your hands and neck, with built in gloves and scarf. Your hips and legs, thanks to an extendable hemline so you can adjust how much of your body gets protected from the cold.

Founder 189

Founder Pakistan Software Developers Software Development 189

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 25, 2017

Every entrepreneur and business leader waits too long before really working on the legacy that he wants to leave to society and his family. They realize too late that they don’t really want to be remembered for how many hours they spent on airplanes, how many emails they produced, or even how much money they made for the business. If you disappeared today, what would your legacy show?

Technical Review 185

Technical Review Leadership Conversion Developer 185

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

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Editor’s note: This article was updated in November of 2017. One of the best ways to prepare to conduct a SWOT analysis is to use examples for help and inspiration. Even if you already know what a SWOT analysis is and what it’s used for, it can be tough to translate that information and examine your own business with a critical eye. Reading an example SWOT analysis for a business that is either in your industry or based on a comparable business model can help get you started.

Botswana 148

Botswana Business Plan Oregon Distribution 148

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

You run an A/B test , and it’s a winner. Or maybe it’s flat (no difference in performance between variations). Does it mean that the treatments that you tested didn’t resonate with anyone? Probably not. If you target all visitors with the A/B test, it merely reports overall results – and ignores what happens in a portion of your traffic, in segments.

Chad 112

Chad Mobile Technical Review Aggregator 112

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

A few years ago, we began to see SaaS companies integrate payment processing into their software. This push to integrate payments was due to a couple of factors. First, it offers a better user experience – why send somebody off-platform to pay for a product or settle an invoice? Next, adding payments to a platform is very profitable, since the SaaS company gets a cut of the payment revenue.

Software Review 116

Software Review Vertical Differentiation Revenue 116

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

by Celina Kirchner, full-stack attorney at Michelman & Robinson, LLP. Yep, you read that title right. Insurance is the next big industry due for a disruption. And with that I know just what your thinking: insurance = SNORE. But wait, before letting your eyes glaze over or clicking out of here entirely, give me just two minutes of your time to explain – because the opportunity is big and the technology is really cool.

Technical Review 183

Technical Review Los Angeles Artificial Inteligence San Francisco 183

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2017

In my experience as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs in business, one of the biggest failures I see is a lack of self-leadership. You can’t lead a business to success, if you can’t lead yourself. I define self-leadership as the capacity to set direction and make decisions, to positively drive your own performance. Leadership in business starts with making good personal choices.

Leadership 149

Leadership Reputation Venture Capital Global 149

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Financial contingency planning is a must—not just for established small businesses, but also for businesses in the earliest stages of formation. If you’re pre-launch or have only recently gone to market, a contingency plan is likely to be the last thing on your mind; after all, your efforts are focused on making your business a success, and not necessarily thinking about what could go wrong.

Software Review 116

Software Review Early Stage Operations Finance 116

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

Technology has the ability to disrupt the marketplace, which is the Holy Grail for any entrepreneur. It means offering a completely different way of doing something and capturing the interest of millions of people who may or may not have anticipated the idea, but were anxiously awaiting the reality. Keep in mind that investors are motivated by only two different types of businesses: a market disrupter, or a business with an already established audience.

Marketing 83

Marketing Chicago Demand Technical Review 83

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 21, 2017

At TelTech , it took our product-marketing organization more than a year to get to something that resembled a true growth team, running high tempo testing. So, if you are struggling to implement the growth hacking methodology, I get it. We assembled a team, achieved product-market fit, and identified our growth levers, but got stuck when we tried to put process behind our testing.

Metrics 114

Metrics Database Retention Hiring 114

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

Being in love is great. Being in love with your business, when you’re an entrepreneur, is even better. Waking up each morning knowing you are getting to do exactly what you love is more than most people could ever say about any “job” they have had. Although there are days when tossing in your hat seems like a viable option, remembering how much you love your “job” can quickly snap an entrepreneur out of that mentality.

Entrepreneur 108

Entrepreneur Ethiopia Massachusetts LLC 108

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

by Itamar Gero, founder and CEO of SEOReseller.com . Each day is an opportunity for SEO agencies and experts to peddle their services to businesses who aim for online marketing success and have the money for it. If you’re about to embark on growing your SEO agency, you’ll quickly find yourself in the thick of this competition. First, let me point out that there are many ways to get ahead.

SEO 207

SEO Startup Campaign Differentiation 207

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 19, 2017

Success in any business these days requires a constant flow of new and innovative solutions, to keep up with changes in the market, competition, and to attract new customers. Yet in my role as a small business advisor, I still see a singular focus on achieving repeatable processes and “cookie-cutter” manufacturing. I don’t believe these two objectives have to be mutually exclusive.

Stock Options 141

Stock Options Incubator Framework Stock 141

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

Whether the widely reported statistic that eight out of ten businesses fail in the first 18 months is accurate or not, few will disagree with the fact that most startups fail. However, it’s rarely from a lack of owner passion, interest, hard work, or desire for success. In many cases, businesses are started by people with years of corporate experience.

Startup 111

Startup New York City Community Software Review 111

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

I was recently a member of a really great engineering team which also happened to be made up of all women. For a stretch of around six months, there were between four and five engineers on the team, all of us women. Our program manager was also a woman and for part of the time our manager was a woman. Anyone in tech will easily understand how unusual this is.

Engineer 63

Engineer Conversion Agile PR 63

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

If you’re invested in improving your A/B testing game, you’ve probably read dozens of articles and discussions on how to plan and run A/B tests. In reading advice about how long to run a test or what statistical significance threshold to use, you probably saw claims like “Always aim for XX% significance” or “Don’t stop a test until it reaches YYY conversions” – where XX% is usually a number higher than 95%, and YYY is usually a number higher than 100.

Software Review 112

Software Review Cost Conversion Design 112

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

The success of any business begins and ends with people. Finding the right team at any time of the year can be a challenge, but it can be particularly trying during the holiday season, when demand is high and time is short. Keeping up with the season can test anyone’s management mettle, but if you put these time-honored people skills to work, you can ring in record profits for the new year. 1.

Management 81

Management Software Review Demand Employee 81

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

by Jessica Thiefels, owner of Honest Body Fitness. Whether you’ve been selling your product for years or just a few months, seeing a slow stream of sales, or no sales at all, is disheartening. You start questioning yourself and your product: What did I do wrong? Should I change it? Should I start over? Believe it or not, many entrepreneurs experience this.

Product 127

Product Software Review Sales Security 127

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

You might have seen that the week before last Balfour Beatty ( here ) and Mace ( here ) weighed in on the future of construction. Both are quite radical in the breadth and depth of impact they predict, whilst the technologies they choose are perhaps unsurprising to anyone immersed in the startup ecosystem. The Balfour Beatty piece is more detailed and they predict humanless construction sites by 2050 (which is admittedly a long way off – broadband is less than twenty years old) saying that

Technical Review 75

Technical Review eCommerce Restful Technology 75

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

For many years, veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces were successful at starting and growing small businesses. In fact, almost 50 percent of veterans owned a business after World War II. But today, veteran entrepreneurship is on the decline. The most recent Kauffman Foundation research found that veterans accounted for 12.6 percent of new entrepreneurs in 1996 and that by 2014, this number had fallen to just 5.6 percent.

SBA 93

SBA New York Small Business Administration United States 93

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 5, 2017

One of our most recent seed investments recently posed a question to me. They had designed a technical hiring process to try and eliminate gender bias but were losing all the women midway through their funnel when a take-home project was introduced. What was going wrong? I reviewed their current approaches alongside Homebrew’s Head of Talent Beth Scheer and we made a few recommendations, but there was nothing glaringly broken.

Technical Review 58

Technical Review Hiring Software Review Engineer 58

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Learning stuff online is the new standard for learning. It’s not just “how to tie a tie” how-to videos, it’s also learning hard skills. In fact, according to a recent report 59% of employed data scientists learned skills on their own or via a MOOC. But how can we take better advantage of online learning? What’s the most efficient way to learn as much info as quickly as you can?

Retention 106

Retention Software Review Agile Video 106

deal architect

NOVEMBER 18, 2017

I get invited to a number of user conferences. I must admit I often feel I am intruding there on customer time with vendor executives. I much prefer smaller analyst summits and Plex has honed such summits to an art.

Customer 298

Customer 298

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

If you are looking towards the end of 2017 and you plan on jumping out of your comfort zone for 2018, you may be an entrepreneur in the making. Entrepreneurial flair and tendencies are something which many people may have, a lot will act upon, but only a few will succeed. If you are looking to build a business from scratch in the new year there are a few things you will need to know and consider. 1.

Software Review 186

Software Review Startup Finance Software 186

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 21, 2017

Why Nobody is Finding Your Content written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Brian Dean. I believe that elements of SEO are now elevated to the strategic level. In other words, as you plan your message, website structure, and content for your marketing, you better include some research commonly seen as a technical aspect of SEO.

Thailand 59

Thailand Turkey Spain Germany 59

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

I’ve learned a lot in my twelve years in business. Practically 90 percent of that time was spent starting and closing one startup or another. I had to fail for 10 straight years to be prepared to scale a six-figure freelance business. Entrepreneurship looked bleak to me and failure unavoidable. But I didn’t pull the plug on myself. I learned resiliency in business through multiple failures, and I matured quickly.

Acquisition 93

Acquisition Startup Engineer Metrics 93

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2017

You have to be extra tough mentally to start a new business venture. While thinking about it, I realized that it’s really not that different from the toughness required and trained into America’s elite military force of Navy SEALs, who are known to be cool under fire, able to sense danger before it’s too late, and never give up on achieving their objective.

Founder 246

Founder Differentiation Entrepreneur Global 246

Jeff Hilimire

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

I took the Dragon Army team offsite last week for a 4-hour retreat to roll out our new Purpose, Vision, Tenets & Values. We had the retreat at the new co-working space downtown, Post Office (which also hosted 48in48 Atlanta a few weeks back!). One of the exercises I took the team through was focused on helping them identify what truly makes each of them happy.

Atlanta 51

Atlanta Hosting Developer 51

deal architect

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

It would be easy to be pessimistic about SAP when you read Dennis Howlett’s recent blog “It’s a hot mess and everyone, whether that is SAP, customers, partners or User Group people want it to go away. The issue comes.

Partner 240

Partner Customer Software 240

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

by Brian Sutter, Director of Marketing, Wasp Barcode Technologies. There are plenty of ways to promote your small business for free. The tactics listed here are tried and true winners. They’re proven to work by tens of thousands of small businesses. Oh yeah – and they’re all free. 1. Partner with a company that complements your products or services.

Small Business 182

Small Business Technical Review Social Media Email 182

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 4, 2017

Weekend Favs November 4 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week. I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

Web Development 40

Web Development Web Developer Marketing 40

Small Business Force

NOVEMBER 26, 2017

Over the last 30+ years as a startup entrepreneur, turnaround specialist, and business advisor/mentor, I’ve found that creating and sustaining a culture that drives business success is one of the greatest challenges an entrepreneur or small business owner faces. A company’s culture is built on the business values upon which the company operates, usually, based on the owner’s own values.

Small Business 30

Small Business Software Review Technical Review Restful 30

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2017

In my role as a mentor to entrepreneurs and an angel investor, I find that too many are stuck in this myth that a good pitch, and good marketing content, should consist of more product features, and more hype on customer benefits. Naturally, these are important, but real winning content has to start with a story that excites people’s imagination, and pulls them in emotionally.

Marketing 173

Marketing Angel Investor Viral Audience 173

For Entrepreneurs

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

I gave a talk this year at the 2017 SaaS North conference in Ottawa, where I discuss the fundamentals of building a repeatable, scalable, & profitable growth process for a startup. Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth Process [View on Slideshare].

Startup 135

Startup Business Model Sales Marketing 135