August, 2015

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Robots and our jobs

deal architect

Nice, and fairly comprehensive research by Forrester analyst JP Gownder. I like his balanced tone, not the Chicken Little tone so many recent books have taken “We forecast that 16% of jobs will disappear due to automation technologies between now.

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[Review] The $100 Startup

YoungUpstarts

How do we escape the 9-5 shackles of corporate drudgery to build a life of adventure, meaning and purpose? Can we do this with $100 (or less) in our pocket? The answer to both questions is yes. At least according to Chris Guillebeau, author of “ The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future “ From a pool of over 1,500 small business owners who built businesses earning US$50,000 or more from a modest investment (often US$100 or less),

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Seeking Nonconsensus

Genuine VC

Tales become legends about founders of exceptionally transformative companies who truly struggled to get any investors’ attention early on. These rejection emails to the founder of Airbnb represent just one of the most recent example of this familiar theme. If a startup were obvious, then everybody would be doing it. And it wouldn’t be an opportunity.

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4 Strategies That Must Be Part of Customer Marketing

Startup Professionals Musings

With the advent of social media and the pervasive move to smartphones, even customers who still prefer to purchase in brick-and-mortar stores have dramatically changed their shopping habits. Many people don’t post about their experiences, but still routinely check first to see what others are saying about the brand and the product online. This new customer paradigm is no longer a homogeneous group driven by traditional media, but a network of unique individuals who interact with each other to de

Customer 212
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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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Why it’s nice to compete against a large, profitable company

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

A big, profitable company seems like the hardest thing for a small company to compete against. They have everything: money, brand, momentum, existing customers, press, product teams, distribution channels, expertise, market insight, analysts, sales offices, product features, and, by definition, a working business model. All a little startup has is a decent idea and extremely greasy elbows.

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A Venture Capital History Perspective From Jack Tankersley

Feld Thoughts

In January, Jerry Neumann wrote a long and detailed analysis of his view of the VC industry in the 1980’s titled Heat Death: Venture Capital in the 1980’s. While I don’t know Jerry very well, I like him and thought his post was extremely detailed and thoughtful. However, there were some things in it that didn’t ring true for me. I sent out a few emails to mentors of mine who had been VCs in the 1980s.

More Trending

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A Quick Guide To Making Your Website Stand Out Online

YoungUpstarts

If you’re reading this blog or stumbled across this website, you’re probably an online entrepreneur. You’ve got a great idea, and maybe already started your own website. But, you’re having trouble standing out. You’re writing blogs and making connections, but you’re struggling to rise above the crowd. Don’t get disheartened. Every business starts out like this.

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Retargeting: A Lead Generating or Lead Repelling Method?

Hearpreneur

Online retail is an industry flooded with window shoppers. Unlike the days when people were restricted to shopping at physical stores, online shoppers cycle through a never-ending wish list with the click of a button. For customers, this means more convenience, as well as more options. Businesses, however, face both the pros and cons of a more level playing field.

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7 Principles Of Business Agility To Dodge Disaster

Startup Professionals Musings

Most small businesses are trying to forget the last recession, and get back to “business as usual.” They don’t realize that business as usual is gone forever. With social media and smart phone conversations, real product information spreads at astounding speeds. Entrepreneurs that are not listening, not engaging, and not changing will be left behind even in the best of times.

Agile 208
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Bayesian vs Frequentist A/B Testing – What’s the Difference?

ConversionXL

There’s a philosophical statistics debate in the optimization in the world: Bayesian vs Frequentist. This is not a new debate; Thomas Bayes wrote “ An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances ” in 1763, and it’s been an academic argument ever since. Recently, the issue has become relevant in the CRO world – especially with the announcement that VWO will be using Bayesian decisions (Google Experiments also uses Thompson sampling , which is informed by a Bayesian pers

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Can Small Businesses Afford To Overlook BYOD Threats?

YFS Magazine

Far from being too small to be targeted, small businesses are frequently being seen as easier targets by criminals – due mainly to their lax attitudes towards security.

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From the Vault: Working Remote. Yeah. About That.

crowdSPRING Blog

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally published this post back in 2012. Next month crowdSPRING will move from a 60% remote work environment to around 90%! This means that the team will gather together on just one day per week, the rest of the time we will be working remote from our homes, hotel rooms, Starbucks, front porches, or wherever we can find a decent WiFi signal!

Lean 76
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Corporation or LLC? Business Organizations for Tech Startups.

YoungUpstarts

By Celina Kirchner, associate at Michelman & Robinson LLP. One of the first actions you will take with your startup is to organize your company a separate legal entity to protect yourself from personal liability for the company’s debts. In the tech startup context, you’ll typically choose between a Corporation and a Limited Liability Company (“LLC”).

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ReturnShip Program, Part III

OnlyOnce

I’ve written a couple times this past year about our ReturnShip program, which is a 4-month paid internship program designed for women who have been out of the workforce for more than 3 year to re-enter and build credible and relevant experience, and to expand the talent pool for our organization. I wrote about the initial concept when we launched v2 of the program , and then again when v2 concluded with the hiring of four of the six participants.

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7 Ways Founders Demonstrate They Can Run A Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

When starting a new business, an entrepreneur has to take a “hands-on” role. Because there are so many unknowns, and things are happening so fast, this is no time to delegate or hire outside consultants to handle core functions. That fact eludes most executives from mature companies who have long depended on their staffs for real work, while their focus stays on strategy.

Founder 210
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How Can We Really Measure The ROI of Optimization?

ConversionXL

Imagine you’ve been working on optimizing a site for a while now, say 3, 6 or even 12 months. You’ve had solid winners each month, and you’re confident in the test results. These are not imaginary lifts. But now your conversion rate looks the same as when you started. How do you explain this to the boss/client? Another scenario: you’ve been optimizing for 12 months and your revenue per customer has increased by 2%.

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SAP Nation 2.0 Excerpt: S/4HANA questions

deal architect

In time for Labor Day weekend reading, 2.0 is starting to show up in book stores (print at CreateSpace and ebook at Amazon). As with previous books, I will be excerpting 10% of the contents over the next few weeks.

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Fighting Back Against Mobile Phones in the Bedroom

Both Sides of the Table

Technology. It has been a hobby of mine since 1981 when I fell in love with programming, applications and online games. My brain is wired for logic and for problem solving and computers have always helped me fill this compulsion. And since I was 13 years old I have been accustomed to the debate about the limitations of technology or rather the downsides of being overly obsessed with gadgets, devices, software or applications.

Mobile 278
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5 Common Mistakes That Could Slow The Growth Of Your Business

YoungUpstarts

As a business owner, you may think of your enterprise as having one thing in common with the great white shark – it must be constantly moving or it will perish. While growing your business is important, you need to make sure that you do so properly; otherwise, you may find that it slows down and to the point that there is nothing you can do to get it to start moving along swimmingly again.

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Why Smart Technology Use is the Key to Better Customer Marketing Data

Duct Tape Marketing

Why Smart Technology Use is the Key to Better Customer Marketing Data written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: pexels. If you haven’t already heard, 2015 is the year big data became a ubiquitous business necessity. Whether used for operational efficiencies or customer information, the benefits of big data are limitless.

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6 Reasons To Reconsider Your Planned Corporate Escape

Startup Professionals Musings

The grass is always greener on the other side. It seems that everyone I know who works in a corporate environment dreams of escaping to become an entrepreneur, and every entrepreneur wishes he or she had the security of a regular paycheck. As someone who has experience on both sides of this fence, I’m convinced that the move from employee to entrepreneur is far more risky.

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Innovation @ 50x in Companies and Government Agencies

Steve Blank

I’ve spent this year working with corporations and government agencies trying to adapt and adopt Lean Methodologies. In doing so I’ve learned a ton from lots of people. I’ve summarized my learnings in this blog post , and here and here and here and put it all together in the presentation below. if you can’t see the presentation click here.

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SAP Nation 2.0 Excerpts: The S/4HANA launch

deal architect

In time for Labor Day weekend reading, 2.0 is starting to show up in book stores (print at CreateSpace and ebook at Amazon). As with previous books, I will be excerpting 10% of the contents over the next few weeks.

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The Morning After

Both Sides of the Table

Last night I wrote a post about how the fall in the stock market over a 3-day period may affect the venture capital markets. If you’re an entrepreneur or VC who wants somebody else’s view on that you should read it. This morning the US stock markets are rallying. So now what? Let me give you the quick summary of what I said yesterday: Public markets affect venture funding.

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The Future Of Human Labor In A Robotic World

YoungUpstarts

By Robert Tercek, author of “ Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World “ Robots are coming to steal our jobs. We know this because one news outlet after another has told us so. As robots and software-driven automated systems take a larger role in our digital and physical lives, the argument goes, they will displace more and more workers.

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Scott Belsky on How a Paper Product Led to a Digital Business & Creative Movement [Traction Podcast #9]

View from Seed

The NextView podcast Traction shares the incredible stories of the creative and unusual things entrepreneurs did to make initial progress in an important. Listen on iTunes , SoundCloud , or Stitcher. The founding stories of companies like LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , The Muse , NatureBox , InsightSquared , and more have appeared on the show.

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4 Customer Decision Moments And How To React To Each

Startup Professionals Musings

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person.

Customer 208
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[New Research] Why Is Facebook Such A Popular Diversion?

Brandanew

Have you ever wondered why is Facebook such a popular diversion? Research has answers. According to a new UCLA research , our brains are wired to connect and be social even when we’re resting. Here’s what the researchers are saying: “The brain has a major system that seems predisposed to get us ready to be social in our spare moments.

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SAP Nation 2.0 Excerpt: The Sprawl

deal architect

In time for Labor Day weekend reading, Amazon is launching 2.0 on Kindle today. It is starting to show up in book stores (print on demand at CreateSpace ). As with previous books, I will be excerpting 10% of the.

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Making Sense of the Stock Market Drops in Relation to Venture Financing

Both Sides of the Table

If you didn’t notice that the stock markets in the US dropped nearly 4% today (after falling last Thursday and Friday) then you were probably completely off-the-grid and on vacation. It was a nerve racking morning. My favorite Tweet of the morning came from Hunter Walk. You thought media twitter was bad… You thought tech twitter was bad… — Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) August 24, 2015.

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Why I Fell In Love With Reading (After I Became A CEO)

YoungUpstarts

by Solomon Thimothy, founder & Chief Executive Officer of Clickx. When I was younger, I used to read only when I was forced to, or if a grade was at stake. Reading was a chore to say the least. I was never the bookworm type. But that all changed when I became the CEO of my own company. Sounds hard to believe? That makes two of us. When I first began my business I hardly had time to do anything, let alone reading.

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Scott Belsky on How a Paper Product Led to a Digital Business & Creative Movement [Traction Podcast #9]

View from Seed

The NextView podcast Traction shares the incredible stories of the creative and unusual things entrepreneurs did to make initial progress in an important. Listen on iTunes , SoundCloud , or Stitcher. The founding stories of companies like LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , The Muse , NatureBox , InsightSquared , and more have appeared on the show.

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6 Top Motivations That Drive The Best Entrepreneurs

Startup Professionals Musings

In my experience mentoring new entrepreneurs and aspiring business leaders, I see far too many who seem to be driven by all the wrong reasons. Everyone seems to espouse extrinsic motivations, such as getting rich, having power, and fulfilling parent dreams, when in fact a focus on satisfying internal interests and desires will likely lead to more success, as well as satisfaction.

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9 Ways To Stand Out On Facebook Without a Big Budget

Brandanew

Even though Facebook is known for changing its News Feed algorithm on an almost weekly basis, it still continues to be the first platform people look for a brand name they come across. Reason? The largest growing segment in 45+ age group. Facebook is now a way of life, not just for the young! Making a mark on Facebook and standing out amongst the very many offering products/ services in the same category, can be a herculean task – especially for those businesses that are running on a budge

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The Technology Dark Ages

deal architect

While The New Polymath was overall wildly optimistic, I had a pessimistic chapter about the state of IT, healthcare, sustainability etc. Five years later the contrast is even more stark. I see Gartner’s hype cycle on new technologies and it’s.

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What I’ve Learned About Venture Funding

Both Sides of the Table

VC funding. Our perspectives on the topic wax and wane with market cycles. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser.