March, 2016

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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Many startup businesses – tech or otherwise – fail. In our industry we applaud the efforts for entrepreneurs to have tried and we know that today’s failure can bring the experience for tomorrow’s success. We also know that even though many of us who are experienced in startup successes & failures look at businesses and say, “That will never work” (as many people said about Uber) or “You can’t make any money in that business” (as many said

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Five Recruiting Metrics Every Founder Should Track

View from Seed

Ask a founder of a growing startup what they need most, and you’ll often get an answer along the lines of, “We need great people, and we need them fast.”. But even well-prepared startups that have laid out strategies for scaling can find themselves scrambling in the face of a fast-growing customer base. Founders need to make sure the quality of the startup’s offerings remains high and provide adequate sales and service support for prospective customers and new users.

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How To Choose A Web Design Agency

YoungUpstarts

For most people looking to build a website for their startup or small business, outsourcing is the only way to go. Without a knowledge of coding , you just won’t get the results you need with template design or DIY methods. However, it’s not just as easy as phoning your local web design agency and getting them on board. There are a few things you need to know about them first – and in this guide, we’re going to go through each of them.

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5 Ways To Check Your Investor Intent Before Signing

Startup Professionals Musings

Even though the color of their money is always green, all startup investors are not the same. Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse due diligence on the investors. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels.

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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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From Reporter to a16z Venture Capitalist: Five Questions with Kyle Russell

Hunter Walker

I met Kyle when he was starting at Business Insider & took notice of our investments ahead of his peers. Of course this meant he was brilliant, and we struck up a friendship. When he was in discussions with a16z, it was a pleasure to provide him context on why I thought it would be a great role for him, and I’m thrilled it’s been a place where he can grow his curious mind.

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The Importance of Due Diligence in M&A Transactions

Scott Edward Walker

INTRODUCTION. I’ve been handling a number of M&A transactions over the past few months from the buy-side, and one mistake I’m repeatedly seeing is the failure of the acquirer to perform an adequate due-diligence investigation of the target. As I discuss in this video from a few years back (starting at the 0:24 mark), I first learned of the importance of due diligence as a young lawyer at a major law firm in New York City.

More Trending

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A New Path Forward

OnlyOnce

A New Path Forward. Welcome to the world, Path Forward, Inc.! I’m thrilled to announce the launch today of Path Forward, a new non-profit with a goal of empowering millions of women to rejoin the workforce after taking time out for childcare. We are launching today with a Crowdrise campaign. See more about that below. And we launched with a bang, too – the organization is featured in this really amazing story on Fortune.

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4 Reasons Potential Customers Don’t Trust Your Website

YoungUpstarts

by Cameron Johnson. The use of the internet has become so commonplace that more and more businesses are opting to use it. As a business owner nowadays, it is almost expected for you to create a website to represent whatever product or service that you are offering. Some businesses have even moved entirely online, only operating through E-commerce. While many business owners are setting up sites for their business, some of them are making the mistake of neglecting site content, relying mostly on

Customer 109
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How To Get New Customers By Targeting New Markets

Startup Professionals Musings

Many entrepreneurs assume that everyone will love their solution as much as they do, so they tune their marketing focus based on their own needs and wants. That’s the right place to start, but real growth and scale requires attracting customers who are not like you. Expanding your market into these areas requires thinking outside your personal box. For example, Starbucks found initial success with professionals aged 25 to 40 in urban areas and with moderately high income but later looked to a ne

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Boston Tech: 2016 Update

View from Seed

Today, we are excited to re-release an updated Hitchhiker’s Guide to Boston Tech ! This guide is a living and breathing site, so we make a bit of a push to update it on an annual basis to keep things fresh. I wanted to point out a couple things in the updated guide, but the general theme is that we are simply seeing more, bigger, and better things happening here in Boston.

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Ten Steps to Starting a Podcast

Duct Tape Marketing

Ten Steps to Starting a Podcast written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: DollarPhotoClub. As the content marketing arms race continues to heat up, it’s becoming harder and harder to get noticed. Sometimes it seems that unless you are a published author, speaker, and prolific blogger, you won’t get much traffic or recognition as an authority in your niche.

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Interview with Chip Coyle of Infor: High Touch in High Tech

deal architect

In my role, I spent a fair amount of time with Chief Marketing Officers of technology companies. Much of the conversation is about their digital journeys - the growing sophistication of their lead generation engines and social marketing. Every time.

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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Many startup businesses — tech or otherwise — fail.

Startup 221
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“Wellth” is the New Wealth

YoungUpstarts

By Nick Goode, VP of Cloud Product Management at Sage One. Wealth has historically been viewed as financial success in business that translates to success in life. Money, real estate, investments, and “stuff” like cars and expensive vacations — if you’ve got these things, you’re doing well for yourself… right? Perhaps it’s time we recognized that the wealth game is changing.

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6 Strategies For Finding Truly Disruptive Solutions

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur with a new technology tells me that his innovation will be industry-disrupting, meaning that it will render the existing technology obsolete, and create a new market. Yet truly disruptive innovations, like the smartphone from Apple and the rise of the Internet, are very rare, and are generally unpredicted. So why would any investor ever believe any of these claims?

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 26: Javier Saade and Hillary Hartley

Steve Blank

The U.S. government is discovering that Lean innovation can help them serve the country better and faster. The Small Business Administration and the digital services agency 18F are trying to help entrepreneurs build successful companies and the 21st century digital government. The guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show explained how they’re working to do that.

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10 Reasons Why People Don’t Trust Your Website

Duct Tape Marketing

10 Reasons Why People Don’t Trust Your Website written by Phil Singleton read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Let’s face it, most of us are skeptical when we visit a business website for the first time. We inherently distrust information on the Internet – unless it comes from trusted sources. It’s just the way it is. This is why it is essential for your small business website to convince new visitors that you are trustworthy and why you are the company they should choose.

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Interview with Paul Wright of Accuride : Steady Wheels Will Get You Far

deal architect

I first met Paul Wright, CIO at Accuride at the Plex User Conference last year. I was struck by the level headed, low-hype way he approached technology, and also how much time he had invested with the user community around.

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Upserve CEO Angus Davis on How Startups Sell to Main Street [Traction #21]

View from Seed

Last time, we heard from a CEO about how startups can sell to big brands and enterprises. This time, Angus Davis, the founder and CEO of Upserve (fka Swipely) shares stories and tactics around selling to Main Street businesses. As a startup that sells to later adopters of technology or very small businesses, how do you think about product, marketing, and sales?

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How To Pivot Successfully

YoungUpstarts

by Ted Spooner, CEO of RespondWell. Speed bumps and change live at the very heart of entrepreneurship. As Mark Cuban says in his book “ How to Win at the Sport of Business “, “you only need to be right once.” But what if you got it right and you were derailed by circumstances out of your control? Part of being an entrepreneur is to know when to take a step back to build something else.

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6 Business Focus Elements That Get More Out Of Less

Startup Professionals Musings

Intuitively, many entrepreneurs and businesses believe that the key to faster growth and success is more products, features, and markets. Since we all have limited resources, and can’t add more hours to the day, the result is usually more things done poorly, rather than a few key things done better than anyone else. The message here is focus , reiterated by every advisor and investor.

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 25: Nigel and Vaughn Caldon and Kerry Frank

Steve Blank

Tenacity and resilience. Getting people to buy in to your startup vision takes a thick skin, perseverance and willingness to learn. You’ll probably be laughed out of several boardrooms along the way. Entrepreneurs refuse to take no for an answer. The latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere shared what they learned from having their ideas rejected and how those lessons propelled their businesses forward.

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An Inside Scoop on the Funding Environment and What it Might Mean for You

Both Sides of the Table

$30 million. That’s how much Invoca raised and we’re announcing it today.

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10 Things Your Brand Can Learn From Children’s Stories

Brandanew

We all are eager to teach children and pass on our pearls of wisdom. But most times we realize that they can teach us adults, a ton of things. Same is the case with Children’s literature. Simplistic but profound lessons for every walk of life, which can easily be applied in the field of business too. I’ve picked up ten classics and things your brand can learn from children’s stories. 10 Things Your Brand Can Learn From Children’s Stories. 1.

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Don’t Forget SEO in Your Content-Marketing Strategy

Rembrandt Communications

Take advantage of this competitive tool to boost sales and online awareness Content is a huge part of most marketing strategies right now. In fact, recent stats from the Content Marketing Institute indicate that 72% of B2B marketers are “heavily focused on creating engaging content, citing it as the top priority for their internal content […].

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Fourteen Steps You Need To Know To Run A Construction Business

YoungUpstarts

Construction is a business that’s uniquely competitive and fraught with risk. Financially, physically and for your reputation. It’s difficult to keep the standard you need to make your company a success. But it’s worth it for the benefits. Steady business, wealth and the perks of flexible, fulfilling work await. But there are a lot of firms out there making use of business practices that range from reckless to downright incompetent.

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8 Good CFO Attributes That Every Entrepreneur Needs

Startup Professionals Musings

The job of chief financial officer (CFO) may sound like a nightmare assignment to technical entrepreneurs, but the tasks and skills required are key to every new venture. In addition, if you are already a CFO, this position is a great springboard to the chief operating officer (COO) or even the CEO position in the startup, based on recent reports. Investors love to see a former CFO running a new business.

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A Resource Guide: Hiring For Growth

For Entrepreneurs

At Matrix Partners, we’ve collectively hired many people by starting our own companies and as investors, and written lots of advice for startup founders. We’ve put together the following articles into a comprehensive resource guide for you to reference as you navigate through the stages of your hiring process. The advice will help you hire the best talent and scale.

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Next after next

Eric Friedman

One of my favorite interview questions is “what is next for you after this role?” Or put another way “what is next after next?” I added it to my list of go-to questions for almost every role as it gives me insight and information into a candidate beyond anything else I have asked before. Accepting that most folks are not going to join your company and retire after 40 years is a healthy way to have the rapid career change conversation that is a sticking point for so many.

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3 Top Skills You Need To Create Remarkable Content

Brandanew

Have you ever looked at a painting in a museum and thought, oh, I could do this. Sadly that’s the fault of an untrained eye. True masterpieces take tons of practice, time and effort to come through. Our training also improves our taste, and the ability to do better. So, if you’re a small business wanting to distinguish yourself and stand apart, here are the top three skills you need to create remarkable content.

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How to Get Your Blog Read in 3 Steps

Rembrandt Communications

Do people really want to hear what you have to say? Today, blogging is a huge part of content-marketing strategy. In fact, “79% of companies that have a blog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing,” per the (HubSpot State of Inbound report). However, you write blogs but don’t get great results. What’s going on? […]. The post How to Get Your Blog Read in 3 Steps appeared first on Boost sales with BtoB Content Strategy and PR here.

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The Power of “Old School” Service: Four Reasons Your Business Should Bring It Back

YoungUpstarts

by Joseph Michelli, author of “ Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way “. As the tech industry has exploded over the past couple of decades and millennials have risen to power, companies have innovated wildly to keep up with relentless customer expectations. Better, faster, easier! is the battle cry. Oh, and make sure there’s an app for that!

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5 Ways Our Lives Are Being Chronicled By Big Data

Startup Professionals Musings

We are now solidly in the era of big data , where computers are capturing and processing the details of everything we do with all our interconnected devices in real time. Businesses see this as the Holy Grail for finally being able to predict who, where, and when customers will buy their existing solutions, and what their future solutions must look like to be attractive.

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The Psychology of SaaS Lead Nurturing: How to Get to “Yes” Faster

ConversionXL

When you’re trying to boost revenue and the number of paying users for a SaaS, your website and signup page are only one piece of the puzzle. Optimizers tend to forget that the entire funnel requires optimization. Focusing on your signup page will help you increase trial signups upfront. But the major questions are: Are paid signups significantly going to go up?

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Figuring Out The Future By Reading Sci-Fi From The Past

Feld Thoughts

I’ve decided to read a bunch of old science fiction as a way to form some more diverse views of the future. I’ve been reading science fiction since I was a kid. I probably started around age ten and was a voracious reader of sci-fi and fantasy in high school. I’ve continued on as an adult, estimating that 25% of what I read is science fiction.

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Investing in Your Growth Is Your Imperative

Brandanew

While scanning through Instagram early morning, I came across Gary Vaynerchuk’s quote – “ Market like the year you’re in.” And this spoke to me. 2016 has solidified itself to be a year of Content with 77% marketers spending more on it. You need to create your online brands – whether personal or professional distinguished like never before.