Sat.Aug 07, 2010 - Fri.Aug 13, 2010

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Yes, but who said they'd actually BUY the damn thing?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is Part 3 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.? Of hundreds of startup pitches at Capital Factory , almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, "If you build this product, I'll give you $X.". Meditate on this: Hundreds of people ready to quit their day jobs, burn up savings, risk personal reputation, toil 70 hours per week, absorb as much stress as having a baby (believe me, I've done both).

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Twitter’s “Who to Follow” – Bad English, Great Functionality

Both Sides of the Table

Around a month ago I heard people talking about Twitter’s bucket test ( definition ) of their new personalized suggested user list and this past week I actually got to experience it myself. The results for me have been excellent and in this post I’ll explain why this is critical to Twitter’s continued adoption. Twitter has implemented its recommended users on your Twitter.com home page as the “who to follow&# (see graphic above) and you have a list of two recommended peo

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Teach Like You’re the Student

Steve Blank

“I never have let my schooling interfere with my education.”. - Mark Twain. Every time I see my graduate students try to teach for the first time, it’s usually so painful I bite my lip. Then I remember the first day I stood up in front of a classroom. You Hired. My first job in Silicon Valley was at ESL (a supplier of intelligence and reconnaissance systems,) I had managed to talk myself into getting hired as a training instructor. ( Long back-story here.

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CallVine Launches

Austin Startup

I’ve been tracking the progress of CallVine very closely since meeting company CEO Rudy Prince several months ago. It has always seemed to me that the capacity for my iPhone to manage group communications has always been lacking. When I saw Rudy at the most recent Austin Tech Happy Hour , I was excited to hear that the app had been submitted to the app store for review.

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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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Revenue Development

K9 Ventures

In 1996, when I started my first company, SneakerLabs, Inc., we began by building chat servers. This was when the state of the art was click-to-refresh HTML form-based chats. SneakerLabs’ first product was a Java-based chat server and client. It worked like a charm since we could create a more interactive experience on the Web. In fact, at the time (1996-1997) we offered both a downloadable product, that our customers could install on their own servers, and a “hosted-offering”, which came to be

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My Chat with Dan Primack of PEHub

Both Sides of the Table

In the technology world there are a few websites that most startups track to keep up with the latest financings, acquisitions, product announcements and gossip: BusinessInsider, TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. In the VC & Private Equity world there’s a small number, too, with one of the most respected being PEHub. That’s thanks to Dan Primack , founding editor.

More Trending

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The Future of Clouds

deal architect

Phil Wainewright, Dennis Howlett, Narinder Singh and I will fling barbs and worse during the appirio sponsored Summer Slam on Thursday, August 19. Given the "no rules, just right" spirit, I am throwing out the first punch by using a. Tags: Cloud Computing, SaaS.

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Great Entrepreneurs Have Vision, Not Just Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

A popular approach for aspiring entrepreneurs these days seems to be to corner anyone who will listen, with a dialogue on their current hot “idea.” The initial outburst usually ends with the question “How much money do you think this is worth?” In my humble opinion, ideas are a commodity, and are really not worth anything, outside the context of a vision and plan.

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How to Ask for Help, Favors and Intros

Both Sides of the Table

An entrepreneur recently sent me an @ reply message on Twitter asking for some help with a decision coming up in his business. I get these frequently via Twitter, Facebook or email. I don’t mind. I can’t always get to them. Basically a request like this is stacking on top of my already large to-do list. But I do like to try and make time for some and I’ll admit I’m a bit random about it.

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What’s that Smell?

Rembrandt Communications

Ahhh. Summer. You sit back in your lawn chair with a cold beverage in one hand, and your favorite book in another. Enticing barbeque aromas waft past your nose, and your stomach grumbles with anticipation. You catch the sweet scent of roses in the garden and the fresh cut grass from next door. But wait [.].

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The ethics around the HP matter

deal architect

Over the last few days, as the news around HP has unraveled I have asked myself a few times : if the incident had happened in March, would I have included it as a scenario in Chapter 20 of my. Tags: Industry Commentary.

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Gen-X May Be Forgotten, But They Run Business

Startup Professionals Musings

What happened to Generation X? They are generally defined as anyone born between 1965 and 1980, sandwiched between 80 million Baby Boomers and 78 million Millennials (Gen-Y). Gen-X has just 46 million members, making it the lost child demographic. Gen-X is the group that will bridge the two larger generations of Boomers and Millennials. I guess the bridge isn’t as exciting as what has happened on one side or what might happen on the other, so they are often referred to as the “forgotten” generat

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Why MOST smart people are better at solving other people’s problems…

Life Beyond Code

And, not their own problems. I am sure you have seen them and may be you are one of them. Smart people who can solve other people’s problems very easily but they can’t solve their own problems. As my friend Stuart Scott would say, most people have brilliant “outsight&# and all they lack is some “insight.&#. What is it that makes it hard to solve one’s own problems.

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Creativity In Architecture

crowdSPRING Blog

I found this video while browsing YouTube and was amazed by how Gary Chang, an architect (and owner of the apartment in the video), dealt with the serious space limitations of his 344 sq. ft. apartment in Hong Kong. He even has a hammock! Tags: Awesomeness design inspiration architecture creativity designer hong kong.

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Book event Cognizant Toronto

deal architect

Cognizant’s Insurance group in Toronto is hosting an event around The New Polymath on September 2. If you are in insurance, or broadly in financial services come meet and greet and also get to see their state of the art.

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If Money Is Your Goal, Don’t Be An Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. On the average, the entrepreneurs I know are broke. But one thing they all seem to have in common is a love for learning and change. They rush in with a passion to better the world, and money is just an indication of their progress.

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VC Seed Funding Example: Trada

Feld Thoughts

My partner Seth Levine has a detailed post up today titled Trada – from the beginning that describes the creation and financing of Trada. Foundry Group is the seed investor in Trada and Seth’s post describes one example of what I think is effective VC seed investing. The meat of the funding story follows: “Of course coming up with the idea is the easy part.

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Negotiation Tips For Small Businesses, Entrepreneurs and Freelancers

crowdSPRING Blog

Not every entrepreneur, small business owner or freelancer is comfortable negotiating. Many dread the adversarial nature of negotiation. Even so, it’s difficult (and perhaps impossible) to operate a small business or startup and not negotiate agreements with employees, vendors, customers, and others. And it’s impossible to work as a freelancer without negotiating agreements with your clients.

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"Living in the present"

deal architect

Not all food in Paris is memorable. As my wife and I sat in a forgettable bistro on a Friday evening she could see my fatigue from book events in 4 countries that week and lack of interest in the.

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Entrepreneurs Can’t Afford To Be Email Deadbeats

Startup Professionals Musings

Like it or not, email is still a major business and personal communication vehicle, just like telephone calls. Your business and your integrity are being judged every day by your responsiveness to emails, and no one likes to do business with a dead-letter box. Unresponsive people and businesses lose friends and customers quickly. If you are one of the “new generation” who simply doesn’t do email, then don’t publish an email address, and delete all email accounts.

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What Do You Hate The Most About Your Mac?

Feld Thoughts

Now that my complete and total infatuation with my Mac has worn off and shifted into delight and love, I’m starting to explore the weaknesses of the Mac for not other reason than I’m trying to figure out where the real rough edges are. So – if you are a Mac user, I’m very interested in the things you don’t like about the Mac, especially the things you hate.

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Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product

VC Adventure

I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). I thought it would be helpful to put some of my thoughts into a blog post and hopefully spur some conversation in the comments and over email. With any broad topic, there are always exceptions to the general rules.

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A cynical end to a cynical Hurd era

deal architect

The largest technology vendor, HP gets less than 4 pages in my 400 page book on technology innovations. And almost 3 of those pages are about Cartridge World and Cisco and Oracle which are challenging HP’s bread and butter printer. Tags: Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) Outsourcing (IBM, Accenture, EDS).

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Why It’s Not Healthy To Be A Stealthy Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. Of course they pretend that they are trying to avoid alerting competitors prior to launch, but too often it becomes an excuse to move slowly in a world that’s all about getting to market fast. I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor.

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An Alternative For The Mac Address Book App?

Feld Thoughts

I’ve been all Mac for the past six weeks and in general I’m loving everything about it. I am, however, starting to bump into a few things that are stinky. The Mac Address Book is one of them. Mail and iCal are good, but Address Book just sucks. I’m constrained by an Exchange server on the back end which is nicely abstracted away across all my devices (multiple computers, iPad, iPhone).

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6 tips for startups and entrepreneurs: give it a break, already.

crowdSPRING Blog

I left early this morning for the first “real&# vacation I have had in over a year and I am looking forward to eating lobster rolls in Maine (hear me, Jeff?) and pouring real maple syrup on my pancakes in Vermont. For entrepreneurs, it is critical to find time periodically to get away, recharge the batteries, re-boot the mind, and, most of all, STOP THINKING ABOUT THE BUSINESS FOR 5 MINUTES ALREADY, WILL YA?

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If it aint broke, improve it

deal architect

Doug Belden invited me for a visit after he read my recent blog about innovation at the Hillsborough County Tax Collector’s office he has presided over since 1998. It is a candidate this year for the prestigious Malcolm Balridge award. Tags: Industry Commentary.

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Competitor Traps Every Startup Pitch Should Avoid

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur should spend plenty of time thinking about competitors, and how they relate to your business, but you need to be very careful what you say out loud about them to your team, your investors, and your customers. What you say speaks volumes about how you think about your startup, how smart you are, and your personal integrity. I’ve spent hours talking to startup founders, and heard a thousand startup pitches, and I always listen carefully to what is said (or not said) about compet

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TechZulu Interview with Mark Suster

Feld Thoughts

On Wednesday I did two interviews with Mark Suster – one for This Week and Venture Capital and then one before the LaunchPad LA event. TechZulu recorded and broadcasted the second one. The first three minutes are kind of funny as we didn’t know they were recording so we were horsing around talking about funny drinks and the legalization of a particular type of medicine.

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Twitter Best Practices for Startups

K9 Ventures

Twitter has become part of almost every startups marketing and engagement strategy. It’s become a channel. Since some of my portfolio companies (@ crowdflower , @ twilio , @ dnanexus , @ highlightcam , and most recently @ cardmunch ) have been using Twitter more, I’ve been thinking about how startups should use their Twitter accounts. Here is what I think startups should and shouldn’t do when it comes to using Twitter: Quality not Quantity : This to me is the Golden Rule of Twitter.

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The Talented Mr. Ridley

Growthink Blog

Arguably the best book ever written on the power of entrepreneurial capitalism - The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley - should be required reading by anyone interested in protecting and defending the free enterprise way of life. In an awe-inspiring tour de force of exposition, Mr. Ridley takes the reader all the way back through human economic history.

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Many Entrepreneurs Charge The Hill Too Soon

Startup Professionals Musings

Don’t charge the hill until you are “ready.” This probably seems obvious to military types, but I see entrepreneurs violating this rule all the time. They approach key potential investors way too early, trying to talk their way up the hill, with no supporting business plan, and before they have a support team around them. Needless to say, they get shot down, and get no second chance.

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Reflecting On An Intense Week In Boulder

Feld Thoughts

A week ago I had just gotten home after a month in Homer, Alaska. I was totally chilled out – I worked plenty in July but had very little physical human interaction with anyone other than Amy. I’m sitting here in my Boulder condo today thinking about the entrepreneurial tour de force that was the last six days. I think I interacted with more different people each day than I did cumulatively over the previous 30 days in Homer.

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How not to pitch your business

VC Adventure

I had an exchange with an entrepreneur last night that I couldn’t resist posting (I did resist including the guy’s name, however). It started with a relatively typical email. One which I wonder why I still receive but still get regularly. The entrepreneur writes: Seth… I’d like to pitch you on a start up. I need the help of someone like you.

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The Case for Listening

Life Beyond Code

Have you faced a situation where you had gone to a meeting to share something but by the end of the meeting all you did was to listen to the other person talk about their work and never bothered to listen to what you had to say? If you have experienced it, I am sure it made you cringe inside. Switching sides, have you been on the other end where someone came to meet you to share their idea and all you did was to talk nonstop about you and your work and never bother to listen to what they had to

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You'll Never Be Able to Do This

Growthink Blog

When Catherine Lanigan was a teenager, she earned a scholarship to attend college. While in college, she took a writing course given by a traveling Harvard professor. During the class, a major assignment was for her to write a short creative story. Catherine earned an 'F' on the story. Not only was earning an 'F' alarming to her, but if she failed the class, she risked losing her scholarship.

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