Sat.May 30, 2015 - Fri.Jun 05, 2015

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Angel Investors Are Still The Lifeblood Of Startups

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). New crowd funding platforms on the Internet, like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo , as well as the Jobs Act of 2012 , are expected by many to ramp up regular people’s ability to fund new opportunities and kill the need for angel groups.

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5 Things Businesses Should Do Now To Ensure 2015 Success

YoungUpstarts

by Richard Milam , the Founder and CEO of EnableSoft Incorporated. With the end of the 2015 fiscal year nearing, businesses may be reviewing their consolidated revenues and thinking of ways they can increase their profit margin as they enter the new fiscal year or second-half of the calendar year. Both large and small companies may benefit from simple business practices that will increase clientele, boost productivity and efficiency, and improve labor utilization.

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The Seeds Have Changed: An Epilogue to The New Venture Landscape

K9 Ventures

Note: This is a long post and it’s based on reflecting on a couple of years of observations in the venture industry. It’s a work-in-progress and I expect to update and refine the content in this post a bit, especially in the next week as I prepare for a talk I’m giving at the Premoney conference in SF next week. It is published here in relatively raw form.

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How to Pitch Your Business by Email

Up and Running

When I think of pitching, I think of presentations (unless we’re talking about baseball, of course). But, pitching can come in different forms, and one of the most common ways to pitch your business —even in our technologically advanced age—is the “pitch email.” Email is everywhere. It’s used by nearly everyone, it’s more personal than social media, and it’s less obtrusive than a phone call.

Email 110
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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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Nail it; then scale it.

Berkonomics

So your business has begun to take off. You’ve figured out your channels of distribution, pricing model and how to support your growing list of customers. Don’t be alarmed by this next statement. That’s relatively easy. You can be the one to develop a product or service, promote it, and support it when you are a small operation. But what if you need to repeat the process of positioning, selling, and supporting your product ten thousand or more times as often as you do today?

Revenue 90
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6 Reasons Why Technology Won’t Kill B2B Salespeople

YoungUpstarts

by Eliot Burdett, co-founder and CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting. A new report from Forrester Research called “Death of a B2B Salesman,” predicts that one million U.S. B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce by 2020. Fears over technology stealing sales jobs is nothing new, it happened following the advent of both the phone and Internet.

B2B 154

More Trending

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Become a Great Leader – Harness the Power of Primal Emotions

Up and Running

If you’ve been seeking answers to the question of how to build the most effective and happy teams, Primal Teams , by Jackie Barretta is a great place to start, whether or not you currently own a business. It’s packed so full of useful information, references to studies, examples, and well thought through analysis, that you’ll get a very fleshed-out version of how to help the people you work with achieve great results.

Ratchet 80
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Gartner at its best

deal architect

I know people measure Gartner by its Magic Quadrants, Cool Vendor lists and Symposium presentations, but to me Gartner really shines when it triangulates a) maturing, large markets it sees from its thousands of client queries each month b) summarizes.

Marketing 259
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3 Advantages to an Experiential Web Presence

Duct Tape Marketing

3 Advantages to an Experiential Web Presence written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. I spend a lot of time online. Whether it’s at work researching and managing my clients , at home browsing my favorite blogs and shopping, or on the go using Uber and Google Maps , I usually always have a way to access the Internet.

Web 50
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What is it Like to Negotiate a VC Round?

Both Sides of the Table

Over the years I’ve written extensively about the downsides of convertible notes for startups such as here , here and here. The truth is that I’ve been warning about convertible notes since 2010 it was first declared that “convertible notes have won.” Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note.

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The 5 Most Common Frustrations Of An Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. But nobody said it would be easy. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined. In my role as advisor to many startups, I try to prepare them for the inevitable bumps in the road ahead, as well as to provide practical guidance on h

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The Opportunity Cost of IT

deal architect

I read two columns today which prompt this post. The first is from Ben Pring where he invokes the Japanese art of decluttering as applied to IT. There has never been a culture in “big boy IT” of throwing things.

Cost 228
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7 Things That Make Brand Storytelling Authentic

Brandanew

Storytelling is probably as old as the human race. However, all stories begin to sound clichéd over time and it is necessary to infuse some authenticity and freshness. With the overload of information and media nowadays, it is hard to achieve the results that a firm may need to go beyond the buzzwords, and create something noteworthy and remarkable.

India 206
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[Singapore] Risky Public Wif-Fi Use Puts Mobile Users At Risk Of Identity Theft And Privacy Loss: Avast

YoungUpstarts

Wi-Fi, both free or private wireless local area networks that allows users to access the Internet, will soon be everywhere. According to the Wireless Broadband Alliance there has been unprecedented growth in Wi-Fi hotspot deployments around the world, at a rate predicted to rise 350% by this year alone. Even in Singapore, free, public Wi-Fi networks are increasingly getting popular across the country with hotels, cafes, restaurants and even some public buildings provide the service for the publi

Singapore 196
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6 Trends Are Driving A Data Tsunami For Startups

Startup Professionals Musings

Image via @_DataTsunami on Twitter A tidal wave of valuable data is surging from the Internet and connected devices today, and the volume is growing exponentially each year. It’s enough to drown any business which tries to fight it or ignore it, and it’s an opportunity to ride higher and faster than even the successes of Google and Facebook, for those startups that use it as their driving force.

Startup 218
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The SaaS gift that keeps on giving

deal architect

Over the last decade I have been a staunch supporter of the SaaS/cloud model – multi-tenancy, OpEx v. CapEx, collapsing of software license/apps management/hosting into one contract, other advantages. But writing SAP Nation and now the sequel looking at S/4HANA.

Cloud 216
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Focus Startup: 80 Percent of Our Traffic Comes Via Facebook Says Pratilipi

Brandanew

Usually, we’ve not covered Startup case studies on the blog so far. But the increasing number of questions we get by other Startups, prompted this one. Pratilipi is also special because, even before their launch, I was taken by the concept (being a chai and book lover) that I had covered them on my personal blog (with much love!). This weekend, being a few months old now, Pratilipi shared their progress chart with some of us on Twitter (I am guessing a list of people who first blogged abou

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Top Tips To Run ‘Live Chat’ On Your e-Commerce Site

YoungUpstarts

By Nichola Ansbro, contact centre manager, officekitten.co.uk. In this age of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, it seems natural that companies should also run live chat on their websites as a quicker and easier way for customers to interact and get answers. For customers, live chat is the best of both worlds – we all dread phoning call centres because we don’t want to sit in a queue for 15 minutes before speaking to someone.

Email 178
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How Entrepreneurs Attract Friends, Family And Fools

Startup Professionals Musings

Image via Flickr by Jupiter Labs Many first-time entrepreneurs find themselves unable to bootstrap their startups, and also unable to find early funding at the venture capital level or even with angel investors. Their only recourse is that first tier of investors, fondly called Friends, Family and Fools. These are the only people likely to believe in newbies, with only minimal product evidence or business experience.

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The Software Paradox

deal architect

Steve O”Grady of Redmonk has an easy to read book out. His thesis is summarized as “By the time Andreessen wrote those words, there were few who would disagree with the core thesis. Those who would were most likely to.

Software 214
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Social Media Behavior That’s Killing Your Brand

Brandanew

Unfortunately, from CEOs to brand managers, there are STILL people who refuse to see the impact social has on their personal and professional brands. Here’s a quick stat: over 90% recruiters look at your online behavior before hiring you. Consumers Googling your brand before they buy is equally high. And yet, several among us, continue to behave in a questionable and irresponsible manner.

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[Infographic] The World’s Hippest Office Addresses

YoungUpstarts

Startups understand that where they base themselves have a direct impact on their success; aside from being where their markets are, it’s also about availability of the right infrastructure and access to talent and funding. But there are some cities (and areas within cities) that also offer added prestige – from London to Silicon Valley, some office addresses have more gravitas than others.

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10 Modern Ways To Kickstart Your Business Website

Startup Professionals Musings

Image via Flickr by SideWages.com These days every new entrepreneur understands that an innovative product or service is necessary, but not sufficient, to start a business. You have to build a web presence with marketing content to get visibility above the almost 300 million other new websites created last year, and attract the customers you need. But most entrepreneurs don’t know where to start.

Widget 215
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Sequel to SAP Nation

deal architect

Another week or so of research left on my sequel focused on the S/4HANA impact on SAP Nation. If production goes without a hitch, the book should be out end of July in eBook and paperback format. I have done.

Product 207
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Content Marketing Inspiration: Original Content Needs An Analog Desk

Brandanew

I discovered Austin Kleon a few years ago, from his blog, but I was only able to get his book late last year, from a Christmas gift bounty. It’s one of those things, English books are sometimes hard to get in Germany, so I keep postponing purchase sometimes. I am glad that I was able to finally lay my hands on it. Steal like an artist – is not your conventional content marketing book – at least not the one that’s recommended too much considering there’s a plethora o

Marketing 183
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5 iOS Apps For Business You Should Never Miss

YoungUpstarts

Smartphones have changed the way that people do business. Today, you have to stay connected at all times if you want to move your career ahead. These five iOS apps will help you stay ahead of competitors and make the most of every business opportunity: 1. Vigil. Image via App Store. Price: In-app purchases vary from $20 to $250. About half of small businesses use websites to interact customers and sell products online.

Analytics 158
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The Pre-money vs. Post-money Confusion With Convertible Notes

Feld Thoughts

The other day, Mark Suster wrote a critically important post titled One Simple Paragraph Every Entrepreneur Should Add to Their Convertible Notes. Go read it – I’ll wait. Or, if you just want the paragraph, it’s: “If this note converts at a price higher than the cap that you have been given you agree that in the conversion of the note into equity you agree to allow your stock to be converted such that you will receive no more than a 1x non-participating liquidation preference

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On Leadership. And Diversity of Character.

Both Sides of the Table

*. What does it mean to be a leader? It’s relatively easier to answer that question when you’re a founder & CEO and have total control over hiring & firing. If your company is successful and valuable people generally do what you ask. It can sometimes create confusion about whether or not you’re truly a great leader or whether people feel they must just follow your orders.

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5 Awesome Apps For Content Creation On The Go

Brandanew

Content creation for a Startup or you personally does not have to be a drag. There are multiple methods and technologies available that make the whole process entertaining and fun. Today, we share 5 awesome apps for content creation on the go. Make sure you’re never missing that content deadline, after all, content creation is a matter of a few seconds, if you use the right tools, umm apps- directly from the comfort of your mobile screens!

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[Infographic] A Startup Founder’s Guide To New York

YoungUpstarts

The Big Apple is many things to many people, but in recent decades the city has also become somewhat of a startup powerhouse – its startup ecosystem is these days regularly compared to Silicon Valley for its vibrancy and innovation. In fact New York is now considered an ideal location for young startups to base themselves from, attracted by the success of startups such as Gilt, Tumblr, and MongoDB.

New York 151
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9 ways project management software can simplify complex projects

The Next Web

When you’re building your business, you want to make sure everyone is on the same page. But that can be most difficult when large-scale, complex technical projects with multiple teams or stakeholders involved are underway. That’s why I asked nine members from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question: What is one valuable way you break down a complex technical project using PM software that has benefited your team?

Software 131
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Hertling’s Equation

Feld Thoughts

I’m a huge fan of William Hertling. His newest book, The Turing Exception , is dynamite. It’s the fourth book in the Singularity Series , so you really need to read them from the beginning to totally get it, but they are worth every minute you’ll spend on them. William occasionally sends me some thoughts for a guest post. I always find what he’s chewing on to be interesting and in this case he’s playing around with doing a Drake’s Equation equivalent for socia

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5 Mistakes You May Be Making While Creating Your Personal Brands

Brandanew

Contrary to popular beliefs, in this day and age, the term branding is no longer just related to companies or products. As a matter of fact, every individual is a personal brand today. Actively updating our social accounts, checking in at every nook and corner we visit, has created a digital footprint for each of us. Creating your personal brands is not a an option anymore.

Audience 161
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The Benefits Of Attending Trade Shows For Business

YoungUpstarts

Trade shows can be really informative, and a lot of fun too. Businesses should consider attending different trade shows to help them learn and grow. But how do they do that? What are the real benefits of attending trade shows for a business? Here’s a look: Meet Potential Clients. Trade shows are a good opportunity to meet potential clients. Not only that, you can chat with them and answer any questions they may have.

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9 daily habits of successful mobile app entrepreneurs

The Next Web

After interviewing over 300 app entrepreneurs I found that there are common qualities that separate the successful from the surviving. Yes the App Store is crowded. Yes there are those who are barely making a living off apps. And yes the gold rush days are over. However, new success stories are constantly popping up. Why were they able to find success when so many are barely surviving?

Mobile 131
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5 Years at Foursquare

Eric Friedman

I have spent the past year or so working on the latest advertising offering from Foursquare called Pinpoint. It’s really the culmination of my five years working Foursquare and an undertaking that was touched by almost every team within the Company. In the months leading up to launch we have assembled an amazing team, some of the smartest people I have ever worked with.