Sat.Apr 11, 2015 - Fri.Apr 17, 2015

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Make ‘Em Say Wow: 11 Tips For Building A Strong Service Team

YoungUpstarts

'By Ron Kaufman, author of “ Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet ”. We love receiving great customer service. That’s no surprise. But did you know that great service can actually elicit a physical reaction? Well, it can! A recent American Express Service Study found that 63 percent of its 1,620 respondents said they felt an increased heart rate when they just thought about great service.

Maldives 178
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The Long Lost Myth of Capital Efficiency

Feld Thoughts

'I miss capital efficiency. It seems like you were our best friend just yesterday. Were you a myth? A lie? A justification by VCs to explain away their lack of capital to invest? A rationalization by entrepreneurs to explain away their inability to raise capital? Do you remember all the blog posts about how companies needed so much less money? All the articles about how capital efficient businesses were a result of AWS, better software development tools, easier starting points, better scaling te

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Top 9 Easy Career Hacks That Most People Don’t Do

David Teten

'I gave a presentation to Womensphere a few months ago on the most valuable lessons I learned early in my career. Back when I was an entry-level investment banking analyst at Bear Stearns (R.I.P.), our trainers gave us some basic advice on how to be a good financial analyst. At the time these sounded obvious, but now with hindsight I think that most of your success in your career is just executing on these basic points…whether you’re a CEO or aspire to be a CEO.

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Influence and Leadership: How Sales Can Make You a Better Leader

Up and Running

'Being an entrepreneur is a pursuit that can have tremendous rewards for those with the gumption to pursue it. Starting and growing your own enterprise requires patience, tenacity, and creativity. When you transition from working for others to building your own business, there are new challenges that you will face. One of these is learning how to be an effective leader.

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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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Six Ways Retailers Can Perform Spring Cleaning

YoungUpstarts

'By Nikole Haiar, Director of Marketing at Hostway Services, Inc. Although the holidays are over, retailers still have projects and initiatives going on. In fact, with spring just around the corner, many brands are building better e-commerce websites and revamping their in-store presences to reflect the warmer weather and changing customer needs. Some companies emphasize this time of year, utilizing it to adjust their offerings for the warmer months.

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Autonomy vs. Ownership

SVPG

'In my recent articles I have been exploring the critically important but complex topic of autonomy of product teams. First we discussed the trade-offs between autonomy and leverage , and then we discussed the trade-offs between autonomy and mission. From your feedback I know this is a subject that is important to many of you, and I realized there was one more dimension to this discussion that I should also put out there, and that has to do with the trade-offs between autonomy and the concept of

More Trending

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A Brief Guide to Choosing a Hosting Solution for Your Business Website

Up and Running

'Having a stable website has long become an imperative for almost any organization, company, or one-person business that aims to expand its online authority and reach connected consumers. As digital marketing strategies become commonplace in businesses of all sizes, the demand for reliable web hosting services increases and the choice of a web host becomes one of the critical decisions.

Hosting 103
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The How, Why And When Of Website A/B Testing

YoungUpstarts

'By Alison Brehme, Senior Online Marketing Manager at Hostway Services, Inc. In today’s marketplace, companies cannot afford to overlook their online presence, including the brand’s website. Whenever new content is added or adjusted on this platform, it is critical to ensure that new features work appropriately and information is displayed as planned.

B2C 135
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Value Inflection Points for Seed-Stage Startups

View from Seed

'When raising capital, it’s important to focus on raising enough money to get your company past big value inflection points. An easy way to think about it is that value over time doesn’t go up and to the right in a straight line like this: Instead, it’s more of a stair step like this: So, what are the value inflection points that create the stair steps, and how does one think about it at the earliest stages?

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Are You Mentally Tough Enough To Be An Entrepreneur?

Startup Professionals Musings

'You have to be extra tough mentally to be an entrepreneur. 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. I learned some good lessons along these lines from a recent book “ The Way of the SEAL ,” by Mark Divine.

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Workdaytime for a fork?

deal architect

'Workday has a ritual it plays out twice a year. It does an hour long webinar to summarize features in its latest release. Stan Swete used to MC the session three times a year. Now, Leighanne Levensaler does it twice.

Cloud 207
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Ten Connecting Conversations That Help THIRTEENERS Succeed

YoungUpstarts

'by Dan Prosser, author of “ Thirteeners: Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy – and How Yours Can Be One of Them “. Here’s an inconvenient business truth for you to consider: It doesn’t matter how valuable, cutting-edge, or unique an organization’s product or service is if its people can’t connect positively and effectively with each other.

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Harvard Is a Hotbed for Entrepreneurs (But Needs More Authenticity, Less Whiteboarding)

View from Seed

'Editor’s note: We recently published original research on the startup activity of Harvard Business School classes between 2008 and 2014. NextView’s David Beisel and Dimitri Dadiomov recently sat down with Michelle Tandler (HBS, Trinity Ventures) on her podcast to analyze this data further. This is a paraphrased summary of that interview. Why did you do this report?

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Avoid The Entrepreneur Role If These Quotes Fit You

Startup Professionals Musings

'Some people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs. This is a good thing, or the business world would be chaos, with everyone trying to do their own thing. So what about you? How do you know if you should be running your own company, or concentrating on that queue of work that someone else has built for you? I’ve hit this before, but I still hear from too many unhappy entrepreneurs.

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What is this life if, full of care

deal architect

'…We have no time to stand and stare….No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. A poor life this if, full of care…. I am feeling poetic today thanks to William Henry Davies.

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7 Tools To Motivate Sales Reps For 2nd Quarter Success

YoungUpstarts

'by Eliot Burdett, co-founder and CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting. With the 2nd quarter of the Fiscal Year underway, it is time for public and private companies alike to assess their financial success over the first part of the year. This is a particularly crucial time period for companies that rely on sales to drive revenue. It is the time for senior management to assess which of their salespeople are on their way to earning the proverbial set of steak knives and which ones need help and motivatio

Sales 195
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Getting feedback from customers when security is an issue

Startup Lessons Learned

'This is the second of several early excerpts I''ll be sharing from The Leader''s Guide, a 4-color, 250-page, hardcover and digital book which will be offered exclusively through Kickstarter--according to my agreement with my publisher, Crown, the book can never be sold in stores. As usual, I''m leaving out important details like company names in order to respect their privacy while the book is still in early draft form.

Security 130
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Are You Trying To Be All Things To All Customers?

Startup Professionals Musings

'Your business can’t be all things to all people, and excel at anything. Every entrepreneur and every business needs a strategy to keep them focused. In fact, in this new world of pervasive interactivity, it’s time to rethink even how to develop a strategy. Strategy used to come from the inside looking out, but now it must come from a dialogue and engagement with constituents.

Customer 211
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Rainy Days Mean Better Content Strategy!

Rembrandt Communications

'3 Tips to Boost Online Awareness Fast How is the weather in your area? For most, temperatures are rising, but you may be experiencing more rain. And as the poem goes, April showers will turn into May flowers. With this in mind, what are you doing to advance your business on the rainy days? If […]. The post Rainy Days Mean Better Content Strategy!

PR 126
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Social Media — For Those Who’ve Been Left Behind

YoungUpstarts

' by Chad Hill, CEO of HubShout. If your small business isn’t already established on social media, you could be as much as a decade behind some of your competitors. Before you attempt to catch up, it’s important to understand the basics so you don’t waste time floundering and making rookie mistakes. Why Social Media? . Two words: Content Marketing.

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How can a marketplace start-up disrupt the incumbent?

Version One Ventures

'Last week, my post on “ Marketplace dynamics: buyer mindshare is key to building a moat ” generated good discussion about the best strategies to disrupt existing marketplaces and get past the incumbent’s moat. It’s certainly an important topic to any founder or entrepreneur looking to break into an existing market. The discussion was sparked by Jonas’ question: “If the first marketplace that reaches liquidity earns a moat (justifying large A rounds for marketplaces), what paths might new entran

Vertical 126
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Realistic Strategies For Funding Product Development

Startup Professionals Musings

'Angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for startups with real products and a proven business model, ready to scale. Yet I still get too many business plans that clearly are looking for money to do research and development (R&D) on a new and unproven technology. If you need funding for these early stage activities, I have some suggestions on better strategies to follow.

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Ten Hidden Gems In Google Analytics: Do Smarter Web Data Analysis!

Occam's Razor

'The 80/20 rule applies to our use of web analytics tools as well. Most of us use just a small amount of power our tools contain. This hurts my feelings! Ok, not so much hurts my feelings and more that I'm sad you are not taking advantage of all of the features at your disposal to drive smarter decisions by your leadership teams. Regardless of the tool you have, it is always prudent to take a fresh look at a familiar tool every once in a while and see what you've been missing.

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5 Tips For Millennial Entrepreneurs To Secure Financing

YoungUpstarts

'By Evan Singer, General Manager for SmartBiz. The Millennial Generation have birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. Technical, civic-minded and experiencing growing economic prospects, millennials are important contributors to America’s small business landscape. In order for entrepreneurs to grow business and and flourish financially, there are universal truths about lending that millennials need to know.

Finance 167
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How to Create a Unique Value Proposition

Up and Running

'Whether you’re a new entrepreneur or thinking about joining the ranks, one question you’ll have to answer is: What sets your business apart? The answer to that question usually leads entrepreneurs to define their unique value proposition, also called unique selling proposition, or USP. To help entrepreneurs create a value proposition, we’ve written this handy guide to walk you through the process.

Audience 121
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Announcing the Global EIR Coalition

Feld Thoughts

'Yesterday morning, over scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital (he had yogurt), we talked about immigration reform and our broken immigration system. Both Jeff and I have been working hard on making it much easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to get visa’s to start their companies in the US. Both of us have been unsuccessful in our efforts at a national level.

Global 119
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Picasso on the power of just starting

The Equity Kicker

'To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing. – Pablo Picasso. Picasso was a prolific genius and one of his tricks was to remember that the act of starting to draw got him started on the path of building the vision for his creation. This trick stands for most any task. The act of getting started is very powerful in beating procrastination and getting things done.

Startup 113
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What All New Entrepreneurs Need To Know About Trademarks

YoungUpstarts

'When you’re setting up a new business, it’s easy to get mired down in all the paperwork involved, and forget about filing some important items. However, one thing that you do need to investigate closely and finalize is your business trademark. Entrepreneurs need to learn how to register a trademark , as well as other dos and don’ts surrounding the protection of their precious intellectual property.

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The Complete Guide to Using Twitter Lead Generation Cards to Find New Customers

Up and Running

'Small businesses thrive on fresh leads. If you’re not constantly working to grow your customer base, your business will start to decline. Savvy entrepreneurs use a variety of lead-generating ideas to keep new prospects coming in. One of those tools should be Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards. This online advertising tools can generate a list of new contacts to keep your business growing.

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History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme

Feld Thoughts

'My favorite Mark Twain post, which I share with my close friend Phil Weiser (the Dean of CU Boulder) is “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” There is a lot of rhyming going on. If you want a quick taste, go read today’s Fred Wilson’s blog post Coming Up With A Better Name For NYC’s Tech Community. If you know me, you know that it think that it is tragic to label things Silicon Blah.

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New Mattermark data: late stage investment up 120%

The Equity Kicker

'Mattermark just released their report on Q1 2015 venture activity in the US (download here ). As you can see activity is up across the board but it is only late stage venture that has seen a massive jump. This picture is consistent with what I’ve been seeing and reading generally – if there is a bubble, and I now think there may well be, then it is confined to late stage investments.

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Women, This Is Our Time: Six Ways To Take Your Power Up A Notch

YoungUpstarts

'by Nancy D. O’Reilly, PsyD, author of “ Leading Women: 20 Influential Women Share Their Secrets to Leadership, Business, and Life “ Statistics show there has never been a better time to be a woman. As of 2014, there were almost 9.1 million female-owned businesses in the United States, generating more than $1.4 trillion (yes, with a “T”) in revenue.

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Austin Ranks as One of the Strongest Markets for Tech Talent Growth

SiliconHills

'Austin ends up on a lot of top 10 lists and now it’s ranked No. 9 on its ability to attract and grow tech talent, according to a new CBRE Research report “Scoring Tech Talent.” The ability to retain and grow tech talent and that clustering effect leads to big demand for office space in […] The post Austin Ranks as One of the Strongest Markets for Tech Talent Growth appeared first on SiliconHills.

Austin 101
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You Need a BoD Now

Scalable Startup

'How to design a board of directors. By Tom Nora. There was an article recently in VentureBeat about how much control the startup CEO founder has over his/her board of directors. Unfortunately, this actually isn’t true in most cases, especially for first time founders, for many reasons. Many factors come into play in early board formation including the founder’s goals, investors, cofounders, early appointees, family, friends.

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Big companies pull back on investment – great news for startups

The Equity Kicker

'Reading this front page of the Financial Times this morning made me feel great about the future for startups. Innovation is happening faster and faster yet big groups are reining in capex and distributing $1tn to shareholders in the US alone. The only way to read this is as a tacit admission that they can no longer live with the pace of change. Moreover, even when the management of these companies get it they are often hamstrung by shareholders who are overly focused on the short term.

Startup 99
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[Infographic] 42 Ways To Be A Boss At Being A Boss

YoungUpstarts

'The phrase “like a boss” may have made it into pop culture lexicon for describing an action that’s made with great authority and finesse, but if you’re the owner of a business you need to be a boss in many ways as well. From being a good listener to having a great vision, a good boss is a great leader who’s willing to get his or her hands dirty.