Sat.Oct 29, 2016 - Fri.Nov 04, 2016

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7 Tools Entrepreneurs Should Be Using To Manage Their Online Reputations

YoungUpstarts

We have all heard the saying, “Your reputation precedes you.” The adage means that what people know of you or have read of you oftentimes shapes their first opinion of you. It’s true that many of today’s young entrepreneurs grew up in the age of the computer and the internet. It’s likely that their business depends fundamentally on online communication.

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Growth strategies for marketplaces: key takeaways from a fireside chat on growth

Version One Ventures

Last week I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Andrew Chen for a fireside chat on growth strategies as part of the Version One marketplace meetup. More than 75 marketplace founders and investors attended the event – coming from as far as South Africa and Nova Scotia. As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup.

Insiders

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A Quick Primer on B2B Conversion Optimization

ConversionXL

Conversion optimization is a little different if you’re in B2B. Some of the same underlying principles apply, but because of the inherent differences in buying decisions and sales cycles, pulling B2C optimization practices straight from the book might be a bad idea. You’ll still need to do the same types of conversion research, persona building, and experimentation that is common across conversion optimization, but let’s talk a bit about how and why B2B is different.

B2B 89
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7 Website Builders You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

YFS Magazine

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware that website builders are one of the best tools available to first-time business owners.

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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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Building A Website That Really Sells Your Business

YoungUpstarts

All modern businesses need to focus at least in part on the website they have. Your business’ website says a lot about it as a whole. What’s more, it will be the first port of call for many people who are interested in your company. It is clear, then, that building a website which reflects well on your business is going to be hugely important. No matter what it is that you trade in, you need to ensure your website accurately depicts it.

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YouTube Marketing: A Small Business Guide

Up and Running

As my series on using social media marketing platforms to market your small business comes to a close (check out past installments on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn ), we arrive at what is possibly the most niche platform in terms of content: YouTube. If you want to use YouTube to market your small business, you’ll be creating videos, plain and simple.

More Trending

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Are You Building High-Level Business Relationships?

Startup Professionals Musings

In the world of entrepreneurs and startups, high level relationships are everything. You can’t start a business alone. You need partners, team members, investors, vendors, and customers. But people don’t realize that all relationships are not the same. There are people you only recognize on the street, business friends, and then close friends whom you can always count on to help.

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Profitability Of Offshore Outsourcing Of Android Development

YoungUpstarts

With the Android platform continuing to grow in popularity across the globe, the need for application development has never before been greater. In order to gain access to the growing number of mobile users around the world who are using their smartphones or tablets to conduct business, an Android application makes a great deal of sense. Benefits of Android Application Development.

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Co-founder Equity Split: A New Framework to Objectively Divide Startup Ownership and Get Back to Building a Business

Gust

We’ve just released our free Co-founder Equity Split tool. It’ll give you a fair and objective recommendation about how to divide your startup’s ownership, so you and your co-founders will have a sensible, real starting point for this notoriously hard, crucially important conversation. Many startup founders find themselves lacking clarity and direction when it comes time to divide their.

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Unit4 Update

deal architect

I had a chance to catch up with Ivo Totev, Chief Product Officer and get a Unit4 update. Some highlights: a) Heightened vertical focus Unit4 has narrowed focus to 4 major verticals – professional services, public services, higher education and.

Vertical 226
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5 Ways Entrepreneurs Are Chefs Creating New Recipes

Startup Professionals Musings

I realized a while back that creating a new company for the first time is a lot like whipping up a great dinner entrée for the first time – you need a recipe, even though it may look simple. You know the basic ingredients, and you can visualize the results you want. Yet you may not be so sure where to start, and how to put it all together. In all cases, don’t skip the basic training.

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Be The Best Team Leader You Can Be

YoungUpstarts

As a people manager in the call centre or contact centre industry, our day-to-day goals and objectives (among many other responsibilities!) are primarily built around the improvement of results, the improvement of team performance and motivation levels, and the improvement of customer satisfaction. So what makes a good team leader? What makes a GREAT team leader?

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Our New Theme – Arts, Crafts, Design, and Marriage

Feld Thoughts

We’ve just closed a financing in Borrowed & Blue and Jason joined the board. Given that Jason is also on the board of Craftsy and Havenly , I’m going to bring up the idea with my partners today that we create and design a new theme around arts and marriage. See what I did there? A friend of mine sent out a wonderful note (well – actually an FAQ) last night about eloping.

Design 146
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Calling Fellow Analysts

deal architect

In my orientation at Gartner in 1995, a senior analyst forcefully pointed out “Sacred cows make the best hamburger”. I cringed on behalf of all vegetarians of the world but took it to heart. For two decades, I have challenged.

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2016 SaaS Survey Infographic

For Entrepreneurs

The forEntrepreneurs 2016 SaaS Survey Infographic highlights key metrics from this year’s SaaS Survey and includes links to advice and insights on improving these metrics. You can find the full 2016 SaaS survey results here: Part 1 covers growth rates, go-to-market trends and cost structure.

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10 Tips To Help Managers Honor Diversity During Challenging Times

YoungUpstarts

by Tommy Lee Hayes-Brown, MBA, CRP, Vice-President of Business Development and Customer Experience at Rideau Recognition Solutions. It is hard to turn on the television today or browse current events online without seeing references to stories about law enforcement violence and subsequent retaliation. We can easily see how these stories as well as others have polarized people, not only racially, but politically, generationally and culturally as well.

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Q316 State of Venture Capital Update With Cooley

Feld Thoughts

Each quarter Cooley does a VC market update. This quarter they interviewed me as part of it on Quarterly VC Update: Brad Feld on the State of Venture Capital Investing. The full Cooley Q3 report includes a bunch of data and trend graphs which I encourage you to go take a look at. The interview with me follows. Based on Cooley data for the quarter, how does your experience in the market compare?

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After 20 years: Updating the Berkus Method of valuation

Berkonomics

Well, it had to happen. Originally created in the mid 1990’s to help with the imprecise problem of how to value early stage companies, especially those in technology, I developed what soon became known as “The Berkus Method” when published in the popular book, “Winning Angels” by Harvard’s Amis and Stevenson with my permission in 2001. But a lot of time has passed since then.

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2016 Pacific Crest SaaS Survey – Part 2

For Entrepreneurs

We recently released Part 1 results of our annual SaaS Survey, which shares data and insights on growth rates, go-to-market trends and cost structure. A new highlight in Part 1 of this year’s results includes data on balancing growth and profitability in SaaS companies, commonly known as The Rule of 40%. Part 2 of the survey results dives into: A comparison of application.

Cost 119
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Denis Vranich, Canadian Executive, Emphasizes Hard Work For New Entrepreneurs

YoungUpstarts

Many people have the dream of opening one’s own business and working for themselves. Thanks to the technology boom and the advent of the internet, today more than ever people are able to open their own business and nurture their startup ambitions. Of the more than 7 billion people living around the world, over 400 million are entrepreneurs who are living out their dream of owning their own company.

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Why Gateway Accelerate Is A Great Choice For International Entrepreneurs

Feld Thoughts

On September 15, 2016, UMSL Accelerate joined the Global EIR network and began taking applications for its international accelerator program, Gateway Accelerate. Today is the last day to apply , so if you are considering it, don’t wait. The goal of this program is to contribute to St. Louis’s local economy and UMSL’s curricular and non-curricular offerings to its students by attracting talented entrepreneurs from around the world to relocate their business to St.

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3 Rookie Hiring Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)

YFS Magazine

Your business is your baby; you’ve poured hours of backbreaking labor into keeping it alive. And now you’re supposed to just dump it, willy-nilly, into the sweaty paws of some employee?

Hiring 93
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Facebook, Google and their dominance of digital marketing

The Equity Kicker

According to the IAB , US digital advertising revenues grew 19% from H1 2015 to H1 2016. That’s very healthy growth for what is now a $32.7bn market. However, when you look at the numbers in more detail it’s clear that this strong headline performance masks a tonne of turmoil underneath. Display continues to crater and the growth areas are mobile and video, but the surprising thing to me is how much Facebook and Google are now dominating.

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Jeff Melanson, Others Highlight What Arts Can Do For Young Entrepreneurs

YoungUpstarts

There have been many studies over the years linking arts exposure in youth to increased intelligence, better test scores and enhanced creativity. Exposing children to things like music, dance and theatre is also known to increase awareness and empathy, as well as enhance their ability to focus. While we nurture arts appreciation and inclusion in the youngest members of our society through school programs and extracurricular activity, we seem to forget that interaction with the arts has the same

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My Kauffman Fellows Summit Talk

Feld Thoughts

I attended the 20th Reunion of the Kauffman Fellows on Monday and Tuesday. I’ve recently joined the board of directors and enjoyed spending two days in Kansas City immersed in things with the Kauffman Fellows, a bunch of friends, and a number of LPs and GPs that came to the event. As part of it, I gave a talk and did Q&A with Lesa Mitchell (now the Managing Director of Techstars Kansas City).

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Finally, 4 Practical Ways To Overcome The Fear Of Entrepreneurship

YFS Magazine

Mindset hurdles and limiting beliefs can get in the way of even the most ambitious aspiring entrepreneurs.

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5 Ways to be More Profitable Before Christmas by Christine Rico

Mike Michalowicz

If you run a food businesses you know the Squeeze: continuous pressure on price alongside heavy costs for both raw ingredients and labor. The squeeze is the same whether you’re a farmer, food manufacturer, baker or restaurant owner: your product is essential to human survival. Everyone eats. But producing a high quality product at a reasonable cost with room for profit is a never-ending challenge.

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Startup SEO: How To Get Started On A Limited Budget

YoungUpstarts

For more than a decade, anyone who’s built a website knows that SEO is a crucial component in that site’s success. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is how users find your site, and if you are in business to sell products, services or even intellectual property, you know how very important that traffic is. However, as a startup you may not understand how to use SEO to your advantage when building brand and growing your business, and if you have a limited budget, you may think you are paddling

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Fireside Chat in Santa Barbara on 11/1

Feld Thoughts

I’ll be in Santa Barbara on 11/1 doing a fireside chat at UCSB from 5:30 – 7:00pm. If you are in Santa Barbara, come hang out and ask me questions. The post Fireside Chat in Santa Barbara on 11/1 appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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6 Practical Tips To Upgrade Your Mobile Marketing Campaigns

YFS Magazine

It goes without saying that the mobile web offers tremendous potential for businesses who leverage mobile marketing strategies to gain maximum exposure.

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Proudly Investing in Businesses that *Get Better* as People Use Actually Them, Not Worse

This is going to be BIG.

Classpass is nothing short of phenomenon--and it's particularly noticeable to me because I passed on its seed round. In my defense, I passed when it was Classtivity, a completely different model focused searching for classes. Obviously, the pivot worked out for them. Still, it's a bit frustrating to see them end their "Unlimited" option to the chagrin of many of their users--just a few months after raising their prices.

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Disrupt — Or Be Disrupted

YoungUpstarts

by Jason Bangerter, founder of Rentler. Disruption is chaos. Disruption is terrifying. Disruption is disturbance. Disruption is where I like to live. Everyone wants to be a disruptor — but not everyone has the right timing or innovative ideas to be one. Luckily, I’ve been able to call myself an industry disruptor, three times in fact. My happy place, work-wise, is living in a world where disruption is constant; where people and companies are continually and creatively redefining the marketplace

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Can You Launch A Product With No Webinars, No Videos, No Multimedia And Still Succeed?

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

In the last decade the world of internet marketing, like the internet itself, has become dominated by multimedia. It’s a different world to how I first started out online. For a good eight years from 1998 to 2006 all my online business projects were text based, with some images thrown. The post Can You Launch A Product With No Webinars, No Videos, No Multimedia And Still Succeed?

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7 Smart Ways To Build A Successful Coaching Business

YFS Magazine

There has never been a better time to start a coaching business.

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ConversionXL Live 2017 Tickets Now Available

ConversionXL

ConversionXL Live 2017 tickets are now available ! Dates: April 5 to 7. Location: San Antonio, TX. Same unique format: 3-days in a resort hotel that’s booked fully for the event! Everyone stays in the same place for the whole duration of the conference. Our 2017 event will take place in the luxurious Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa. As always the ticket includes 2 hotel nights and all meals + entertainment.

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Don’t Jump Too Soon: How To Properly Pace Business Growth

YoungUpstarts

by Brent Freeman , co-founder and president of Stealth Venture Labs. Despite what many entrepreneurs may think, know this: Not all growth is good growth. In fact, expanding too quickly can be just as dangerous as not growing at all. Companies that put their noses ahead of their skis in a quest for glory often lose balance and fall flat. To maintain stability, you have to update your operating procedures, processes, and people as your organization develops.