Sat.Jan 08, 2011 - Fri.Jan 14, 2011

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What did they do before you came along?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Here’s a simple question, often asked when designing software but more useful when you’re designing your marketing and sales pitch: How are people doing this today without you? Sounds obvious; I want to take it a step further, like this: Ignoring most of your potential market , how are expert, power-users doing this today, without your software?

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Avalon Ventures Raises A New $200 Million Fund And Gets A New Website

Feld Thoughts

Congrats to my friends at Avalon Ventures on raising their new $200 million fund. I’ve been friends with and co-invested with Rich Levandov , one of Avalon’s partners, since the mid-1990′s, most recently in Standing Cloud , Zynga , and NewsGator. I’ve gotten to know several of Rich’s partners over the past few years and recently had a wonderful Do More Faster book tour dinner hosted at Avalon’s San Diego office by Kevin Kinsella (a fellow MIT-grad turned VC.

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Twitter Link Roundup #69 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

crowdSPRING Blog

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Top 10 Online Advertising Trends For The Decade

ReadWriteStart

We started this week's One Million by One Million roundtable with a discussion of online advertising trends, looking at them from the perspective of cost-effective customer acquisition and brand building, as well as entrepreneurial opportunities. You can find more on the topic on my blog at Top 10 Online Advertising Trends For The Decade. While on this topic, I want to particularly emphasize the social media advertising trend, and my observation that the infrastructure to measure, analyze, optim

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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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Blogging In French: Olivier Roland Proves There Is Money To Be Made Helping People In Other Languages

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link. Download the MP3 [ 59 Minutes - 28 MB ] Many a time I’ve received a question from a person who has English as a second language, regarding their options for writing a blog and whether they should focus on English since most success stories seem to be from English websites.

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Common mistakes of first time (technical) founders

Lightspeed Venture Partners

'There is a great thread over on Quora answering “ what are the most common mistakes first time entrepreneurs make ?” The current top rated answer is from Siqi Chen , one of the co-founders of Serious Business. We funded Siqi and Alex Le at Serious Business. I’ve reproduced Siqi’s answer below but it is worthwhile to follow the link to Quora to read other answers, and the comment thread on Siqi’s answer.

More Trending

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Announcing nextNY Fellows: An Innovation Community Leadership Initiative

This is going to be BIG.

Five years ago, I started nextNY with the idea that it would be participant driven--that the community would take an active role in managing itself. I think that we've done a decent job with that, and we have a number of examples of individuals who have used it as a leadership platform, but it isn't as much of a leader factory as I had hoped. With that in mind, I tried to come up with a structure and set of incentives to make it easier for new up and coming faces in the crowd to step up and make

Community 102
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Tech Wildcatters Applications Due January 16th

The Startup Lawyer

Dallas-based Tech Wildcatters is set to launch their 2nd class and will stop accepting applications January 16th. Their inaugural class of 5 companies raised over $4,000,000 in funding through two venture and two angel rounds. Tech Wildcatters is a startup accelerator that offers up to $25,000 and 12 weeks of hands on mentorship. Here’s what they look for in a startup: -2 or more founders (there’s way too much work for just one person).

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13 Articles To Help You On Your Entrepreneurs Journey

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

This is Yaro here, briefly intruding on Leigh’s column. I just wanted to clarify that Leigh wrote this article to highlight many of the best and most important articles hidden away in the archives of this blog. Since Leigh is a long time reader of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com (and now columnist) she’s been around long enough to see this content come and go on the front page and be in a position to talk about what she thinks is worth reviewing, especially if you are new to this blog.

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Great Products Are Not Just the Product Guy's Job

SVPG

I recently asked the founder of a startup what he most wanted to know about marketing. He said, “What’s the best way to get publicity without feeling spammy?” He’s actually done it already: build a great product customers love. His Read-It-Later IOS apps and browser plug-ins have quietly amassed 3 million users. Building a great product worthy of conversation is generally thought to be the product manager’s job.

Product 69
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How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck

Both Sides of the Table

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. That notes only told part of the story. Bijan Sabet – investor & board member in some small companies you might have heard of like Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee & OMGPOP – took issue with the whole n

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The Cover-Up Culture

Steve Blank

In a startup “Good news needs to travel fast, but bad news needs to travel faster.”. There’s something about the combination of human nature (rationalization and self deception) and large hierarchical organizations (corporations, military, government, etc.) that actively conspire to hide failure and errors. Institutional cover-up’s are so ingrained that we take them for granted.

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Lack of Integrity is an Easy Quality to Detect

Startup Professionals Musings

As an entrepreneur, your personal integrity is critical for getting and keeping the support of investors and team members, and your company’s integrity is critical for getting and keeping customers and vendors. But in a practical sense, what does that really mean? Most definitions of integrity include something like “the quality of being honest and morally upright.

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The phenomenon of the technology Buyor

deal architect

One of the big ahas in researching my book was how much technology is being embedded in products by companies we traditionally do not categorize as tech vendors – the book cited examples from BMW, Hospira, Nike, Moen and several.

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How MySQL solved their Sales & Marketing challenges

For Entrepreneurs

An interview with Lesley Young, who was the VP of worldwide Sales for MySQL, and then head of sales for the MySQL division within Oracle. Few products are as well known as the ubiquitous MySQL database. The company behind the database was also one of the great success stories in the Open Source world, and [.].

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New Models for Investing in Innovation

Steve Blank

In November 2010 as part of my interview about entrepreneurs and Customer Development , the Shoshin Project also asked me about my thoughts on investing in innovation. They wanted some words of wisdom for their investment bank and hedge fund customers. This falls into the “Asking someone who was handy versus knowledgeable&# category. (I was a entrepreneur who retired at the right time, not a VC or hedge fund manager.

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Six Idea Validation Tests to Pass Before Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

I have a certain friend who called me again a while back, all excited about his latest revelation. “What if you could go to a web site and find all the recipes you could make today, with just the ingredients you already have in your kitchen? I’m going to start a website to offer this service!” I’m sure you all realize that there could be quite a distance between a great idea and a great startup.

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Implied Suspicion Versus Implied Trust

Feld Thoughts

I just had an exchange with an entrepreneur that I don’t know. It went something like the following via several emails over the course of a week. Entrepreneur: I’m working on something really amazing that I’m looking for funding for. Can we get together to discuss? Me: Can you send me a short email overview so I can tell you whether or not it’s something we’d be interested in exploring?

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Do You Have a “We” Site?

Rembrandt Communications

Welcome to our site. We are the leader in widgets. Our widgets are the best. We use innovative technology. You should buy our widgets because blah, blah, blah. Yes, this is terrible copy for your site. But look at all the businesses out there that use this kind of language. And while you may not [.].

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Year-End VC Report Shows Strength of Internet & Early Stage Investment

ReadWriteStart

Investment research firm CB Insights has released its end-of-year report for 2010, which finds both the fourth quarter and the year overall ending strong. The $6.5 billion in VC funding over 735 deals makes the fourth quarter an eight quarter high on deals and dollars. And overall, the year saw $23.7 billion in funding in 2792 deals - a 14% growth in funding and a 13% growth in deals over 2009.

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The Renewable Energy Sector is Fundable in 2011

Startup Professionals Musings

My picks for favorite startup sectors to improve your fundability in the new year include green, biotech, and renewable energy (also called alternative energy or sustainable energy). In previous articles, I’ve put some definition around the green and biotech investment categories, so I’ll try to do the same here for renewable energy. Renewable energy is any source that can be produced cleanly, will not disappear like fossil fuels, and is less polluting.

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Snow in Seattle

Feld Thoughts

I spent the day in Seattle yesterday, starting off with an awesome early morning run along the ocean near downtown and ending the day walking back with some folks from a bar at UW in a freak Seattle snowstorm. I spent time with four different companies yesterday – two that I’m an investor in ( BigDoor and Gist ) and then two others that I’m working on interesting things with.

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Pivoting

Lightspeed Venture Partners

'Late last year, Aaron Batalion (one of the co-founders of Living Social , a Lightspeed Portfolio company) gave a talk about the many pivots that led Living Social to their current business of local deals. (You can see the accompanying slides here ). I think this is a fascinating topic. I had dinner with some terrific entrepreneurs recently, including the CEOs of Slide, SayNow (videoegg), Triggit, all companies that made at least two major pivots before getting to where they ended up, and we dis

Cofounder 114
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What Cities Will Be Hot for Entrepreneurship in 2011?

ReadWriteStart

Here at ReadWriteStart, we frequently profile cities outside Silicon Valley that are thriving hot-spots for tech entrepreneurship. Our " Never Mind the Valley " series has featured cities like Austin, London, Montreal, New York, and Boulder. These cities tend to have strong business climates, but in particular they offer a strong community for startups - often, but not always, centered on universities.

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Startups Seeking Shortcuts Will Just Take Longer

Startup Professionals Musings

Some entrepreneurs start polling venture capitalists for that multi-million dollar investment before they even have a business plan. That’s like trying to sell part of something to a stranger for big money when you haven’t fully defined it yet. It won’t work, it costs time and money, and hurts your credibility for when you need them later. Every entrepreneur needs help and support along the way, from developing the initial idea, to selling off the successful business (exit strategy).

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Why I’m excited about First Round’s investment in Salescrunch

This is going to be BIG.

Let’s face it: Sales are the bastard stepchild of the startup world. While everyone was buzzing about the Verizon iPhone, there was a short mention (Thanks Peter!) about a New York company called Salescrunch that we funded. It was an order of magnitude smaller funding than what Formspring raised to take yet another crack at the Q & A Holy Grail, and much less than what Klout raised to measure influence in the Twitter ecosystem, so it didn’t get a lot of buzz.

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If It’s Not a Creative Solution, I’m Not Interested

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

The tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has me thinking about political discourse in the USA. My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, and my heart goes out to all Americans. Once again we grieve over guns and politics. As a “Boomer&# it takes me back, in a sad way. [.].

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How to Follow the Top Angel Investing Women in Tech on Twitter

ReadWriteStart

If you're in the early stages of building a startup company and are interested in raising your first investment money for it, you may be interested to learn about, develop relationships with and be educated by some of the top women acting as angel investors in tech. Who are these women? That's a question being collaboratively answered on the Q&A site Quora , with participation from people like Tara Hunt, Jason Calacanis and so far six other people with experience in the field.

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Women-Run Tech Startup Successes

Up and Running

I believe there are disproportionately few women heading interesting tech startups; that this is bad; and that it’s neither their fault nor their preference. I’ve posted about that in women in entrepreneurship and about the gender gap on my main blog, and I’ve read the arguments in Vivek Wadwha’s thoughtful post on TechCrunch and elsewhere.

Startup 101
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Will an API propel Quora into the mainstream. and will that suck?

This is going to be BIG.

I was having a great conversation with Jason Schwartz the other night about Quora --how the current Quora community feels a lot like Twitter did in the early days. Conversation is of high quality and it's really easy to find thoughtful contributors. We both agreed that the overall quality of what we find on Twitter is down from where it was. Don't get me wrong, Twitter is still a big part of my communication infrastructure and a valuable resourse, but I now have to use a myriad of tools to use t

API 101
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Put your users first!

BeyondVC

As a VC who invests in seed and first rounds, I love revenue just as much as the next guy. However, the focus on revenue should play second fiddle to a user/customer first experience. Over the years, how many times have we seen companies grow from next to nothing in user base and somehow forget why they got there in the first place? Yes, the answer is because they made an insanely great product or service that catered to their users.

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Soluto and Boxee Get Nominated for Crunchies Award

VC Cafe

T here’s plenty of startup awards and competitions, but Techcrunch Crunchies seems to be one that startups pay attention to. Techcrunch published the list of finalists for Crunchies 2011 , revealing two Israeli nominees: Soluto , nominee for best international startups, develops software that helps users speed up their PC computers using advanced driver technology combined with collective user wisdom.

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5 Ways to Spot Trends That Will Make You (and Your Business) More Successful

OnlyOnce

5 Ways to Spot Trends That Will Make You (and Your Business) More Successful. I’ve recently started writing a column for The Magill Report , the new venture by Ken Magill, previously of Direct magazine and even more previously DMNews. Ken has been covering email for a long time and is one of the smartest journalists I know in this space. My column, which I share with my colleagues Jack Sinclair and George Bilbrey, covers how to approach the business of email marketing, thoughts on the futu

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Brands that have fun – Toyota Prius

Start Up Blog

There’s something about brands that know how to have fun. I reckon the Toyota Prius fits in this category. Their recent advertisement asking the crowd to work out the plural version of the word Prius is very catchy. (I’m a long time jingle lover). It’s also a cool way to build some anticipation and awareness of the new range. Is your brand having fun?

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Put your users first!

BeyondVC

As a VC who invests in seed and first rounds, I love revenue just as much as the next guy. However, the focus on revenue should play second fiddle to a user/customer first experience. Over the years, how many times have we seen companies grow from next to nothing in user base and somehow forget why they got there in the first place? Yes, the answer is because they made an insanely great product or service that catered to their users.

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Betting the Future of Commerce = Apps

Austin Startup

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich. Barely a week into the New Year, the American Dialect Society brushed away any doubt that 2010 was a watershed year for mobile technology by voting “app&# the Word of the Year, as reported by NPR and other media outlets. More interesting than the fact that it beat out “nom nom nom,&# the cheery affirmation of cookie love by childhood favorite Sesame Street character Cookie Monster, was that the 1998 Word of the Year was the tech prefix “