Sat.Oct 20, 2012 - Fri.Oct 26, 2012

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7 Startup Mistakes Kill the Best Profit Projections

Startup Professionals Musings

Many startups fail before reaching that magic “cash-flow positive” position they have been striving for, despite seemingly reasonable financial projections. A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. These mistakes are usually masked by excuses, like the economy turned on me, or my competitors played dirty.

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The End Of Marketing As We Know It

YoungUpstarts

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “. Consider for a moment the annoying, interruptive, often obnoxious nature of traditional marketing. Dinnertime phone calls from strangers in noisy call centers. Glossy pictures of the latest fashions worn by models who barely look human.

Marketing 188
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Viva Tel Aviv: Meet the 6 amazing startups launching at Techono.me today

The Next Web

Coming to you live from sunny Tel Aviv, where six carefully curated Israeli startups are having their big debut on stage at the Techono.me conference organized by Orli Yakuel and her team. I met with the startups earlier this week to prepare for this post, and I have to say, they are truly very interesting. Here’s a quick run-down of the finalists competing in the startup competition – they will be judged by experienced entrepreneurs and investors but the audience decides on the winn

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Why Average VC Returns Don’t Really Matter

Agile VC

The VC industry (both the GP part and the LP part) pays attention to the sector’s returns, but the broader tech ecosystem only occasionally tunes in. Typically it’s when Cambridge Associates releases their benchmark data on the VC asset class ( here’s a 2010 example article from TechCrunch ) or an organization like the Kauffman Foundation publishes a white paper ( a 2012 example article from Business Insider here ).

LP 176
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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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Dealing With Business Cards

Feld Thoughts

There are some things I wish would just go away forever. Business cards are one of those things. I stopped carrying them several years ago and simply give people my email address (brad@feld.com) as my primary contact data. But at the end of every day I have a handful of cards to deal with. Sometimes it is one or two; often it is a big pile. Yesterday I was at the Xconomy Big Data Conference in Boston.

API 154
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[Review] The Rebel Entrepreneur

YoungUpstarts

The title of the book by Jonathan Moules, “ The Rebel Entrepreneur: Rewriting the Business Rulebook “, initially seemed like a form of tautology. Isn’t every entrepreneur a rebel by nature? Aren’t entrepreneurs the very people who take a contrarian view of making their own success instead of following conventional methods to achieving it?

More Trending

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How to Generate More Sales From Your Email Marketing Campaigns

ConversionXL

Compared to social media and content marketing, email is a mature channel for engaging online consumers. Its longevity is a testament to its ability to convert leads into buyers and buyers into repeat customers. In fact, according to a Forrester report put out on September 24, 2012 email continues to be the top factor in influencing repeat purchases: Forrester Research report showing email’s positive influence on repeat customers.

Campaign 111
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Thinking big and doing stuff properly

The Equity Kicker

I’m just back from an inspiring few days at Dublin Web Summit and then F.ounders , both in Dublin. Many of the conversations and talks there revolved around the importance of having big ambition and of doing quality work. Paddy Cosgrave’s F.ounders and Web Summit are great examples of both. Delivery of high quality conferences characterised by an extraordinary attention to detail have enabled them to grow in three years from nothing to 4,000 people in Dublin last week and conferences around the

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Seven Reasons Why Customer Reference Programs Fail

YoungUpstarts

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “ Harnessing the power of references and referrals seems like an obvious win. What could make more sense than to leverage the enthusiasm of happy customers to convince buyers that they need your products and services? And in an increasingly social and networked world — not to mention an economy where every dollar of revenue is critical — this type of third party validati

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Eastern European Champions & the 4 V’s of Big Data

Cracking the Code

Eastern European Champions I had the opportunity to do a keynote at the IDCEE conference in Kiev last week. It was my first time in the city and I must say that I was immediately taken by the energy of the city and of the entrepreneurs that I met at the conference. It took me some time to figure out a title and I eventually settled for “Building European Champions” as the region has proven its ability to generate very successful venture outcomes and will continue to be the birthplace of many suc

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Oct. 25 NY: Enterprise Tech Meetup: Best Practices in Startup Hiring

David Teten

I’m participating this Thursday, Oct. 25, in the Enterprise Tech Meetup, where we’ll discuss best practices in B2B startup hiring. We’ll also cover how can a candidate make themselves more attractive for a quickly growing enterprise company. You can see some of my thoughts here. RSVP. Besides me, the other panelists are: Sean Maclsaac, CTO, Yext.

CTO Hire 114
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How We Fight – Cofounders in Love and War

Steve Blank

I often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder. And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets – i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps. But Jessica Alter , Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating , pointed out that co founders did not mean two founders in the same room.

Cofounder 329
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Clients First: Move You Beyond The Cliché And Change Your Business Forever

YoungUpstarts

by Joseph and JoAnn Callaway, authors of “ Clients First “ We put the customer first. We’ve heard it (and probably said it) so many times it’s become a cliché. And yet, while we pay lip service to the idea, few companies truly put it into practice. The fact is, we’re so concerned with bottom lines, profit margins, and paying the bills (at work and at home!

Customer 140
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The IT Reality Check

deal architect

InformationWeek tells a depressing, if not surprising, story “But when we asked 382 business pros--a mix of IT and non-IT people--about how IT is perceived in their companies, we were shocked by what we found in both the responses and.

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Visionary Entrepreneurs are More Than Idea People

Startup Professionals Musings

A popular approach for aspiring entrepreneurs these days seems to be to corner anyone who will listen, with a pitch on their current “million dollar idea.” The initial monologue 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 much, outside the context of a visionary leader and a plan.

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The rise of the “successful” unsustainable company

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

It’s appalling what passes for “successful entrepreneurship” in the press or the Valley, but it’s not their fault. Witness, for example, this terrific Fast Company article on Bill Nguyen , serial entrepreneur who’s seventh startup “Color” famously raised $41m for a new mobile app before it even launched. (The launch, by the way, was a failure.

IPO 240
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[Singapore] Entrepreneurial Film ‘Shuttlecock Boys’ To Screen In December

YoungUpstarts

If you love movies that have an entrepreneurial theme in it – “ Jerry Maguire “, anyone? – you should look out for this upcoming independent movie: “ Shuttlecock Boys ” from India by director Hemant Gaba. “ Shuttlecock Boys ” revolves around the lives, successes and failures of four friends who hail from lower middle class backgrounds in Delhi.

Singapore 217
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The Real Deal: Jim Fowler on Competitive Intelligence. Or If they ask you, you didnt hear it from me!

deal architect

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. This time it is Jim Fowler, director of competitive market intelligence for Software AG, based in Reston, VA. When Vinnie invited me to.

Software 275
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7 Ways it Pays to Build a Socially Conscious Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

More entrepreneurs want to be socially responsible these days, but fear a negative impact on profits, growth, and the ability to find an investor. In the short run, there are real costs associated with the “triple bottom line” of maximizing profit, people (social), and planet (environment). But very quickly, it is becoming obvious to startups that the value and satisfaction exceeds the costs.

Vermont 251
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Startup Execution Transcends the Idea From Day One

Gust

Apple NYC image via The Washington Post. A startup begins with a great idea, but all too often, that’s where it ends. Ideas have to be implemented well to get the desired results. Good implementation requires a plan, and a good plan and good operational decisions come from good people. That’s why investors invest in entrepreneurs, rather than ideas.

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Top Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Dale Carnegie

YoungUpstarts

by Kevin Schweizer , Online Marketing Manager for Phone.com. Dale Carnegie (pictured), author of the bestselling book, “ How To Win Friends and Influence People “, has a lot of good lessons for new entrepreneurs. Dale Carnegie is well known for his successes, but he has also had a lot of failures. Entrepreneurs can learn a lot from Carnegie’s life and teachings.

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More Innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog Welcome to Tomorrowland The next Graphene? Food Waste – a Green opportunity Google Street View goes underwater Viber : the mobile Skype? Raising the bar Smart headlights Clinical query.

Green 230
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10 Entrepreneur Tips Dodge Million-Dollar Mistakes

Startup Professionals Musings

It’s a well-accepted axiom in the investor community that entrepreneurs learn more from their failures than their successes. Thus a well-explained startup failure often can actually improve your odds of funding in the next go-round. Yet, there is no doubt that the best strategy is to learn from someone else’s mistakes, so you can enjoy the millions that someone else lost in learning.

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Detroit Free Press Marathon

Feld Thoughts

Marathon #23 is complete. On Sunday, I finished the Detroit Marathon in 4:41:39. The two smiling faces next to me in the picture are Matt Shobe, who I’ve now done three marathons with, and my running coach Gary Ditsch. They ran with me in Detroit and it was super helpful to have them. The most exciting thing for me about the Detroit Marathon was that my partner Jason Mendelson completed his first marathon!

Detroit 161
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[Review] Start With Why

YoungUpstarts

We’ve seen it happen time and again. A company starts off with great fanfare, led by a visionary leader who brings it to new heights and grows it year after year. There is much clarity in what it does and it attracts a loyal following of customers and fans. Employees who work there are passionate about what they do. Every action it takes is aligned to its core values and beliefs.

Analytics 150
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More New Renaissance

deal architect

on the innovation blog Thirty years of emoticons Simulator to combat distracted driving Dreamforce sounds and sights Man-machine conversations Bill Clinton, the optimist Elon Musk: The Iron Man Breast Cancer Breakthrough Who will maintain our tech-heavy automobiles?

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Big Company Habits Jeopardize Any Jump to a Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

I hear many executives and professionals in large corporations talking about their dream of jumping ship, and starting their own company. What they don’t realize is that the longer they wait, the more big-company habits they are acquiring, which will make their eventual decision harder and entrepreneurial efforts less and less likely to succeed. Certainly, the longer they wait, the greater the variety of excuses they will find for why now is not the time.

Burn Rate 233
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Bad day for the cloud: Dropbox and Google App Engine experiencing outages

The Next Web

Dropbox and Google App Engine are both experiencing outages today. At the time of writing it’s unclear how the two downtimes are related. Dropbox is giving the following error: Google App Engine is meanwhile timing out, and actually the Google Developers domain as a whole is having trouble loading. Even YouTube is experiencing issues, according to Downrightnow , although it’s working fine for us: Tumblr also suffered an outage today.

Engineer 157
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Questions you and your co-founder need to have answered before you start (or ASAP)

This is going to be BIG.

What's your equity split of this business and why? Are we comfortable with the thinking behind that? What is the scope of our business? What is outside the scope of what we want it to do? Are we allowed to do anything outside of the business? What is the expected time commitment? What are my roles going to be and how might that change over time in 3 months, 6 months?

Cofounder 145
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Serves me right

deal architect

…for having a last name like mine. It has been butchered for decades. The tide seems to be turning, though. (Must be my nephews and kids for making the family name infamous). Most hotels, events, unfortunately even spammers are getting.

Naming 207
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5 Steps to Successful Marketing With Multiple Media

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs and startups often ask if they should use social media for marketing, digital media, or traditional media. The answer is yes to all, and the challenge is how to choose how much of each, and how to integrate them for maximum impact and the least cost. None should be considered mutually exclusive to any other. The place to start today is if your company only uses traditional media for marketing, or no marketing.

Media 231
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Major sites and platforms experiencing outages today, including Dropbox and Google App Engine

The Next Web

Following the Amazon Web Services outage earlier this week , major sites and platforms are experiencing outages today, including at least Dropbox and Google App Engine. At the time of writing it’s unclear how the two downtimes are related, but Tumblr’s performance issues earlier today point to a clue. The blogging company told us in a statement: “Tumblr is experiencing network problems following an issue with one of our uplink providers.

Engineer 155
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Return profile of VC investments shows why home runs are key

The Equity Kicker

One of the world’s larger investors in venture capital recently shared data with us about the multiples they have made on over 5,000 companies they had stakes in via their LP investments in US VC funds. I’m not sure the extent to which they are happy with the information being made public so I’ve rounded the numbers and won’t mention their name.

LP 150
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The best and biggest Cognizant Community

deal architect

Francisco D’Souza, CEO of Cognizant, sighed as he had to break away at 9 pm from a reception where his guests were enjoying hand rolled cigars and flambé. He had a few more phone calls to make that night. And.

Community 199
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A Quick Site Checklist for Fall

Rembrandt Communications

The busy, fall season is here, and it’s time to focus on your priorities for the rest of the year. Here’s a quick list of questions to ask: What are your site analytics? Review the content that is most popular, and make a note to add more of this content to your site. If you [.].

Analytics 124
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7 things I learned from failing that you can avoid

The Next Web

Like any juicy breakup from our adolescence, entrepreneurs also crawl their way through similar stages of grief when faced with startup failure. It’s been four months since we discontinued work on Bidzuku and until now, I was unable to string together my thoughts into a coherent and helpful message despite my best efforts. Time has since passed and grief has turned into that burning desire to do something worthwhile again.

Cofounder 146