Sat.Oct 03, 2015 - Fri.Oct 09, 2015

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10 Keys To Improving Your Business Time Management

Startup Professionals Musings

Many entrepreneurs fantasize about days longer than 24 hours, convinced that their new venture could change the world, if they just had more time. They don’t realize that a more viable solution is to get more done per existing hour, rather than creating more hours. We all know at least one person who is always “very busy” and works plenty of hours, but generates few significant results.

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Making the SAP "circle bigger"

deal architect

Neesha, in her long review at Amazon of SAP Nation 2.0 says “One of the critiques I've heard about the author is that he's an outsider. While this may seem like a negative to some, I see it as a.

Insiders

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[Review] The Social Customer

YoungUpstarts

The greatest challenge of the social media age isn’t to grow the largest fan or follower base. Nor to achieve the greatest “virality” in our digital campaigns. Rather, it is this: “How can we better reach prospects, convert them to customers, and serve their interests through social media?”. While Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have found ways to monetise their platforms, many are still figuring out ways to connect one’s communities on social media with the corporate wallet.

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Sustainable engineering – avoid big re-writes

The Equity Kicker

Last week friend of Forward Partners Douglas Squirrel published a post about Sustainable engineering on The Path Forward in which he advises founders on how to scale their engineering effort. When the focus is on validating the idea and building first versions of the product it usually makes sense to take shortcuts in code and process quality to accelerate learning, but when the focus shifts to scaling the company it’s important to shift to scalable and sustainable software development

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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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Build Your Business By Accentuating Your Positives

Startup Professionals Musings

Most of the entrepreneurs I know realize they have some bad habits, like maybe procrastination or not listening well, so they focus on dropping these. New studies indicate that a more productive approach would be adopting new good habits and behaviors that clearly move your business forward, like good time management and implementing customer recommendations.

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How to fix traffic jams forever without spending a dollar on roads

Start Up Blog

The Brooklyn, the Golden Gate, the Sydney Harbour… name a bridge leading to a major city and anyone who drives over it during peak hour will know the pain. In fact driving on any major roadway towards a Central Business District is generally a horrible experience. I read this article today about Australia blowing its luck as the lucky country largely due to traffic and transport issues.

More Trending

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Dell is in Talks to Buy EMC According to Media Reports

SiliconHills

Several media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and the New York Times are quoting inside sources saying Dell is in talks to buy EMC, a data storage and software development company. In 2013, Dell went private in a $25 billion buyout deal which left its founder Michael Dell with a 75 percent ownership […] The post Dell is in Talks to Buy EMC According to Media Reports appeared first on SiliconHills.

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48in48 in pictures

Jeff Hilimire

Wow. I’m just finally getting my feet back under me after the inaugural 48in48 event last weekend. When I first conceived of this event over a year ago, I never envisioned it would be so successful. The amount of support and passion that people showed was awe-inspiring, and we did it! We built 48 nonprofit websites in 48 hours! I’ll be sharing more details soon, but I thought I’d start with sharing the weekend via some pictures I took along the way.

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What Makes a Great Business Partner?

Both Sides of the Table

A while back when I was reading the press I saw a quote from Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins that was simple, yet profound. He was quoted as saying, “Being a great partner is as important as being smart or being right.”. I liked it so much I wrote it down and tried to think about what it meant to me and I promised myself I would write about that one day.

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Three Megatrends That Will Affect Everybody’s Business

YoungUpstarts

by Professor Dominique V. Turpin, president of IMD. The future is hard to predict and a lot of “experts” regularly get it wrong. However, there are some facts so important and trends so inevitable that leaders would be ill-advised to ignore and not try to anticipate. Here are three of many future megatrends that will not necessarily determine what will happen, but will most likely have a big impact on everybody’s business in the coming years to decades: Changing demography. .

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SaaS: We aint seen nothing yet

deal architect

Every SaaS conference this year – Dreamforce, SuiteWorld, PowerPlex, Rising – has been brimming with confidence and mostly happy customers. Things are going swimmingly well. No surprise – for a decade now, my blogs and books have been celebrating SaaS.

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9 Entrepreneur Leadership Principles Worth Practicing

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurship is all about leading – leading customers to a new product or service, leading a startup team to peak performance, and leading a new business to the market opportunity, while providing maximum return to stakeholders. Most entrepreneurs feel they have innate leadership talents, but struggle with how to nurture these abilities and measure their effectiveness.

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Why @UpfrontVC invested in Disruptive Rental Car Startup @Skurt

Both Sides of the Table

Rental cars. I have never met a person who loved their rental car company or the experience of turning up at an airport, waiting in line, paying a huge fee and then dealing with returns, airport shuttle buses and so forth not to mention half-washed and smelly cars. I think the closest parallel I have is the feeling I had for taxi cabs (inconvenient, smelly, expensive) before Uber.

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Withering On The Job Vine: Assessing If It’s Time To Move On

YoungUpstarts

By Vicky Oliver, author of “ Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots “ Remaining at a job even though you’re unhappy or unappreciated is like dangling on a low rung in Purgatory. Staying in your position may have its financial rewards, but it’s not doing you — or the company — any good. In fact, a new movement has CEOs offering to pay employees to leave if they’re not interested in staying.

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere show No. 5: Daniella Yacobovsky and Jane Moritz

Steve Blank

Nature and nurture together shape successful entrepreneurs. And it’s possible to balance work and family when doing a startup. Family relationships influence founders and their startups. That was the message from the two latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Daniella Yacobovsky , co-founder of online jewelry retailer BaubleBar , and Jane Moritz. a food entrepreneur who owns Challah Connection , an ecommerce site specializing in Jewish gift basket

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7 Seed-Stage Funding Sources To Finance Your Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

Even if you work every day in the world of new-venture funding, as I do, the options are confusing, and their meanings seem to change on a regular basis. I challenge any entrepreneur, for example, to define the difference between "seed-stage" and "early-stage" financing. Yet, knowing this distinction is important. Remember, you have only one chance to make a great first impression, so it helps to know the lingo when dealing with investors.

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GE: From IT to OT

deal architect

GE’s Global Research Center, its locomotives, medical scanners and other products, even the design/content of its annual reports have been prominent in my books and blogs for a long time. It is an extremely innovative company which keeps company with.

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Cheap Ways Validate Your App Idea And Get Early Users

YoungUpstarts

by Mark McDonald, co-founder and co-CEO of Appster. While there is no bullet-proof way to validate your app idea before you launch, getting a face time or any kind of interaction with potential user base can be incredibly helpful. Understanding your users and the problems they face, is an essential element of building a successful product. Depending on what you’re trying to learn, here are some possible ways to reach out. 1.

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5 Fashion Brands That Are Killing It On Facebook

Brandanew

Fashion Brands generally have a strong presence in social media. Our fashion appetites as consumers are usually large. While big brands have good following because their brand names have existed for a long time, it can be a bit harder for new brands or Startups. A vibrant social presence helps the brands maintain their relevance in the highly competitive marketplace and keeps reminding their fans about new launches.

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7 Winning Strategies For Smartphone App Startups

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the quickest ways to become an entrepreneur these days is to develop and publish a smartphone app. The price of entry can be less than $10,000, so the competition is huge and growing rapidly. According to Tim Cook at Apple, there were over 9 million registered developers in 2014. Yet according to other statistics, vanishing few of these ever generate a significant profit.

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Raising Capital As A First Time Founder

Gust

A year ago, in mid September 2014, I walked out of a Starbucks in San Francisco with the very first check from an angel investor for Glassbreakers. Though it was only $5,000, it was enough to prove to myself and my co-founder, Lauren Mosenthal, that we could actually fundraise for our startup. We already had 1,000 women signed Read more >. The post Raising Capital As A First Time Founder appeared first on The Gust Blog.

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5 Simple Ways To Spruce Up Your Home Office 

YoungUpstarts

By Jennifer Tuohy. As an entrepreneur in the age of “we’re well past 9 to 5,” your home office is your command center — and it’s also most likely located in the corner of your bedroom or, if you’re really lucky, in your spare room surrounded by piles of winter clothing. As this is a space where the really important things get done, whether in the wee hours of the morning or while you’re burning the midnight oil, it’s important to take some time to make it attractive and welcoming.

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Is Social Media Working For Your Business?

Brandanew

So, you have your social media team in place. You have a strict schedule to regularly publish on all major channels. You have even set aside a budget for paid promotions. But what is next? How do you know that this investment is actually bearing fruit? How do you know that your social channels are actually giving you leads? Is social media working for your business?

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SAP Nation 2.0 Excerpt: Make the problem bigger

deal architect

As with previous books, I have been excerpting 10% of the contents. You can buy the book at several stores (online in paperback at CreateSpace and ebook at Amazon). 2.0 looks at the prospects of S/4HANA which SAP launched in.

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Deal Certainty

Feld Thoughts

We’ve seen several M&A deals collapse unexpectedly in the past two months. Each was at the signed LOI stage. There was no warning or evidence of an issue until the moment the CEO got the phone call from the acquirer saying the deal was off. In both cases, the explanation was vague. I’ve also seen several financings fail to close recently.

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How To Motivate Long-Serving Staff

YoungUpstarts

By Melanie Astbury, HR Manager for officekitten.co.uk. At Office Kitten we value loyalty more than anything, and strive to keep employees with the company for as long as possible to maintain a high quality workforce. However, after being in any job for a number of years, workers can lose interest in their role. If managers fail to recognise this it can lead to a valued employee leaving for a new challenge.

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How Can You Get More Social Media Fans?

Brandanew

Building up a social media following can be a very tedious affair. While it is a great feeling to have a big fan base, the initial build up is generally slow. But the fan count is considered a matter of prestige more than anything else nowadays. Some people can judge you or your brand purely on the basis of the number of fans you have. And thus, some new businesses and Startups end up committing the cardinal sin of purchasing more social media fans from dubious sources.

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When an idea is ready to become a business

The Equity Kicker

As regular readers will know Forward Partners invests in companies at idea stage, when there is literally nothing more than an entrepreneur and a plan. I’m frequently asked how we can do that and hope to make great returns given the risks of investing at this stage. The answer to that question has many parts, not least that we have a product and growth team with a lot of experience helping entrepreneurs turn their ideas into great companies, but the one I’m going to focus on today is

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Watch Me Use A Glowforge

Feld Thoughts

If you’ve been following our Glowforge investment you will be familiar with the pre-order campaign they are currently running. Halfway through (with 15 days to go) they are now at $7.8 million. Yesterday, Dan Shapiro and I did a video of me creating a Foundry Group coaster out of a piece of wood. It was done remotely – I did all the design work on my computer in Boulder, uploaded it to the Glowforge cloud, and printed it on a Glowforge in Seattle.

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How Product Videos Can Help Your Business

YoungUpstarts

The Internet is filled with videos these days, including those that start playing automatically as part of a website’s background. This is because a lot of people simply don’t have long enough time while surfing the web to read long product descriptions and articles. They want to get their information easily and quickly, and in simple-to-digest formats.

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6 Tips For Writing Product Descriptions That Work

Brandanew

Copywriters often see product descriptions as uninspiring. They are short. They’re not always about Tom Hanks or your favorite football team. Products can range from pencil sharpeners to the brand new fish catching instrument that’s setting world records ( you can tell we’ve been Shark Tank obsessed). Are you staring at the computer screen?

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17 ways to say no: Real responses from real VCs on why they didn’t invest

The Next Web

Starting your first company (or your third) is a daunting and exciting prospect, but even if you manage to ultimately find some success it probably wasn’t at the first attempt. On that road is a whole lot of disappointments, so we thought it might be useful to bring you some real examples of rejection responses received by founders looking for investment from VCs.

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What Do You Want Your Legacy To Be?

Feld Thoughts

Yesterday, I gave a talk and then did two breakout Q&A sessions at EO Alchemy 2015. It was a lot of fun and many of the questions were thought provoking to me, which I enjoy greatly. One of them caused me to pause and answer extra deliberately. Near the end of the second breakout session, I was asked “ What Do You Want Your Legacy To Be? ” I don’t think I’ve answered this question before publicly and I realize I never think about it, so I took a few seconds to roll th

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Is Product Price The Most Important Thing For Online Buyers? Not Really.

YoungUpstarts

By Kristina Azarenko , marketing manager and SEO specialist at Amasty. When it comes to offline shopping, there are many triggers that influence our decision-making. But these triggers become even trickier in the world of eCommerce as an average conversion rate here is much lower than conversion rate of offline sales. Price is believed to be one of the main factors that influence a buyer’s choice.

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Talk about what you’ve done – pitch advice

The Equity Kicker

This advice is from a 2008 post by Jason Calacanis (hat tip Founders Notebook ): 4. Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do. ——————————————-. Weak startups and their leaders seem to immediately start talk about “what’s next,” as opposed to focusing on the core product. Anyone can say we’re going to add: a mobile version, collaborative filtering, an advertising network, visualizations, a marketplace, a browser plugin, a browser and a social network to their product.

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How to Build a Successful and Diverse Venture Capital Portfolio Without Really Trying

This is going to be BIG.

After checking out The Information's "open dataset" on diversity in venture capital , I felt pretty disappointed. It didn't include the most important statistic of all--the results! Who is actually building a portfolio whose founders reflect the diversity of the greater population? I went back and calculated the number of companies in the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures portfolio who have at least one founder who is female, from an underrepresented minority group, or LGBT.