Sat.Oct 15, 2011 - Fri.Oct 21, 2011

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50 Great Ways To Use QR Codes In The College Classroom

YoungUpstarts

QR codes were first created by Toyota to track vehicles in manufacturing, offering a small barcode that can be quickly decoded. That was 1994, and now, almost 20 years later, QR code technology is experiencing a revival — but not in the automotive industry. The small, square codes are ubiquitous, showing up on everything from flyers to beer bottles, allowing anyone with a smart phone to quickly scan and find out more information with the code.

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Valuation Methods 101

Gust

This is the first of a six part series on different methods used by angel investors to arrive at pre-money startup valuations. Below is a brief description of each of the most popular methods. Detailed descriptions will be published over the next few weeks: The Scorecard Method: This method compares the target company to typical angel-funded startup ventures and adjusts the average valuation of recently funded companies in the region to establish a pre-money valuation of the target.

Valuation 174
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Binpress – A Marketplace to Find Affordable and Trustworthy Code for Web Development

VC Cafe

Binpress , the latest project by the Israeli startup incubator Lionite is making waves in the coding community with their source code marketplace. The purpose of binpress is to save coders time coding by finding existing solutions to time consuming problems. Their focus is on code for web applications in all sorts of languages, frameworks, and platforms.

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How to get beta signups for your startup in 9 steps

thenextweb.com

login / register. The Next Web Blog. Conference. Got News? tips@thenextweb.com. -->. Social Media. Part of The Next Web family. Home. About Us. Team. Contact. Energy Goes Social On Facebook. Grammy CMO spells out social media savvy. Reprise for iOS makes iTunes look ugly. All Stories. Top Stories. Channels. Apple. Apps. Daily Dose. Design & Dev.

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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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Scavado – No More Stringing Recruitment Candidates Along

YoungUpstarts

Even though online professional networking sites and services like LinkedIn and BranchOut have changed the face of human resource recruitment, there’s still room for continued disruption. In fact, a new web-based talent sourcing solution aims to make Boolean search string training for recruiters – which they traditionally rely on – obsolete: Scavado , a simple, yet powerful, alternative to costly Boolean search training that quickly yields relevant prospects to recruit.

CTO Hire 176
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To insure or not to insure iPhone 4S

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Last Friday, I stood in line for 1.25 hours for an iPhone 4S at a Verizon store. The last time that I stood in line for something was for Britney Spears and then before that Bill Clinton. As you can see, I don’t just stand in line for anything. Hahahaha. As the #8 customer, I was quickly whisked away to the nearest cashier station and received my white 32 GB iPhone 4S.

More Trending

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The Synthetic Cloud

deal architect

SAP announced recently it was moving to smaller, more frequent modifications to its Business Suite every three months: “In the past, we have delivered innovation with enhancement packages or releases in a bundle, but our customers gave us clear feedback.

Cloud 297
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How the iPhone Got Tail Fins – Part 2 of 2

Steve Blank

Read part 1 of this post for background. By the early 1920’s General Motors realized that Ford, which was now selling the Model T for $290, had an unbeatable monopoly on low-cost automobile manufacturing. Other manufacturers had experimented with selling cars based on an image and brand. (The most notable was an ad by the Jordan Car company.) But General Motors was about to take consumer marketing of cars to an entirely new level.

Jordan 300
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Ten Tips on How to Get the Entrepreneur X-Factor

Startup Professionals Musings

To be successful as an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra, like Simon Cowell is searching for on the X-Factor , that you can’t quite put your finger on. But the entrepreneurs that have “it” seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

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Walker Twitter Highlights: October 10th – 16th

Scott Edward Walker

I’m using Twitter as a form of micro-blogging to share interesting blog posts, articles and podcasts relating to entrepreneurship and startups, M&A and legal issues. Below are my five most popular tweets (via bit.ly ) for the past week and a couple of blog-related tweets. If you’d like to see all of my tweets (or an RSS feed of them), you can do so here.

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Wearable antenna Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. The Breffo Spiderpodium The iPhone Siri Personal Assistant.

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Is Your Social Media One-Sided?

Rembrandt Communications

You post interesting tweets every day and add to your Facebook pages up to five times a day. People seem to like your posts, and you are obtaining a following. Good for you! But it may be time to take a closer look at your social media efforts. After all, you may be forgetting one [.].

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Try These Ten Startup Work Relationship Strategies

Startup Professionals Musings

Just because you are an entrepreneur, or work in a startup, you can’t ignore the rules of building and maintaining relationships. Many despise these experiences in corporate environments, and leave for a startup, only to find that they have to be able to navigate a similar minefield there of workplace and business relationships to be successful. Jan Yager, Ph.D., an author and speaker on this and related subjects, outlines in her latest book “ Productive Relationships: 57 Strategies for Building

Startup 240
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[Infographic] The Irony Of Meetings

YoungUpstarts

It’s official – we hate meetings. But we need them. WebEx recently released the findings of some original research on how coworkers communicate and interact. According to the study, even though knowledge workers say that meetings are their least favorite form of communicating, they acknowledge that brainstorming and personally interacting with co-workers is when they feel most effective.

Email 180
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More New Renaissance

deal architect

on the innovation blog Finger Scanning replaces school roll call Design Driven Companies Geeky Day Trips Mars’ Custom Candies.

Design 186
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Entrepreneurial Communities Must Be Led By Entrepreneurs

Feld Thoughts

I’m about to head out to TechStars New York Demo Day. Our investment in SideTour – one of the TechStars New York companies – was announced yesterday and I’m excited to introduce them along with hanging out with all of the other great entrepreneurs from this session. If you’ve been watching the Bloomberg TechStars series , we are doing the finale tonight where we meet with all of the teams and see where they are six months after the program ended.

Community 170
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Optimizing Series A Fundraising Around…Partnership Buy-In

Genuine VC

Whether a startup’s initial Seed round is comprised of individual angels, seed-focused funds, larger VCs , or some combination of the three, when it’s time for the entrepreneur to raise a true Series A round, of course the goal is run a process to “optimize” it. You can find quite a bit of advice in the blogosphere about how to optimize around the most salient dimension: valuation.

Valuation 154
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OhThatsYou.com Community Offers Help For The Fashion Clueless

YoungUpstarts

Let’s face it – far too many of us are totally clueless about fashion. Most of us will have no idea how to match and pull off the outfits we see in fashion magazines. But here’s a new social networking service that is aimed at uniting the fashionistas and the fashion-cluess amongst us.Founded by California entrepreneur Azita Gandjei, Oh That’s You!

Community 157
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Keep Term Sheets Simple for Quicker Cash to Spend

Gust

Remember a term sheet agreement is not a deal until the check clears. Entrepreneurs sometimes assume an initial agreement with an angel is a commitment, so they start spending before any money is received. Due diligence and paperwork take time, and can change everything. It’s true that angel investors typically do not present entrepreneurs with overly complicated deal structures, especially when compared to venture capitalists.

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The ?PC? Era Finally Arrives ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. The “PC” Era Finally Arrives. October 17, 2011. Steve Jobs’s passing reminded me of one of his sayings, that we’ve now entered a “post PC era” of computing. What he and others have meant is of course that the desktop computer is losing its preeimance as the primary computing platform with the rise of smartphones and tablets at one end

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Never give up but move on quickly

BeyondVC

As a young kid, I was always taught the valuable lesson of never giving up or quitting. No matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to stand up and keep moving. That is the same trait that I also admire in many of the entrepreneurs that I have funded over the years. This mentality is what carries many great entrepreneurs from near death experiences to ultimate success.

Finance 139
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dot429.com – Professional Networking For The LGBT Community

YoungUpstarts

We can’t deny there can still be some form of discrimination against the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in the workplace (or elsewhere, for that matter), so perhaps it’s no wonder that they would come up with an online professional networking site – dot429 ( www.dot429.com ) – a professional networking site for LGBT community and their allies. dot429 – 4-2-9 spells G-A-Y on a telephone keypad – is offered as a platform to connect with

Community 156
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What Is How?

Feld Thoughts

My friend Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN , has a new edition of his book How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything out. In this copy, the forward is by President Bill Clinton, who has firmly embraced Dov’s philosophy of HOW. We’ve been investors in Dov’s company LRN for the past decade and over the last five years I’ve gotten to know Dov and his wife Maria pretty well.

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8 Tips for Starting a Home-Based Business

Up and Running

In the past, home-based businesses weren’t taken seriously. If your office was in your home, you did everything you could to hide that fact. But that’s no longer the case. Home-based businesses comprise one of the fastest growing business segments today. People love the idea of being able to be their own boss and work from the comfort of their own home.

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Never give up but move on quickly

BeyondVC

As a young kid, I was always taught the valuable lesson of never giving up or quitting. No matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to stand up and keep moving. That is the same trait that I also admire in many of the entrepreneurs that I have funded over the years. This mentality is what carries many great entrepreneurs from near death experiences to ultimate success.

Finance 139
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[Singapore] The9 Opens Red 5 Singapore Office

YoungUpstarts

China online game developer and operator The9 Limited announced today that there are establishing a Red 5 office in Singapore as its Asian operation and development center, which will manage the operations of its upcoming online multi-player first-person shooter (FPS) game Firefall in all countries outside of the North American and European markets.

Singapore 151
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Yesware – Integrating Email and CRM

Feld Thoughts

I continue to be obsessed about email – it’s by far the most significant comm channel I use. And – it’s accelerating, not decelerating, especially as it proliferates across devices as well as other comm channels. I’ve watched as many of the companies we’ve invested in use email and CRM systems (such as Salesforce) as though they existed in separate parallel universes.

Email 130
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5 Ways To Scare Off Outside Investors During Your Pitch

Gust

The man stopped talking, finally, summarized his pitch, and thanked us for listening. We sat in stunned silence. He’d treated us – a group of local investors – to a pitch punctuated with detailed stories of how previous partners, an investor , and an attorney had screwed him. He told us he’d finally beaten them back, and was now ready to move forward with his great technology.

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Want $50k in Seed Funding? Apply now.

ReadWriteStart

A new program that began earlier this year is looking for five IT-centric entrepreneurs to receive seed funds along with a series of services. Located in an underused mixed-use office building in downtown St. Louis, the program is run by two venture capitalists - Judy Sindecuse and Hal Gentry - who have formed a new entity called Capital Innovators.

St. Louis 124
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Make Your Home Office Work For You

YoungUpstarts

(Credit: www.workingnaked.com). By Pooja N. Gugnani, professional organizer and founder of Organizing With You, Inc. Working from home can be a refreshing alternative to enduring long hours in traffic and a rigid schedule – if and only if your home office has a system that complements your needs well! As a professional organizer, I’m seeing an increasing number of clients working from home so they can spend more time with their family.

Vertical 151
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NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing – Applications Are Open

Feld Thoughts

Last week I was called out on a blog titled Stop Squawking; Embody The Change. In it, Nilofer Merchant (the writer) asserts that while my writing about the lack women in tech / entrepreneurship / computer science is useful, it doesn’t have much impact. Nilofer says: “Those posts are all “Yeahness”; maybe they are helping educate the few people on this earth who haven’t read the research, statistics that says that diversity of opinions improves the performance of any workgroup.

Affiliate 124
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Three Inspiring Videos (AND Three Additional Lessons)

Life Beyond Code

If you know where to look, there is no short supply for inspiration. If you are not interested, inspiration can be right in front of you and you will miss it by a mile. Here are three videos that should inspire anyone: 1. Stanford Commencement speech by Steve Jobs. More than 11 million people have watched this so there is a very good chance that you have already watched it.

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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Nonprofits And For-profits

ReadWriteStart

During today's roundtable, we had a lot of discussion around nonprofits and for-profits. Foundups : Michael Trout, from Fukui, Japan, pitched Foundups , which he claims will be a platform for open corporations. He talked about everything from raising funding for pre-seed entrepreneurs to get them to the seed stage, crowd funding, social media marketing and open source.

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[Review] Go For It!: A Practical Guide To Success For Everyone

YoungUpstarts

I’m usually very wary of any book that claims of being a guide to success. But “ Go For It! ” by John Tassone , a straight-talking, shoot-from-the-hip kind entrepreneur in the insurance industry, was seriously an enjoyable read. One of the reasons is that I personally agree with Tassone’s own definition of “success” Success, he believes, is not about having a lot of money.

Poland 150
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Brews and Views – Deciphering What The $@%@$ Entrepreneurs Really Need to Know About Investors

Feld Thoughts

Our friends at Dorsey & Whitney are hosting me and Jason Mendelson this Thursday, October 20th from 4pm to 6pm to drink beer together and discuss “what really matters” in a venture deal. While the event requires registration , I’ve been told that copies of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist will be given to whomever shows up (until they run out) and that the beer will be a collection of yummy local microbrews provided by Devil’s Canyon Brew

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Can 124,000 Investors All Be Wrong?

Growthink Blog

A very bright spot in the U.S. economy right now is angel investing. According to the Center for Venture Research , angel funding activity in the 1st 6 months of 2011 totaled $8.9 billion, an increase of 4.7% over the same period in 2010. The numbers tell the inspiring story of entrepreneurial, “can do” America – more than 26,000 companies raising capital from more than 124,000 individual investors.