Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 26, 2013

'If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded due diligence process. This is the last step of the process, where surprises in the evaluation of the management team, documentation, and personnel problems can derail the investment. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the due diligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.

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Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Term Sheet 242

YoungUpstarts

JULY 26, 2013

'by Libby Gill, veteran management consultant and author of “ Capture the Mindshare and the Market Share Will Follow: The Art and Science of Building Brands “ To create a compelling brand, you have to capture more than just the market share, you capture the total mindshare – that is, minds, hearts, soul and the hence the unimpeachable trust of your customers.

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Technical Review Public Relations Community Customer 200

Feld Thoughts

JULY 25, 2013

'Following is a guest post by Zack Rosen , co-founder and CEO of Pantheon. Pantheon is building “A big badass platform that will run 30% of the Internet.” They are making it easy for professionals to build, launch, and run websites. Pantheon is one of the Silent Killers in our portfolio – and I’m immensely proud of the progress they are making and excited about their future.

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Vermont Startup Campaign Virginia 165

The Next Web

JULY 20, 2013

'Editor’s note: Andrej Kiska is an associate at Prague-based Credo Ventures. Prior to Credo, Andrej worked at an early growth fund Benson Oak, the first backer of AVG Technologies . “VCs are arrogant. VCs are cowards. They speak about how they love to help entrepreneurs build successful companies, yet when I ask them to give me feedback on my business plan or idea, they usually don’t even bother writing me back.

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Silicon Valley Mongolia Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur 124

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

Startup

Growthink Blog

JULY 23, 2013

'Every successful business requires a lot of planning. From market research to internal corporate structure, the planning stages of starting and growing a business can be quite extensive. While this preparation is a key factor in the success of any company, there are a few things which far too many business owners neglect. Planning for success and growth is important, but smart businesses are also prepared for the worst case scenario.

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Revenue Security Acquisition Business Model 115

YoungUpstarts

JULY 22, 2013

'By Pamelo Ramos, Yodle.com. You may operate a website as part of your online retail business, or simply for informational purposes. Either way, your website represents your online identity, your face to the Internet. As such, the domain name to your website is one of the most important choices you will make. In a very real way, choosing a domain name is as vital as choosing the name of your business itself.

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Naming France Canada Internet 133

The Next Web

JULY 20, 2013

'Editor’s note: Jonathan Saragossi is the founder of IM Creator , a free website builder, and AppSite , an editor and website collection for promoting mobile applications. Jonathan is also a UX and marketing consultant for major startups including Any.Do and Playscape. You can contact him by email or on Twitter. So you’ve developed your dream app and uploaded it to the market, eagerly waiting for a flood of downloads to propel your product to stardom.

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PR Development Team Review Viral Mobile 157

crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 21, 2013

'On any given day at the crowdSPRING HQ, we will have anywhere between 1 and 6 people working in the office simultaneously. Of late, 1 is the more common number and 6 is becoming a rarity. Why is that? Well a year or two ago we instituted a policy (I say “instituted,” but really it was more of an evolution) whereby people could come and go as they please.

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Lean Small Business Leadership Engineer 82

YoungUpstarts

JULY 23, 2013

'by Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D. Today, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, it seems we are approach a new Middle Ages in America, as inequality increasingly spreads through the land. It is as if the superrich are like the new royalty and the top 1% are living in mansions like the old castles of kings in the kingdoms that eventually melded into Europe and the U.K.

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America Bankruptcy Distribution Video 133

SVPG

JULY 21, 2013

'I''m always badgering teams about moving faster. Yet I continue to meet people and teams that not only move very slow, they don''t understand the relationship between speed and innovation, or speed and quality. In fact, many people still think those goals are at odds. I attribute this mainly to a deeply rooted Waterfall mindset. Do you remember the old: "quality, time or scope - pick any two"?

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Differentiation Leadership Engineer Customer 72

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

'I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. It’s why it’s important to establish a brand, know what your key messages are and communicate them often and simply. I have published many of these PR Tips before.

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Marketing Europe Engineer Networking 385

deal architect

JULY 25, 2013

'Gartner has been talking for a while about the ‘Nexus of four forces – Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information” Forrester warns “”Today’s Hottest Technologies Will Be Ho-Hum By 2015” Many of the customers I have interviewed this summer for the.

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Cloud Mobile Technology Customer 326

Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2013

'A minimum viable product (MVP) is not always a smaller/cheaper version of your final product. Defining the goal for a MVP can save you tons of time, money and grief. Drones over the Heartland. I ran into a small startup at Stanford who wants to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) with a Hyper-spectral camera over farm fields to collect hyper-spectral images.

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Product Customer Development Forecast Engineer 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 23, 2013

'Marketo filed for IPO with impressive 80% year-over-year growth in 2012, with almost $60m in revenue. Except, they lost $35m. WTF? It’s not impressive when you spend $1.60 for every $1.00 of revenue, force-feeding sales pipelines with an unprofitable product. Don’t tell me this is normal for growing enterprise SaaS companies. I know the argument: The pay-back period on sales, marketing, and up-start costs is long, but there’s a profitable result at the end of the tunnel.

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Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 21, 2013

'To be an entrepreneur, you have to be navigate lots of unknowns, and the path is fraught with risk. Once you are past a certain mental age, you know too many of the things that can go wrong, so you never start. Sort of like the old saying that if we didn’t have young men to fight our wars, we could achieve world peace in no time. People who are young, or young at heart, don’t know all the negatives, or don’t worry about them.

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Startup Entrepreneur 267

deal architect

JULY 24, 2013

'I was watching the new SAP commercials with the theme "Run Like Never Before" and reminiscing on the annual pilgrimage Gartner colleagues would make to Waldorf in the late 90s. It is striking how much the company has changed in.

Software 271

Software 271

YoungUpstarts

JULY 24, 2013

'If you’re a public relations or media professional you’re probably acutely aware of the love-hate but symbiotic relationship between the two camps. You know, that “Can’t live with you, can’t live without you” feeling. Well, the newly released Brands and Media Engagement Survey Report 2013 sheds more light on this sometimes tenuous relationship.

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PR Asia Public Relations Media 223

Feld Thoughts

JULY 24, 2013

'I’m excited to announce the launch of the Colorado Startup Community Fund. This is a $200,000 fund for providing financing to support activities, events, and organizations in the Colorado startup community. It’s part of the Startup Colorado initiative and is going to make the first round of grants at the end of Q3. The Startup Colorado Community Fund from Startup Colorado on Vimeo.

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Colorado Community Denver Startup 172

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2013

'After working with dozens of startup founders, I’m still amazed that some seem to be able to do the job easily and effectively, always in control, while others always seem to be struggling, out-of-control, and fighting the latest crisis. I am more and more convinced that it is the right founder behavior that leads to success, rather than some exceptional intelligence or training.

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Founder Leadership Employee Management 260

deal architect

JULY 25, 2013

'Excited to be part of a panel at the HP Vertica Big Data conference in Boston August 7. Chris Selland is moderating with Dave Vallente of Wikibon and Curt Monash of Monash Research. The day prior Billy Beane of the.

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Boston 150

YoungUpstarts

JULY 22, 2013

'By Ali Behnam, co-founder of Riviera Partners. The new hire process, particularly at the executive level, is a significant decision and can be quite involved. While there are a number of factors in play which combine to impact the recruiting and hiring process, there is one constant that drives the process of the search – the CEO always sets the tone.

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Hiring San Francisco Due Diligence Cofounder 214

Rembrandt Communications

JULY 25, 2013

'Take Advantage of Content Management – Even Without a Budget If you are a business owner, you know the importance of content marketing and SEO, or search engine optimization. It helps you: Provide value to customers and the search engines. Stand out from the competition. Build customer word-of-mouth. Boost credibility and sales and more! Who [.].

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SEO Engineer Search Sales 154

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 25, 2013

'At some point in their life, hopefully everyone strives to be the best in their chosen profession. Most people think that being the best requires more intelligence, more training, and more experience. In reality, in business or even in sports, the evidence is conclusive that it is as much about how you think, as what you do. I saw this illustrated a while back in a sports excellence book called “ Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else ”, by Jon Gordon.

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Entrepreneur Business Plan Startup 253

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 25, 2013

'Guest post by Lisa Regan and conference co-host Sarah Milstein. The Lean Startup methodology has its roots in the tech sector, where companies need to iterate quickly in order to survive. But the methods have expanded into nearly every industry we can name. In fact, at last year’s Lean Startup conference we had speakers from a number other sectors, including government, transportation, education and public health.

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Lean Ghana Startup Government 167

YoungUpstarts

JULY 24, 2013

'NI Managing Director for Southeast Asia, Mr. Chandran Nair (fifth from left), presented a token of appreciation to the Minister in PM Department and CEO of PEMANDU, Senator Dato’ Seri Idris Jala (fourth from right). Automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software provider National Instruments has announced the opening of National Instruments Academy & Innovation Nucleus (NI-AIN), a shared services lab facility in Technology Park Malaysia comprising over RM20 million (~US$6.25

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Malaysia Technology Intellectual Property IP 205

Mike Michalowicz

JULY 26, 2013

'Sleepy’s tagline is “For the rest of your life.” FedEx’s is “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” Ivory Soap’s is “99.44% pure.” A great tagline communicates confidence to customers. It sets expectation. It is a concise way of saying what your customer will experience. Here are the steps to take to create a great tagline: 1.

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Restful Employee Customer Management 165

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 23, 2013

'Founders almost always cite lack of money as the reason for failure, but if you look deeper, I believe the reason is more often about dysfunctional people and leadership. Sometimes it comes right back to the founder, in terms of a malaise often called “Founder’s Syndrome.” A few years ago I was intimately involved with a promising startup that taught me about this issue.

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Founder Leadership Demand Product Development 245

Scalable Startup

JULY 20, 2013

'In 2008 I was working on a post-merger integration project for a small company being acquired by a Fortune 100 behemoth. We looked at several SaaS based systems for accounting, sales automation, calendaring, product management, scheduling our company airplane, travel, etc. At the time SaaS just wasn’t mature enough and people at the company weren’t comfortable enough to make the change; too many old habits of installing software.

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Mobile Hawaii Angel Investor Early Stage 22

YoungUpstarts

JULY 25, 2013

'We’re all familiar with personal task managers or to-do list applications, but most of them are meant to be used in a personal, individual capacity. What if, for example, you had tasks that required someone else’s help to complete? Sure, a business type project management app has that kind of collaborative functionality, but such an app would be way too overpowered for simple use.

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Web Management Video Email 204

Mike Michalowicz

JULY 25, 2013

'How do you want your clients to behave when you work with them? Do you need them to stay out your way? Do you want them to review your work as you progress? Do you want them to just relax and have fun while you take care of the work? Define your rules of engagement and present them to your client in away that will make them feel comfortable. Deliver that message in your own unique way, that is consistent with your Immutable Laws.

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Customer Restful 156

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 24, 2013

'I’ve noticed a great tendency among startup founders to ignore the essentials of business accounting in the early stages of their startup. Just because you are not profitable yet, doesn’t mean you can skip the record keeping. In fact, just the opposite is true. When you anticipate losses for the first year or two, it is more important to properly document all expenses, including tricky ones like business travel, business meals, and your home office.

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Intellectual Property SBA Warrant Stock 233

Feld Thoughts

JULY 22, 2013

'As Amy and I get to the end of Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, I’m noticing more and more management and leadership lessons. Oh – and it’s awesome SciFi. In my experience, it’s a challenge for CEOs and management teams to get focused on a small set of numbers that drive behavior. I talked about this in my post Three Magic Numbers.

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Leadership Management 148

YoungUpstarts

JULY 25, 2013

'by Barry Sloane, President and CEO of Newtek Business Services. Summertime brings with it dreams of vacations and lazy days spent by the pool. Some business owners opt to give employees a jump-start on the weekend by offering special summer hours. Summer hour policies have become increasingly popular in recent years. In 2012, 75 percent of human resource professionals surveyed by OfficeTeam said their companies offered summer schedules.

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Retention Employee .Net Security 191

Mike Michalowicz

JULY 23, 2013

'Have you ever woken up in the morning, looked in the mirror and said, “Who the f*ck is that?” Have you ever been terrified by the stranger looking back at you in the mirror and run screaming back to bed, only to realize it was you all along. Yeah. Those were the days. Head-throbbing, morning-after mess aside, mirrors reflect what is really going on in our lives.

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Finance Employee Partner Entrepreneur 155

The Equity Kicker

JULY 22, 2013

'Investors are frequently asked what they look for in a good startup and most good ones answer “Great team, great product and great market” With early stage companies team is paramount because that’s just about all there is in the company. The product and market can be changed (with pain) but if you take the team out the business is unlikely to survive.

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Early Stage Later Stage Cofounder Startup 146

The Next Web

JULY 25, 2013

'Last Friday, my friend Shak pathed, “Productivity at tech companies must be low today. Half the folks are headed to Utah while the other half are looking for an ice cream truck.”. Told to pack for a camping trip but not much else, 850 like-minded individuals showed up in Eden, Utah last Friday for the first Summit Outside event, hosted by the Summit Series team famous for its weekend retreats like Basecamp and Summit-at-Sea.

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Utah Entrepreneur United States Cofounder 146