Sat.May 24, 2014 - Fri.May 30, 2014

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Be Your First Customer: Why Beta Testing Is Right for You

YoungUpstarts

'by Sam Bahreini, co-founder and COO of VoloForce. It seems like almost all technology goes to market with a “beta” tag attached. Google is notorious for this, releasing many of its products in beta form — and sometimes even leaving them in that phase for years. After all, Gmail wasn’t taken out of beta until 2009 — five years after it was originally released.

Customer 184
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Founders. Run. Amok. It Starts With a Term Sheet.

This is going to be BIG.

'Last week, for just the second time ever, I passed on an investment opportunity because of the terms of the deal--both the price and the legal structure of the agreement. It was a company whose product I believed in and whose founder I liked, but a firm lobbed in a term sheet at a price 33% higher than what I had offered using a very light agreement meant for a much earlier stage company.

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The rise of the female founder

Version One Ventures

'We’re all too familiar with the very real gender gap within the tech community. Women are underrepresented as engineers, management, investors, and founders. A commonly cited statistic is that only 7 percent of U.S. venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Business Insider recently crunched the numbers behind 26 of the top venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and learned that the percentage of female-founded startups in their portfolios ranged from a high of 19% to a low of just

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Verified Data Will Prevent “Fake It Til You Make It”

Hunter Walker

'Besides having a great animated graphic, yesterday’s New York Times “ Faking Cultural Literacy ” OpEd got me thinking about the role of verified data. The column touches on the increasing proclivity (or even probability) that you develop and espouse an opinion without even experiencing the source data itself. “It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything.

API 104
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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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5 Keys To Getting Things Done On The Road

YoungUpstarts

'by Robb Begg, CMO at Introhive. I’ve seen the insides of many hotels over the last 10 years. I know what goes into a great hotel room , and I know what differentiates work trips where you’re productive and those where everything feels like a struggle. I’ve worked in all sorts of different environments and have learned a thing or two about doing it effectively.

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Twitter Link Roundup #225 – Small Business, Startups, Innovation, Social Media, Design, 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!

More Trending

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Books I Read On My Q214 Vacation

Feld Thoughts

'Wow. I needed a vacation. Amy reminds me that I say that on day three of each of our quarterly weeks off the grid. It doesn’t seem to matter how I try to pace myself or how recent my previous week off the grid was. On day three, when I’m not looking at email, anything on the web, or checking my phone, I just breathe deeply and say “wow I needed this vacation.” Oh – and I decided to get over my fear of horses.

Dallas 113
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Advice To Young Entrepreneurs – Think Like An Immigrant!

YoungUpstarts

'By Patrick Bet-David, CEO of the PHP Agency, and author of “ Doing The Impossible: The 25 Laws for Doing The Impossible “ There’s never been a better time to be a young entrepreneur in America. The opportunities are endless and money is easy to earn. In spite of this, many young entrepreneurs and small businesses continue to struggle, with many just getting by.

Iran 234
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7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Use Video To Grow Their New Business

Duct Tape Marketing

'7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Use Video To Grow Their New Business written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Joe Forte – Enjoy! Congratulations! Your business plans are in place, perhaps you have sought out and won investors, and gotten a foothold in the market with your product.

Video 77
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Entrepreneurship in New York: The Mismatch between Venture Capital and Academic R&D

ithacaVC

'I received this report yesterday: Entrepreneurship in New York ebook. It is worth reviewing if you are interested in entrepreneurship and VC in upstate NY. Good perspective though I am favorably biased towards activity that I see “up here” Our deal flow is strong and constantly growing. It is actually better than ever. I am including below the entire introductory email that came with the report.

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The Perfect Investor

Growthink Blog

'I have greatly appreciated the positive responses to my posts last week on " Doing As Warren Does " as to applying the principles utilized to make Berkshire Hathaway the most successful investment company of all time. And it is understandable why so many people - from very different world views and levels of financial sophistication - rightly consider Mr.

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Starting an E-commerce Site? Five Tips Every College Grad Should Know.

YoungUpstarts

'by Nikole Haiar, Director Marketing, Retail & Partner Services at Hostway Corporation. The economy is slowly improving, but the job market remains tough, especially for new college graduates. Unwilling to let sluggish demand kill their dreams, many college students are taking their destiny into their own hands: Rather than waiting around for a call back from a recruiter, they’re starting new companies and launching e-commerce sites.

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Three Things I Learned on Commencement Day

Steve Blank

'In the last five years I’ve been at Commencement Day at universities around the world – a few times to receive awards and three times as the commencement speaker. But attending both my daughters’ college graduations this year helped me to see how things look from the other side of the podium. ——-. First, college graduations fall in the category of “life cycle” events.

Agile 329
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An Alternative to the Uncertainty of Outcoursing

The Entrepreneurial Mind

'ENTREPRENEURIAL PROFILE : Peter Marcum: DevDigital. DevDigital has offices in Nashville, Tennessee and Baroda, India. DevDigital began as company that bought used Internet network assets, such as routers and switches, from distressed companies at a steep discount. The company would refurbish this hardware and resell it to small independent network companies.

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8 Deadly Wastes That Every Entrepreneur Must Avoid

Startup Professionals Musings

'Every entrepreneur I know is short on resources, including time, money, and skills. The last thing they can afford is to waste any of these, but in my mentoring and coaching activities, I see it happening all too often. Waste in a startup is any activity that absorbs resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers.

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7 Tips To Secure Funding They Don’t Teach In Business School

YoungUpstarts

'by Asif Khan, CEO of Caremerge. Fundraising is arguably the most important issue for any entrepreneur. Without financial backing, even the most brilliant idea will never see the light of day. This is a daily fight for start-ups as they delicately balance cultivating their billion dollar idea while struggling to come up with the next hundred dollars to keep the lights on.

Security 165
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The CFO office inconsistent tech innovation

deal architect

'I did a couple of (un-enjoyable) years to start my career at Price Waterhouse. I audited accounting processes at several companies and government agencies. 3 decades later I am still surprised how inconsistently many of those processes have evolved. Accounts.

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Seed Round Signaling Revisited: Myths, Truths, & Half-Lies

Genuine VC

'It’s been five years now since large VC ‘signaling’ entered the seed stage entrepreneur’s lexicon. Yet even today, whether or not to take a (relatively) small check in a seed round syndicate from a multi-hundred million or even billion dollar fund is still a decision which takes quite a bit of consideration and sometimes consternation. It seems as though it’s been talked about ad nauseum in the blogosphere, but we see first-hand as entrepreneurs we’re investing in at NextView Ventures w

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Entrepreneurs And Startups Drive Future Work Trends

Startup Professionals Musings

'The new era of highly connected and interactive technology is changing not only how business employees interact with customers, but also how they interact with each other, and with their company. I am happy to see reports that young companies are in the forefront of these trends, on both the customer trends and the employee trends. Both are required to stay competitive.

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[Review] Things A Little Bird Told Me

YoungUpstarts

'Since its founding in 2006, online social network and microblogging service Twitter has pretty much become a permanent part of the Internet as we know it. From mundane love messages to celebrity pronouncements, or to the sharing of online content to even being used as a way to coordinate anti-government protests during the Arab Spring, Twitter has been in so many different ways for so many different purposes it’s now hard to imagine our world without it.

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10 Ways To Kill A Growing Business With Bad Hires

Gust

'Image via Flickr by Hobvias Sudoneighm. Every startup with any traction quickly reaches a point where they need to hire employees to grow the business. Unfortunately, this always happens when pressures are the highest, and business processes are ill-defined. At this point you need superstars and versatile future executives, yet your in-house hiring processes and focus are at their weakest.

Hiring 170
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3 Steps to Give Clients Exactly What They Want

Rembrandt Communications

'Are you doing what it takes to grow your business? If you are a small business owner, you know how difficult it can be to compete. You not only have competition on a local level, but you may be struggling to win new clients from large, national corporations as well. Being an entrepreneur is tough, […].

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More Entrepreneurs Are Seeking Purpose In Business

Startup Professionals Musings

'I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I have always looked at a business first for its potential ability to be self-sustaining, and provide reasonable profits to feed my family, my lifestyle, and my retirement. Then secondly, I look for it to be a business I can enjoy, with the potential to change the world. Today, these top priorities of many entrepreneurs seem to have reversed.

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Is Desktop Virtualization Right For Your Company?

YoungUpstarts

'In the old days, companies purchased PCs that either had an operating system (most likely Windows) already installed, or they installed Windows using a CD-ROM to each individual machine. Workers would boot up their computers and do work from their own desktop. With today’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), instead of installing corporate desktops on every endpoint machine, companies store workers’ desktops on servers.

Wiki 259
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A guide to networking for those who hate networking

The Next Web

'Andrea Deets is the Lead Writer at Crew, an invite-only network connecting short-term software projects with handpicked developers and designers. This post originally appeared on the Crew blog. Once I was making oatmeal in the microwave in my dorm and two of my other flatmates came in… I never cooked food in that kitchen again. I’m an introvert and people scare the hell out of me.

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A Few Surprising Facts about the 2014 Lean Startup Call for Speakers

Startup Lessons Learned

'Post written by Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries, co-hosts for The Lean Startup Conference We’re seeking speakers we don’t already know for this year’s Lean Startup Conference , December 10 -11 in San Francisco. Our call for proposals is open now , and if you know already that you want to apply, jump to it (but read the directions first!). If you’ve never applied to speak at The Lean Startup Conference before—or never even considered it before—here are a few things to keep in mind, some of them s

Lean 167
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Customer Engagement Is Key To Branding Yourself

Startup Professionals Musings

'The days are gone when a techie or a genius could build things in his garage and customers would find and buy the product, based purely on the “wow factor” of the technology. New technologies are everywhere today. People have seen so much that they are blasé, or actually fear pure technology. They want a personable brand, before they will consider the product.

Customer 248
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[Infographic] 10 Books Every Aspiring Entrepreneur Must Read

YoungUpstarts

'If you’re looking to start up, it’s crucial to find seasoned mentors whom you can trust to provide you to right advice when you need it in the course of starting and running your business. But if you don’t have access to such people, there can be an easier way: books. Yet not all startup books are alike, and frankly not all of them are remotely useful.

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9 iconic growth hacks tech companies used to boost their user bases

The Next Web

'John McLaughlin is a start-up founder and entrepreneur based in Manhattan and a writer for Fueled, a mobile development company based in New York City. These days, it seems like some tech companies go from zero to a million users overnight. The growth of these firms — Airbnb and Uber might service as recent examples — can seem magical… but it’s not.

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Getting Serious: The next billion-dollar market in games

VC Cafe

'Guest post by Sagi Shorrer*. We’re seeing a revolution in the use of games for purposes beyond mere entertainment. Serious games, as they are known, are on the rise. The idea is simple: the best way to get people to do something is to make it fun. ‘Edutainment’, a seventies buzzword for educational entertainment, is nothing new. But games as a medium offer something no book or television could: interactivity.

Marketing 162
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Why VCs Should Recycle Their Management Fees

Feld Thoughts

'I’m an investor in a bunch of VC funds. Some of them recycle their management fees; others don’t. I’ve never really understood why funds don’t recycle their management fees. Understanding what “recycling management fees” means is a fundamental part of understanding the economics of a venture firm. Here’s how it works.

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The Power Of Blogging For Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Jamelle Sanders, CEO of Jamelle Sanders International. In the early days of my business, I did not really see the significance of blogging. In fact, I started a blog around the second year of my business. I was quickly disappointed with the lack of results and did not post for almost two years. However, after doing some research and talking with business mentors, I learned that blogging has a major impact on the bottom line of a business.

Audience 174
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The importance of being on time (and why we often run late)

The Next Web

'Gadi Shamia is the co-founder and CEO of Magneto, a smart system that fixes your calendar. In my first startup, TopManage (now SAP Business One) I spent the first couple of years as the chief salesperson. It is something that many founders experience (selling to customers or pitching to investors) and it meant four to five out-of-office meetings a day.

Cofounder 167
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ProductHunting

VC Cafe

'When I was a product manager at Gerson Lehrman Group, Ask.com and AOL, I developed an addiction to trying out new products as soon as (or before) they hit the market. This got me the nickname ‘Beta W**re’ (I personally prefer ‘Beta addict’) by some of my colleagues. Behind the fascination of playing with a new toy for the first time, there was an element of research: How did the PM think about onboarding a new user?

API 153
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The Hardware Renaissance is gaining speed

Version One Ventures

'As I’ve written before , I’m bullish on hardware. Yet even I was blown away by how far the hardware renaissance has come over the past year. Version One recently spent a few days at Solid , Tim O’Reilly’s new conference that focuses on the intersection of hardware and software, where I led a panel on scaling hardware companies. The panel brought together some of Version One’s early hardware bets – Indiegogo , Tindie , and Upverter.

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The Best 2 Hours I Spent On My Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Josh Ludin, founder of the subscription box Blind Surprise. Let me tell you a quick story. When the idea of my first internet business was conceived, I was stuck where many young entrepreneurs frequently get caught – getting past that idea stage. I simply knew what I wanted to sell, and that I wanted to sell it over the internet, but had no real direction.

Tampa 170