Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 30, 2013
'The average length of a funding pitch to Angel investors is ten minutes. Even if you have booked an hour with a VC, you should plan to talk only for the first fifteen minutes. The biggest complaint I hear from investors is that startup founders often talk way too long, and neglect to cover the most relevant points. Or they get sidetracked by a technical glitch due to poor preparation.
YoungUpstarts
JULY 31, 2013
'I’ll be honest about this – I was full of skepticism when I first approached “ Click! Work Anytime, Live Anywhere “, a self-help, “get rich”-type book from Singapore-based dotcom millionaire Fabian Lim. Serial entrepreneur Lim had made his fortune from creating and running a string of Internet businesses such as ClickMedia , as well as events company ClickEvents built around, yup, teaching people how to get rich by being Internet entrepreneurs.
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Venture Chronicles
AUGUST 2, 2013
'I have covered a couple of topics in this series, the first being hiring the best people and the second organizing for success based on the attributes of the people you are hiring. Today I want to go into territory less obvious because let’s face it, hiring the best people and creating conditions where they can succeed is the kind of startup advice that is squarely in the “stating the obvious” category.
crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 28, 2013
'Much has been written on the “Steve Jobs” school of human resources. Jobs was an uncompromising believer in hiring the most talented team possible and believed equally in firing folks at will. That was all well and good for the most valuable company in the world, where an endless stream of applicants lined up at the door everyday and allowed Jobs and company to cherry pick the very best.
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 Professionals Musings
AUGUST 1, 2013
'The sad truth is that cash flow surprises kill many startups, even though they should have been adequately funded to survive. Overall, 90% of small business failures are caused by poor cash flow, according to the D&B Small Business website. Cash is king when it comes to the financial management of a growing company, so this is not the place for shortcuts and sloppy practices.
deal architect
JULY 29, 2013
'Two large agencies, Publicis and Omnicon, announced a merger yesterday. Famous brands such as BBDO Worldwide, Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi will be part of the new empire. With merged revenues of $ 23 billion, it will become the.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Rembrandt Communications
AUGUST 1, 2013
'Hiring outside experts may be the key to boosting sales now. Summer is flying by and August is here. With this in mind, what are you doing to make your life easier during these warmer months? As a business owner, it’s easy to want to control every aspect of your business. But you can actually [.].
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 27, 2013
'Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who think the most creatively, not only in their initial product or service, but more importantly all through the stages of growth from startup to maturity. But even the best of them can easily slip into some bad decision habits that limit or hurt their business, due to natural human tendencies and the pressures of business challenges.
deal architect
AUGUST 1, 2013
'I wrote this post about Sabremetrics and Selling for the salesforce blog. Billy Beane of the Oakland A''s - Mr. Moneyball - is prominent in my post. He will also be keynoting at the HP Vertica Big Data conference in.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 1, 2013
'Singapore-based accelerator Joyful Frog Digital Incubator ( JFDI Asia ) has revealed that over 300 digital startup teams have applied for its second accelerator program for this year, competing for just 12 places in this intake. Applications has streamed in from all over Asia, with applicants from Singapore and India comprising over half of the total number, with representation even from the UK – India (28%), Singapore (23%), Philippines (7%), Indonesia (6%), Taiwan (4%), Vietnam (4%), UK
Feld Thoughts
JULY 30, 2013
'Fred Wilson had a post yesterday titled Mentor/Investor Whiplash. His recommendations for dealing with it can be summarized as “collect all the data, think about it, discount what investors have to say, and ultimately listen to what the market is telling you over what advisors / investors tell you.” I then read through the comments on the post and was bummed out.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 31, 2013
'Success in a startup is not possible as a “one-man show.” An entrepreneur has to engage with team members, partners, investors, vendors, and customers. In my experience, the joy of positive engagement is sometimes the only pay you get in an early startup. Amazingly, many successful startups are built on this basis alone, with almost no money. I will talk here primarily about building the internal team of a startup, but the same principles apply outside to your “extended team” and customers.
deal architect
JULY 31, 2013
'Oh how I wish Ed had written a few months ago this nice summary of Microsoft mistakes around Windows 8. Instead, I have had a frustrating time for 6 months now with my Toshiba Ultrabook. I have had a phenomenal.
YoungUpstarts
JULY 29, 2013
'by Meng Weng Wong, co-founder and social engineer at JFDI Asia. You’re supposed to demo the business, not just the product. The investors who come to Demo Day might nod politely when you talk about the features of your product. But they’ll sit up and pay attention when you talk about the customers and revenues of the business. You’re in dialogue with the marketplace.
Life Beyond Code
JULY 30, 2013
'Kare Anderson and I have been friends for a while. Every meeting and conversation with Kare is an absolute delight because she is simply a powerhouse of ideas, enthusiasm, energy and a bundle of possibilities. I was not there when these videos were recorded by Japjot mentioned to me that the experience was very similar to that of what we had when we recorded Guy Kawasaki videos – almost no retakes, insights with clarity and compassion.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 28, 2013
'I often recommend business networking as the most effective way for a startup founder to find investors, advisors, and even key executive candidates. But what if you are an introvert, or new to this game, and don’t know where or how to start? The answer is still the same, but I have learned over the years that there is an etiquette to this process, just like there is for social networking.
deal architect
JULY 30, 2013
'Most companies will say things like customers are our highest priority. Or quality. Or Investors. Or even write bestselling books about "Employees First". But SAP unabashedly says Our Partners are Job 1. Not sure how else to explain that SAP.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 2, 2013
'by Alessandra Colaci, marketing manager of Auctiva. With summer winding down to its final blissful weeks, a new school year is soon to begin, and that means shoppers will be on the hunt for essential study supplies, clothing and gear for their school-age kids. Back-to-school promotions are well underway at major retailers, but there’s still ample opportunity for small and midsize merchants to succeed in this competitive market.
The Next Web
JULY 28, 2013
' . Just because you have a great idea doesn’t mean your startup will succeed, and there’s a simple reason for this: concepts don’t make companies. Startups depend on everything from the capabilities of their founders to the depth of their pockets. But, just because an idea hasn’t taken off doesn’t mean it won’t eventually, right? Particularly in the tech scene, you’ll see ideas tried countless times before a true winner emerges.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 29, 2013
'Entrepreneurs often get the advice from their lawyers and friends to always get a Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA or CDA) signed before disclosing anything about their new venture. Most investors and startup advisors I know hate them, and refuse to sign them. Who is right? Let me try to put this question in perspective. If you are totally risk-averse, then push to always get signed NDAs.
deal architect
JULY 30, 2013
'I have been reading plenty of stories recently about how technology and automation are killing jobs. And my usual reaction is to think of William Gibson and his quote "The future is already here — it''s just not very evenly.
YoungUpstarts
JULY 30, 2013
'The pivot – at least as far as a startup is concerned – is defined by Eric Ries, author of “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses ” as a structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about (a startup’s} product, strategy, and engine of growth.
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 1, 2013
'Put this in the protip category. When you create a calendar event and invite someone to it, make it useful. For example “Board Meeting” is not helpful. But “BigDoor Board Meeting” is very helpful. Don’t invite me to a meeting that says “Meeting with Brad Feld.” Make it something like “Smith / Feld – UX for BigDoor” meeting.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 2, 2013
'Every entrepreneur wishes that he could predict whether his idea could be the “next big thing,” before he spent his life savings and years of energy on it. Investors, on the other hand, typically don’t even look very hard at the product or service, but prefer to evaluate first the entrepreneur, and secondly the business plan. I define these products and services as “solutions” (customers buy solutions to a problem), but Guy Kawasaki more generically calls them causes, meaning any new idea, comp
Mike Michalowicz
JULY 31, 2013
'Today, as I write this, I am sitting on a veranda with the most magnificent views of Jamaica. I came here to speak at the annual Business Summit event in Kingston, and my wonderful host has me staying in a villa at Strawberry Hill. My room sits on top of a mountain (a hill for Jamaicans, a mountain for New Jerseians), over looking other mountains in all directions.
YoungUpstarts
JULY 31, 2013
'by Thomas Moran, CEO of Addison Group. From payroll issues to healthcare costs, employers must navigate various legal technicalities to stay compliant with ever-changing laws. For many small to mid-sized businesses, this can be a heavy burden to bear. As a result, outsourcing employees through staffing firms and streamlining operations and functions can save both money and headaches.
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 2, 2013
'I adore Jeremy Bloom. He co-founded Integrate , which we are investors in. I’ve interviewed him for the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series I do at CU Boulder. We’ve been part of a few events together. He’s got an enormous heart, soul, and brain. A while ago he created a foundation called Wish of a Lifetime. It’s a magnificent example of what I call “ Random Acts of Kindness ” and is a deep part of my value system.
The Equity Kicker
JULY 30, 2013
'One of the reasons I moved to Forward was to be in the vanguard of change for early stage company finance. Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger wrote a post yesterday about the disruption of venture capital which lists the changes afoot: Information about VCs on the internet. In the mid-1990s VCs began to have websites, but there were no good resources for entrepreneurs to find out about the venture capital process and learn about individual firms or partners.
Mike Michalowicz
AUGUST 1, 2013
'Wouldn’t you know it. I am at the Four Seasons in Kingston, Jamaica for breakfast today (not today “today,” but as I write this “today”), and out of nowhere six or seven people emerge for a photo shoot. Not of me mind you. The cliche Austin Powers photographer is barking out commands in preparation for the shoot. A model stands in the shade off in the distance, as a makeup artist applies makeup, another feeds her water and grapes (literally), and yet another is cir
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 2, 2013
'Nexus 10 (S$668 for 32GB Wifi version, in charcoal gray). The Nexus 10 is the latest of the Nexus series, designed with the joint efforts of technology giants Google and Samsung. The powerful tablet device carries the best-of-class hardware married with the latest version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and the all of Google’s app goodness, and includes the world’s highest resolution tablet display (so far), as well as multi-user support.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 31, 2013
'I’m intensely proud of both the amazing startup community in Boulder as well as the many significant companies that have been – and are being – created in the little town of 100,000 people I call home. I regularly talk about the ones we’ve invested in through Foundry Group, but this only covers a part of the awesomeness that is going on here as Foundry Group has a very tight thematic focus.
The Next Web
JULY 29, 2013
'Marco Gomes is the founder of social media advertising company Boo-box , which reaches 60 million people in Brazil monthly with ads from clients like Google, Unilever, Volkswagen and Microsoft. He’ll be speaking at our upcoming TNW Conference Latin America , which takes place on 28 and 29 August in São Paulo, Brazil. In the run-up to the conference, we caught up with Gomes to find out about what it’s like to do business in Brazil, how foreign companies should approach the market, and what we ca
Mike Michalowicz
JULY 29, 2013
'In this episode of On A Roll, Mike Michalowicz explains why you need to excel at the little things. Customers don’t notice the big things you do right, because they expect you to do it right. It’s the little unexpected things that can wow a customer. Focus on being the world’s best at the little things.
YoungUpstarts
JULY 31, 2013
'Human parents will spend any amount to pamper their children… even those of the dog variety. Earlier we highlighted the FitBark , an activity tracking system and mobile app that you use on your dog to record their physical activity around the clock (incidentally Fitbark has just relaunched their funding campaign on crowdfunding site Indiegogo ).
The Equity Kicker
AUGUST 2, 2013
'I just read this in a post about learning to be an entrepreneur: Paul Graham promotes the view that it’s a bad idea to begin with big ambitions, because the bigger they are, the longer they are going to take to realize, and the longer you are projecting into the future, then the more likely you are going to be wrong. “The way to do really big things,” he says, “is to do really small things, and grow them bigger.”.
The Next Web
JULY 28, 2013
'Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Lasse Clausen, co-founder and CEO of FOUNDD , a Berlin based discovery engine. You can follow him on Twitter here. This post originally appeared on his blog. I just installed Pocket on my iPad. It’s well designed product that takes you elegantly through a complicated setup process. But one fundamental step was flawed.
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