Sat.Mar 28, 2015 - Fri.Apr 03, 2015

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10 Paths Which Often Lead To Early Business Failure

Startup Professionals Musings

'Every entrepreneur I know has their favorite excuse for a previous failure – an investor backed out, the economy took a downturn, or a supplier delivered bad quality. These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and Angel investor, I still see too many common failure causes that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm.

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3 Ways Technology Is Changing Small Business Lending

YoungUpstarts

'by Jake Dacillo, Marketing Director, Balboa Capital. In 1994 Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said, “retail banks are dinosaurs, they can be bypassed,” in a Newsweek interview. Over two decades have passed since he made that statement, but the Internet has helped change the banking landscape remarkably. Consumers can now conduct a wide variety of bank-related transactions from the comfort of their computers, tablets and mobile devices.

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10 Things the Bank Will Ask When You Need a Business Loan

Up and Running

'That bank loan you want for your company? Well, the bank is going to want a lot before they give it to you. Do you find this daunting? Me too. I was really disappointed when I needed my company’s first commercial bank loan to finance receivables of more than $1 million—from well-known distributors no less—and we ended up having to sign a lien on our family home to get the loan.

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A Checklist For Writing Code

David Teten

'Ever since I studied Total Quality Management in college, I’ve been a bit obsessed with documenting processes. I was particularly influenced by Dr. Atul Gawande’s “ Checklist Manifesto ”, which underlined for me the value of collecting, documenting, analyzing, and continually re-optimizing best practices. I wrote a while ago a 3-part series on communications: How to Write a Memo That People Will Actually Read.

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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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How to Get Laid Off

OnlyOnce

'How to Get Laid Off. One of my colleagues at Return Path saw my post about How to Quit Your Job and was inspired to share this story with me. Please note there is no other method to my posting it other than thinking it’s a very good way of approaching a very difficult situation. In 2009 I was working at a software security start up in the Silicon Valley.

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Three Tools To Button Up Your Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Max Yoder, co-founder and CEO of Lesson.ly. Small businesses are always looking for improvements to help their businesses run effectively while maintaining a positive reputation in the community. Online solutions that provide a “buttoned-up” impression don’t have to be costly. In fact, some of the best tools available are created to give a bigger-business feel without breaking the bank.

More Trending

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Startup PR: A Journalist’s Advice for Seed-Stage Companies Seeking Press Coverage

View from Seed

'Editor’s note: Unlike the Ubers and Airbnbs of the tech startup world, seed-stage companies don’t typically have the valuations, awareness, or traction typically associated with press coverage. That said, coverage is important, and early-stage companies would be wise to work with local press in addition to national. Below, we interview Lauren Landry, a journalist who covered the Boston innovation economy for four years prior to her recent move to Northeastern University.

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Hacking For Defense In Silicon Valley

Steve Blank

'Lead, follow or get the heck out of the way. In peacetime the U.S. military is an immovable and inflexible bureaucracy. In wartime it can adapt and adopt organizational change with startling speed. BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. —– But first some history… World War II.

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Why Unicorns Are No Longer Enough. The Battle for Hendecorns

Both Sides of the Table

'We built MakeSpace’s logistics systems and customer applications (to see all of your items in storage in beautiful photography) in the first year. Then we launched our service in NYC and in just one year captured 2% of all new storage customers in our target demo in just one year with almost no marketing budget. How did we achieve these initial results?

Chicago 243
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No Expert Has A Startup Checklist To Ensure Success

Startup Professionals Musings

'A common request I get while mentoring entrepreneurs is for a copy of the startup checklist they need to follow, in order to build a successful new business. I wish it was that easy. The challenge is that every new business needs to be innovative and different, in order to rise above the crowd, bring real change to the world, and give you the satisfaction you seek.

Startup 219
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Accidental VC: How Much Does Design Matter for Seed-Stage Startups?

View from Seed

'Accidental VC is a series written by me, Jay Acunzo. Though I never planned it, I somehow wound up working in VC in 2014 as NextView’s head of platform. And since I’m an operator, not investor, I recognize just how valuable all the casual, daily discussions inside a VC’s office can be to fellow operators and entrepreneurs. So, while I’m thankful for what I’m learning, this series is my attempt to share this knowledge far beyond our office walls … one random l

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How Employers Use Social Media To Screen Applicants (And Why They Should Change Their Tactics)

YoungUpstarts

'by Michael Klazema , lead author and editor for Backgroundchecks.com. In the fall of 2014, TIME Money highlighted a study — conducted by the recruiting company Jobvite — to assess how employers use social media as a recruiting tool. According to the study, 93 percent of surveyed hiring managers will look at an applicant’s social media profile as part of the hiring decision process.

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Trying Something New On Immigration In Colorado

Feld Thoughts

'I’ve been working on the Startup Visa since I first wrote about it on 9/10/2009 in my post The Founders Visa Movement. While there has periodically been improvement on the margins on the issue, I think our federal government has broadly failed us on this front. So, I’m going to try something different. Yesterday, CU Boulder announced a new Entrepreneurs in Residence program to be administered by the Silicon Flatirons program.

Colorado 140
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Every Entrepreneur Dreams Of A Startup Without Risk

Startup Professionals Musings

'Outside of dreams, there is no real business opportunity without risk. Serious entrepreneurs know that, but too many “wannabes” still fall for that elusive get-rich-quick scheme with no risk. As an active Angel investor, I still hear entrepreneurs asserting large opportunities with minimal risk and no competition. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.

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Is the Freemium Model the Future of Marketplaces?

Version One Ventures

'The Freemium Model, where a vendor offers both a free and paid version of the product, has become the de facto business model for many SaaS companies. Freemium makes general usage free, while monetizing the heaviest users through premium features. This model has proven to work well for consumer apps like Spotify as well as enterprise services like Hootsuite.

Revenue 131
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10 Crowdfunding Tips & Tricks: WePay

YoungUpstarts

'by Bill Clerico, CEO and co-founder of WePay. Crowdfunding continues to grow in popularity, creating endless opportunities for inventive commerce and fundraising opportunities. In addition to the old-school general purpose crowdfunding sites, new platforms are emerging to serve specific verticals or sets of verticals. These niche platforms in turn are leading to even greater opportunities in small business categories from technology to food and beverage.

Vertical 159
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The Coming Zombie Startup Apocalypse

This is going to be BIG.

'Are we in a bubble? And if so, when will it burst? Everyone likes to debate it, and statistically, almost no one gets it right. Not only is it notoriously difficult to time the market, but even if you did, you''d miss out on individual winners. Sam Altman of YC recently pointed out that pulling back during the downturn in 2008 would result in several big misses: In October of 2008, Sequoia Capital—arguably the best-ever in the business—gave the famous “RIP Good Times” presentation (I was there)

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How Valuable Are Stock Options Offered By A Startup?

Startup Professionals Musings

'Wouldn’t you like to be one of the lucky people who joined Google and Facebook when these were startups, and now be a multi-millionaire? So people ask me “How many shares should I ask for or expect when I join a startup today?” In reality, the number of shares doesn’t mean anything – it’s your percent of the total that you need to negotiate. For example, 200,000 shares may sound like a lot, but if the startup has issued 20 million (a common starting point), that’s just 1% of the company.

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The 8 Most Common Small Business Accounting Mistakes

Up and Running

'Thanks to the huge range of accounting applications available for today’s small and medium-sized businesses, it’s easier than ever to keep an accurate record of where your business’s money is going. While accounting software has made bookkeeping and accounting easier for small businesses, it’s also made errors and accounting mistakes—from incorrectly categorizing a transaction to doing all accounting yourself—much more common.

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How To Have An Environmentally Friendly Office

YoungUpstarts

'When you are working in an office or even better yet, running an office, there are lots of things that you have to be concerned about. One of the things that you need to be thinking about within an office is ensuring that all of your staff are happy and safe in the working environment. When you’re talking about your staff being safe you’re not just talking about ensuring that they not hurting themselves in the office with a rogue stapler or a paper cut.

Green 152
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Announcing a new strategic investor and partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures

This is going to be BIG.

'I''ve said before that I wouldn''t take on a partner. I didn''t think I needed one, and I''m happy to say that it seems that I''ve done just fine without one. I''ve had the good fortune of investing in standout companies like Canary, Tinybop, Floored, Orchard, and Ringly, just to name a few. The fund is performing really well and we''ve had lots of inbound offers to invest in the second fund, which was being rounded up until recently.

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7 Entrepreneur Types Drive Change On A Global Scale

Startup Professionals Musings

'By most definitions of the term, an entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business, incorporating innovative changes to existing products, services, business models, and creating new markets. Yet very few achieve that great aspiration of really driving economic, social, and environmental changes on a global scale. What does it take to get to that level?

Global 208
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5 Marketing Mistakes I Made as a New Entrepreneur

Up and Running

'After years of working for micromanaging bosses, working ten-hour days, and feeling completely drained at the end of a workweek, my husband and I decided to call it quits. We left our jobs in the media world and started our own business, McEwen’s Media. Our business is an extension of the work we did for the corporate world, with one big exception—we’re in charge.

Marketing 127
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Creative Marketing Ideas For Easter

YoungUpstarts

'When it comes to marketing, using what’s currently on trend can really help boost your campaigns and get people talking about your business, products, or services. If you’ve walked into your local department store lately, you’ll begin to see Easter decorations and foods set out to prepare for the upcoming springtime holiday. Follow suit and use this time of year to your advantage when it comes to your marketing strategy and get it on the action.

Marketing 149
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How to put an end to workload paralysis

The Next Web

'This article originally appeared on the Crew blog. We’re all busy. But sometimes we go through periods where the work piles up and it seems like it might never end. With the waxing and waning of my freelance work, a startup to manage, and side projects always on the go, this seems to happen to me all too often. So why is it that the busier I get, the less work I seem to do?

Web 127
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Introducing one of Version One’s earlier investments: VarageSale

Version One Ventures

'Online marketplaces have made it easier than ever for people to buy and sell things. But the human element has been missing with the anonymity of Craigslist and eBay. That’s why I’m happy to announce an investment we did two years ago when we participated in the seed round of VarageSale. At the time, they chose not to announce the funding, following a more general trend of going stealth.

Stealth 119
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The Candy Queen Store: A Story of Struggle and Perseverance for Entrepreneurs

Up and Running

'Have you ever noticed that children have a universal desire to play dress up? Kids love to be creative with their sense of fashion: they cover themselves in stickers, wear tutus with rain boots, adorn their heads with flowers and princess crowns. Mel Buchanan, owner of the Candy Queen Store, took notice. With drive and vision, Mel responded to this need by creating the Candy Queen Store to serve fashion-adventurous girls ages three to 10.

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[Infographic] What Is Your Business’ Greatest Cyber Threat?

YoungUpstarts

'Here’s a scary statistic for you – 90% of small and medium businesses in the US don’t use data protection for company and customer information. That’s right, only one in ten small and medium businesses actually put in place proper practices and processes that prevent business disasters – ranging from simple data loss to critical security breaches – from happening.

Security 147
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A 6-step survival guide for non-technical founders

The Next Web

'Ash Read is the founder of Nudge, a Twitter community management and customer service tool. This article first appeared on Medium. I’m not gonna lie to you. Building a product is really, really hard work. Especially when you can’t push the pixels and dive into the codebase yourself. As a non-technical person, starting a software business can seem like an uphill battle.

Founder 126
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Desperately Seeking a Solution to Google Hangouts Errors 212, 213, 214, 215, 216

Feld Thoughts

'I’m a huge Google Hangouts user. It’s typically a multi-day occurrence that I’m on a hangout and one of the devices connected to the mega-video-conferencing setup in my office is a Chromebox. A few months ago I got Google Hangouts errors intermittently for a few weeks but it magically cleared up. I noticed it again on Sunday and it has been constant on all my computers in multiple locations on different networks.

Caching 114
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Successful marketplaces evolve away from transaction revenue

The Equity Kicker

'Hand crafted goods marketplace Etsy recently filed for IPO and Techcrunch has a great analysis of it’s S1. As you can see from the chart below much of the recent growth has come from seller services. The post also looks at Homeaway, Grubhub, and Shutterstock, three other marketplaces that have similarly diversified away from transaction revenues to drive growth and profitability.

Revenue 110
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What Are Cloud Servers And How To Utilise Them For Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Alex Christo. When it comes to conducting business online, you have to be outfitted so you can work in the cloud and stay connected without the threat of unexpected downtime. Because cloud servers are a necessary component of doing business online, it helps to understand a little bit more about the concept. A Hazy Concept for Some People. When anyone speaks of the “cloud” in computer technology, it sounds rather nebulous, just like a cloud itself.

Cloud 147
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Why these 9 companies choose transparency

The Next Web

'As Neil Patel recently said, “transparency is the new marketing.” For several years now, internet and affiliate marketers like Pat Flynn and Matthew Woodward, have shared their “income reports”. This works well for marketers as proof that they know what they are doing. When they launch a product, or even publish a blog, people listen. Within the last couple of years, you are now starting to see actual companies sharing their revenue numbers and many other things (like employee’s salaries).

Affiliate 125
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Book: The Intel Trinity

Feld Thoughts

'As of today The Intel Trinity,The: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World’s Most Important Company wins my award for best business book of 2015. I got an Apple ][ for my bar mitzvah in 1978. Ever since then I’ve been fascinated with computers and the computer industry. I obviously missed the 1950s and 1960s, but the history of that time period has deeply informed my perspective, especially the definition of Moore’s law by Gordon Moore in 1965.

Cofounder 113
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Ask the questions you should be asking

The Equity Kicker

'I just read the following quote in a post by Jon Parrish a now successful entrepreneur about pitfalls that founders fall into: Entrepreneurs (myself included) have this incredible ability to ignore reality when it isn’t in line with our goals. We feel threatened by the idea that the answers to the questions we should be asking may prevent us from moving forward, so we don’t ask them.

Search 99
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Lenovo Starts To Play In The “Things” Market: TBR

YoungUpstarts

'by Ezra Gottheil, principal analyst at Technology Business Research. The Internet of Things offers device vendors like Lenovo the opportunity to diversify their consumer portfolios, increase revenue and profits, and establish deeper relationships with customers. Lenovo has been working on its things portfolio for about a year, and the company is poised to bring its expanded collection of products to market in China.

Marketing 142