Sat.Jul 02, 2016 - Fri.Jul 08, 2016

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Why Acceptance of Failure is Critical to Startup Success

Both Sides of the Table

I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer

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Is Your Business Making The Most Of Modern Technology?

YoungUpstarts

2016 is certainly an exciting time to be alive. It seems that every other day there’s some new software or gadget that the whole world raves about. Everyone’s feeling the rapid pace of technology, and as a business owner you should be too. There are countless ways you could be utilising modern technology to improve every aspect of your business. From HR to marketing to R&D, you’re at risk of falling behind the competition if you don’t use all the tech at your disposal.

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7 Common Staffing Mistakes That Doom Many Businesses

Startup Professionals Musings

Business success is all about having the best team, yet the average entrepreneur has little prior experience with hiring people and building top-notch teams. It’s no wonder that half of startups fail in the first five years , and an even smaller percentage ever see a return for their years of effort. Most new entrepreneurs assume their passion will attract and motivate the right team members.

Hiring 144
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Microservices Essentials for Executives: The Key to High Velocity Software Development

For Entrepreneurs

“Software is eating the world” – Marc Andreesen Companies thriving in the new world order have technology as a core competency. They build complex cloud applications. They constantly bring new capabilities and features to the market. And despite the constant iteration and updates to their cloud application, their software is rock-solid reliable. How do they.

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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 Learn Programming and Launch Your App in 3 Months—with No Programming Experience

Up and Running

If you’ve ever tried to start a software company or build a mobile app, you’ve probably come across these options for getting it out there: Find a technical cofounder. Hire a freelancer to build your app. Learn programming and build it yourself. When it comes to finding a cofounder, if you don’t already know someone with technical abilities, it’s going to be a very long, difficult process to find someone to work with you—if you can successfully do it at all.

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How To Improve Employee Satisfaction

YoungUpstarts

Dissatisfied employees are a problem. Either they’ll quit and take their talent elsewhere, (leaving you with a gap to fill), or they’ll “quit and remain”, meaning that they’ll physically remain in your office but will have ‘mentally’ handed in their notice. Want to avoid both these outcomes? Try these methods for improving employee satisfaction: Give pay rises where you can.

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Suck Less | A Plea For User-Centric Design: Powered By You!

Occam's Razor

Analysts, honestly, make the world go round when it comes to any successful business – yes, data is that important. As you might expect from any role, they also make a handful of important mistakes. I've written about the biggest mistake web analysts make. Today's post is an adjacent mistake: The cardinal sin of spending too much time with data and in reports!

Design 86
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How and Where to Write About Technology in Your Business Plan

Up and Running

Often, a business plan introduces a new technology that requires some explaining. On one hand, as a reader of business plans for investors, I see way too many business plans that ask a reader to wade neck-deep through technology to get to the business. That’s a great way make your reader run in the other direction! It’s a business plan, not a term paper or thesis.

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Four Business Ideas You Can Start For Less Than £1k

YoungUpstarts

Have you ever dreamed of starting your own business, but gave up on the idea because you didn’t think that you had enough money to fund it? Many people make the mistake of believing that they can’t pursue their dream of becoming an entrepreneur without thousands of pounds available. But, the truth is, this simply isn’t the case. If you’re hoping to run your own business one day, you’ll be pleased to hear that there are many different business ideas that you can start with just £1,000 or less.

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High Technology Tell All Books

Feld Thoughts

Tell All Books are nothing new and some of the most explosive ones of all time have already come from California (in and around Hollywood). Suddenly, tell alls are focusing on high tech companies instead of movie stars. So far this year two have been published with a lot of fanfare and I bet there are several others that are under contract from major publishing houses.

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15 Entrepreneurs Share Their Favorite Inspirational Business Quote

Hearpreneur

Share André Gide wrote that,”Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Quotes are an important part of motivation, though many of them are repeats of another turn of phrase. Business owners are particularly partial to famous quotations. Reading a motivational speech from a business legend or famous creative mind can give you a spark.

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The 10 Best U.S. Cities to Start a Business in for 2016

Up and Running

While we may think of a major hub like Silicon Valley as a prime example of an entrepreneurial city, the reality is that these epicenters of growth may not always offer the most supportive climate for new businesses. So, where should you stick your flag in the ground? To find out, I turned to WalletHub’s report on the best (and worst) cities in the United States to start a business in for 2016.

St. Louis 105
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A Review of Skytop Lodge: The Collapse of an Icon

Mike Michalowicz

I realize that you may be reading this article because you are considering a stay at Skytop Lodge in Skytop, Pennsylvania. I provide a full review below. But if you want the Cliff Notes version: Don’t go. The fees approach that of a Four Seasons resort, yet Skytop provides you with the cleanliness of a truck stop and the service attentiveness of a Motel 8.

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Mangling JSON numbers

TechEmpower

If we have a long (64-bit integer) that we serialize into JSON, we might be in trouble if JavaScript consumes that JSON. JavaScript has the equivalent of double (64-bit floating point) for its numbers, and double cannot represent the same set of numbers as long. If we are not careful, our long is mangled in transit. Consider 2 53 + 1. We can store that number in a long but not a double.

Java 294
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The Corrosive Nature of Over-Introducers

Both Sides of the Table

In modern society we’re all over-worked and over-loaded with information and tasks and to-dos and obligations. Nowhere is this more apparent than working in a startup where you are definitionally under-resourced and trying to make big accomplishments in compressed periods of time. That’s why focus is critical. Saying “no” often to people who want to divert you from your mission becomes obligatory if you want to make progress.

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Next Book: Silicon Collar

deal architect

My new book is nearing the end of the editing process and is headed to the design agency. It should be released by middle of September. Here’s a synopsis: “Never before have people had such a broad choice of occupations.

Design 231
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7 Keys To Signing Business Advisors That Add Value

Startup Professionals Musings

In my role as an angel investor to startups, I’m struck by the broad variety of advisor strategies I see in investor presentations and business plans that cross my desk. Some entrepreneurs are “lone rangers,” never mentioning any outside guidance, while others tout dozens of advisors. In my experience, both of these approaches will likely have minimal value for your venture.

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[Workshop at Ann Arbor] How To Create An Awesome Blog

Brandanew

July has begun, and the year seems to be whizzing past us. The good news is that we’re planning amazing things for the rest of the year, which have already rolling. The first event I’m speaking at this summer is with the WriteOn group at Ann Arbor. I’m a group regular and as you’d remember had previously shared some digital marketing insights with them last year.

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Veteran CTO on How the Tech Side of Startups Has Evolved [Traction #25: Yoav Shapira, Operator.VC]

View from Seed

In this episode, NextView’s Rob Go talks with Yoav Shapira, a longtime tech leader in the Boston startup community. Yoav was first employee at CarGurus, a founding executive of HubSpot, CTO at Happier, CTO at Jana, and more. Today, he shares the evolution of what it means to lead a startup from the technical side. Follow him @yoavshapira and watch for the official launch of his new VC firm, Operator.VC (announced after this episode was created).

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Blackmoon: A Next-Gen Marketplace Lending-As-A-Service Platform

YoungUpstarts

The launch of Blackmoon , a next-generation market lending-as-a-service platform in the US is good news for both lenders and investors. Blackmoon competes with existing securitization agents, as it uses advanced technology to give asset managers full-time access to loans provided by balance-sheet lenders. Since the launch, Blackmoon has continuously come up with the best technology for diverse industry-related functions including.

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7 Ways That Entrepreneurs Naively Misuse Their Board

Startup Professionals Musings

Most entrepreneurs avoid setting up a board of directors for their new business unless or until they sign up an investor who demands a seat on the board. That implies that a board of directors has no value to the founder, and is just another burden that to be assumed for the privilege of attracting outside investors or going public. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.

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How to Create an Ideal Creative Writing Space

Brandanew

Recently, I attended a great workshop by editor and all round creative Jeannie Ballew who presented us with her ideas on how to create an ideal creative writing space. The reason I decided to bring it to the blog here for marketing folks, is simply because, all of us are writers. Whether you're writing 1000 words in your marketing blogpost, 140 characters on Twitter or a further 700 on LinkedIn, we're all looking at getting more creative with our copies and craft!

Green 140
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What Your Content Says About Your Startup

Rembrandt Communications

Are you guilty of these 3 big mistakes? We get it. You’re a busy small-business-owner with a limited budget. And this means you probably cut corners by writing all of your website copy, e-mails, blogs, newsletters, and more. Yes, you finish and post the content on schedule, but what does the final product really say […]. The post What Your Content Says About Your Startup appeared first on Boost sales fast with content marketing strategy, SEO and PR here.

PR 100
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5 Tools To Increase Close Rate For A Young Upstart

YoungUpstarts

by James Kappen, founder of Proposable. Like most young entrepreneurs in the earliest stages of a professional career, my initial ideas for new business ventures were endless and abundant. In fact, at that time the most difficult decision seemed to revolve around simply determining which option would be the best – and most enjoyable – to pursue.

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Entrepreneurs Celebrate Their Independence Every Day

Startup Professionals Musings

For all entrepreneurs, starting a business is the route to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” no matter how risky. It’s the American dream that has been the goal of people in this country for over 240 years. If you are here in the U.S., I hope you are all able to take some time off this holiday weekend, to contemplate what you do, and why you do it.

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Our Q2 2016 Round-Up

Version One Ventures

Hope you had a great Canada Day and Fourth of July weekend! Here’s a quick recap of some of this quarter’s news clippings for V1 and our portfolio companies. Keep in mind that these are just the things that have been announced publicly; other equally important and interesting things have been happening behind the scenes too. Funding announcements. We made three new investments this quarter.

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How Facebook helped this guy’s e-commerce store go from zero to $100K+ in 3 months

The Next Web

22-year-old Melvin Chee from Melbourne, Australia went from experimenting with e-commerce dropshipping during his semester break to a 6-figure business in just 3 months. He had previously started several different businesses, many of which failed spectacularly. Some of his efforts were featured on BBC News and StartupDaily, but his biggest hit so far was started largely by accident.

Australia 101
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[Review] The Freaks Shall Inherit The Earth

YoungUpstarts

Chris Brogan is a freak. And a very successful one too. Author of numerous bestselling books on social media and influencer marketing, including “ The Impact Equation “, Chris has consulted with huge companies like Disney, Microsoft, Coke and Google, and is the publisher of Owner Magazine. He has also sold multi-million dollar companies, and amassed huge followings on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

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Ultimate Workout Room/Playroom for Crossfit, Parkour, and Gymnastics

David Teten

What is the best way to create maximum workout options in a New York apartment? I spent a fair amount of time researching the best system for the workout room/playroom in our new apartment, which we designed around fitness. (“Playroom” really means “room for adults to work out in and occasionally let children into”.) The solution we arrived at costs a lot less than a regular playroom and has dramatically more functionality.

New York 100
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3 Reasons Why Immigrants Make Great Entrepreneurs

YFS Magazine

There are many parallels between starting a life in a new country and starting a new business. While I used to feel ashamed that I was from a different country, I now appreciate the fact that I am an immigrant.

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What Is Machine Learning Anyway?

Feld Thoughts

One of the consistent characteristics of the tech industry is an endless labelling of technology and approaches. Some of it is foundational resulting from some entirely new. Much of it is re-categorizing something, either because it is suddenly trendy again or because a set of ideas have been organized in a new way. When I was in my 20s, I found this exciting.

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6 Tips For Entrepreneurs To Deal With Mental Stress

YoungUpstarts

by Swati Kapoor, Practo. Managing a business is no joke, and entrepreneurs frequently face challenging situations that impact them mentally. This, coupled with the modern way of living, can get you stressed at some point. It is considered normal to experience a small amount of stress in everyday life. In fact, that stress may be good for you. However, you don’t want to feel extremely stressed at all times as that could become the root of several problems.

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Strategies Hotels and Bed and Breakfasts Can Use to Increase Profit Margins

Up and Running

Ever since the idea entered your head, you haven’t been able to let it go. And now, you know almost without a doubt that you want to start and run your own bed and breakfast, or perhaps even a small hotel. But, you’ve got a lot of questions. What are you going to do when no one rents the room? How can you get people to rent a more expensive suite?

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Mind Shift: Top 5 Secrets To Mastering Your Entrepreneurial Mindset

YFS Magazine

Like many entrepreneurs, I used to mistakenly think that “hustle” and working hard each day are primary money making tasks that would propel my business forward. 

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Taiwanese TV on Mucker and the Rise of Silicon Beach

Mucker Lab

Unique Business News , a satellite cable news show based out of Taiwan, stopped by Mucker’s offices recently as part of a segment on Silicon Beach. The piece offers up a fresh, “across the other pond” perspective of the tech scene in Los Angeles and greater SoCal, which continues to gain wider recognition from around the globe. Watch the full segment here, which starts around the 0:33-second mark, and features Mucker at the 1:34 mark: In case you still need to brush up on your

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When To Bring In A Collection Agency

YoungUpstarts

For startup companies, cash flow is critical to survival. Being paid by customers and clients on a timely basis is vital to businesses of all sizes, however it is especially important for smaller, newer companies with limited capital resources. These companies, more than any others, rely on accurate and timely payments in order to stay afloat. When a customer fails to pay on time and begins to give excuses as to why they are unable to make the payment, this can have a serious detrimental effect