Sat.Apr 16, 2016 - Fri.Apr 22, 2016

article thumbnail

The Importance of Teams and Why the Best Leaders Cultivate Them

Both Sides of the Table

I was watching my favorite show on TV this morning – GPS (Global Public Square) with Fareed Zakaria. It is a hugely compelling show because Zakaria covers world issues that will affect all of us in ways that are accessible and with frameworks for processing disparate information. He brings knowledgable experts from varying points of view but never books anybody that engages in yelling matches.

Pakistan 205
article thumbnail

Money Management Tips For Virtual Assistants & Small Business Owners

YoungUpstarts

by Diana Ennen and Kelly Poelker, co-authors of β€œ Virtual Assistant, The Series: Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA β€œ. Money management is one of those topics many virtual assistants and small business owners routinely put off and hope for the best. It’s front and center on the mind on April 1 st in anticipation of the April 15 th tax deadline, but then it goes straight to the back burner for the rest of the year.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The Number-One Rule Is to Stay Business-Focused

Startup Professionals Musings

After listening and working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, I have heard many focused only on their next million dollar idea, but very few make any money from an idea alone. On the other end of the spectrum, others focus totally on building a product, assuming a great product will assure business success. Both groups are missing the essence of an entrepreneur – the business focus.

article thumbnail

Q1 Round-up: Portfolio companies in the news

Version One Ventures

In the past, we typically wait until the end of the year to recap what’s happened here at V1. But with a group of incredible startups doing great things, we’re determined to provide more frequent updates. If you’re not already familiar with the startups and founders making up the V1 portfolio, here’s a summary of some of this quarter’s news clippings.

article thumbnail

Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick NoreΓ±a, 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 NoreΓ±a 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

article thumbnail

All Great Websites Have This In Common

YFS Magazine

Planning for your online presence is just as important as planning anything in your business. And just like business planning, it requires tenacity, gumption, loads of introspection and sheer grit.

article thumbnail

Turn Your Web Design Talent Into Freelance Success

YoungUpstarts

By Dan Bochichio, co-founder of Bocain Designs. It’s 2016, and just about everyone either does business online or uses the internet as a tool to discover, rate and engage with businesses they rely upon. With so much demand and opportunity, now seems like a great time to tap into the market for quality freelance web designers, but what can you expect?

Web 100

More Trending

article thumbnail

Seriously, SAP?

deal architect

SAP has a new spokesperson, Phil. He is pretty slick: β€œthere’s no such thing as being fashionably late to a paradigm shift” He is also condescending to his lady boss. I hear he is doing a series, so in keeping.

Software 235
article thumbnail

5 Small Business Marketing Tools for Building Authority Fast

Duct Tape Marketing

5 Small Business Marketing Tools for Building Authority Fast written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Whether you are trying to get better rankings in Google, spreading your message on social media or working on making your website more persuasive, the power of being seen as an authority will help you streamline your digital marketing.

article thumbnail

Why Every Business Needs To Become A Platform, And How To Do It

YoungUpstarts

By Kurt Bilafer, Global Vice President Sales & Success at WePay. What’s the hottest trend in business right now? Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter? Sharing economy apps such as Uber and Airbnb? Apple, and its line of personal computing devices? Or Software as a Service for the enterprise, such as Salesforce? You could probably make a case for any one of these, but here’s the thing: Although on the surface these companies appear to have completely different business models, they al

Japan 109
article thumbnail

Introducing the NYC Tech Podcast from NextView [Ep. 1: Melting Pot Problems]

View from Seed

We’re thrilled today to roll out a bit of an experiment, but one we feel has staying power – an NYC Tech podcast. This show will be exclusively about, for, and even by New York City tech. Although we’ve written about NYC tech before and are active seed investors here, we’re hoping this podcast can fill a much-needed void, help strengthen the community, and shine a spotlight on an ecosystem that deserves more cheerleaders and local attention.

article thumbnail

Startup Advice

Both Sides of the Table

I usually tell people that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned by F’ing up at my first company.

Startup 173
article thumbnail

7 Leadership Tips When The Business Is Struggling

Startup Professionals Musings

It’s easy for an entrepreneur or a CEO to feel like a leader when things are going well, but the challenge is to keep that confidence and drive in the face of economic downturns, business turnarounds, and stressful personnel situations. Working twenty hours a day, losing your cool, and falling back to a no-risk strategy are not conducive to long-term success.

article thumbnail

How To Communicate Your Message On A Pull Up Banner

YoungUpstarts

If you are searching for a way to make a big impression for your business, then pull up banners are one of the most low-cost and portable marketing tools that you can use to drive more leads for your business. To ensure that pull up banners will work as a powerful marketing tool for your business, the team from Classic Colour offer the following tips on designing pull up banners that will attract more leads for your business.

Sales 100
article thumbnail

Hiring Your First Engineer: A Technical Entrepreneur’s Take

View from Seed

How do you build your engineering/dev team from the ground up? There are a few different ways to do it, but unfortunately, none bring a guarantee of success. Let’s make a few assumptions: You are a founder, you have your idea, and you have your money. It is just you. You need to bring in the right people to build your product. What kind of engineers do you need?

Engineer 149
article thumbnail

The Importance of Teams and Why the Best Leaders Cultivate Them

Both Sides of the Table

I was watching my favorite show on TV this morning — GPS (Global Public Square) with Fareed Zakaria.

Global 170
article thumbnail

8 Qualities That Put You In The Virtuoso CEO Category

Startup Professionals Musings

As an angel investor in early-stage startups, I’ve long noticed my peers apparent bias toward the strength and character of the founding entrepreneurs, often overriding a strong solution to a painful problem with a big opportunity. In other words, the entrepreneur quality is more important than the idea -- in investor jargon, people invest in the jockey, and not the horse.

article thumbnail

5 Ways To Unleash Your Creativity Through Humor

YoungUpstarts

Photo credit: LOL from Shutterstock. By Will Becker, Copywriter & Social Content Strategist, Trepoint. Comedy brings perspective. It brings the refreshing release of laughter and joy. It brings a critical eye and a necessary commentary on the world around us. Whether you yourself are a funny person or not, we turn to humor to help us better understand this big old mess we’re all a part of.

Stock 158
article thumbnail

Clarity of Message: Why You Need A Great Message & How To Create It

For Entrepreneurs

Intro In the early stages of their business, founders often struggle to come up with really strong messaging to describe what they are selling, and this has a huge impact on their ability to raise money, find customers, and attract employees. This is not that surprising, as it can be really hard to arrive at.

article thumbnail

Hacking for Defense (H4D) @ Stanford – Week 3

Steve Blank

We just held our third week of the Hacking for Defense class. This week the 8 teams spoke to 108 beneficiaries (users, program mangers, etc.), we held a Customer Discovery workshop, we started streaming the class live to DOD/IC sponsors and other educators, our advanced lecture was on Product/Market fit for the DOD/IC and we watched as the students solved their customer discovery obstacles and started getting closer to their customers.

article thumbnail

How to Create A Buyer Persona For Your Consumers

Brandanew

As a business you will naturally know who your ideal consumer is. Successful marketers work on something called as ‘buyer personas’ that help them really dig deep into this ideal customer. Personalization is a big 2016 marketing trend. As customers, we want brands to reach out to us with things we like and prefer. We don’t prefer random marketing messages that do not address any of our concerns or needs.

Ruby 116
article thumbnail

4 Major Mistakes Established Companies Make

YoungUpstarts

By Steven D. Goldstein, author of β€œ Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami? β€œ. Start-up companies obviously face many difficulties. Once they make the decision to start their business, they must operate at full throttle almost immediately. They know that if they do not build their business, and quickly, they’ll have nothing β€” so it becomes a fight for their life from day one.

article thumbnail

Current Startup Market Emotional Biases

Feld Thoughts

Bill Gurley wrote an incredible post yesterday titled On the Road to Recap: Why the unicorn financing market just became dangerous … for all involved. It’s long but worth reading every word slowly. I saw it late last night as it bounced around in my Twitter feed and read it carefully just before I went to bed so the words absorbed into my brain.

Marketing 103
article thumbnail

Hacking for Defense (H4D) @ Stanford – Week 3

Steve Blank

We just held our third week of the Hacking for Defense class. This week the 8 teams spoke to 108 beneficiaries (users, program mangers, etc.), we held a Customer Discovery workshop, we started streaming the class live to DOD/IC sponsors and other educators, our advanced lecture was on Product/Market fit for the DOD/IC and we watched as the students solved their customer discovery obstacles and started getting closer to their customers.

article thumbnail

Lean Startup Week 2016: Call for Speakers

Startup Lessons Learned

Guest post by Kirsten Cluthe, editorial director of Lean Startup Co. Speaking at Lean Startup Week offers renowned and emerging industry leaders the opportunity to share their stories with our global community. And by renowned and emerging, we mean you, person who deserves recognition from our community of 2,000 attendees for the awesome work you’re doing!

Lean 95
article thumbnail

Don’t Miss Your Window Of Opportunity

YoungUpstarts

By Lea Schneider. If you are looking for new opportunities to market your business, the answer may be right in front of you. Your store window opens a pathway to get your message to consumers on a daily basis and should be used as a promotional tool for your business. Window displays are not just for retail stores. Every sector of business should use their windows to get attention.

article thumbnail

Putting out the biggest fires

Eric Friedman

I am usually a very regimented person, and crave process and structure. Some would even say too black and white, as I need to allow for some grey areas and unknowns. I agree with this feedback and take it to heart. It wasn’t until I started to build the inside sales team at Foursquare that I really saw it as a something to work on and something to watch out for that I realized its importance.

Sales 85
article thumbnail

Making Space for Moms

Feld Thoughts

Tami Forman, the Executive Director of Path Forward (a new non-profit that I recently joined the board of ) just did a powerful five minute presentation on making space for moms in the workforce. I knew that Tami was a great speaker because of my interactions with her at Return Path, but she just totally blew me away with this talk. Making Space For Moms | Tami Forman | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo.

Naming 82
article thumbnail

How to hustle your way to growth

The Next Web

With the advent and proliferation of β€œgrowth hacking”, many products are launching with hopes of leveraging data, A/B tests, and viral loops to manufacture a hockey stick growth curve. It’s easy to think you can growth hack your way into an overnight success, but in practice it rarely works out that way. Instead, it looks more like this in the early days/months/years: Startups take off because the founders make them take off.

article thumbnail

[Infographic] What Market Research Can Do For Your SME

YoungUpstarts

For many reasons, market research is detrimental to the success of your enterprise. Depending on your industry, your market research needs will vary. Though most entrepreneurs are aware of the importance of market research when venturing into a new business, it is important to keep market research within your ongoing marketing strategies. Market research gives you a better understanding of the needs and wants of your customer.

Marketing 109
article thumbnail

Startup compensation: flat salaries and equity/options work best

The Equity Kicker

Earlier in my career I was a proponent of incentivising management teams with a quarterly bonus structure based on hitting KPIs that would be established at the start of each quarter. We had some success with this system, most notably at Zeus Technology, which was a good exit for my old firm Draper Esprit, but these days I recommend flat salaries with upside coming from options or founder shares.

Salary 79
article thumbnail

I’m drowning. Β Are you?

Hippoland

I’m going to digress from what I usually write about – the ins and outs of raising seed $$. A few weeks ago, a mentor to me asked me to jump into a new opportunity. Although it was super exciting, I basically said no. I’ve just been totally drowning with work, family, friends, hobbies, life – my sanity. I wasn’t keen to take on anything new.

B2B 76
article thumbnail

Psychological Backfiring: What No One Tells You About Neuromarketing

ConversionXL

You’ve read about color psychology, system one and two, emotional persuasion, etc. I know you have because it’s everywhere. It’s on KISSmetrics, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., Help Scout, HubSpot… you name it. Hell, we’ve covered some of these topics ourselves. Why? Well, because many psychological triggers do, in fact work.

article thumbnail

Building A Business: Getting The Word Out Fast

YoungUpstarts

When you build a new business from scratch, there is plenty to take on board. If you are like most people, you will probably find that there is more to do than you had anticipated. However, don’t let this put you off. If anything, those who succeed in business are those who actively enjoy the challenges. Nothing is a hurdle with the right approach! One of the major challenges early on will be spreading the word about your company.

article thumbnail

9 Virtues To Succeed In Life, Business And Football

YFS Magazine

I am a professional kicking coach and our camp’s theme for this season is β€˜Never Settle’. I truly believe that if you are willing to put in 100% and demand more from yourself, that your path to success increases ten fold.

Demand 75
article thumbnail

Looking for Interactive Video Artists

Feld Thoughts

Amy and I have started to buy some video art. I’m personally fascinated with the interactive stuff and am starting to learn more about different video artists. Here’s an example of one – Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – that my dad aimed me at. If you have ideas of folks I should look at, can you toss them in the comments? Oh – and I’m also looking for giant sculptures of monsters, like the one I have of the predator in my backyard, which I’ve named The Shrike.

Video 72
article thumbnail

How to win the battle against patent trolls

The Next Web

2015 was one of the worst years on record for patent troll lawsuits. Most of the lawsuits that snagged headlines involved tech titans – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon – but small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) were far more frequent targets. While these cases may make for less sensational news stories, they show that no business, no matter how small, is immune.

Web 69