Sat.Oct 19, 2013 - Fri.Oct 25, 2013

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More Features Kill More Startups Than Lack of Money

Startup Professionals Musings

'“Scope creep” (or feature creep) is an insidious disease that kills more good startups than any other, especially high-tech ones, and yet most founders (who may be the cause) never even see it happening. This term refers to the penchant to add just one more feature to the product or service before first delivery, just because you can. The instigators are all well-intentioned – executives talk to potential customers who “must have” a few more things; or the technical team edicts some “technicall

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How To Fix Obamacare

Feld Thoughts

'Now that our federal government is back at work and the short term debt ceiling thing is resolved, it should be no surprise that the news cycle is now obsessed with Obamacare and its flawed implementation. Over the weekend I must have seen a dozen articles about this online and in the NY Times, and then I woke up this morning to a bunch of new things about the Healthcare.gov site underlying tech, how screwed up it is , and what / how the Health and Human Services agency is going to do to fix i

CTO Hire 134
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Web-Based Worthworm Helps Determine PMV For Startup Investment Purposes

YoungUpstarts

'One of the challenges for investing in startups has always been the lack of an established way for founders and investors to actually measure and decide on the valuation of the startup concerned. But newly launched Worthworm ( www.worthworm.com ) aims to do exactly that – the web-based system was designed to help develop a realistic process to determine pre-money valuation (PMV) for early-stage ventures seeking investment from angel investors and the like, facilitating negotiations betw

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Search: Not Provided: What Remains, Keyword Data Options, the Future

Occam's Razor

'In late 2011, Google announced an effort to make search behavior more secure. Logged-in users were switched to using httpS from http. This encrypted their search queries from any prying eyes, and kept from being passed on to websites the users visits after seeing search results. This led to the problem we, Marketers, SEOs, Analysts, fondly refer to as not provided.

Search 154
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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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Speaker Lineup for the 2013 Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Between webcasts and interviews, we’ve been gradually introducing some of the speakers who are appearing at this year’s Lean Startup Conference. Now we’re ready to announce the full lineup , along with a special deal, explained below. There are some speakers on this year’s roster whom you''ve heard of before and who who deliver great talks every time out—people like Marc Andreessen , Steve Blank , Reid Hoffman, Chris Dixon and Ke

Lean 152
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5 UX Hacks That Can Immediately Increase Revenue

ConversionXL

'Managing shopper experience for medium-sized eCommerce businesses presents a lot of opportunities for conversion testing, and the ability to see real and immediate revenue results when tests are successful. My favorite conversion tests are those that can be abstracted from the specific website audience and applied to larger populations of online shoppers.

Revenue 124

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Creating And Pitching A Product At Startup Weekend, Investing In Startups Via Angel List, And How To Gain Exposure For A New Project

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. In this week’s podcast episode on the Walter and Yaro show (still yet to be named!) we review Walter’s hectic weekend putting in long hours at a startup event. He was part of a team that came third in a competition to create a new product, pitch it and even find customers for it, … Read the rest of this entry » The post Creating And Pitching A Product At Startup Weekend, Investing In Startups Via Angel List, And How To Gain Exposure Fo

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How to Nail a Group Presentation

Both Sides of the Table

'Most people suck at presenting to big groups. It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential employees, customers and VCs. So I thought I’d write a piece on how not to suck when you give a presentation. 1. Show some energy!

Audience 399
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I felt a great disturbance in the Force.

deal architect

'We have watched for years as cloud companies target on-premise systems – so Salesforce going after Siebel, Workday after PeopleSoft, Amazon after IBM etc. At the Microsoft Analyst Event yesterday I heard in reverse of back to on-premise examples especially.

Cloud 259
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Investors Look First At The Founder, Then The Idea

Startup Professionals Musings

'Investors are people too. They evaluate you like you should assess a possible co-founder or first employee. What are your credentials? What have you done that would convince me that my money is safe in your hands? Only after they see you as fundable, do they want to assess your plan for fundability, not the other way around. Even with great credentials, it is all too possible for an entrepreneur to come across as a high risk investment.

Founder 270
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Imbalanced People

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

'There’s a saying that a great developer is 10x more productive than a mediocre one. That’s not true. You can’t put 100 average designers on a committee and get a fabulous design, right? A great developer, or a great designer, is better than 10x an average one — they’re better than an infinite number. Because they’ll come up with ideas and implementations that 100 others wouldn’t.

Engineer 257
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Top 4 jobs of a startup CEO #blindpost

Jeff Hilimire

'Johnson Cook , the dude that sits right behind me at Atlanta Tech Village , and who flew the pirate flag on top of the building last week cementing himself forever in my consciousness as a true bad@ass, wrote a post recently called, The Top 3 Jobs of a Startup CEO. I read all of Johnson’s posts, but this one sounded like the perfect blindpost so I grabbed the headline and did my own thing with it (without reading his post first), per the blindpost rules.

Startup 54
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Microsofts High Value Strategy

deal architect

'I arrived at Microsoft’s Fall Analyst Event with modest expectations. I expected to hear about the growing MBS Dynamics business with 400,000 customers. I expected a bit of disarray given the CEO transition and long search. It turned out be.

Software 246
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Startups Must Tout Market Needs Before Technology

Startup Professionals Musings

'Even though I love technology, I always cringe when an entrepreneur starts his pitch by touting his new technology. He has forgotten that new technologies are perceived by most customers as causing more pain than the problems they hope to eliminate. I chastise these startups to highlight the solution created by the technology, rather than highlight the technology itself.

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[Singapore] GrabTaxi – Disrupting The Singapore Cab Industry, One Cab At A Time

YoungUpstarts

'Singapore’s taxi industry has been the subject of many recently introduced services looking to disrupt that sector. We’ve seen the recent introduction of premium limousine provider Uber , which hails a luxurious if pricey ride with simply a few touches on their mobile, to various different mobile applications on Android and iOS all offering an easier in obtaining a cab in this city.

Singapore 254
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NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing

Feld Thoughts

'Several years ago on a Saturday I found myself at Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte. I was attending the second National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) Awards for Aspirations in Computing event. I had gone for a three hour run early in the morning on a beautiful spring day in Charlotte and my mind was wandering all over the place.

Charlotte 191
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Innovations from surprising places

deal architect

'Innovations from various parts of the world we don’t usually expect innovation from Construction Outsourcing – Philippines The parbuckling of the Costa Concordia – Italy Smartphones made in the US – Fort Worth, TX Global Shipping innovations – Massive boats, Innovative Business Uses of Technology'

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Startups Need To Embrace Zero Paid Media Marketing

Startup Professionals Musings

'The power and influence of paid media advertising, including print ads, TV commercials, radio, and even online digital campaigns is waning, in favor of unpaid earned and owned messaging from your website, social media, key market influencers, and existing customer word-of-mouth. But startups need to remember that even zero paid media doesn’t mean that marketing is free.

Media 252
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Giift.com – Playing The Right Cards

YoungUpstarts

'How many cards do you have in your wallet? If you take away your credit cards, you’re likely to find an entire array of other cards that run the gamut from loyalty cards from your favorite stores, gym membership cards to the one that carries your affiliation to a certain airline program. In fact, you’ll probably be surprised by the number of cards you’re carrying at any one point.

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Scary, Month-End Sales Numbers? Time for Better Content Strategy

Rembrandt Communications

'Give Customers What They Really Want It’s Halloween so things are pretty scary out there. But if you are looking at low sales numbers as the end of the month grows near, that can be darn right terrifying! If this sounds familiar, I’ve got a few helpful tips for you. First of all, are you […].

Sales 159
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The Internet of Small Supplies

deal architect

'Lee, our leather repair guy, has mended and polished countless shoes and bags and heels and soles for our family over the last couple of decades.

Internet 220
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How Entrepreneurs Can Be Business Leaders And More

Startup Professionals Musings

'Starting and building a company is all about leadership – formulating an idea, building a unique plan based on vision and experience, and forging a path over and through all obstacles. Yet the image of leadership in business is at an all-time low, according to national leadership experts, considering the political debacles, record business bankruptcies, and executive fraud cases.

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[Infographic] Best Business Climates Of The World

YoungUpstarts

'Did you know that the many of the best cities around the world for business is actually in the Middle East? In fact, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are amongst the top five cities in the first world (based on the Human Development Index) that have the best business climates. On the other hand, much of Europe is languishing in recession – Portugal, Spain and Greece bring up the rear as three of the five cities with the worst business climates.

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Lean Analytics: The Best Numbers for Non-Tech Companies

Startup Lessons Learned

'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. If you’re coming to them from outside the tech sector, the language around analytics can be particularly confusing. Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies.

Analytics 167
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Social Networks and innovation content

deal architect

'What’s your favorite social network -Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora, Pinterest, other? Sorry I asked and started a debate :) That’s the new reality, is it not? People have vigorous views about how much they like one versus another. With the.

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9 Tips To Business Success By Anticipating Problems

Startup Professionals Musings

'Creating a startup, or managing any business, is all about problem solving. Some people are good at it and some are not – independent of their IQ or their book smarts (there may even be an inverse relationship here). Yet I’m convinced that problem solving is a learnable trait, rather than just a birthright. Entrepreneurs who are great problem solvers within any business are the best prepared to solve their customers’ needs effectively as well.

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[Africa] Nominations For Top35-Under35CEO Awards Now Open.

YoungUpstarts

'Africa may be home to mostly developing countries, but that doesn’t mean there’s little or no entrepreneurship on the continent. In fact, there are many unsung young African entrepreneurs struggling to make a difference – and Top35-Under35CEO Awards , an annual program that highlights and recognizes young African entrepreneurs, aims to use their examples to encourage and promote more entrepreneurship among young Africans.

Africa 181
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Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey suggests you create a daily ‘Do and Don’t List’ This is his.

The Next Web

'Square co-founder and Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey made an appearance at Y Combinator’s Startup School event where he spoke about acceptance and motivation in how you build a team and company. You can’t do something without a common share or purpose — you will wobble and not do anything that is timeless. Reading from Robert Henri’s “ The Art Spirit “, Dorsey made comparisons about what’s in the story with how it relates to startups.

Cofounder 167
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IaaS Architectures

deal architect

'Timely article in InformationWeek as cloud provider Nirvanix goes out of business about the scrutiny IaaS architectures will increasingly get “The size of the pipes providers use to move data into and out of their cloud is an architectural decision, Cloud Computing, SaaS'

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How to really learn from your experiments

Version One Ventures

'At any stage of a start-up’s life, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different directions to take. In the early phases, you need to pick the right product direction and find your product-market fit. Later, you may wonder which marketing channels will work at scale and which ones won’t. Since you never want to approach each crossroad blindly, the key is to continually test out the options.

Lean 154
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[Sponsored] Make Video Calls With UberConference

YoungUpstarts

'Thanks to advances technology, the tools available for team collaboration and work productivity have taken the small business and startup world by storm. From online project management applications and professional group chat software to team calendaring and cloud storage solutions, the technology aids that once could only be afforded by large corporate enterprises are now available to far smaller companies at far more manageable prices.

Video 178
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50 incredible stats about the tech scene that businesses need to know

The Next Web

'The Internet can be a difficult space for entrepreneurs to maneuver considering the many facets to it. Should I start with a mobile presence first? Do I need an app or can I just optimize my website for mobile viewing? Should I advertise via Facebook or YouTube? All these are questions that companies tend to face. And here is where a slideshow compiled by Vala Afshar, the CMO and Chief Customer Officer at American computer networking company Enterasys , comes in extremely useful.

Mobile 158
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Wellesley’s New Human-Computer Interaction Lab

Feld Thoughts

'Amy and I just underwrote the renovation of Wellesley College’s new Human-Computer Interaction Lab. The picture above is a screen capture of the Wellesley College home page today (called their “Daily Shot” – they change the home page photo every day) with a photo from yesterday when Amy did the ribbon cutting on the HCI Lab.

Boston 136
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Retailers: Don't Track Me, Bro

This is going to be BIG.

'A lot of money is being put into trying to figure out what I do when I walk into a store. Nomi just raised $10M and Prism Skylabs just raised $15M. These efforts aren''t new. Path Intelligence raised a million bucks to do this years ago. Given the time I spent a decade ago doing not only venture capital, but investing in private equity funds that buy retail companies, I find this data collection fascinating.

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5 Tools Your Business Needs For 2014

YoungUpstarts

'Like it or not, we’re in the last few months of 2013. Whether you follow a calendar fiscal year, or use the US Government’s example and run your year from October to October, you’re either in the first quarter of the new year or the last quarter of an old one. That means it’s time to start thinking about how to improve your business for 2014.

Metadata 172
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13 industries that tech founders should watch

The Next Web

'Savvy founders don’t just focus on iterating their own products – they look to other industries and niches for inspiration and opportunity as well. Whether you’re looking for new ways to scale growth or simply trying to figure out where the competition’s headed, staying nimble is key. To find out which industries tech founders should look to next, I asked a panel of 13 founders the following: What is one industry (or niche) tech founders should be exploring now, and why?

Founder 156