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

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Smart Startups Don’t Try To Satisfy Every Customer

Startup Professionals Musings

Let’s face reality -- no one can satisfy all the people all the time. In business, this means an entrepreneur who never says no to any customer is doomed to a hard life and some expensive mistakes. Many people will argue that total customer satisfaction is paramount, but I’m a pragmatist who believes that treating everyone the same really means treating all of them poorly.

Customer 149
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The Long Arc of Startup Teams: How Founders’ Approach to Talent Evolves

View from Seed

Basketball or football? I realize sports analogies for startups can feel trite, but as you think about the different phases of team-building in a startup, this one is actually pretty spot on. Your recruiting strategy should be adapted to a few distinct phases just as the approaches to building different kinds of sports teams varies. Below, I take a look at each.

Founder 163
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How To Prepare For Your January Cash Flow Problems Right Now

YoungUpstarts

by Carl Faulds, managing director of Cashsolv. January is a grim month for many businesses tipping them into suffering cash flow problems. On the one hand, there’s a VAT payment to be made at the end of December. On the other, clients will have shut down their accounts departments over the Christmas period, meaning that payments can be later than ever.

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Entrepreneurs Share Their 2016 Resolutions

Up and Running

The new year is already upon us. Can you believe it? Do you feel ready to put 2015 in the past, or are you looking back on a year well spent? Each year, we’re all familiar with the tradition of setting resolutions, things that we vow to achieve or become in the next year. Entrepreneurs, being goal setters by nature, often like to participate with resolutions related to their small business or startup.

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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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Your Success At Work Depends On Peer Relationships

Startup Professionals Musings

Most entrepreneurs, and members of any small team, naively assume that the key to their success is hard work, dedication, and long hours in the business. In reality, their effectiveness is usually more related to how well they develop their work relationships with peers and business leaders. First they need to decipher correctly every relationship as a workship, friendship, or foe.

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6 Clever Nudges To Build a Culture of Experimentation

ConversionXL

Conversion optimization is hard, but often the heaviest lifting is often organizational – changing an organization from a gut-based approach to one driven by data and experimentation. Picture, perhaps, a Director of Marketing at a large, stable company with a solid brand. She’s on the cutting edge of digital marketing, reads articles like this and wants to implement a testing culture within her team and organization.

Metrics 56

More Trending

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You Can’t Judge Market Size by This Slide

View from Seed

I’ve been meaning to follow up on Rob’s post last month highlighting the competitor slide as the least informative in an investor pitch deck. I’d like to nominate another: the market size slide, which is usually dominated by graphics like these: As investors, we’re considering the total addressable market for a given product or service immediately upon hearing a vision for it: How many users and/or customers are there for this?

Marketing 186
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Do VC Platforms Make Sense?

Both Sides of the Table

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros. Examples of VC platform services include: recruiting, marketing, design support, inside sales reps, consulting, accounting services and so forth.

Portfolio 182
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10 Actions That Will Transform You From Good To Great

Startup Professionals Musings

Everyone recognizes a great leader when they work with one, but most leaders don’t know what to look for in themselves that will drive that perception by others. In my experience, there is no magic gene involved, just simple good habits executed consistently and convincingly until everyone around you wants to follow your example. This leading by example is easy to say, but not so easy to put into action.

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From BUNCH to FANG

deal architect

When I joined Gartner in 1995, I thought it was quaint some of the older analysts would talk about BUNCH – Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell. So 70s and 80s. In 1995, HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, Compaq and other.

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Million Dollar PR On A Dime

YoungUpstarts

by Ann Noder, CEO of Pitch Public Relations. Big brands spend millions each year on managing their presence in the media through public relations. For small start ups, that expense is simply and sadly out of reach. But that doesn’t mean you can’t launch into the press spotlight. And you should! Like no other form of marketing, editorial media coverage gives companies an implied third party endorsement that can drive recognition and sales.

PR 153
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Invite: Digital Marketing And Brand Storytelling Trends 2016 Workshop

Brandanew

I’m thrilled to share that Brandanew will be hosting its first digital marketing and brand storytelling trends 2016 workshop on January 15 in Delhi. This will be a good way to start 2016 on a creative and fun note! So, I welcome you to join us for the event. The un-conference and a very hands-on implementation oriented workshop will be hosted at the Indian International Centre, Lodhi Estate in Delhi.

India 143
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7 Ways to Bootstrap Your Business to Success

Startup Professionals Musings

Most first-time entrepreneurs seem to believe the myth that they need a minimum of a half a million dollars to start a business. At least that is usually the lowest number I see requested from our local angel investment group. In reality, over 80 percent of successful new businesses are self-funded for much less -- often as little as $10,000. I’m convinced this also reduces risk.

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Is Content-Marketing-Strategy Dead?

Rembrandt Communications

No…You Just Have to Avoid Costly Shortcuts! It’s 2016, and marketing has changed. Today, your sales, public relations, social-media, SEO, and all other, activities work together to find and keep new customers through specific messaging. And at the heart of all of this is content. According to The Content Marketing Institute article on Key Roles […].

Marketing 100
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Nine Types of Clients You Should Cut Loose In 2016

YoungUpstarts

by Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, authors of “ The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People “ and “ The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built a Bestseller “. As the new year approaches, you’re probably looking forward to taking advantage of new opportunities that will help your business grow and blossom.

Employee 152
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7 Awesome Tools For Professional Blogging You Must Use

Brandanew

A lot of bloggers think blogging is only about writing a few paragraphs interspersed with images. I’m not trying to be cynical here, but there’s a plethora of blogs which would do really well if created professionally. Blogging is a writing medium that works in sync with modern technology and marketing tactics. The knowledge of the medium and use of a few smart tools can help you take your game to the next level.

Analytics 116
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5 Key Actions To Maximize Entrepreneur Productivity

Startup Professionals Musings

If you define your self-worth as an entrepreneur by how busy you are, it’s time to find another lifestyle. We all know people who are extraordinarily busy, but never seem to accomplish anything. For survival, entrepreneurs need to be all about accomplishing results that matter for themselves, their team, and their customers. That’s productivity. Why is this so hard?

Product 141
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Data, not algorithms, is key to machine learning success

Version One Ventures

There has been an explosion in machine learning activity, and Shivon Zilis recently mapped out the current machine intelligence ecosystem as we enter 2016. This is one of the key areas that we’ll be following this year. While the opportunities here are tremendous, the exuberance surrounding machine learning distracts startups from a key hurdle: it’s data, not algorithms, that will dictate who wins in this space.

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Smart Spending Tips For Small Businesses To Start Off The New Year Right

YoungUpstarts

By Erin Warren, SVP of Marketing, Splender. Small businesses make up the majority of all annual sales in the U.S. With about 30 million (and counting) of these influential small companies, the total spending will only continue to rise. This is especially true during the holidays, when everyone – both individuals and businesses – are spending more money.

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Fundraising 2016 – Control Your Destiny

Feld Thoughts

Welcome to 2016. We’ve already heard lots of predictions about the late stage financing market, tech IPOs, and what is going to happen to unicorns this year. And it’s only Monday, January 4th. Remember that these are predictions. No one really has a clue. And a year is a long time. My simple advice for 2016 is “control your destiny.” There are lots of different ways to control your destiny.

IPO 87
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Unconscious bias is more dangerous than cognitive bias

The Equity Kicker

I often write about cognitive biases because they undermine decision making. If investors aren’t conscious to avoid sunk cost bias, confirmation bias and many other cognitive biases they will make bad decisions. Today I’ve had my thinking taken up a level by a post on brainpickings titled The Hidden Brain: How Ocean Currents Explain Our Unconscious Social Biases.

Europe 85
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5 Things That Make Outdoor Advertising More Effective

YFS Magazine

Outdoor advertising has become more competitive. Here are five tips to ensure your outdoor ads are noticed, and most importantly, remembered.

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Benefits To Coworking For Start-ups

YoungUpstarts

The business world is ever changing and progressing in all aspects. When it comes to the workplace, traditional office spaces are becoming a thing of the past. Coworking is an inventive new way to work that increases productivity and functionality in the office. Shared spaces are the perfect solution for entrepreneurs, freelancers, writers, techies, and startups all looking for a place to conduct business.

Community 122
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What’s Happening Today That No One Sees?

Feld Thoughts

Amy and I watched The Big Short on Tuesday with my partner Jason and his wife Jenn. We were electrified as we walked out of the theater – all four of us loved it. Jason commented that it was a particularly impressive movie given the subject matter. I couldn’t stop saying “that’s the best explanation of what created the financial crisis that I’ve ever seen.” I remember reading The Big Short in 2010 when it came out.

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Calling it how it is -- that time I raised $1m for my startup.

Hippoland

When I was fundraising for my company LaunchBit, raising money frustrated me to no end. There were all the rejections. All the time spent in investor meetings. All the email follow ups that went nowhere. We ended up raising ~$1m, but it was brutal. On the flip side, I often enjoyed selling LaunchBit, as a product, to customers. Selling a product had many similarities to fundraising – again, constant rejection, lots of demo calls before getting to a “yes”, and follow up e

Startup 76
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Star Wars Could Pave way for Austin Hologram Company’s Success

SiliconHills

By EVA RUTH MORAVEC Reporter with Silicon Hills News A licensing rights agreement with the Walt Disney Company has awakened the force at an Austin company known as a global leader in 3D visualization. Zebra Imaging is taking pre-orders for the result of that agreement: a 3D hologram of one of five images from the […] The post Star Wars Could Pave way for Austin Hologram Company’s Success appeared first on SiliconHills.

Austin 75
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Smart Finance Decisions For Your Start-up Business

YoungUpstarts

As the owner of a start-up, you must make dozens of important decisions. Your decisions about finance may have the biggest impact on the success or failure of your company. To succeed, you need to have some financial tools in place from the very beginning. You can use these tools to monitor your finances and make informed decisions. Critical tools for financial planning.

Finance 116
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A Twitter For Mac Bug That Breaks My Heart – And Workflow

Feld Thoughts

Let’s start with my bias. I love Twitter, use it all the time (a lot more than Facebook), and will continue to love and root for Twitter. I’ve been a Twitter for Mac user for a long time. I know it’s out of favor with all the cool kids, but it works for me. It sits quietly on the left side of my giant screen and whenever a little dot shows up next to the second icon (I think it’s a tilted bell) I know I have something that has @bfeld in it that I should look at or respond

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London VC investment up 130% YoY

The Equity Kicker

I read these stats in the Financial Times this morning and thought I’d record them for posterity. As you can see the UK and especially London had good years for VC investment last year. We’re still a long way behind the US though where $47bn was invested in 2014 (no 2015 stats yet, all data from CB Insights). If you adjust for a 5x difference in population the picture is better, but we are still only 45% of the US on a per capita basis.

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The Illusion and (Mis)uses of Certainty

OnlyOnce

September’s Harvard Business Review had a really thought-provoking article for me called How Certainty Transforms Persuasion. Seth Godin wrote a blog post around the same time called The Illusion of Control. The two together make for an interesting think about using information to shape behavior as leaders. I’ve often been accused of delivering too many mixed messages to the company at all-hands meetings, so I enjoyed the think, though not in the way I expected to.

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[Infographic] The Best Strategy For Online Business Success 

YoungUpstarts

Success in the online business world will require a lot of hard work. However, it’s possible to automate most of your processes once they are in place. You just need to create an effective strategy and learn from other online entrepreneurs. The guide you’re reading today is short and simple, but it still contains useful information that could point you in the right direction.

eCommerce 109
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Book: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Feld Thoughts

A cliche I’ve heard many times is “Wall Street Always Wins.” The first week of 2016 in the public markets has been an entertaining reminder of this. In 1998, when I started ending up with lots of shares in public Internet companies, I came up with a formulaic approach for any public equities that are distributed to me (either from our funds or other VC funds).

Flash 73
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Is the ‘winner takes all’ era for marketplaces coming to an end?

The Equity Kicker

On Monday this week taxi app Lyft raising a new $1bn round which included $500m from General Motors. Twelve months ago the received wisdom was that Uber was on a tear and it’s competitors would fail and in response to this funding news LA Times wrote a piece questioning whether the ‘winner takes all phenomenon’ that characterises so much of the internet doesn’t apply in transportation.

Mobile 70
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Getting’ paid with Mike Monteiro

Start Up Blog

I feel like marketing is more about design than it is about product. When I say this I’m really talking about the ability to make. In the TV Industrial era it used to be about the ability to make. But we all have the ability to make today. Now it’s about the ability to design thoughtfully what is made. We all have access to distribution, manufacturing, ecommerce and the formally restricted tools of business.

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The Importance Of Keeping Up With Industry Legislation

YoungUpstarts

Last year alone saw hundreds of new environmental regulations and nearly twenty five pieces of health and safety legislation published. With a seemingly endless list of ever changing rules to follow, it can be difficult for business owners to know that they’re compliant. However, if you want to reap the benefits and avoid the consequences of non-compliance, it’s vital that businesses are able to keep up: Benefits of Staying Up-to-Date.

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Accidentally Deleting Everything

Feld Thoughts

The first time I experienced someone accidentally wiped out a full set of data was on an IBM PC with a Tallgrass Hard Drive and Tape Backup. I was at PetCom Systems, my first real job. It was a Friday evening and I was the only person around. The phone rang and I answered it, “PetCom Systems, how can I help you?” It was a user from somewhere who was trying to back up for the weekend and didn’t know what to do next.

Naming 73