YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

by Kevin Kaiser , Startup Biz Blog. There isn’t a profession in the world that wouldn’t benefit from continuing education. The world is constantly evolving especially as technology rapidly advances. Means of reaching potential clients have changed and the rough economy has restructured the common budget. While novice entrepreneurs could definitely benefit from higher education, an experienced entrepreneur could also benefit from traditional or online classes.

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ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Ethernet inventor and generally accomplished tech super-guy Bob Metcalfe gave a great opening keynote talk at this morning's Capital Factory Demo Day in Austin, Texas. The event has been good so far and is live streaming online for free. Metcalfe offered a wide ranging talk to open the day but included some tasty tidbits in the form of two lists: five personal skills that entrepreneurs need to develop in order to succeed in building tech companies that scale and six types of people a startup eco

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Technical Review Angel Investor Startup Texas 148

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Boston is a great place to start and build a company. There is a wealth of resources that are unique to this town and a vibrant community of hackers, business people, and investors at various stages in their career. However, Boston is a transient town, especially for the student population that refreshes a large population each year. It’s also surprisingly difficult for students to get plugged-in to everything that is happening in the local tech ecosystem.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work. Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s a good start.

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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

Startup

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

Many of us have fond childhood memories of grocery shopping with the family during weekends; I still recall struggling to lug heavy bags of groceries home from the supermarket, as a young boy, just to prove to my parents I was grown up enough to help. It was character-building for sure, but it wasn’t exactly fun. For most people, shopping for household items and groceries is possibly one of the most troublesome, time-consuming and repetitive activities around.

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ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Auren Hoffman is the CEO of Rapleaf , a personal-data aggregator that has been the subject of a remarkable amount of controversy but is wildly useful as a data provider to must-see apps like Rapportive and Gist. While Hoffman's company may know a lot about you as a web user and person, he knows a lot of people himself the old-fashioned way, in real life.

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Silicon Valley Hiring Technical Review Due Diligence 130

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. On the average, the entrepreneurs I know are struggling. But one thing they all seem to have in common is a love for learning and change. They rush in with a passion to better the world, and money is just an indication of their progress.

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YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2011

Leading business information architect and IT entrepreneur Pekka A. Viljakainen’s was recently in town to give a talk and promote his book “ No Fear: Business Leadership for the Digital Age “, and we were fortunate enough to catch him for a short interview to talk about how business leadership in the new digital era. In this interview, Viljakainen also shares some thoughts about entrepreneurship and globalization.

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Leadership Social Media Global Technical Review 183

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

So you proved your concept. You have some actual customers, driving real revenue and maybe even have an employee or two. Have enough funding to last a little while, but some nagging doubts. You've never done this before. In fact, you've never really run a business. And now here you are, all alone, trying to figure out how to take that concept, those few customers, that couple of employees and create a sustaining, scalable business.

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Early Stage Advisory Board Technical Review Employee 32

deal architect

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Kudos to Vijay Vijayasankar for saying “he is very proud to be an IBMer” as he continues a debate we have been having for a while now about whether IBM is innovative or not. He cites SAP and Sabre (the.

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Software 218

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Even when your startup is a one-man show, you will soon find that you are “out of control,” unless you start organizing and writing down how and when key things need to get done. Like it or not, you are now entering the dreaded realm of “formal business processes.” The right question is “What is the minimum that I need?” The simple answer is that you need to implement one process at a time, starting with those things that are most critical to your business, until you feel a relief that things ar

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YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

Here’s an interesting infographic from the Silicon Valley technology startup accelerator Blackbox , whom earlier this year launched the Startup Genome Project. As part of their Startup Genome Report , the project analyzed and looked at the different stages of success that a startup would go through. The report is based on profiling over 650 startups, which should pretty much give it an accurate and decent snapshot at the stages of a startup’s life cycle.

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Silicon Valley Startup Technology Incubator 186

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

In the “if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at&# category, I present the video I’m A VC. The formal press release, Foundry Group Premiers Documentary Film About Secret Lives of Venture Capitalists , explains things more fully. My partner Jason Mendelson created, composed, wrote, sang, and produced the whole thing and explains the back story of I’m a VC on his blog.

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Video Partner Entrepreneur 166

deal architect

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. In the 90s as AS/400s and LANs took off, many multi-nationals adopted two-tier ERP strategies – a mainframe based application for corporate and.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2011

“Will the dogs eat the dog food?” This rather crude expression weighs heavily on the mind of all good startup founders, no matter how confident they appear. We all know the products they give away, and the ones purchased by family and friends don’t count. The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy.

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YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

So we all know that the recent financial crisis has left a devastating wake on the American economy – and especially on unemployment – but how bad was it, really? Here’s an infographic that shows the sobering figures. Americans are suffering the highest figures of unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And if that’s not bad enough, the richest 1-percent of Americans take home almost 24-percent – that’s one-quarter – of the nation’s i

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Restful United States 173

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

So you proved your concept. You have some actual customers, driving real revenue and maybe even have an employee or two. Have enough funding to last a little while, but some nagging doubts. You've never done this before. In fact, you've never really run a business. And now here you are, all alone, trying to figure out how to take that concept, those few customers, that couple of employees and create a sustaining, scalable business.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Advisory Board Technical Review Employee 20

deal architect

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

In a discussion I had with a client a few weeks ago he asked me if salesforce implementations and service providers have reached a mature state given the company is over a decade old. I told him the answer depended.

Cloud 218

Cloud 218

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Don’t charge the hill until you are “ready.” This probably seems obvious to military types, but I see entrepreneurs violating this rule all the time. They approach key potential investors way too early, trying to talk their way up the hill, with no supporting business plan, and before they have a support team around them. Needless to say, they usually get shot down, and get no second chance.

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Elevator Pitch Angel Investor Venture Capital Business Plan 239

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

By Amy Abrams, co-author of “ The Big Enough Company: Creating a Business That Works for You “ Early in my career, I worked in what is now referred to as the first dotcom bubble. When I think back to those days, I remember it being incredibly fun, hectic, creative and exciting. I also remember working around the clock and feeling like I had no life.

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Rembrandt Communications

SEPTEMBER 4, 2011

What do you know about your site visitors? If you are regularly monitoring site analytics as part of your marketing efforts, you are way ahead of the game. However, if you are a small business owner who has no time and no idea what your site visitors are clicking on, it’s time to… Spend Five [.].

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SEO Analytics Small Business Marketing 124

deal architect

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

on the innovation blog Back to the Future; Digital Maps of History Panasonic’s “Smart Town” 25 Cool College Labs Technology and Memory Lanes General David Petraeus’ greatest innovation.

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Technology 170

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

Most entrepreneurs who start a company alone soon come to the conclusion that two heads are better than one – someone to share the workload, the hard decisions, and the costs. In a moment of crisis, you may be tempted to take on the first person expressing interest. This would be a mistake, and could easily cost you your startup. If you think about it, you should realize that not everyone is ‘ideal partner material.

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YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Despite all the negativity we hear in the press about the sad state of the economy these days, the latest Citibank small business survey shows that the majority of small business owners believe they are poised to grow or are already in growth mode. According to the results, about 49-percent say they are “holding their own, but poised to grow when the climate is right” and 28-percent indicated they are already growing.

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VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

This summer, I had the pleasure to be a mentor at the Entrepreneurship Summer School , an elective at London Business School (my alma mater) where students are tasked with testing whether their startup ideas can turn into a fundable business over the course of three months. I could write a whole post on the 7-D model students follow (and I probably will) but I’d like to focus on a lecture at the end of the course, by a UK-based angel investor, who provided tips for entrepreneurs to make th

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Startup Cofounder Warrant Stock Options 133

deal architect

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

On the New Florence blog The logistics of moving the 9 ton Amenemhat II Energy Harvesting Displays Uncle Sam’s App Store Farmer’s Mobile Catastrophe Fleet.

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Harvest Mobile Technology 170

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health. Some founders try to deflect these questions by talking incessantly, so you often need to be calm, patient, and persistent to get the answers.

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Due Diligence Sweat Equity Intellectual Property Entrepreneur 237

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Earlier we showed you an interesting infographic from Silicon Valley technology startup accelerator Blackbox ‘s Startup Genome Report , about the stages of a startup’s life cycle. This time, we have another, also made by online analytics startup KISSmetrics , that breaks down and shows you the different internet startup profiles and how they measure up in terms of factors such as funding, market size, and even motivation.

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Internet Silicon Valley Startup Analytics 162

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

I've found myself thinking a lot about the research being conducted by the Startup Genome Project these days. The data is an absolute goldmine and provides quantitative benchmarks for issues I've thought about for years. One of the findings from their first report was: "Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than experience or money." This certainly maps to my experience as a founder and also working with other entrepreneurs.

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.Net Founder Community Programming 132

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

I’m back in Boulder after living in Paris for the month of July and Tuscany for the month of August. I had an incredible time in both places, got a lot done, enjoyed being with Amy continuously, and had a very successful experiment of “working in some other place for a month&# that I intend to repeat many times over the course of the rest of my life.

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Stock Restful Entrepreneur Marketing 123

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

Tweet. Let's be clear--you can absolutely build an incredible company without participating in social media. There is certainly success without blogging, and blogging definitely isn't a guarantee of success by any means. So why bother? You have tons of things to do as a founder. You have hiring to do, money to raise and you've got to get your company's story out there.

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YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

I’m sure most of us agree volunteerism is a GOOD THING and that we should all do more GOOD THINGS. LinkedIn , the world’s largest online professional network with more than 120 million members worldwide, has today added a new “Volunteer Experience & Causes&# field as part of a member’s profile. With this field, LinkedIn members can add volunteer positions, causes they care about, and organizations such as the Singapore Red Cross , the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society , Me

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Singapore Japan Asia Hiring 150

Growthink Blog

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

A venture capital firm is a financial institution that focuses on providing capital, in the form of equity, to companies who offer them the prospects of significant growth. The partners and associates at venture capital firms are known as venture capitalists. The term "VC" or "VCs" applies to both venture capital firms and venture capitalists. Unlike angel investors, who invest their own money, VCs are professional institutions that invest other people's money.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

A few months ago Suzy Kendrick of CanvasPop reached out to me after I wrote a blog post titled What’s Your Product Cadence. She had some comments relevant to her business and offered to put together a Twitter word cloud print for @FoundryGroup. It came out great and is now hanging in our office. The CanvasPop team was super to deal with – they offered us the first print for free.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Tweet. I kayak on the waters around Manhattan--which is a ton of fun but can also be a bit precarious when it comes to navigating ferry traffic. A few weeks ago, we were with a group of paddlers and came face to face with a ferry boat heading in our direction. We wound up between it and the pier that it wanted to turn into coming around a bend. The ferry boats in NYC are on pontoon-like structures, and so the worst thing you can ever see as a kayaker is straight through to the other side of the

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Product Development Startup Product Developer 104

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

If you know anything about America’s beer history, you would know that Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Brewery, is one of the industry’s leading pioneers and innovators in the craft brewing segment. In fact he’s one of the industry’s more recognizable faces as well, having been featured in 2009 beer documentary film Beer Wars by Anat Baron as well as fronting Discovery Channel’s Brew Masters series.

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Delaware America Channel Founder 145