Sat.Apr 07, 2012 - Fri.Apr 13, 2012

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10 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Beat the Odds

Startup Professionals Musings

Did you ever wonder why some entrepreneurs always seem to have all the luck and success, while others never seem to catch a break? As an Angel investor, I quickly learned that luck has very little to do with it, and I now look for some personal characteristics and leadership styles that separate the potential winners from the losers. These differences are the reason that investors say that they invest in people, rather than ideas.

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[Review] Likeable Social Media

YoungUpstarts

With close to 900 million users and an upcoming IPO , Facebook is ruling the web as the social network of choice. Following close behind is Twitter , the 140 character king of microblogging also known as the “SMS of the Internet” LinkedIn , YouTube , Flickr , Foursquare , blogs, and tonnes of other social networks make up the other players of the social web.

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American River 50 Mile Endurance Run

Feld Thoughts

Wow. That was an amazing experience. I ran the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run on Saturday and finished in an official time of 11:57:37 , just under my goal of 12 hours. My un-official mile by mile splits are up on RunKeeper which served me well with my iPhone 4S and Mophie Juice Pack until the very last few minutes when my battery finally died on my phone.

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10 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Academics

crowdSPRING Blog

As college graduation weekends and summer business incubator announcements loom, I thought I would take a few minutes to consider the connection between the entrepreneurship and academia. Entrepreneurs, by definition, take an idea or a concept and strive to make that idea into a operating business. To do this, we spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork: researching, modeling, testing, and (finally) executing to turn all of that work into a revenue-generating enterprise. scientists, and

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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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Would Steve Jobs Have Fired Thomas Edison?

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

My last blog post, by far, was the most viral piece I’ve written in four years of blogging. Provocative titles and edgy content seem to win readers. And it would appear that creative style is a hot topic. If Steve Jobs Worked For You, You’d Probably Fire Him , is about a concept called Creative Style. Creative style can be measured , there are a couple of great assessments available.

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[Indonesia][Event] Startup Asia Jakarta 2012

YoungUpstarts

Earlier this year in February, the Startups in Asia conference in Singapore saw Singapore-based social collaborative learning platform Teamie emerging victorious from a pool of nineteen regional startups pitching in a ‘Startup Arena’ to win a US$10,000 prize. Buoyed by the success of that event, the Tech In Asia team will be organizing another ‘Startup Arena’, this time in Jakarta, Indonesia on Jun 7-8, 2012.

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More Trending

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“I Have an Idea….”

Andrew Payne

I see a steady stream of entrepreneurs contacting me with various software ideas: a Web site, a mobile app, etc. All are looking for funding and developer help to implement the idea, and most won’t end up with either, even though some of the ideas are really interesting. Why not? The software business has changed profoundly over the past decade.

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How to use customer service to differentiate your business – Small business Spotlight

Up and Running

Every business needs to differentiate itself, to find a way to show the world how it’s unique and different. If you were to ask the owners of 10 hair salons which products or service they sell or provide, most would probably start with “hair styling and coloring” or something along those lines. And you wouldn’t have any clue what made them special, would you?

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Taming The Apps Explosion With Data Center Convergence

YoungUpstarts

By Joe Ong, managing director of Hitachi Data Systems Singapore. Outlining the perils of mass application adoption. The concept of working on-the-go in Asia has resulted in application developers experiencing a sudden increase in companies commissioning the creation of enterprise applications for the mobile workplace over the past 18 months. With data increasing at this monumental rate, the adoption of new applications has become a double-edged sword for many organizations.

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Governments and Business Model Innovation

deal architect

The DOJ is suing Apple and several book publishers over e-Book pricing. In a word, I am ambivalent. In my new book, I have a whole chapter on business model innovation facilitated by technology. Here is an extract: It was.

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“I Have an Idea….”

Andrew Payne

I see a steady stream of entrepreneurs contacting me with various software ideas: a Web site, a mobile app, etc. All are looking for funding and developer help to implement the idea, and most won’t end up with either, even though some of the ideas are really interesting. Why not? The software business has changed profoundly over the past decade.

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How to use your business plan

Up and Running

Bill Payne had a nice post on gust.com late last month titled Using your business plan , in which he lists the different forms or outputs people confuse with a business plan and sets each one into the proper use context. He defines the elevator pitch, video pitch, executive summary, PowerPoint presentation, and business plan as different forms. This fits beautifully with my thinking that the plan is what’s going to happen, when and why, and how much it costs and brings in; and all these

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Why Being a Successful Entrepreneur Takes Practice

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs seem more quickly frustrated these days when their “million-dollar idea” doesn’t turn into a sustainable business overnight. They don’t realize that it takes many skills to build a business under the best of circumstances, and today’s world of instant gratification doesn’t leave room for the patience and practice to develop these skills.

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SAP at the crossroads

deal architect

The contrast is striking. In a week, when Facebook’s $ 1 billion acquisition of Instagram showed mobile apps are the new path to get closer to the consumer/enduser, SAP announced it wanted to go the other direction - deeper into.

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“She doesn’t deserve to be alive”

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

“She doesn’t deserve to be alive” — this is how my late grandmother “complimented” Nigella Lawson. And why does she not deserve life? “Well look at her, she’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s smart, she’s an amazing cook, and did it all with with kids. No one should have all that.” I think this all the time.

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Real Innovations in Higher Education? | Ann Kirschner | Chronicle of Higher Education

Campus Entrepreneurship

CUNY’s Ann Kirschner has an excellent piece in the Chronicle o f Higher Education exploring how much innovation is really happening in US higher education. A nice read for anyone interested in the present and future of higher education. Even major higher-education projects and government initiatives are just playing around the margins. Take the international-export activity in education: Some institutions have indeed begun ambitious expansions with overseas branch campuses or partnerships,

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Pull Investors to Your Business Plan With a Summary

Startup Professionals Musings

Modern investors love to first read a two-page summary of your business plan, formatted like a glossy marketing collateral sheet, with text well laid out in columns and sidebars, and a couple of relevant graphics. This one had better grab their attention, or they won’t look further. You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary.

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Is Best Buy Amazons showroom?

deal architect

I have heard the question many times in the last couple of weeks since Best Buy had a disappointing quarter. Actually I have heard it for the last decade, and while CompUSA, Circuit City, Curry’s have dwindled, Best Buy continues.

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The Best Way To Validate Your Idea? Ask The Right Questions.

YoungUpstarts

So you call yourself an entrepreneur. You compulsively view the world in terms of opportunity, and you can name a dozen business ideas for products and services that fulfill a need that isn’t being met. And you think you’ve got the charisma and determination to build a talented team that can turn one of your ideas into reality. Good for you! Positive change in any field begins with a dream.

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Link Post (weekly)

Venture Chronicles

Is Facebook a Worthy Social CRM? tags: blog facebook. What the Betamax Case Teaches Us About Readability | Mike Industries. tags: blog readability. Making Your Users Happy: The Business Tools We Use | Alfred App – Mac OS X Quicklaunch Application. tags: blog get satisfaction. Larry Summers and the Technology of Money – Technology Review. tags: blog.

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Today Startups Can Win Customers From Big Business

Startup Professionals Musings

You can’t succeed in your new startup if you can’t win customers, and the new Internet-empowered customers are tough. They are in control, and they no longer care where or from whom they buy, so here is your chance to win. They do have a specific purchase progression with key milestone moments that determine your win or loss outcome in every transaction.

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Not your Pas Platform

deal architect

I blogged last week about “The feature that launched a thousand projects”. I was describing the flurry of activity the iPad retina display has unleashed particularly in its ecosystem of over 200,000 apps. Brian Sommer is running a series on.

Software 225
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[Infographic] Designing The Cereal Box

YoungUpstarts

You may think of the cereal box as merely a container to hold your breakfast cereal, but the history in the making of the now ubiquitous and humble breakfast choice and the design of its packaging can hold many lessons – intellectual property rights management and marketing, amongst others – for business types. Here’s a quirky infographic that takes the piss out of the process how a cereal box is likely to be designed (so take it with a pinch of salt, please).

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New Book: Brad Feld’s Burning Entrepreneur – How to Launch, Fund, and Set Your Start-Up On Fire!

Feld Thoughts

Inspired by my friend @FAKEGRIMLOCK , I’ve launched a new self-published book with the gang at Hyperink. It’s titled Beyond The Blog: Brad Feld’s Burning Entrepreneur – How to Launch, Fund, and Set Your Start-Up On Fire! and available digitally on Amazon , Barnes & Noble , and Hyperink. For the next 48 hours, you can buy it for $2.99.

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Authenticity is Experience

Genuine VC

People ask us at NextView all of the time: “What is the typical profile of an entrepreneur in your portfolio?” Subtly behind that question is often one about the experience-level of the founders. The answer, however, doesn’t fit into a neat soundbite. We have and will continue to fund young entrepreneurs in their twenties – and as my partner Rob Go likes to say, we’re proud of it.

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Looking forward to Oracle event

deal architect

We all go to way too many industry events that are product centric – launches, demos, speeds and feeds etc. So it is nice to go to events that focus on trends, strategies etc. It’s one reason I look forward.

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[Sponsored] ReputationWatch – Monitoring Online Conversations About Your Business (Part III)

YoungUpstarts

When it comes to social media, most experts agree that one of the worst things that small- and medium-sized businesses can do is to jump onto the social media bandwagon without a proper game plan. You may have heard of this scenario before – a small business decides to get on a social networking platform like Facebook, but later loses control when a public relations crisis turns customer sentiment against them, and then decide to abandon the platform for good.

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Forget Med School - Be a Startup Doctor

ReadWriteStart

Late last year, Mark Cuban (self-made billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks) wrote that entrepreneurs should ignore what their customers want. This may sound shocking, but it's nothing new. In fact, it's practically common knowledge for start-up companies; many entrepreneurs ( including Steve Jobs ) consider it one of the "best practices" of developing a product.

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Do You Have These 3 Signs of SEO Copywriting Burn Out?

Rembrandt Communications

Are you writing Website landing pages, e-mails, search engine optimization (SEO) tags, blogs, social media entries, and more on a daily basis? If so, you may be experiencing one or more of the following symptoms: Difficulty turning on the computer to start writing. Endlessly staring at a blank page waiting for inspiration to hit you. [.].

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Quit sniping keep writing

deal architect

I groan at articles like this one – journalists writing about bloggers who write about each other. I should have stopped at the title which describes it well - “The Tech Blog Circle Jerk”. Having said that there is an.

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9 Oft-Overlooked E-mail Etiquette Tips Every Young Worker Should Know

YoungUpstarts

Ding! You’ve got mail. Welcome to the working world, youngsters. Chances are you’ve been e-mailing since the early years of AOL, but what do you know about work e-mails? If you’re wondering where all the smiley faces are at or why your co-workers don’t forward funny YouTube videos to each other, then you clearly have a thing or two to learn about e-mail etiquette in the workplace.

Demand 158
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SEO DIY: Optimize Your Startup's Website Yourself

ReadWriteStart

Anyone who pays attention to the world of search engine optimization knows that maximizing your company's search results on Google and other search engines is not something you can do with a quick pin here and a hasty status update there. It's a full-time job. But if you're working to build a startup, you've already got a full-time job - or two or three.

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Authenticity is Experience

Genuine VC

People ask us at NextView all of the time: “What is the typical profile of an entrepreneur in your portfolio?” Subtly behind that question is often one about the experience-level of the founders. The answer, however, doesn’t fit into a neat soundbite. We have and will continue to fund young entrepreneurs in their twenties – and as my partner Rob Go likes to say, we’re proud of it.

Vertical 109
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More New Renaissance

deal architect

on the innovation blog Top Cruise Ships Dude, you are getting the new iPad A picture is worth a thousand calories Trailfinders – a brick and mortar survivor Generation Flux.

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[Infographic] Wasting Time And Money

YoungUpstarts

If as the adage goes that time is money, then wasting time is wasting money. And since wasting money is known as A BAD THING, then we should all be wary of wasting time. According to a survey by America Online and Survey.com, US workers waste over two hours of each 8-hour work day – and that doesn’t even include scheduled lunch or break times.

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Why Investors Reject Your Startup Pitch

ReadWriteStart

Why didn't he call? You dressed to impress, you were witty and intelligent, but still the phone isn't ringing. When you think you've made the perfect pitch to an investor (Yes, an investor. What did you think we were talking about?) and shockingly, the person leaves you hanging without a clue why you've been rejected, what do you do next? Sponsor. Most likely, it's time to rethink and refine your pitch.