Sat.Jun 18, 2016 - Fri.Jun 24, 2016

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7 Attributes of An Entrepreneur's Startup Dream Team

Startup Professionals Musings

There is a common belief in the angel and venture capital community that you put your money on the best team, rather than the best idea. Thus the top priority of every entrepreneur who wants funding should be to build and highlight their “dream team” of co-founders, executives and advisers, to attract the biggest and best investors. Solo entrepreneurs rarely find an investor.

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For Here or To Go

Feld Thoughts

It’s 2am on Friday and I’m awake because Brooks the Wonder Dog is afraid of thunderstorms. His approach to them is to literally try to climb under my body while I’m sleeping, which prevents me from sleeping, which results in me watching the Brexit insanity in real time. Yesterday, we had our own US insanity around immigration as our Supreme Court voted 4-4 on the legality of Obama’s executive orders on immigration.

India 127
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A Closer Look At Different Materials Used In 3D Printing

YoungUpstarts

by Gaurav Sharma, digital marketing consultant at CG Trader. 3D printing has come a long way since its inception and has made numerous contributions in the field of manufacturing and medicine. While the machine itself is something to marvel, there are a number of elements that make 3D printing possible. For instance, the software used to create 3D models and the materials used to create a physical object using the machine.

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What Do You Do When Your Customers Are Afraid To Shop Online?

ConversionXL

You and I may have a hard time believing it, but many people are afraid to shop online. Now, as someone who regularly makes ridiculous impulse purchases, I never second guess entering my credit card information online. In fact, I just bought a Led Zeppelin coffee mug in the time between writing and editing this article. You, too, probably regularly buy books, movies, clothes, and software online.

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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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Why Every Entrepreneur Needs A Startup Co-Founder

Startup Professionals Musings

It seems like every entrepreneur I meet these days is quick to proclaim themselves a visionary, expecting that will give more credibility to their startup idea, and improve their odds with investors. In reality, I’m one of the majority of investors who believe that startup success is more about the execution than the idea. Thus, unless the visionary highlights a cofounder who can take the vision and execute, I assume the worst.

Cofounder 131
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15 Entrepreneurs Discuss Whether or Not Twitter Is Dying

Hearpreneur

Share Twitter has had its shares of ups and downs over the last few years. Every introduction of new social media platforms chip away at current banner holders like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Over the course of the last couple years co-founder Jack Dorsey was reinstated as CEO due to decline, the constant buzz about doing away with 140 has caused uproar on both sides, and every week a headline concerning stolen information is splashed across every news site.

More Trending

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5 Reasons Why Your Brand Should Have a Following

Duct Tape Marketing

5 Reasons Why Your Brand Should Have a Following written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit Very Pixel. Have you ever noticed how so many major corporations produce commercials that focus more on their brand name rather than an actual product? At first, this might lead to some head-scratching—after all, isn’t the product what they’re selling?

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Intel Disrupted: Why large companies find it difficult to innovate, and what they can do about it

Steve Blank

In the 21 st century it’s harder for large corporations to create disruptive breakthroughs. Disruptive innovations are coming from startups – Telsa for automobiles, Uber for taxis, Airbnb for hotel rentals, Netflix for video rentals and Facebook for media. What’s holding large companies back? Here are four reasons: First, companies bought into the false premise that they exist to maximize shareholder value – which said “keep the stock price high.

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Part 2 of Interview with Stephan Sieber of Unit4

deal architect

This continues our interview with the new CEO of Unit4. Part 1 ran yesterday. The Unit4 brand is much stronger in Europe than in North America. What's your vision for changing that? In fairness, North America is already around 15%.

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3 Simple Ways Productivity Leads To Your Best Self

YoungUpstarts

By Johan Gunnars, CEO and cofounder of Simpliday. What do you think of when you hear the term “self-improvement”? If you’re like a lot of people, you might imagine working your way through giant stacks of self-help books, starting an intensive new exercise regimen, or devoting more time to charitable causes — all of which are certainly worthwhile ways to improve oneself.

Cofounder 113
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The Local SEO Playbook – Your Guide to Local Rankings

Duct Tape Marketing

The Local SEO Playbook – Your Guide to Local Rankings written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Look, if you’re a local business, meaning most or all of your business comes from customers living in your community, you must get very serious about local SEO. Don’t worry, ranking locally for the kinds of things your prospects are looking for isn’t rocket science, but it does take a serious commitment to a handful of things.

SEO 46
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8 Ways To Pivot Your Business To Kickstart Growth

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur I know starts out with a strong conviction that their solution is a perfect match for their target market, and yet almost every one later admits a need to “pivot” before finding their groove. Course corrections, or pivots, are normal for new ventures, so expect them and don’t make excuses. Failure is the unwillingness to learn and change based on better information.

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Interview with Stephan Sieber, CEO of Unit4

deal architect

Stephan Sieber took over as CEO of Unit4 in April. He joined the company in 2014, after over more than a decade at SAP, including Managing Director of SAP Switzerland and Chief Operating Officer of the region DACH (Germany, Switzerland.

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Life Audit: 4 Ways To Reprogram Your Life

YoungUpstarts

by David Osborn , an entrepreneur, public speaker, and author. At some point, you were asked what you wanted to be when you grew up. Your answers varied as a child, but they were genuine and untainted by outside factors. But you matured, succumbed to those outside pressures, and now find yourself in a career you just like — or maybe even hate. Many of us live a programmed life dictated by others rather than one that’s true to ourselves and our dreams.

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How Social Media Marketing Can Ruin Your Budget

Brandanew

Social media marketing is a must for every business today. But the question is, are you spending your social media marketing dollars wisely? Technology continues to evolve–this means that new trends and marketing tools are coming about, giving you far too options. Every campaign usually begins with a test. Once you figure out what works best for you, you can scale your program as large or as small as you need it to be.

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Traction Metrics Seed Real Startup Funding And Growth

Startup Professionals Musings

Almost every entrepreneur looking for outside investors has heard the annoying rejection, “You are just too early – come back when you have more traction.” That should make you wonder - how do you measure traction in a metric? If it’s so important to investors, perhaps you should be using traction to measure your own progress, independent of a need for additional funding.

Metrics 143
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The #1 Mistake That Kills Your E-mail Campaign

Rembrandt Communications

Do you let your e-mail messages go out like this? You’re a small business owner who wants to save money wherever possible. I get it. But are you holding back funds in the right areas of your content-marketing plan? For example, it’s easy to hire an inexpensive copywriter with little experience to create your e-mail […]. The post The #1 Mistake That Kills Your E-mail Campaign appeared first on Boost sales fast with content marketing strategy, SEO and PR here.

Campaign 100
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Ditch Your Old Marketing Tactic And Invest In Social-Word-of-Mouth-Marketing

YoungUpstarts

By Jeff Ernst, CEO and President at Smync. When a startup is looking to build awareness for their brand – regardless if it’s an app, a grocery delivery business, a retail boutique or a new smart home device, the most common approach to trying to build this mythical “awareness” is to go “old school” – get a press release out and distribute it through the wire and get 200 backlinks, put up creative content across all your social channels, find all the free $100 Google/Bing/LinkedIn ad codes you ca

Marketing 169
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How Do I Improve My Social Media Presence?

Brandanew

Building a social media presence is something that every marketer is concerned about. Social media creates remarkable value for your organization for the long term. It looks straightforward to start with, but that’s rarely the case. You need to to develop the right kind of presence at scale that is consistent with your brand image. This is nuanced and varies from case to case, but here are a few pointers that can help you get started. .

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5 Steps To Avoid Solutions Looking For A Problem

Startup Professionals Musings

Technical entrepreneurs love their technology, and often are driven to launch a startup on the assumption that everyone will buy any solution which highlights this technology. Instead, they need to validate a customer problem and real market need first. Don’t create solutions looking for a problem , since investors ignore these, and customers other than early adopters may be hard to find.

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The Parentpreneur’s Guide To Taking A Guilt-Free Vacation

YFS Magazine

Learn what need to get done, make time to do it, and figure out how you will continue to create revenue while you are disconnected.

Revenue 118
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Obsession Is A Way Of Life For Most Entrepreneurs

YoungUpstarts

You could literally spend all day online just reading through tips for entrepreneurs until you have business knowledge spewing out of every orifice. This happens to a lot of people, and they wind up spending most of their time dreaming about taking action, reading about someone else taking action, and discovering new ways to take action, rather than actually taking action.

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Gust Launches Comprehensive Equity Management Platform for Cap Table Management and 409A Valuations

Gust

Gust announces acquisitions of Sharewave and Preferred Return; creates the most robust and affordable equity management solution for early-stage startups. June 22, 2016 – NEW YORK, NY – Gust, the global service provider powering the entrepreneurial ecosystem, announced today the launch of a comprehensive equity management platform, Gust Equity Management.

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Seed and pre-seed – trends and definitions

The Equity Kicker

The increasing capital efficiency of startups has been changing the face of venture for the last decade or so. The first thing to happen was that the bar for a Series A went up – unsurprising given that startups could now get much further with pre-Series A amounts of capital (2005-2010). That created a gap in market which sub $100m dedicated seed funds (aka micro-VCs) stepped into – there are now over 300 of them (2005-2016).

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Don’t Waste A Crisis

Feld Thoughts

This cliche, which has uncertain attribution (Winston Churchill, Rahm Emmanuel, M. F. Weiner) is a priceless line that gets tossed out periodically, especially in the middle of a crisis. Over the years I’ve been involved in many business crises. I qualify this, since my crises have never involved life and death or the survival of the human race.

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Corners You Must Never Cut When Starting Up A Business

YoungUpstarts

A huge part of business is making decisions. Make the right ones, and you have the potential to soar. But make the wrong ones? Your business could fail within the first year of launching. Of course, you want the former and not the latter. So how you can ensure this happens. How can you make the right decisions? There will soon appear opportunities when you can cut corners.

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How to follow up with investors who have rejected you?

Hippoland

When I was fundraising, there were a ton of investors who rejected me. Worse yet, there were many more investors who gave me no-response / went MIA / or was non-committal. So what do you do with all of these people? Is it worth re-approaching these people later? The short answer is yes. A “no” or non-response today isn’t forever. But the natural response that most entrepreneurs have is, “Oh, this investor doesn’t like me,” and he/she just shrinks away from talking w/ that investor ever agai

B2B 76
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Europe is underweight in Micro-VC

The Equity Kicker

ValueWalk have reported on new data out from Prequin that shows continued growth Micro-VC fundraising. Micro-VC growth has been going on long enough now that I’m hearing LPs question whether we’ve reached saturation point and this segment of the market would benefit from some contraction. Certainly that’s the argument Samir Kaji is making.

Europe 81
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USAA Wins PYMNTS/Alexa Voice Activated Technology Contest

SiliconHills

USAA won the PYMNTS/Alexa Challenge in the “Easiest to Explain to Mom” category for its innovative use of voice recognition technology. San Antonio-based USAA created a financial management program accessible through Alexa, the voice recognition program interface for Amazon’s Echo household device. “What Mom or Dad doesn’t want a little help to make ends meet?

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Wisdom With Age, Making A Career Change After 40

YoungUpstarts

You’ve worked hard for many years dealing with traveling, time away from home and the demands of a high-pressure environment. Now that your older, you want to take back your life and enjoy more time with your spouse, family and friends. This is a scenario that many people just like you face each day. The decision is life altering and can mean a fresh start at the prime of your life.

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Writing Checks Doesn't Make You an Investor

This is going to be BIG.

I met with a family office investor yesterday and we were talking about his family's interest in diversifying their investments into early stage companies. They mostly participated in real estate transactions--an asset class where actual due diligence is conducted, deals take months, even years to close, and assets are sometimes held for decades. It's an asset class built on relationships.

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Mattermark data shows US venture is slowing down – Europe may be insulated

The Equity Kicker

Stage-by-Stage Change in US Venture Capital Deployed (Deal Value) – Mattermark. Stage-by-Stage Change in US Venture Capital Deal Volume – Mattermark. Mattermark just released data for deal volume and value in the US in May. As you can see the trend is down, particularly in Seed and Series A. Moreover, as they point out these are lag measures because they report announced deals and deals are often announced 6-12 weeks after completion.

Europe 81
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6 Clever Strategies to Grow Your Real Estate Business

Up and Running

If you’re starting a real estate business, you know it’s important that your new business makes money. After all, you have to have enough cash in the bank to stay alive, as a business, never mind making enough to purchase that luxury vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The question is, what are the most effective strategies to go about making that money?

Wyoming 80
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How Your Business Could Generate Extra Income Through Investments

YoungUpstarts

For new businesses entering highly competitive industries, earning a consistent income on the side could be the difference between survival and failure. Many entrepreneurs look to enter secondary markets, but, with so many different avenues available to you, narrowing down your options can be difficult. Here are three of the most common trading markets that your business could benefit from: Forex Trading.

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Leadership and Mental Health

Feld Thoughts

Jerry Colonna and I are having a fireside chat and Q&A about leadership and mental health on Tuesday, June 28th at 3pm at The Josef Korbel School for International Studies. It is being co-hosted by Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network and DU’s Project X-ite. Please register and join us. The post Leadership and Mental Health appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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Stamps.com Buys Austin-based ShippingEasy for $55 Million

SiliconHills

Stamps.com Tuesday announced its acquisition of Austin-based ShippingEasy for $55 million in cash. ShippingEasy, which makes software to allow online retailers to organize, process, fulfill and ship their orders easily, relocated to Austin from Sydney, Australia in 2012 and is run by Katie May, an Austin native and serial entrepreneur. May has worked as head […] The post Stamps.com Buys Austin-based ShippingEasy for $55 Million appeared first on SiliconHills.

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