Sat.Jul 12, 2014 - Fri.Jul 18, 2014

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10 Entrepreneur Alternatives To Investor Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

'The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this valley, and there are some good ones I will outline here.

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Ladies, It’s Time: Go Be You

YoungUpstarts

'There are articles all over the internet about the marginalization of women and how, even in our advanced society, most of the professional workspace is a male dominated “boy’s club” where women are expected to drop out, become soccer moms and, basically, be reflections of the men and children who surround them. This is stupid. We’ve written before about how important it is for women, especially in today’s society, to retain their autonomy and to be their best selves.

Cofounder 176
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How To Disrupt The Investing Business, With Katina Stefanova (Ex-Bridgewater Management Committee)

David Teten

'I had a conversation recently about the investing business with Katina Stefanova , who recently left Bridgewater, the largest hedge fund in the world. I’ve always had great respect for Bridgewater, which unlike most investing organizations realizes just how critical processes and culture are to investing success. Katina served as a Senior Executive and Management Committee Advisor at Bridgewater Associates.

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4 Things You (and Every Small Business) Should Know About Taxes

Up and Running

'Recently our Bplans audience had the chance to attend a free webinar on Small Business Taxes, hosted by the CEO and founder of TaxAlli.com, Zach Olson. The webinar was extremely informative, and we had a lot of great questions from our attendees. As a follow up for our registrants, and in case you didn’t have a chance to attend, we’ve provided Zach’s slide deck above, and the transcript from the webinar below.

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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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Small Business and Startups: 7 Habits of Me

crowdSPRING Blog

'Steven Covey started it all with his seminal book, “7 Habits of Effective People.” His work has spawned hundreds of blog posts – a quick search turns up the “21 Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs,” and the “7 Habits of Effective Managers,” even the “10 Habits of Happy Mothers.” All of this exploration of habits and success, habits and effectiveness, habits and happiness led me to ask myself: “Self, I ask, what are your habits?

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Apple And IBM Bury The Hatchet In The Collaboration Economy

YoungUpstarts

'By Topher Morrison, author of “ Collaboration Economy: Eliminate the Competition by Creating Partnership Opportunities ”. If you need any further proof that the information age is dead and the collaboration age is now in full swing, bitter rivals Apple Inc., and IBM have announced that they are going to be collaborating to create approximately 100 business apps for the iPhone and iPad.

More Trending

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Think Hard Before Jumping From Corporate To Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

'I talk to many people who have spent years struggling up the corporate ladder who dream of jumping ship and becoming an entrepreneur. I hasten to tell them that every job move is fraught with risk, but the move from employee to entrepreneur is on the high end of the risk curve. It’s a big jump, especially in today’s economy, so do your homework first on this one.

Startup 271
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Uber Alles Paralysis

deal architect

'As the World Cup winds down, it has been such a celebration of global diversity. Polite Japanese fans cleaning up after themselves. Crushed Brazilian fans applauding the German team. And the reverse – way too many leaders blaming losses on.

Global 191
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[Infographic] WYSIWYG: DIY Websites

YoungUpstarts

'It used to be that designing and developing websites was an expensive proposition; without in-house web designers one needed to hire an agency that was wont to overcharge for web development work. These days, there’re a slew of web tools that allows anyone – at whatever level of design expertise – to put together websites for cheap.

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How to Incorporate Brand Advocates into Your Marketing Strategy

Duct Tape Marketing

'How to Incorporate Brand Advocates into Your Marketing Strategy written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest post is from Holly Cordner – Enjoy! photo credit: Intersection Consulting via photopin cc. When asked about how and why they make purchases, most people say that reviews and recommendations play a major role.

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Kickstart Your Startup Credibility With A Prototype

Startup Professionals Musings

'These days, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, pitching their latest and greatest new idea, and looking for someone to give them money. Angel investors, like me, have long figured out that asking to see the prototype is a quick way to separate the ‘wannabes’ from serious players. Talk is cheap, but entrepreneurs who show you a working model of their idea know how to execute.

Startup 263
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Boston Startup Talent: Leaky Bucket or Everlasting Spring?

Agile VC

'One of our portfolio companies, Plastiq , announced yesterday that they raised a $10M Series B led by Khosla Ventures and are planning to move their headquarters from Boston to San Francisco. We’re thrilled for the company to have a great investment partner joining the syndicate and one with deep payments expertise having backed companies like Square, Stripe, Fundbox, and others.

Boston 208
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5 ‘P’s” For Your Social Media Marketing Success

YoungUpstarts

'By Jeremy Juhasz, social media strategist at EMSI Public Relations. Small businesses and nonprofits face a different set of circumstances when it comes to social media marketing than their larger for-profit counterparts, namely, smaller budgets, fewer employees and a greater priority on traditional forms of marketing. For those charged with marketing, the biggest first step toward making social media an integral component of the plan may be convincing your organization.

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How Can This Be A Billion Dollar Company?

Feld Thoughts

'I was in the bathroom this morning catching up on all the blogs (via Feedly ) that I hadn’t read this week since my head was in a bunch of other things. I came across one from Nic Brisbourne (Forward Ventures) titled I’m a stock picker. I wish he had called it “This Unicorn Thing Is B t For Early Stage Investing” but I think he’s a little more restrained than I am.

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How to Make Your Summer Content Sizzle

Rembrandt Communications

'… and have time for a cool beverage It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s the middle of summer, and the last thing you feel like doing is starting a massive, sales campaign to bring in new customers. This won’t work anyway because most of your potential customers are either on vacation, getting ready to travel or […]. The post How to Make Your Summer Content Sizzle appeared first on SEO Content Strategy and BtoB Public Relations.

SEO 154
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Why should different stock classes in a startup be created?

Gust

'A useful way to look at it is the difference between current value and potential value. When an investor puts money into a company in exchange for an ownership stake, mathematics means that the amount of ownership the investor receives for the amount of the investment determines the “value” being assigned to the existing company before the investment.

Stock 167
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[Review] The Sales Bible

YoungUpstarts

'“Everyone wants to succeed at sales. Most people don’t. It’s not that they can’t. It’s just that they don’t know how.” Filled with motivational quotes like the ones above, Jeffrey Gitomer’s “ The Sales Bible ” is a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred compendium of ideas and techniques to boost one’s success in sales.

Sales 196
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Dear VCs: What Happens When Your Words And Your Actions Don’t Match

Feld Thoughts

'Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post Your Words Should Match Your Actions. It was a generic rant that resulted from me watching a couple of VCs blow up their reputations with entrepreneurs I know because of how they treated them. This morning I ended up on an email thread about this. I’m going to anonymize it, but you’ll get the point.

Matching 177
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The psychology of side projects: How creative hobbies improve our performance at everything

The Next Web

'This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog. At any given time, I have a side project running. It’s often a new blog or a Tumblr or a book or a newsletter. Sometimes I try to design WordPress themes. Other times I try photography. This ethos of new projects and new improvements runs throughout our Buffer team. We love to find ways to grow, excel, and improve through side projects and hobbies.

Web 168
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$1bn invested in UK startups in last six months

The Equity Kicker

'In June I shared some CBInsights data on investment into London startups through Q1 under the headline London: A startup ecosystem in the making. This week TechCrunch published Crunchbase data for the whole of the UK showing a similarly strong picture. Success begets success in the startup world and these investment figures wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for the success that has been enjoyed by companies like Just Eat, AO.com, King.com and Zoopla.

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3 Ways To “Share Local” And Make Your Business Stronger

YoungUpstarts

'by Eric Groves, CEO and co-founder of Alignable , and author of “ The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing “. Local businesses are stronger together than alone. Your competitive advantage is derived from the local and industry knowledge you possess along with the market power (resources that enable you to attract and retain customers) built.

Cofounder 189
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Mentors 2/18: Expect Nothing In Return

Feld Thoughts

'The second element of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto is Expect nothing in return (you’ll be delighted with what you do get back). It’s extraordinarily simple while being profoundly hard. It’s simple because it’s easy to say “I’m doing this without any expectations.” That felt good, right? You are going to be a good mentor, helping another up and coming entrepreneur, and it’ll be good karma.

Community 173
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Why the future of work is already here

The Next Web

'Sean Kim is an entrepreneur, new-born writer, and striving life-hacker. This post originally appeared on the Sketchfab blog. It’s a beautiful afternoon as I write this post at the Dineen coffee shop in Toronto. I’m also instant messaging a co-worker in New York City, about to get on a Skype call with our Community Manager in the Netherlands, and sending an email to our development team in Paris.

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When Are Business People Entitled To Be Entitled?

Gust

'Image via Flickr. Where did this sense of entitlement in our business culture come from? I’ve written about this before, but I was reminded again a while back at a conference for startups when an entrepreneur started berating investors for not funding early-stage startups. It sounded to investors like me that they felt a funding entitlement for their startup idea.

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How To Turn Flexible Working Hours Into A Win-Win Situation

YoungUpstarts

'by Sean Blanks, marketing director of www.cartridgesave.co.uk. Did the news that that every employee now has the right to request flexible working strike fear into your heart? It needn’t. We decided to introduce flexible working five years ago, specifically for our team of programmers. Employees with this skill are notoriously hard to recruit and so we decided to add it to the recruitment package, feeling it would be perceived as a perk that would suit their traditionally more unsociable hours

Employee 180
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What Should You Do When Someone Rips Off Your Site Design

Feld Thoughts

'I recently received the following email. I am in a bit of a dilemma and would really appreciate any insight you all have on what to do. Last month, my team worked with a designer to create a new homepage for my startup. Yesterday, I saw that another company ripped off our entire site design. They have also just recently pivoted into doing exactly what we do.

Design 149
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Productivity vs. Distraction: Should you block social media at work?

The Next Web

'Ilya Pozin is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and investor. He is the founder of online video entertainment platform Pluto.TV, social greeting card company Open Me, and digital marketing agency Ciplex. Social media in the workplace is a hot button topic. As more employees are reprimanded or even fired over the things they choose to post on their social channels, employers are paying more attention to what their workers are tweeting and saying.

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Can you build “Silicon Valley” companies outside of the Valley?

Version One Ventures

'The big debate among tech circles has always been if it’s possible to build a “Silicon Valley” company outside of the Valley. Is Silicon Valley a physical place or a state of mind ? Can upstart ecosystems in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, or Seattle churn out tomorrow’s billion dollar tech companies? Considering a large proportion of Version One’s portfolio is located outside Silicon Valley, I absolutely believe that major tech companies can emerge outside of the Silicon Valley bubble.

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Thinking Big: How To Beat Big Competitors As A Small Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Lewis Robinson. Many big businesses spend a lot of cash on recruitment. This is possible because large corporations have big pockets. However, smaller companies don’t always have the same resources. How then, are they supposed to be able to compete for top talent? This is an issue that can be found across the board, from hiring, to marketing, to production, and beyond; is it possible to remain competitive as a new or small business when your industry is home to well-established giants?

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AngelList Syndicate Feedback From An Experienced Entrepreneur

Feld Thoughts

'We recently funded Blinkfire Analytics using our FG Angels Syndicate. The CEO and founder, Steve Olechowski , was co-founder / COO of FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007. I was an investor and on the board of FeedBurner, which is how I got to know Steve. If you don’t know the FeedBurner story, there were four FeedBurner founders – Dick Costolo (now CEO of Twitter), Eric Lunt (now CTO of BrightTag and until recently a board member at Gnip, which Twitter just acquired), Matt Sh

Syndicate 148
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The beginner’s guide to Facebook ads for startups, small businesses and non-profits

The Next Web

'Rewind the clock a few years and you’d frequently hear people suggesting that Facebook is a great marketing channel because it was free to have a presence. If you built a good Facebook page for your business and attracted lots of fans, you’d have a valuable platform to talk to potential and existing customers. But times have changed and Facebook are pulling in the reigns.

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Introducing our latest investment: HandUp, directly helping those in need

Version One Ventures

'Lately, we have seen a growing number of entrepreneurs taking aim to solve the key issues facing our local and global communities. From improving transportation to optimizing neighborhood water usage and encouraging investments in municipal bonds, innovative start-ups are trying to make a difference. Along these lines, we are thrilled to announce our investment in HandUp , a platform that lets you donate directly to a person in need simply by sending a text.

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[Review] Roadside MBA

YoungUpstarts

'What happens when you pack three economists into a car and send them off on a road trip to discover the secrets behind America’s small businesses across the country? Hilarity ensues, of course, when you have three different eggheads with vastly different interests and personalities; however along the way they also encounter the various small businesses, with their individual quirks and peculiarities, that make the United States tick.

Tennessee 174
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Mentors 1/18: Be Socratic

Feld Thoughts

'Since today is the first day of the new Techstars Boulder program, I figured that it’s time to get rolling Deconstructing The Techstars Mentor Manifesto. My goal with this series of posts is not to get the detail right, but to flesh things out and get your feedback. So please comment on anything and challenge everything to help me get it better.

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How we increased our activation rate from 2% to 30% in 10 steps

The Next Web

'David Arnoux is Head of Growth and co-founder of Twoodo, helping teams organize using simple #hashtags. This post originally appeared on the Twoodo blog. One of the greatest lessons of the past few months is that when building a SaaS company you shouldn’t overlook the soft data just because it’s not hard data. This is especially true when following lean methodology.

Cofounder 161
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Bitcoin: things only grow this fast when something important is happening

The Equity Kicker

'Coindesk just published their quarterly ‘ State of Bitcoin ‘ presentation. This slide stood out for me: Looking at the massive year on year increases in most of these metrics I’m reminded of some wise words from Jeff Bezos. In around 2002 I was stuck in my hotel room in Egypt due to food poisoning and the only English TV available was an American business channel.

Egypt 145