Sat.Nov 14, 2015 - Fri.Nov 20, 2015

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Does a VCs Culture Really Matter? The Upfront Story

Both Sides of the Table

I’m often asked about the differences between being at a VC and being an entrepreneur and whether I prefer one or the other. The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” The reason is that at a VC you have a group of partners who often have different focus areas of excellence, each pursues deals in their respective field, each makes investments and sits on boards and each spends their

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Successfully Get Your New Business Off the Ground With This Free New Tool From Intuit QuickBooks

YoungUpstarts

Let’s face it, navigating your 20s and 30s is no easy feat, but doing that while looking to start a business is even more difficult. From initial funding processes to increasing your online presence, to tackling accounting and more, there’s a lot that goes into getting your business off the ground. Even with all this, it doesn’t have to keep you up at night.

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Protect Your Business Plan Like It’s Your Baby—Here’s How

Up and Running

We all want the best for our babies—and our business plans! Nearly all businesses, whether they are small or large, are comprised of intellectual property (IP) and trade secrets, which can serve as the foundation for commercial success. The World Intellectual Property Organization defines IP as, “creations of the mind,” which, depending on the business, can take many forms.

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The art of hiring a data scientist

Version One Ventures

Nearly four years ago, I joined the Insight Data Science team and we launched an intensive 7 week post-doctoral training fellowship bridging the gap between academia and data science. Since then, over 400 Insight alumni have been hired as data scientists or data engineers at top tier companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Airbnb, and Google. Although I formally left the company in March 2013 (but continue to have an advisory role there), I still field countless questions from entrepreneur

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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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The Advanced Guide to Holiday Testing

ConversionXL

When you think about the holiday season, you think more traffic, right? More traffic means more conversions. More conversions mean more data. More data means more insights. But is the data from the tests you run during major shopping holidays representative? We can’t throw sample pollution out the window, can we? Will your insights still be relevant in February when the rush dies down?

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[ADV] How Can Translation Services Help Business?

YoungUpstarts

Today, the world is smaller than it ever was before. The developments in technology now allow us to communicate with other people based anywhere across the globe within seconds. Similarly to our personal lives, globalisation can also have a positive effect on businesses. The idea of international expansion becomes more and more popular within the UK SMEs.

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17 Entrepreneurs Share their Favorite Quotes

Hearpreneur

André Gide wrote that,”Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Quotes are an important part of motivation, though many of them are repeats of another turn of phrase. Business owners are particularly partial to famous quotations. Reading a motivational speech from a business legend or famous creative mind can give you a spark.

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Lean Startup In Japanese Companies

Steve Blank

Implementing the Lean Startup in any company is hard. All the culture and incentives are designed for execution. Innovation at times seems like you’re swimming up hill. Now compound that level of effort with trying to put a Lean Startup culture in place in Japan. According to Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino, Japanese companies tend to be technology centric, obsess over quality and have weak leadership.

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Top 5 Tips To Successfully Recruit Creative Talent

YoungUpstarts

By Marina Djordjevic, Director of Talent Acquisition at Idean. The rapid rise of the digital economy and sharp focus on delivering an excellent user experience has made it challenging for companies that aren’t Google or some other tech giant to recruit the creative talent they need. Big companies can throw money at candidates with hard-to-find skill sets, an option that isn’t available to most startups or smaller app development businesses.

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Man-Machine equilibrium

deal architect

I am researching how automation – robotics, AI, 3D printing, process bots, drones etc – is changing every job category and the results may end up in a book, several blogs. In just the beginning stages of my research, I.

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Social Customer Service Metrics: 3 Case Studies

Duct Tape Marketing

Social Customer Service Metrics: 3 Case Studies written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Flickr. How has marketing changed thanks to social media? Well, now 90% of customers are influenced by online reviews. Some companies cringe when they hear this: The decision whether to buy can come down to a good or bad Yelp review.

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6 Key Principles Drive Startup Change Leaders Today

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the business ironies that many entrepreneurs have learned the hard way in the past is that ideas which are truly disruptive carry the highest risk of failure, take the longest to gain traction, and thus are the least likely to get external funding. So some entrepreneurs stick with incremental solutions, avoiding more transformational or adaptive solutions implying disruptive change.

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The Top 5 Holiday Scams To Warn your Employees About

YoungUpstarts

by Stu Sjouwerman, founder and CEO of KnowBe4. This holiday season could be the most wonderful time of year for cyber criminals, accor ding t o digital identity company ThreatMetrix. In a new report, the firm reveals that it has detected a 25% jump in attacks. You should warn everyone in your organization that cyber criminals are going into overdrive this time of year: 1.

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 11: Pat Sullivan and Sebastian Jackson

Steve Blank

Startup founders strive to turn their dreams into reality, and the mentors who guide them often learn as much as they teach. How startup ideas are developed and nurtured was the focus of conversations with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Pat Sullivan. Joining me in the Stanford University studio were: Pat Sullivan , CEO of Ryver , a team communication tool.

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The unbearable lightness of enterprise software launches

deal architect

A reader of SAP Nation 2.0 commented it read like a “slow-motion train wreck”. It starts with the incredible excitement and expectations when S/4HANA was launched in February : “This is the biggest product launch in the last 23 years.

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5 Personality Types That Thrive In New Businesses

Startup Professionals Musings

As a startup advisor, I see many aspiring entrepreneurs whose primary motivation seems to be to work part time, or get rich quick, or avoid anyone else telling them what to do. Let me assure you, from personal experience, and from helping many successful as well as struggling entrepreneurs, that starting a business is hard work, and doesn’t come with any of the benefits mentioned.

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More Women. Fewer Trolls. Better Internet [Traction #13: Sandi MacPherson]

View from Seed

The NextView podcast Traction explores all the clever, creative, and atypical things entrepreneurs do to make initial progress against the odds. If startups should do things that “don’t scale,” then this podcast asks a simple question: What ARE those things? Past episodes include stories from founders of LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , Mattermark , Duck Duck Go , InsightSquared , and more.

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Survival Checklist For New Solopreneurs

YoungUpstarts

by Donovan Janus, founder of 17hats. The hard part is over! You’ve already decided that your side business or after work hobby is going to become your new primary source of income. This is an extremely exciting time filled with endless possibilities where growth is nascent and mistakes are bound to be made and learned from. While failure is a real fear of new entrepreneurs everywhere, you can prevent it from becoming reality with these five tips: Find yourself in your work.

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Another victim of the war on terror

deal architect

Freedom House monitors freedom on the web and its 2015 assessment of countries based on developments as of May was gloomy enough. “Of the 65 countries assessed, 32 have been on a negative trajectory since June 2014. The most significant.

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7 Indicators Of Business Traction You Should Celebrate

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur is quick to tell friends and potential investors about his or her vision of changing the world, about all the customers who have expressed an interest, and about all the other investors who are lining up to get a piece of the action. As an angel investor, I really prefer to hear evidence of credible traction today, not how great things could be in the future.

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5 Things Remarkable Professional Bloggers Do Consistently

Brandanew

Even school kids have blogs nowadays. Blogging is an epidemic. By 2020 there’s an expected 600% growth of online content – a large part of it consumer driven. We’re creating content like never before. However, not all blogs are created equal. Being a professional blogger means taking care of your personal or corporate brands in addition to being engaging.

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How Community Involvement Can Help Your Startup

YoungUpstarts

by David Adams, founder of HomeSuite. When we think of giving back to the community, we often think of dramatic relief efforts like those that supported the victims of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. After the floods devastated New Orleans, companies like Wal-Mart and Pfizer pledged millions in money and services to aid victims. Individuals like Sandra Bullock and Jay-Z also contributed large amounts.

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10 Women Entrepreneurs That Will Inspire You

YFS Magazine

While we celebrate women entrepreneurs every day, this week (November 19th) kicked off the 2nd Annual International Women’s Entrepreneurship Day [WED] to empower women and their businesses. So, here's a look at 10 empowered female entrepreneurs who should definitely be on your radar.

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You Need More Than BtoB Content Strategy for Success

Rembrandt Communications

3 Simple Secrets to Win Loyal Customers, Sales and Credibility You worked hard to get your BtoB content strategy in place. Now, your business is buzzing with current and interesting social-media-posts, articles, newsletters, videos, contests, case studies, press releases, and more. You are doing what needs to be done. And now, it’s time to take […].

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[Workshop] How To Use Digital Marketing To Generate Sales For Your Books

Brandanew

As shared before, we conducted a workshop on how to use digital marketing to generate sales with a group of authors/writers concerned about their book sales in Ann Arbor on November 12. While the ideas were specific to authors, I do believe the tips and information that was shared can be used for any physical product sale. This includes: selling art, pens, mugs to clothes!

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The Top 5 Benefits Of A Commercial Security System

YoungUpstarts

Business owners have many issues to deal with on a daily basis. The security of a business shouldn’t be one of them. That’s why most successful business owners view the installation of a security system as an investment rather than an expense. With so many other business related activities to focus on, the last thing any sensible business owner wants to worry about is the lack of security in his or her company.

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3 Small Business Government Resources You’ve Probably Overlooked

YFS Magazine

Whether it’s funding opportunities or valuable business training, governments across the globe provide hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free value to entrepreneurs willing to access them.

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Trying to Raise Money? Thinking About Gust for Startup Fundraising?

Gust

How to Make Your Gust Account Stand Out to Investors Before you read any further, I want you to know that I’ve personally used Gust to raise money for my first tech startup. I know a lot of other entrepreneurs who use or have used Gust to seek funds, but their profiles don’t always get attention from investors. Below are. Read more >. The post Trying to Raise Money?

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How to Create Remarkable Video Ads On Social Media

Brandanew

Facebook tells us that we need to create remarkable video ads. And I constantly have this nostalgic image in my head. Some of us might not remember the times when online videos suffered from buffering and time lags because the network speeds were so low. It does sound like a 80s geek movie now. We have a plethora of technology platforms from YouTube, to Facebook, Vimeo, Vine, Instagram where consumers are creating and sharing short videos effortlessly and directly from mobile devices now.

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Top 5 Tips To Keep Your Office Safe During Your Holiday Getaway

YoungUpstarts

By Herman Yau, CEO of Tend. The holiday season is upon us — a time when many company owners and entrepreneurs put business aside temporarily to focus on family and friends. But it’s not all merry-making and good cheer: Unfortunately, the holidays are also the time of year when thieves kick their activities into high gear, looking for unguarded homes and businesses to burglarize.

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How to lose 76% of your users

The Next Web

Imagine you work at a SAAS company and your funnel looks like this: We have a signup conversion rate of 10 percent. Pretty impressive, right? Our investors thought so too. How impressed? They gave us $9,000,000. However, there was a problem. A big, lurking problem that eventually neither us nor the investors could ignore. Only 30 percent of signups actually implemented Ptengine – our company – on their website.

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An Entrepreneur’s Inner Battle, What They Aren’t Telling You

YFS Magazine

Aspirations are great, but missing out on life around you isn’t. Severe startup burn out will occur; you will begin to feel so fried and tired of striving that you lose sight of your actual goals.

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What’s the Best Business Proposal Format?

Up and Running

A business proposal can often make or break your chances of securing a new client. Write a great one, and you’ll likely snag their business. Write a poor one, and you might lose out—even if you’re offering the best service out there. So, how do you write a business proposal, and what is the proper format? While it depends a lot on your industry, and whether or not you’re offering a product or service, writing a business proposal is pretty straightforward.

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The Authentic Introvert Entrepreneur

YoungUpstarts

by Beth L. Buelow, author of “ The Introvert Entrepreneur “ The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Be who you are, as long as you’re like us. That’s the implicit message we’ve probably all experienced at one time or another. It might have been at school, at home, or at work. We’re told that individuality is celebrated, but at the end of the day, conformity is what’s rewarded.

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5 ways to be productive as a part-time founder

The Next Web

Working on a start-up while doing 12-hour shifts as doctor is pretty gruelling. More often than not, I would come home completely destroyed and want to collapse into bed. Also, there are the night shifts, the weekend shifts, the unholy hours worked that was probably during a public holiday. Doctoring isn’t easy and start-ups isn’t easy. While my colleagues went home to Game of Thrones and a big tub of ice cream, I cracked open my laptop and continued to code through the night (with a big tub of

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Hosting A Business Lunch? Feed Clients This And Close The Deal!

YFS Magazine

With a nutrient dense meal and a happy client, you’ll surely close the deal. Try this strategy for your next sales meeting over lunch!

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