Sat.Nov 08, 2014 - Fri.Nov 14, 2014

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Designing Products from Scratch: An Interview with UX Leader Josh Porter

View from Seed

'Josh Porter is the founder of What to Wear Daily , a service that helps you prepare for your day. He is best-known as the creator of 52 Weeks of UX and was also head of UX at HubSpot, by way of being co-founder of Performable (acquired in 2011). Below, Josh talks about designing features from nothing and how to make important design choices during the pre-seed and seed-stage phases of startup growth.

Design 330
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Investors Consider These 7 Elements to Be High Risk

Startup Professionals Musings

'If you aren’t willing to take some risk as an entrepreneur, then don’t expect any gain. Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. If you need investors, it’s important that you understand their filters, and even if you are funding your own efforts, you need to recognize the red flags.

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Enterprise Messaging Comes Of Age With sqoope

YoungUpstarts

'Everybody’s on an instant messaging app these days. Fast, convenient and almost idiot-proof, they allow us to communicate quickly with each other via text, photos, videos and more. Tapping on our data connections – be it 4G or WiFi – data-based messaging is just as instantaneous as SMSes without incurring higher mobile charges. However, messaging on a consumer platform becomes a little dicey when it comes to work.

Singapore 250
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The Planned Iteration Startup Launch Minimizes Risk

Gust

'Eric Ries on Lean Startup methodology, via Wikipedia. The traditional mode of starting a company has been to plan a serial process, where you complete once all the steps, leading to the “big bang” launch of the company. I strongly recommend a dramatic departure from this model, called “planned iteration” or Lean Startup methodology, where you assume you won’t get it right the first time, so you launch with a minimum viable product (MVP).

Agile 163
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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 Millennial Entrepreneur: Idealistic or Realistic? [with Infographic]

Up and Running

'Earlier this spring, studies in both the U.S. and the UK have reported declines in entrepreneurship: more startups failing, fewer getting off the ground, and low growth expectations for those currently open. After all this time, is it possible that entrepreneurs are now an endangered species? I hope you can sense the sarcasm in my tone. As is often the case, the speculation surrounding these kinds of studies has veered into the realm of sensationalism.

Cofounder 148
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Twitter Link Roundup #243 – Small Business, Startups, Innovation, Social Media, Design, Marketing and More

crowdSPRING Blog

'Today is Friday – end of week and ready to relax; anyone gonna see Interstellar this weekend? Anyhow, it’s time for our weekly roundup of the cool, intriguing, and compelling links and articles we shared with you over the past week on our very own crowdSPRING Twitter account (as well as my own Twitter account ). We like to talk about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and various random stuff!

More Trending

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Why Corporate Skunk Works Need to Die

Steve Blank

'In the 20 th century corporate skunk works were used to develop disruptive innovation separate from the rest of the company. They were the hallmark of innovative corporations. By the middle of the 21 st century the only companies with skunk works will be the ones that have failed to master continuous innovation. Skunk works will be the signposts of companies that will be left behind. ——– In the 20 th century companies could be leaders in a market for decades by just focusing o

Channel 286
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Are You Ready for Equity Based Crowdfunding?

Up and Running

'Are you an emerging entrepreneur with an underfunded venture? Could your business flourish with a gush of money and hype? Then, the unveiling of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed equity crowdfunding rules reveals a panacea for growing your business’s coffers. The SEC’s proposed rules (mandated by the JOBS Act of 2012) amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to allow the offer and sale of securities through an internet crowdfunding campaign, simil

Equity 125
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Leadership Mistakes Plague Every Startup Founder

Startup Professionals Musings

'Even entrepreneurs who have built many startups, or sold their last one for millions of dollars, know they make occasional people leadership mistakes. They know leadership is all about managing their own complicated, illogical, and fallible human foibles, as well as the people they depend on. These can trip up even the best, often at the cost of more than a good night’s sleep.

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Why You Don’t Want to Give Financial Information to All of Your Investors

Both Sides of the Table

'We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. The trends are well understood: more angels, more seed funds, more crowdsourcing and so forth. We all can intuit the benefits to founders of these trends so there’s little reason to elaborate. What is less understood are the consequences of these changes. I have blogged about some of the downside consequences of the changes and the private information I have says the consequences are much worse than is reported in the press since

SEC 352
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Five Sales Tips For Entrepreneurs To Close More Deals

YoungUpstarts

'By Martin Limbeck, “ NO is Short for Next Opportunity: How Top Sales Professionals Think “ You had the guts and the drive to start your own business. You now have a product, service or idea that potential clients need and want. But, now what? Simply establishing your business is not enough. Customers are not going to find you and hand you money.

Sales 263
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Planning for the Future: Your Exit Strategy

Up and Running

'Even if an island in the Maldives isn’t in the cards, if you’re seeking outside investment, an exit strategy is essential. What is an exit strategy? An exit strategy is a method by which entrepreneurs and investors, especially those that have invested large sums of money in startup companies, transfer ownership of their business to a third party, or by which they recoup money invested in the business.

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Every Business Leader Shows Imperfections To Avoid

Startup Professionals Musings

'Does it really take a few flaws to make a great entrepreneur, or are the rest of us just confused about what a perfect business person is all about? In the past I’ve written about the positive attributes of great entrepreneurs, so this time I thought I would focus on the negatives that I see often, and I challenge you to find someone that has all the positives and none of the negatives.

Demand 259
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The hidden benefits of Uniform Culture

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

'This article originally appeared on the WP Engine Blog. I don’t mean “uniform” as in “identical.” (Although, that’s not a bad definition of culture : The attributes that we all share.). I mean “uniform” as in, “Wearing the same clothes, thereby reducing individuality.” We have a swag culture at WP Engine, particularly in T-shirts.

Engineer 229
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4 Marketing Tips Every Startup Should Ignore  

YoungUpstarts

'by Mark Ditteaux, President and COO of Mark-it-Smart. When you are first starting a business, your marketing strategy is crucial. It can make or break your future, and you want to get it right. So how do you know what the right marketing moves are? You turn to your trusty pal Google to figure out. That’s when you discover that the Web is laden with marketing advice, and it’s not always easy to decipher which of it is the real deal and which of it is from people that have no idea wha

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Users, Payers and Multi-Sided Markets

Steve Blank

'If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons.

Marketing 269
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Crowd-Funding Success Usually Brings New Challenges

Startup Professionals Musings

'Many entrepreneurs seems to be convinced that the “crowd” of regular people using the Internet will somehow solve their startup funding needs, when they sense a lack of interest from accredited investors. Professionals maintain that there is plenty of money and equity for qualified startups, and funding marginal startups via any source will only make more people unhappy.

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Are You Ready for the Holidays or Just Overwhelmed?

Rembrandt Communications

'Time to Get your Content Strategy and Priorities in Place! It’s already mid-November and time to prepare for the holidays. And while things get super busy over the next, few weeks, here are a few things to keep in mind… Remember to celebrate! With all of the preparations for the holidays and getting things done […]. The post Are You Ready for the Holidays or Just Overwhelmed?

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Three Common Expense Tracking Mistakes

YoungUpstarts

'by William Olsen, CPA, Co-founder and VP of Product Development at Deductr. It seems like tax time is fraught with last minute scrambling to gather business records for those who claim business deductions. The vision of sorting through receipts “mining” for deductions makes procrastinators out of all of us. Proper deduction tracking during the year is not as difficult as you might think.

Utah 223
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15 ways to test your minimum viable product

The Next Web

'Chris Bank is the Growth Lead at UXPin, the UX Design App. Though the MVP provides a means to test hypotheses as a starting point, it does not imply that it is easy to build. The idea behind this exercise is not to see if the product can be built in terms of technical feasibility. Rather, it is to see whether you should be building it in the first place and, more importantly, whether it’s solving a problem other people find worth paying for.

Product 167
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Gossip At Work Undermines Every Business Leader

Startup Professionals Musings

'As an entrepreneur, you should treat gossip among the members of your team as a reduction in productivity at best, and at worst, an indication of unhappy, un-empowered, or non-collaborative employees. As a leader, you should be asking yourself if you are the problem, and working hard to improve the situation before it gets out of hand, causing lost clients as well as lost productivity.

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2014-15 Bridge Group SaaS Inside Sales Research Survey

For Entrepreneurs

'The Bridge Group is known for publishing insightful studies that aid SaaS Sales & Marketing leaders to build and optimize their inside sales strategies. They are working on the 5th round of their SaaS inside sales research and would like our help completing a 6-7 minute survey. Your answers will remain anonymous, and in return […].

Sales 166
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Survival Tips For The Overworked Entrepreneur

YoungUpstarts

'By Chelsea Berler, author of “ The Curious One: From Food Stamps to CEO – One Woman’s Journey through Struggle, Tragedy, Success and Love “ Starting and running your own business can be an exciting, empowering act that has positive ramifications for your entire way of life, but the responsibility entailed in such an endeavor can often lead entrepreneurs to place themselves in situations where they are handling too much at one time, pushing themselves physically and menta

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Are you ‘fit’ to be an entrepreneur? 3 ways to get mentally charged

The Next Web

'Callum Laing is the CEO of Entrevo Asia and the founder of Fitness-Buffet, an employee fitness business in 11 countries. I’m always intrigued when I meet successful people, entrepreneurs or otherwise, to understand their fitness habits. Over time this has lead me to identify three different types of fitness activities that serve three very different but important functions to an entrepreneur.

Asia 167
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Ride the Wave

Version One Ventures

'In the course of your career or start-up, nothing is more powerful than catching a big wave at the right time. I was reminded of this as we celebrated the 25 th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th. I was 16 and living in (West) Germany when the wall was torn down. The reunification that followed less than a year later brought tremendous optimism to Germany.

Germany 152
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$1bn sales in 17mins 58s – Alibaba

The Equity Kicker

'Singles Day has just started in China. It’s a day where single people celebrate, and was selected because of the number of ‘1s’ in the date – it’s 11/11. It’s also the largest online shopping day in China and the news this morning is that Alibaba racked up $1bn of sales in the first 17mins 58s, and $2bn in the first hour.

Sales 149
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[Infographic] Why Small Businesses Can (And Should) Hire Big

YoungUpstarts

'Startups and small businesses are always advised to think big, but apparently this is even more true when it comes to hiring. While looking for and hiring high potential employees is important for any kind of organization, such hires can be even more critical to the success of a startup. A high-potential employee tends to be one that not just has ability and ambition, but one that also inspires fellow colleagues and takes charge of any kind of situation – as you can see, these are traits

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How quitting email helped my company communicate better

The Next Web

'Max Nalsky is the founder and CEO of Pyrus, the workplace communication platform. We operate in a world of inboxes. Everyone has his or her collection of points where other people can touch them — email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype – the list goes on. It’s easily overwhelming, and we are cursed with options when it comes to communicating with people nowadays.

Email 167
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10 Ways to Develop Your Leadership Team

Up and Running

'Got a question for one of the entrepreneurs mentioned below? Today at 4:30pm EST, we’ll be chatting about leadership development on Twitter. Join in using #bplans as your hashtag. Are you providing your leadership team with the support they need to succeed? Leadership development is an employee perk many don’t outright recognize, or greatly appreciate.

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High growth startups are a big deal for the UK economy – new research

The Equity Kicker

'There’s a new report out on the impact of high growth small businesses on the UK economy. Last week I wrote about some new research showing that nearly all job creation in the US comes from young companies and concluded by saying it would be great to see some similar research in the UK. And now we have some already. With this publication and the upcoming Scale Up report I hope it will be very clear that high growth startups are the engine of growth for employment and the UK economy more

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[Infographic] Startup Salaries: Why Less Is More

YoungUpstarts

'Thinking that founding your own startup may be the ticket out of your financial doldrums? Well, not in the short run. Recent research has shown that a startup’s chances of success is actually inversely related to the amount of financial remuneration its founders give themselves; that is, the less the founders pay themselves, the higher their chances of success.

Salary 176
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7 warning signs that your startup’s about to fail

The Next Web

'Andrew Condurache is the founder of Closed Club, a startup that archives closed down startup products and key lessons learned A startup can be seen as a series of trials and errors – some things work others do not, but you keep pushing on. Sometimes you think you are on the right path and everything is going smoothly… then out of nowhere, an unexpected obstacle stares you right in the eye.

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Goal Setting That Leads to Greatness

Up and Running

'When you set impossible goals, you force your employees—and yourself—to innovate. Steve Jobs was famous for his high standards. In fact, those impossible targets he set for his team made Apple the innovative powerhouse it is today. According to one employee, when engineers completed the prototype of the very first iPod, they presented their work to Jobs for his approval.

Employee 128
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Is an Accelerator Right for You?

David Cohen

'(This is first in a series of 10 blog posts from my interview with Scott Gerber for the Inc.com Founders Forum. We discussed a bunch of topics including choosing an accelerator, mentoring, acquisitions and the tech talent shortage. You can watch all of the videos on Inc.com.). Not every founding entrepreneur at the early stages should look for an accelerator.

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[Infographic] How Consumers Spend Their Money Online

YoungUpstarts

'Online shopping has become one of the biggest Internet trends in recent years, thanks to the explosive growth in the number of e-commerce platforms and payment gateway methods, and even the number of logistics partners that specialize in fulfilling online orders. But how do consumers really shop online? As in, how often do they do so, how much do they spend, and what devices do they use for browsing and purchasing online?

eCommerce 168
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Elon Musk: SpaceX will launch micro-satellites for low cost internet

The Next Web

'Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX is working on micro-satellites. Following a story in The Wall Street Journal, he tweeted this morning that SpaceX is developing “advanced micro-satellites operating in large formations” with an official announcement due in two to three months. SpaceX is still in the early stages of developing advanced micro-satellites operating in large formations.

Internet 153