Sat.May 07, 2011 - Fri.May 13, 2011

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Non-Technical Entrepreneurs Need the Right Partner

Startup Professionals Musings

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Then the question becomes “How do I evaluate and attract the best technical talent?

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Do I dare call bullshit aloud? Do you?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

A daily side-effect of my moderate fame is a barrage of “special&# offers, guest-post requests, pleas for attention, and modest, tasteful bribery. It’s not bad; most are sincere, and even those blatant marketing ploys requesting me to “review this fantastic new book that’s so relevant to your readers who are aching to read it&# are professional, direct, and come bearing gifts (even if it is just a free book).

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How Federal Government Can Help Entrepreneurship

Feld Thoughts

This afternoon in Boulder I’ll be on a panel as part of the White House Startup America Roundtable. If you weren’t invited to the event, there is a web site called Reducing Barriers to Innovation that you can participate in. Over the past few years, I’ve spent some time thinking about how the government can help entrepreneurship. It started with my role as the co-chairman of the Colorado Governors Innovation Council which was my first involvement in any formal way with any gove

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HOW TO: Hire the Perfect CTO

mashable.com

); // Welcome to Mashable! Sign in with Facebook or Twitter to get started! Close Mashable | The Social Media Guide Top Stories My Stories Topics People Activity Viral Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video About Mashable Company About Us Advertise Submit News Contact Us Announcements Mashable Follow Resources Guidebooks Lists How To Trending Mashable Awards Subscriptions Partners W3 EDGE Rackspace Concentric Sky Dynect DNS Intridea Welcome to Mashable!

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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 Co-Founder Mythology

Both Sides of the Table

I spoke at Stanford last year about starting a tech company. They really cleverly chopped the video up into small bite-sized segments. So for anybody who reads my “This Week in VC&# transcripts but doesn’t watch the video – this one’s for you! It’s only 3 minutes, 44 seconds. I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# So embedded is this conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that it feels like heresy to even question it.

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What Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About Accountability And Leadership

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Growing up, I could be described as very sensitive and at times even shy and introverted. I always thought that leaders were very loud, extroverted, had great senses of humor and that they had to be very arrogant. I have come to know there is no direct correlation between arrogance or likability and leadership. There will always be those who follow the arrogant, however, they’re so unsure of themselves that these are the types of people that you do not want on your team, and whom you specificall

More Trending

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How I Found a Great CTO

www.huffingtonpost.com

HuffPosts QuickRead. Loading. HuffPosts QuickRead. Loading. BIG NEWS: Unemployment | For Profit Colleges | Financial Reform | Small Business America | Royal Wedding More Log in | Sign Up Edit Preferences Logout News Web Like 303K CONNECT FRONT PAGE US CANADA POLITICS POLITICS HUFFPOST HILL 2012 ELECTIONS GREEN POLLSTER SPECULATRON BUSINESS DAILY FINANCE SMALL BIZ BLOG AUTOBLOG HUFFPOST TECH TECHCRUNCH THE WATCHDOG ENTERTAINMENT ENTERTAINMENT MUSIC POPEATER MOVIES TV GAMES.

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8 questions for SAP

deal architect

In preparation for the visit to Sapphire I have been polling the industry and have come up with a few questions I hope SAP executives answer next week On behalf of Apple: We expect our major suppliers to reflect our.

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Investors Expect Ten Essentials in a Business Plan

Startup Professionals Musings

People ask me if they really need ANY business plan, unless they are looking for an outside investor. In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Things that make it investment-grade for outside investors will also benefit you, since you are the ultimate investor.

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Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data

SoCal CTO

A long-time friend and colleague, Steve Wexler, who is great at visualization took my Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data and produced a really need interactive visualization via Tableau. You can find it here: Interactive Version: Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data (US) Explanation: CTO compensation and equity at venture-backed companies Probably the best thing for someone to do is to go to the Interactive Version and look things up using their specific situation.

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A Framework for Web Analytics

www.jonsamsel.com

Jon Samsel Social media, SEO, marketing and writing Home Bio Books Portfolio Login A Framework for Web Analytics On May 10, 2011, Heardable’s CEO, Jon Samsel, was asked to speak at the Jamba Juice Digital Marketing Summit in Emeryville, California. The juice jam was organized by Jim Holbrook, CEO of of Neighbor Agency and Conn Fishburn, Founder and CEO, F3 Ideas.

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Fortress Enterprise

deal architect

I have been amused with the number of blogs and tweets which go along the lines of “Is NetSuite ready for the Enterprise?” Esteban Kolsky asks it and cites a Forrester analyst who asks something similar. Dennis Howlett asks if.

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PR for a Startup Should Not Start With an Agency

Startup Professionals Musings

As an entrepreneur, it’s never too early to start selling yourself and your idea. I hear lots of excuses from startup founders, like “I’m too busy,” concern over IP security, can’t afford an agency, and it’s too early. The result is they get no feedback, no credibility, no visibility, and no investors until months later than they expect. I’m definitely not lobbying here for promising things you can’t deliver, or hiring a publicist before your first programmer.

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Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data

SoCal CTO

A long-time friend and colleague, Steve Wexler, who is great at visualization took my Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data and produced a really need interactive visualization via Tableau. You can find it here: Interactive Version: Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data (US) Explanation: CTO compensation and equity at venture-backed companies Probably the best thing for someone to do is to go to the Interactive Version and look things up using their specific situation.

Salary 175
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Landing Pages That Convert

www.chancebarnett.com

Chance Barnett Curious Connections of People, Marketing & Technology About Me Landing Pages That Convert Posted: May 20th, 2009 | Author: Chance Barnett | Filed under: Copywriting , Marketing Strategy , Search Marketing | Tags: conversion , landing page , subscriber conversion | View Comments Hey- if you’re interested in learning about how to get your online business off the ground and convert visitors to your site into customers, then you need to check out a video interview I did with Andre

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NetSuite the new Applications Unlimited

deal architect

I was struck by a small gesture by Mark Hurd of Oracle as he presented at the SuiteWorld event. He got off the stage and came to the level of the audience and talked about NetSuite’s importance to Oracle and.

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The Connectivity Wave Needs Entrepreneur Leaders

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs are always looking for “the next big thing,” when maybe in fact it’s a lot of little things that are only recognized after the fact as components of a big evolution or revolution. In my view, the Internet “connectivity anywhere” has already spawned several of these, but the global change has only begun. Emily Nagle Green, in her recent book “ ANYWHERE ,” argues effectively that the future of the world and business is ubiquitous connectivity, the total interconnection of people, ide

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5 (Sarcastic) Truths About Entrepreneurship That No One Will Tell You

Up and Running

Tweet My cousin Brian recently shared an article titled 5 Ways To Test An Entrepreneurial Idea. It was full of cute and inspiring ideas on how to succeed in the world of small business ownership. “Research an analogy,” “Contact your prospective clients,” and my personal favorite, “Visualize it.” When I read the last one I choked on the cup of Ramen Noodles that I was slurping down for lunch.

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Working On, Rather Than In, Your Business

Feld Thoughts

I spent the day yesterday in Kansas City at the Kauffman Foundation with about 20 women entrepreneurs who were the E&Y Winning Women from 2008, 2009 , and 2010. As part of their program, Paul Kedrosky and I spent the morning talking to them about accelerating their growth, dynamics around financings, and boards – mostly about how to build a board and use it effectively.

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Artificial Clouds (to provide shade) in Qatar Chips optimized for mobile apps The crowdsourced math project The world’s largest model airport Reid Hoffman’s Networked Graph.

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Don’t Pay Bribes to Get International Expansion

Startup Professionals Musings

By Ernst Gemassmer Expanding into International is both necessary and positive for every company, including startups, but it has some unique challenges, as I have found out personally, like expected “under the table” payments in dealing with other cultures and bureaucracy. Some companies look at this as a “cost of doing business,” but it can easily cost you your reputation and your business.

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Avoid Rip-Offs! 5 Questions to Ask a Potential SEO Copywriter

Rembrandt Communications

You realize that your site is not showing up in the search engines for your top keywords, and your competition is stealing your sales. It’s time to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist to help you rank higher online. But before you hand out your hard-earned cash for SEO services, beware! There are many [.].

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Why Panels Suck And My New Approach To Panels

Feld Thoughts

I’ve been getting at least one invitation a day to speak on at a conference or on a panel. My general rule is to only say yes when it intersects with my travel, if it is for an organization I’m already involved in or a person I want to support, or if it’s in a place I’m interested in visiting. When invited, I typically end up getting asked to give a keynote, be interviewed on stage, or be part of a panel.

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog The stars are truly aligned! Security at the Royal Wedding 25 most powerful Asian businesspeople National Train Day.

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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: 2 Really Cool Companies

ReadWriteStart

During today's roundtable, we had two 1M/1M premium members discussing their businesses alongside Penworks, a new company we looked at for the first time. The premium members have been working with us for a bit and have made progress, so this was an interesting roundtable where we were able to discuss some more advanced issues. First up, Vrushali Humnabadkar from Pune, India, presented Penworks, a technical documentation outsourcing service.

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Update on our study on deal sourcing

David Teten

It’s been very exciting to see such a strong response to our recent research study on “Best Practices in Private Equity and Venture Capital Deal Origination”, published in the Winter 2010 Journal of Private Equity. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic study on this topic; we have not found any other in-depth research on origination by either academics or practitioners.

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The 3 Most Damaging Myths in Entrepreneurship

Up and Running

Tweet Having just completed my spring business plan season — three big business plan contests and our angel group investment — I think it’s a good time to poke some holes in several damaging and far-too-common myths about startups. Furthermore, as I write this I’m just leaving Disney World, so the myth of the Pied Piper ( the illustration here, in case you were wondering ) comes to mind too. 1.

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Hobbies and Entrepreneurship

This is going to be BIG.

If you're looking to build relationships with VCs, learn from top entrepreneurs or just get deep into the NYC innovation community, I suggest you read a book. I don't mean any particular book about startups--I mean join a book club. Joe Yevoli and Reece Pacheco run a book club of 30 local entrepreneurs that meets monthly. How about riding a bike?

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Trade Show Checklist: How To Successfully Sell Your Product At Trade Shows

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

With a physical product, there are several ways to meet customers and market your business. In this week’s article, I write about doing trade shows and meeting potential customers face-to-face in a convention type of setting. I have noticed over the past couple of years that the trade show world seemed to be dwindling in foot traffic. In the face of numerous shows ‘debuting’, there are simply too many shows to attend.

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Business Insider Startup 2011 conference

David Teten

I was only able to stay for part of yesterday’s Business Insider Startup 2011 conference, but was impressed by the caliber of speakers and companies there, including significant West Coast representation. One of the pitching startups was Grovo , which offers an easy-to-digest guides to all things Internet. i think the company is very promising; i’ve already referred some family members to it.

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The long road to bringing an idea to life: MySizeFinder Case Study

Life Beyond Code

There is a joy in bringing ideas to life if you do that with love. This is a case study of MySizeFinder – from the idea to going live. You will see everything that happened behind-the-scenes including most of the people involved. Hopefully this will be useful information for people on the sidelines wanting to do something but have not taken the plunge yet.

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Respecting the Craft

This is going to be BIG.

A lot of baseball fans have the knuckleball fantasy--particularly guys like me who are over 30 that realize that this quirky pitch is their last ticket to play in the major leagues. We never developed the 98mph fastball--and it's unlikely that any amount of pounding a vat full of rice is going to get us there. Yet, there's always the possibilty that Charlie Hough or Tom Candiotti randomly moves in next door to us and agrees to soft toss some floaters every night for six months until we pick it u

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Deciding to Become an Entrepreneur

Growthink Blog

At the bottom of this post, I have an important question for you. Please post your answers in the Comments section. Danny Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. If you're a New Yorker, you've probably heard of at least some of his restaurants which include Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Hudson Yards, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern, and Cafe 2 and Terrace 5 at the Museum of Modern Art.

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5 Tips for Entrepreneurs: in praise of train schedules

crowdSPRING Blog

There is a myth that has developed over the years about entrepreneurs and their legendary 20 hour days. Everyone knows that we eat all of our meals at the office, sleep under our desks, never see our families, and forgo friends and social lives. Well there is a certain truth to that, but the entrepreneurial life (along with mobile devices, ubiquitous internet connections, and collaboration tools) can, I argue, allow some semblance of normality in our existence.

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Ten “smart” cop-outs

Life Beyond Code

In general, all of us mess-up more often than not. The simple thing to do when we mess-up would be to admit it and avoid further embarrassment. However, we are trained to avoid dealing with uncomfortable things so we come up with “smart&# cop-outs. Here are ten of them (feel free to add more in the comments section.). 10. When you don’t get good grades in exams, you are tempted to say, “I only studied in the last few days, otherwise…&#. 9.

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Getting to know you

VC Adventure

You already know a lot about you. But I don’t. I sit at this end of the internets and type our posts on topics that I hope you’ll find interesting. And some portion of you tweet out links to posts that you like. And a smaller portion of you either comment on a post I’ve written or send me an email with your thoughts (all of these things – from just reading to any level of engagement – I appreciate!).