2010

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Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?

Both Sides of the Table

I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people. A few people have asked me to try and define the perfect startup organization chart. I don’t believe that one exists. Every team configuration is different. But I do have more insight into understanding your startup team. This time I thought I’d try and address engineering talent.

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Yes, but who said they'd actually BUY the damn thing?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is Part 3 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.? Of hundreds of startup pitches at Capital Factory , almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, "If you build this product, I'll give you $X.". Meditate on this: Hundreds of people ready to quit their day jobs, burn up savings, risk personal reputation, toil 70 hours per week, absorb as much stress as having a baby (believe me, I've done both).

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Why Lawyers Don’t Run Startups

Steve Blank

Startups need to have a great lawyer, accountant, patent attorney, etc. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. I was having coffee with a friend who teaches at the U.C. Berkeley Boalt Law School and runs their entrepreneurship program. Our conversation led us to Scott Walkers post Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers and why we both recommend that entrepreneurs print it out and tape it to their wall.

CTO Hire 287
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No departments

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, June 17, 2010 No departments Big companies have departments. Startups are companies. Startups aspire to become big companies. Therefore, startups should have departments. Right? Why do companies have departments? There are a lot of reasons: ladder of advancement, sharing of best practices, functional specialization.

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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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Never Mind the Valley: Here's Paris

ReadWriteStart

If you're capable of seeing past the old stones of Paris and the picturesque rural villages, you'll realize that France is every bit as technologically advanced as any other Western country - more so in some areas. Not only does the country have a higher percentage of homes with high-speed Internet than the U.S. (plus it's faster and costs half as much ), it ranks first in the world for number of blogs per Internet user, and has a formidable market of Internet consumers who spent €5.5 billi

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HOW TO: Build an App for Your Small Business

mashable.com

Top Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video Google Buzz Social media Android MARKETING Advertise Network Blippr iPhone App Mashable France MashDeck Twitter App Mobile Site Social Media Events Twitter Guide Book Facebook Guide Book Partners App Development WordPress Experts MaxCDN Content Delivery Dynect Managed DNS Rackspace Hosting Intridea About Us Submit a Tip!

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Why some smart people don’t take action?

Life Beyond Code

Why some smart people don’t take action? I mean “action&# that will lift them to a whole new level in life and in business. This is a question that has haunted me for a while. I meet so many smart people during my travels and speaking engagements. when I hear what these people are involved with and think about what they “could be&# actually involved with, it is not difficult to see the “gap.&# They could be doing much more but it seemed like they have resigned to be just

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How To Instantly Turn What You Love Into An Income

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Before I got into the fat loss industry, I was a musician (I still play today so who knows what the future holds!). In the past, I tried to make that love an income. My dreams were big, but my pockets ultimately were empty. Eventually I had to do what a lot of musicians do and get a job. Luckily, it ended up being in something else that I love – health and fitness.

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Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer

Ben's Blog

Meet the new boss. same as the old boss. —The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again. Cause hustlers hit the block when police change shifts. New York, California different toilet, same s#@t. —The Game, Let Us Live. Every day I hear from entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists about an exciting new movement called “the consumerization of the enterprise.

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@altgate » Blog Archive » Outsourcing For Startups

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Switching Costs Startup Executive Compensation Scorecard → Outsourcing For Startups Posted on September 16, 2010 by fnazeeri A few weeks ago John Prendergast (founder/CEO of Blueleaf ) and I gave a presentation on outsourcing at the Boston Founder Institute.

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73.6% of all Statistics are Made Up

Both Sides of the Table

How to Interpret Analyst Reports. The headlines in the media are filled with that latest stats. Stats sell. The stats are often quoted from the latest reports. People then parrot them around like they’re fact when most of them are complete bullsh*t. People throw them around at cocktail parties. Often when they do I throw out my favorite statistic: 73.6% of all statistics are made up.

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No, that IS NOT a competitive advantage

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is part 1 of the series: 5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches. Listening to first-time entrepreneurs talk about their competitive advantages is as predictably invalid as the local weatherman's 10-day forecast. Between this blog and reviewing applications to Capital Factory I see hundreds of pitches a year. Every pitch has a section on competitive advantages, and quite literally 95% of the time the claimed competitive advantages are pathetic, unoriginal, and not really advantages at all.

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Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic – Pivoting the Business Model

Steve Blank

Startups are the search to find order in chaos. Steve Blank. At a board meeting last week I watched as the young startup CEO delivered bad news. “Our current plan isn’t working. We can’t scale the company. Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. But I think I know how to fix it.” He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengin

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Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot (The following guest post is a new experiment for this blog. It was written by Sarah Milstein in collaboration with kaChing CEO Andy Rachleff. kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here.

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Holiday Reading: 5 of This Year's Best Books for Startups

ReadWriteStart

Ideally, you'll find some time over the next few weeks to curl up with a good story. Or hey, at least that's what I look forward to on vacation. If you are looking for some books on entrepreneurship to read, or even to gift, here are some recommended books from 2010. There were a number of great business books published this year, many of which we reviewed here as part of ReadWriteWeb's " Weekend Reading " series.

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Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs

www.forentrepreneurs.com

Skip to content Home Startup Help Conceiving, Refining and Validating your Startup Idea Getting your Startup Funded Building your Startup for Success Business Models Customer Acquisition & Monetization Why Startups Fail Recurring Revenue The Low Cost Sales Model Viral Customer Acquisition The Power of Free The Touchless Conversion Lead Gen Models Field Sales Channel Sales Building a Sales & Marketing Machine Intro Building the Machine Instrumenting the Machine Solving Blockage Points Re

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What the Beatles Can Teach Us About Starting a Company

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← $528 Worth of Optimization Tools for $25 Guest Post on A Smart Bear: Virtual Assistants and Outsourcing → What the Beatles Can Teach Us About Starting a Company Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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How do the sample Series Seed financing documents differ from typical Series A financing documents?

Startup Company Lawyer

After the recent announcement of the Series Seed Financing documents by Marc Andreesen, Brad Feld points out that there are now four sets of “open source&# equity seed financing documents: TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents (by Cooley). Y Combinator Series AA Equity Financing Documents (by WSGR). Founders Institute Plain Preferred Term Sheet (by WSGR – disclaimer, I represent the Founders Institute and was involved in drafting this document).

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Is Outsourcing Exploitation?

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

I wasn’t going to write this article. I was comfortable with my stance on outsourcing, comfortable enough to recommend it and promote products, and profit from the affiliate commissions, from people who use the catch-call of $2-per-hour labor and the phrase – “ they do the work, you get the money “ I’ve begun the process of outsourcing to the Philippines.

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Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good?

Ben's Blog

“Concrete shoes won’t help in the river. I don’t care if you is Michael Phelps my n*&#a”. —Lil’ Wayne. The biggest difference between being a great functional manager and being a great general manager—and particularly a great CEO—is that as a general manager, you must hire and manage people who are far more competent at their jobs than you would be at their jobs.

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Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders | @altgate

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly More on Liquidation Preferences → Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Posted on December 15, 2010 by admin Here’s a chart of the day worth sharing. I was working on some data analysis around the topic of angel round pre-money valuations (which I’ll post soon) and came up with the following interesting charts.

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What Tech Entrepreneurs Could Learn from Chamillionaire

Both Sides of the Table

On why you should be an entrepreneur, “A lot of people do what they have to do. You want to get yourself to a position where you can do what you want to do&# (Chamillionaire). Last night I co-hosted a dinner at Soho House in Los Angeles with some of the most senior people in the media industry with executives from Disney, Fox, Warner, media agencies and many promising tech & media startup CEO’s.

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"Authentic" is dead

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

It's time to retire the following phrases. They should no longer be used, ever, in any context except derisive mocking: Fast and easy. Putting customers first. The Holy Grail of. The leading provider of. Legendary customer support. Also eschew these words, as devoid of meaning as a yogi's mantra and as useless as a simile that doesn't contribute new information: Authentic.

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No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions

Steve Blank

Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might want to read my post on why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups. They called back laughing and the invitation disappeared. At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time. But until now I haven’t been able to articulate a framework of why or had a concrete suggestion of what to replace them with.

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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 5, 2010 The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits have written a new book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development , which builds upon the foundational work of The Four Steps to the Epiphany , while improving accessibility, updating the ideas, and making it more actionable.

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Snowflakes in the Valley: What Happens When 40 Nordic Entrepreneurs Visit Silicon Valley

ReadWriteStart

During the holidays, the Web becomes an even more significant part of our lives, connecting us to our relatives and friends around the world. The Internet might be truly global then, but the world of startups still revolves much around Silicon Valley. Together with 40 Nordic entrepreneurs , we decided to take a trip to the startup mecca, looking for opportunities and lessons to learn.

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HOW TO: Connect with Other Entrepreneurs Online

mashable.com

Top Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video Google Buzz Social media Android MARKETING Advertise Network Blippr iPhone App Mashable France MashDeck Twitter App Mobile Site Social Media Events Twitter Guide Book Facebook Guide Book Partners App Development WordPress Experts MaxCDN Content Delivery Dynect Managed DNS Rackspace Hosting Intridea About Us Submit a Tip!

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How to Detect a Toxic Customer

Software By Rob

A month ago I received a sales inquiry via email for my invoicing software package. The prospect asked if we could complete the questions he had attached in a spreadsheet: I will need the attached questions answered in order to proceed as I can’t get them all answered off your website. There were nearly 80 questions, at least half of which could be answered from our website.

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Four Minutes In The Morning

Feld Thoughts

Amy and I created a tradition about a decade ago we call “four minutes in the morning.&# We try to – fully clothed – spend four minutes together every morning 100% focused on each other. I’m an early bird – usually getting up around 5am regardless of the time zone I’m in (except on the weekends – then I sleep until I wake up – sometimes 1pm.

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SaaS Economics – Part 1: The SaaS Cash Flow Trough

For Entrepreneurs

Provides SaaS entrepreneurs with an Excel spreadsheet model and graphs that show the cash flow trough that happens to SaaS or subscription businesses that use a sales organization.

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The Right Kind of Ambition

Ben's Blog

“Some say that I’m they favorite. But I aint hearing none of that. I’m about my team ho. Young money running back”. —Drake. “Stay in your place. While I sit here and rule. I’m king of a cow. And I’m king of a mule”. —Yertle the Turtle. In my last post, I mentioned that you should strive to hire people with the right kind of ambition. Surprisingly to me, I received a large number of responses from readers questioning whether or not this was good advice.

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Anything is Possible (in a Startup)

This is going to be BIG.

I know you're out there. I can feel you now—corporate recruiters at career fairs, sending offer letters to work at banks and consulting firms. I know that you're afraid. Google is. You're afraid of startups. You're afraid of change. You’re afraid that students and young people are going to realize that you’re not the best place for them to learn, grow, or gain in responsibilities.

Startup 167
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Journeymen, Mavericks & Superstars: Understanding Salespeople at Startups

Both Sides of the Table

Most technology startups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). Very few of them are started, in my experience, by sales people and very few early stage companies really understand sales. That’s why I started the Sales & Marketing Series and at one point I will do a bunch of posts on the sales methodology we developed at my first company called PUCCKA.

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Why I feel like a fraud

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

" I feel like a fraud. I've been at this for 16 years and I still feel like a fraud. I'm just waiting for the day they see through the façade, but they keep coming back every year." -- Jason Young. Ah yes, the awe-inspiring words of confidence from the seasoned entrepreneur. My friend Jason intended this as soothing words of solace during (one of my) periods of personal freak-out while Smart Bear was in its infancy.

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What’s A Startup? First Principles.

Steve Blank

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill. Everyone knows what a startup is for – don’t they? In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business Model. Ok, but what is a business model ?

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Founder personalities and the “first-class man” theory of management

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. And that narrow definition of entrepreneurship doesn’t count all of the managers inside established companies who are effectively engaged in the same process of building an internal startup (see What is a startup?