2014

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The Audacious Plan to Make Electricity as Easy as WiFi

Both Sides of the Table

'When I first met Meredith Perry she was 24. That was three months ago this week. Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning.

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Why Founders Should Know How to Code

Steve Blank

'“ By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.”. Book of Five Rings. A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. —-. I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress.

Cofounder 336
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A Startup CTO’s Take on Early Technology Choices & Tradeoffs

View from Seed

'Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make. NextView Ventures: You just experienced something that most developers don’t ever see: zero code base at a company.

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Don’t Follow The Buzzwords For Small Business Technology

YoungUpstarts

'by Don Thomas Jacob, Head Geek at SolarWinds. Today’s technology landscape is littered with buzzwords and seemingly urgent exhortations for businesses: move to the cloud, spend time and money developing a mobile app, support mobility, and so on. They are also inundated with news of trendy tech gear and encouraged to spend on implementing big technologies such as BYOD or big data and associated IT infrastructure.

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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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How to Find the Time to Accomplish Anything

Feld Thoughts

'Guest Post By William Hertling – williamhertling.com (Author). William Hertling is a web strategist, programmer, father, short-order cook and the author of two award-winning and best-selling techothrillers: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity is Closer than It Appears and A.I. Apocalypse. You can follow him at @hertling or on his blog, williamhertling.com.

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The Economics of a Small VC Fund

This is going to be BIG.

'Two years ago I started a fund. For the fund to be viable, it had to be at least $5 million, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $8-10 million would have been perfect. Thankfully, that''s what I raised--$8.3 million. So how does it work? How does one make money raising a venture fund of this size? Not easily, let me tell you. The benefit comes in the upside, and it''s very back end weighted.

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The end of ownership: The zero-marginal-cost economy

The Next Web

'Dries Buytaert created Drupal, an open source content management platform, in his dorm room. He is also the co-founder and CTO at Acquia, a company providing enterprise software for websites and commerce. Society is undergoing tremendous change right now — those of us who enjoy services like Uber and Kickstarter are experiencing it firsthand. The sharing and collaboration practices of the internet are extending to transportation (Uber), hotels (Airbnb), financing (Kickstarter, LendingClub), mus

Cost 167
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The Landing Page Optimization Guide You Wish You’ve Always Had

ConversionXL

'What follows is a list of resources that can be applied specifically to landing page optimization, found here on ConversionXL & from other great websites around the web. We’ve organized everything to best simulate a visitor’s experience on a landing page from first click to final conversion. To get the most out of this guide, please use each resource to focus on one area of your landing page experience at a time.

Analytics 134
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The rise of the female founder

Version One Ventures

'We’re all too familiar with the very real gender gap within the tech community. Women are underrepresented as engineers, management, investors, and founders. A commonly cited statistic is that only 7 percent of U.S. venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Business Insider recently crunched the numbers behind 26 of the top venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and learned that the percentage of female-founded startups in their portfolios ranged from a high of 19% to a low of just

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7 Bookkeeping Habits Every Entrepreneur Should Adopt

Up and Running

'Good bookkeeping is essential to keep your business thriving—not just surviving. Badly tracked finances can cause your business a world of problems—from poor cash flow to improper tax filings and beyond. These kinds of problems can put a young business at serious risk. Good bookkeeping habits, on the other hand, can help a business thrive—and not just survive.

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The Case for Optimism and Risk at Startups

Both Sides of the Table

'Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives.

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How To Find the Right Co-Founders?

Steve Blank

'How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. ——-. I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup.

Cofounder 335
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Biz Dev Tips for Startups – The ‘First Meeting’

VC Cafe

'Most times when I finish a meeting, I think to myself “that was such a great meeting. I’m so excited for what happens next” If your meetings aren’t ending like this, then you’ve just wasted everyone’s time. Here are a few lessons I learnt from having hundreds of business meetings in Australia, Chile, and the USA.

Chile 165
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How to Miss By a Mile: An Alternative Look at Uber’s Potential Market Size

abovethecrowd.com

'On June 18, Aswath Damodaran , a finance professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, published an article on FiveThirtyEight titled “ Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion. ” This post was a shortened version of a more detailed post he had written for his own blog titled “ A Disruptive Cab Ride to Riches: The Uber Payoff.” Using a combination of market data, math, and financial analysis, Professor Damodaran concluded that his best estimate of the value of Uber is $5.9 billion, far short of the value re

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Michelle Dale: Mother Of Three Takes Her Kids Around Europe On A Ten Year “Laptop Lifestyle” Trip Thanks To Her $30,000+ A Month Online Business

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'This has to be one of the best “laptop lifestyle” case studies I have ever heard. Let me introduce you to Michelle Dale. She is the founder of Virtual Miss Friday , a virtual assistant service and training company. [ Download MP3 | Transcript | iTunes | Soundcloud | Raw RSS ]. Michelle has been traveling all around Europe … Read the rest of this entry » The post Michelle Dale: Mother Of Three Takes Her Kids Around Europe On A Ten Year “Laptop Lif

Europe 111
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Never ask for "Just 5 Minutes!"

This is going to be BIG.

'A few weeks ago, I was talking with a founder that I backed and he was telling me how excited he was about his company. He said the path was so clear that he could literally see it--and that''s the way he''s always been since I met him. He has a quiet confidence and he''s excited to talk about his company--and he could go on and on if you let him. It''s a stark contrast to people who beg for "just five minutes" of my time.

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When Should Startup Founders Discuss Valuation with Seed VCs?

View from Seed

'As the seed-stage startup fundraise process has received more transparency in recent years, ranging from published advice on how to raise seed capital to increased availability through AngelList, Funders Club, and various accelerator programs, I’ve noticed another trend emerging. In short, more and more entrepreneurs are signaling their price expectations earlier in their seed fundraise process.

Valuation 336
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How a mobile app for honesty can make you a better marketer

The Next Web

'Chris Bolman is the Director of Growth at Percolate. This post originally appeared on the Percolate blog. Over the summer of 2013, David Byttow, a former Google software developer, started building a mobile app to solve a problem he had. Byttow noticed he and the engineers he worked with were bad at giving each other feedback, and he wanted a way they could comment honestly on each other’s work without professional or personal backlash for saying something negative.

Mobile 166
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The Effects of Typography on User Experience & Conversions

ConversionXL

'“Typography is the detail and the presentation of a story. It represents the voice of an atmosphere, or historical setting of some kind. It can do a lot of things.” Cyrus Highsmith. We only have a handful of tools to communicating online, really. Words, images, colors & composition are the usual suspects – but they’re stealing most of the credit for what goes into making effective websites & landing pages.

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Have Entrepreneurs Become Too Informal?

Seeing Both Sides

'I love dressing informally, maybe too much. My wife frequently reprimands me for dressing down. I recently met with a US Senator in slacks and a collar shirt (which I thought was being respectfully dressy!) and he wryly cracked that I looked awfully comfortable. I sometime teach my HBS class in jeans (please don''t tell the dean). But lately, I have been wondering if entrepreneurs have taken informality too far.

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30 Compelling Reasons to Start a Business

Up and Running

'Are you toying with an idea for a business? A lot of people think about starting a business, but for whatever reason the idea never becomes a reality. If you’re an entrepreneur who is on the fence about starting a business, we have the encouragement you need to take the first step. We asked 30 business owners to offer persuasive reasons for entrepreneurs to launch a business.

Cofounder 165
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Bad Notes on Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

'This week. On the phone … Me: So, you raised venture capital? Him: Yeah. We raised a seed round. About $1 million. Me: At what price? Him: It wasn’t priced. We raised a convertible note. Me: With a cap? Him: Yes, $8 million. Me: Ah. I see. So you did raise with a price. It’s just a maximum price. You’ll find out the minimum when the next round is raised.

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Beyond the Lemonade Stand: How to Teach High School Students Lean Startups

Steve Blank

'While the Lean LaunchPad class has been adopted by Universities and the National Science Foundation, the question we get is, “Can students in K-12 handle an experiential entrepreneurship class?” Hawken School has now given us an answer. Their seniors just completed the school’s first-ever 3-credit semester program in evidence-based entrepreneurship.

Lean 334
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Managing Virtual Teams – Top 5 Tips

YoungUpstarts

'Virtual team management can get a whole lot easier when you apply the right tips and tools. Truthfully, managing a virtual team is a whole lot of work and has more challenges than just psyching yourself up to get out of those nightclothes and into something snappy. Here are five Servcorp Singapore tips on making virtual team management a whole lot easier: Communicate Via the Right Channels.

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The Unique but Powerful Way the HubSpot Mafia is Impacting Boston Startups

Genuine VC

'It’s official: now two months after the IPO, HubSpot has surpassed the $1B market cap threshold and has become that “pillar” company that the tech ecosystem long anticipated. The benefits have been touted previously : an anchor for attracting and retaining talent in Boston, as well as a breeding ground for the next set of great Boston entrepreneurs and founders.

Boston 279
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The Deep, Dark, Emotional Challenges of Being a Leader

Feld Thoughts

'I got to spend a lot of time with my close friend Rand Fishkin the past few days. The first was at Denver Startup Week, where we did a panel discussion with Ben Huh and Bart Lorang where we discussed the pact between CEO and Board, the pact between Founder and Investor, and how to be transparent and direct. The next day, Rand led a full day offsite for a number of CEOs in our portfolio.

Denver 195
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Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You

Gust

'Einstein image via Flickr by Sebastian Niedlich. Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any other components of their job.

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Understanding Different Types of Angel Investors

View from Seed

'We at NextView Ventures invest exclusively in a startup’s seed-stage round , meaning that many if not most of our deals are made alongside individual angel investors. These angels, however, come in many different shapes and sizes. So to successfully raise a seed round of capital, founders should possess at least a basic understanding of the different types of angel investors they’ll encounter.

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7 US startup visa options for international founders

The Next Web

'Mikita Mikado is a software engineer and entrepreneur from Belarus, now based in San Francisco. He is the co-­founder and CEO of Quote Roller and PandaDoc. There is no other place like Silicon Valley, the tech Mecca of access to great talent, capital and countless prospective clients. For some founders, moving to the Valley is the only option to succeed.

Belarus 167
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Consumerization of the Enterprise – Phase 2

For Entrepreneurs

'Consumer VCs like to make light of the Founders Fund mantra ‘We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.’ For those of us working in the enterprise, it’s actually the reverse, “They promised us 140 characters, instead we got Workday.” Since 2010, SaaS applications were supposed to “consumerize”, but as anyone who has used […].

Mobile 167
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Hogging the Credit - Why Software Is Eating Banking

Seeing Both Sides

' . When this 10s decade is over, we will look back and be amazed that a mere ten years prior, a few, absolutely massive financial institutions controlled the global banking industry. Software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen famously observed, and an industry like financial services -- whose service offering is essentially all information-based -- is particularly susceptible to the disruptive force of technology.

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Building your user engagement pyramid

Version One Ventures

'One of the first blog posts that Boris shared with me when I was starting out is “ Don’t forget your logged out users ” by Fred Wilson. Fred notes that with many social platforms, a huge number of their regular users don’t actually login because they are able to derive value from their services on a “logged out basis”. As a result, he advises entrepreneurs to build services for those users that lead to more engagement, ultimately motivating them to log in.

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Why ADD Might Actually Benefit Startup Entrepreneurs

Both Sides of the Table

'This weekend I was reading the NY Times online and I came across this excellent piece about ADHD written by Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry. In the article the author talks about the condition of the brain – which affects up to 11% of American children in which people with ADHD (or ADD, which doesn’t have hyperactivity) – in which people with ADD have a low tolerance for routine tasks and thus they seek out “novelty” The author believes this ma

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Driving Corporate Innovation: Design Thinking vs. Customer Development

Steve Blank

'Startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but interestingly we see that companies are not larger versions of startups. I’ve been spending some time with large companies that are interested in using Lean methods. One of the conundrums is why does innovation take so long to happen in corporations? Previously Hank Chesbrough and I have written about some of the strategic issues that impede innovation inside large corporations here and here.

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13 Negotiating Techniques Taught At The Wharton School Of Business

YoungUpstarts

'by Steven G. Blum, author of “ Negotiating Your Investments: Use Proven Negotiation Methods to Enrich Your Financial Life “ Life is a series of negotiations. While we may realize this in theory, we probably don’t realize how often it applies in practice. Your work schedule, your pay and benefits, prices in big box stores, cell phone contracts, day care arrangements — you name it, it’s negotiable.

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A Few Surprising Facts about the 2014 Lean Startup Call for Speakers

Startup Lessons Learned

'Post written by Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries, co-hosts for The Lean Startup Conference We’re seeking speakers we don’t already know for this year’s Lean Startup Conference , December 10 -11 in San Francisco. Our call for proposals is open now , and if you know already that you want to apply, jump to it (but read the directions first!). If you’ve never applied to speak at The Lean Startup Conference before—or never even considered it before—here are a few things to keep in mind, some of them s

Lean 167