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Denouement

View from Seed

Aggregate VC investment in 2009 hits a low of roughly $20B, a figure last seen in 2003 in the wake of the bursting of the dotcom and telecom bubble and 2001 recession. Companies are retrenching, VC firms are going through their own upheavals, and IPOs are non-existent. But there is also opportunity in lean times.

IPO 202
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Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business)

Startup Lessons Learned

Two others – that each team member give their input independently and that the results be objectively aggregated – are also key parts of building a meritocracy. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. So why is demographic diversity important?

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Denouement

Agile VC

Aggregate VC investment in 2009 hits a low of roughly $20B, a figure last seen in 2003 in the wake of the bursting of the dotcom and telecom bubble and 2001 recession. Companies are retrenching, VC firms are going through their own upheavals, and IPOs are non-existent. But there is also opportunity in lean times.

IPO 100
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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. More on that in a moment. They are close to breakeven.

Customer 167
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Lessons Learned: Please teach kids programming, Mr. President

Startup Lessons Learned

Then you set up a web app to co-ordinate volunteers who can wipe a hard drive and install Ubuntu. But aggregated across many schools, there are thousands or tens of thousands of them. You can find out more at: manning.com/sande Many thanks in advance, Todd -- Todd Green Manning Publications Co. Third, you market it far and wide.

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Business ecology and the four customer currencies

Startup Lessons Learned

In an ecosystem, each participant acts according to its own imperatives, but these selfish actions have an aggregate effect. Startup founders need to use their own judgment to ask: which is the riskiest assumption underlying my business plan? Founders struggle with this question. Successful startups don’t.

Customer 156
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It's a startup, not a spreadsheet

Startup Lessons Learned

It’s entirely possible for the startup to be a massive success without having large aggregate numbers, because the startup has succeeded in finding a passionate, but small, early adopter base that has tremendous per-customer behavior. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.