April, 2012

article thumbnail

10 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Beat the Odds

Startup Professionals Musings

Did you ever wonder why some entrepreneurs always seem to have all the luck and success, while others never seem to catch a break? As an Angel investor, I quickly learned that luck has very little to do with it, and I now look for some personal characteristics and leadership styles that separate the potential winners from the losers. These differences are the reason that investors say that they invest in people, rather than ideas.

article thumbnail

CTO Salary and Equity Trends 2009-2011

SoCal CTO

Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners - a go to resource here in LA for recruiting C-level positions at startups - was nice enough to compile some data again this year (see last year's Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data ). Even better, my good friend and data visualization guru Steve Wexler of Data Revelations was able to create visualizations of the data.

CTO Hire 294
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Why SAP needs a chiropractor

deal architect

It was early in 2010. I was finishing up research for The New Polymath. I had a generous page in the manuscript on Hasso Plattner’s in-memory vision. An SAP employee reviewed an early draft and encouraged me to reach out.

article thumbnail

Why Don’t We Make Learning A Computer Language A Requirement In High School?

Feld Thoughts

I spent this weekend at LindzonPalooza. Once a year Howard Lindzon gets together a bunch of his friends at the intersection of financing, tech, media, and entrepreneurship, we descend on The Del in Coronada, and have an awesome 48 hours together. Many interesting and stimulating things were said, but one I remember was from Peter Pham over dinner. It was a simple line, “why do we teach languages in junior high and high school but not a computer language?

Java 164
article thumbnail

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

article thumbnail

Four Ways To Create A Positive Team Culture

YoungUpstarts

by J. Clint Anderson Ph.D., founder and president of J. Clint Anderson Company. Between increased diversity, growing workload, geographic dispersion, and organizational changes, who has time to worry about a corporate culture? Research shows that when people connect well, organizations succeed. So, the real question is: Can you afford not to invest in your team culture?

article thumbnail

St. Louis Startups Strut Their Stuff

ReadWriteStart

Two events this week in St. Louis show how vibrant the startup ecosystem has become there. On Wednesday, a group of 13 companies presented to 50 investors, looking to raise an aggregate of $16 million in capital. The companies were all part of Capital Innovators, an accelerator venture fund that has been operating since last fall. Capital Innovators put on the event, called Demo Day, at the cherished Pageant Theater, which normally is a concert venue.

St. Louis 127

More Trending

article thumbnail

10 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Academics

crowdSPRING Blog

As college graduation weekends and summer business incubator announcements loom, I thought I would take a few minutes to consider the connection between the entrepreneurship and academia. Entrepreneurs, by definition, take an idea or a concept and strive to make that idea into a operating business. To do this, we spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork: researching, modeling, testing, and (finally) executing to turn all of that work into a revenue-generating enterprise. scientists, and

article thumbnail

Product Marketing Contribution

SVPG

The Product Marketing Contribution. Jane is supporting the launch of Product X, a new release her company is really excited about. She is on the marketing team. Armed with her launch checklist, she schedules a meeting with John, the product manager. At the meeting, John answers all of her questions, draws a market segmentation on the white board, and talks about the key features and why they are important.

Product 108
article thumbnail

American River 50 Mile Endurance Run

Feld Thoughts

Wow. That was an amazing experience. I ran the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run on Saturday and finished in an official time of 11:57:37 , just under my goal of 12 hours. My un-official mile by mile splits are up on RunKeeper which served me well with my iPhone 4S and Mophie Juice Pack until the very last few minutes when my battery finally died on my phone.

article thumbnail

31 Great Ways Universities Are Using Google+

YoungUpstarts

Social media resources like Google Plus offer a great opportunity for growth in education through collaborative work, communication, and camaraderie. Many of today’s universities have recognized this incredible potential, and have put G+ to work on campus. We’ve discovered more than 30 great ways universities are currently using Google Plus, along with several ideas for the future.

Georgia 181
article thumbnail

A Field Guide on How to Create an Innovator

ReadWriteStart

Are people born innovators, or can they learn to become that way? An interesting new book, "Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World," by Tony Wagner, a member of Harvard's Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, explores this question in detail. It is a must-read for anyone who is thinking of taking the lonely road toward starting one's own venture.

Engineer 156
article thumbnail

Startups Need the ‘Why’ Before the ‘What’ to Build

Startup Professionals Musings

All too many startups are founded simply on the basis of a new and exciting technology invented by an industrious technologist. This is the origin of the “solution looking for a problem” and “if we build it, they will come” syndromes, which result in surprise and frustration waiting for funding, and waiting for customers that don’t materialize. The right approach is to start by solving a problem causing real pain to a large number of customers willing to pay real money for a solution.

article thumbnail

Twitter Link Roundup #126 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

crowdSPRING Blog

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

article thumbnail

Would Steve Jobs Have Fired Thomas Edison?

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

My last blog post, by far, was the most viral piece I’ve written in four years of blogging. Provocative titles and edgy content seem to win readers. And it would appear that creative style is a hot topic. If Steve Jobs Worked For You, You’d Probably Fire Him , is about a concept called Creative Style. Creative style can be measured , there are a couple of great assessments available.

Viral 112
article thumbnail

Why I’m Joining The Application Developers Alliance Board of Directors

Feld Thoughts

I spend all of my working time in the domain of software, Internet, and entrepreneurship. Over the past few years I’ve gotten increasingly involved in a handful of political situations – local, state, and national – that directly impact companies either in the ecosystem I’m part of or that I’ve invested in. Many of these political situations stifle entrepreneurship, innovation, or opportunities for these companies.

article thumbnail

“I Have an Idea….”

Andrew Payne

I see a steady stream of entrepreneurs contacting me with various software ideas: a Web site, a mobile app, etc. All are looking for funding and developer help to implement the idea, and most won’t end up with either, even though some of the ideas are really interesting. Why not? The software business has changed profoundly over the past decade.

article thumbnail

What to Outsource In Your Business

Growthink Blog

In an interview on his blog, billionaire and founders of the Virgin companies Sir Richard Branson said the following about Steve Jobs: "I admired Steve Jobs, although he was completely different from me. He used to shout at employees that made mistakes. He did not delegate much, and broke all the rules I believe in. Somehow it worked for him. Apple is one the best brands in the world.

article thumbnail

10 Sure Ways to Get Your Plan Trashed by Investors

Startup Professionals Musings

After struggling to create your business plan for months, every entrepreneur likes to think that their document is inspirational and will reach someone who is smart enough to see the brilliance of the idea, intuitive enough to recognize their business acumen, and enthusiastic enough to offer the money required to make it happen. Every serious investor, on the other hand, has a stack of these in their in-basket (email or real plastic) awaiting review, and is looking for the flaw or less-capable e

article thumbnail

6 Tips I Gave My Team To Help Them Get More From Their Content

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Here is my review of what I call the six layers of quality content writing , relevant for the web, books, news or even a technical white paper. I gave these tips to my team and thought it would be worth sharing them here on EJ as well. 1. Topic Selection. You already know your niche.

article thumbnail

The Scarcest Resource at Startups is Management Bandwidth

Both Sides of the Table

When you work inside a startup with lots of clever and motivated staff you’re never short of good ideas that you can implement. It’s tempting to take on new projects, new features, new geographies, new speaking opportunities, whatever. Each one incrementally sounds like a good idea, yet collectively they end up punishing undisciplined teams.

Bandwidth 415
article thumbnail

Doing A 50 Mile Race For The First Time

Feld Thoughts

Doing something for the first time is always fascinating for me. In an hour I’ll be starting the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run which will be the first ultramarathon I’ve ever run. Assuming that RunKeeper and my iPhone works (with it’s special magic Mophie juice pack), you can track me live on my RunKeeper account. I also imagine my wife Amy will be tweeting things out during the day.

Hawaii 129
article thumbnail

How We Fooled Ourselves into Delaying Our Startup’s Launch

viniciusvacanti.com

I remember reading the first few pages of Steve Blank’s book, Four Steps to Epiphany , and thinking two things: This is not exactly a page-turner. This is a really smart way of thinking about startups. Soon after, I started attending the Lean Startup meetup in New York and reading Eric Reis’s writings. I was believer. One of the main principles is to release an early prototype of your idea to potential users to get their feedback.

article thumbnail

The Incredibly Logical Way to Manage Customer Relationships

Duct Tape Marketing

In a perfect world, every customer relationship would be steeped in a complete understanding of the customer’s current wants, needs and desires. The trick of course is that getting anything that looks like that at all requires three things – incredible planning, thoughtful technology and consistent execution. The entire category of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology inherently offers the promise of this kind of relationship management while often providing little more than a

article thumbnail

Interviewing Engineers? Enough with the Whiteboard Coding!

Diego Basch

[Originally posted on July 25, 2011 on the IndexTank blog, now down. Reposting it here so I don't lose it.]. If you are reading this there is a chance you may not know who Steve Vai is. In my opinion, he’s the owner of the most gifted musical brain in the world. You may not like the style of music he plays or his guitar pyrotechnics. However, there is no question that most bands would kill to have someone like him on stage.

article thumbnail

Blinded by the Light – The Epiphany

Steve Blank

Epiphany e·piph·a·ny noun ?/i?pif?n?/. A moment of sudden revelation or insight. We now know how to teach entrepreneurs how to think about business models and use customer development to turn hypotheses into facts. But there is no process to teach how to get an epiphany. We can only try to create the conditions where this might occur. ————-.

Flash 313
article thumbnail

Don’t Try to “Pull an Instagram.” Here’s Why …

Both Sides of the Table

Instagram. It’s understandably on everybody’s mind these days. Clichés abound about, “You know what would be cool? …” I’ll write soon on my views of why I believe Instagram took off as a social network and what I think comes next. Instagram happens to be one of the few social networks I regularly use along with Twitter.

Valuation 316
article thumbnail

10 Top Business Models for New Ventures Today

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the toughest decisions for a startup is how to price their product or service. The alternatives range from giving it away for free (like Twitter), to pricing based on costs, to charging what the market will bear (premium pricing). The implications of the decision you make are huge, defining your brand image, your funding requirements, and your long-term business viability.

article thumbnail

I finally figured out my plan for email, to-do’s, note-taking, and the cloud

Jeff Hilimire

I don’t know about you, but I’m always trying to figure out the optimal way to use all the digital services/platforms available to me. And I’ve really struggled over time with how to use email effectively, how to keep track of my to-do list, where and how I should take and store notes, and how to effectively use the cloud in the middle of all of that.

Cloud 56
article thumbnail

“She doesn’t deserve to be alive”

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

“She doesn’t deserve to be alive” — this is how my late grandmother “complimented” Nigella Lawson. And why does she not deserve life? “Well look at her, she’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s smart, she’s an amazing cook, and did it all with with kids. No one should have all that.” I think this all the time.

New York 248
article thumbnail

A VC Walks into Your Pitch Meeting Biased

Genuine VC

VCs rarely go into an entrepreneur’s pitch meeting with a completely open mind. Of course they have biases given their past experiences, like with any human interaction. More importantly, though, they have biases about whether or not they are going to find the opportunity attractive even before a word of the dialog has been spoken. VCs have a fond saying about “wanting to like it” when they’re introduced to a new investment opportunity where many conditions of their so-called pattern recognition

Syndicate 224
article thumbnail

Five Days to Change the World – The Columbia Lean LaunchPad Class

Steve Blank

We’ve taught our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and the National Science Foundation in 8 week, 10 week and 12 week versions. We decided to find out what was the Minimum Viable Product for our Lean LaunchPad class. Could students get value out of a 5-day version of the class? The Setup. At the invitation of Murray Low at the Entrepreneurship Center in the Columbia Business School, we went to New York to find out.

Lean 258
article thumbnail

Some Thoughts on Branding Startups and Communities

Both Sides of the Table

Brad Feld visited Los Angeles this past week. I always enjoy spending time with Brad as the antidote to the eco chamber. He is a unique human being with original thoughts & ideas and very limited concern for having to fit into other people’s narratives. And I’ve always remembered a quote from high school, “Non Conformity is the Highest Form of Social Attainment.” That always stuck with me.

Community 304
article thumbnail

8 Angel Investors That Entrepreneurs Should Avoid

Startup Professionals Musings

A few angel investors have slipped or fallen from their lofty perch, so entrepreneurs must take great care to validate the character and reputation of every prospective investor. The entrepreneur’s tendency to be in a huge hurry to obtain the funding can end up being disastrous, and play into the hands of these less scrupulous investors. Many entrepreneurs believe all money is created equal.

article thumbnail

[Infographic] Online Marketing In 2012: What You Need To Know

YoungUpstarts

The frustrating part for online marketers when it comes to that space is that things change all the time. Which means that you have to keep on your toes and catch these fluctuating trends as they unfold. For 2012, there are some trends that you need to be aware of. For example: - Mobile searches increased by a massive 400-percent in 2011. - 70-percent of people on social networks are also online shoppers. - Over 50-percent of e-commerce store visits occur when consumers are logged onto Facebook.

Marketing 204
article thumbnail

Should I invest my savings in this startup?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is part of an ongoing startup advice series where I answer (anonymized!) questions from readers, like a written version of Smart Bear Live. To get your question answered , email me at asmartbear -at- shortmail -dot- com. Employee-Investor writes: I’ve been invited to join as startup as employee #1. They’re giving me a salary and an OK stock grant, but I want more stock.

Salary 229
article thumbnail

Getting President Obama To Play With Your Product

Feld Thoughts

Yesterday, President Obama was in Boulder. The guys at Orbotix showed up and got him to play around with a Sphero. Watch the video (it’s pretty awesome) and then I’ll tell you the story of how they made it happen. The short answer – always be ready to demo your product – you never know when the President (or a key customer) is nearby.

Product 187