Agile VC

JANUARY 13, 2016

We’re off to a fresh start here at the beginning of 2016. Looking back at 2015, the standout theme in the VC/startup ecosystem was unicorn hunting. We started the year enraptured by the “Age of Unicorns” with this cover of Fortune in January 2015 : Illustration: Jeremy Enecio. But by the time we ended 2015, the headlines like “ The Dangers Ahead if Tech Unicorns Get Gored (WSJ) ” and “ Regulators Look Into Mutual Funds Procedures for Valuing Startups (WSJ) 

Technical Review 157

Technical Review .Net Revenue Software Review 157

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2016

If you have a software development background like mine, I’m sure you often get questions about when to outsource, versus building the solution in-house. The same applies to manufacturing and almost any process these days. Outsourcing is defined as contracting the work to another company, usually located in a developing country, like India, China, or Eastern Europe.

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Intellectual Property Non-disclosure Agreement Software Review Technical Review 129

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 27, 2016

by Wes McDowell, The Deep End. If you’re a startup, you probably already know the importance of having a killer website. In addition to being your lifeline to the rest of the world, it can (and should) be a major tool to allow you to grow your prospects, and gain traction in the marketplace. The way I see it, your website should cover two major bases: It should be current.

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Startup Software Review Web Video 100

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). And going for crowdfunding before you do customer discovery with customers can lock you into the wrong idea too early.

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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

Startup

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JANUARY 28, 2016

I once witnessed a first-time entrepreneur pitch his very early stage startup, vision, and product with so much passion, precision, and authority to a well-recognized Global consumer goods brand that the CIO agreed to a POC (proof of concept) even before the entrepreneur finished his 30-minute pitch! For a large multinational to take this leap of faith was no small feat – especially considering the relatively early stage of the startup.

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Customer Startup Kentucky Early Stage 60

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 21, 2016

I woke up this morning in Fort Worth, Texas. For the first minute I wasn’t really sure where was I but it eventually snapped into focus. This happens to me periodically when I travel. I’ve got a stretch where I’m on the road a lot. Fortunately, I’ve got amazing partners. I was reflecting on this over a cup of stale coffee this morning.

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Partner Fort Worth Technical Review Portfolio 74

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 27, 2016

For a software startup, a patent can be the intellectual property providing the key competitive advantage, or it can be an expensive non-defensible bureaucratic nightmare -- or both. I still generally advise software startups to file a patent as a barrier to entry from competitors and to increase their valuation by investors, but every entrepreneur needs to understand the tradeoffs.

Software Review 129

Software Review Intellectual Property Software Technical Review 129

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2016

By Trevor Sumner, Chief Technology Officer of LocalVox. Because of the explosion of social media and mobile as the primary, go-to consumer device for local information, Google is increasingly losing search share to local directories, social media sites and maps apps. In the local space, about 50% 1 of searches are done on directories and map apps – further fragmenting an already dizzying number of ways customers find out and select small businesses.

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Search Fractional CTO Small Business Syndicate 153

YFS Magazine

JANUARY 29, 2016

If you have ever wondered about the market domination of WordPress, then you’ll get the best possible answer here.

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Small Business Marketing Web Development Developer 61

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 22, 2016

When it comes to business, just as in our personal lives, we tend to quickly stereotype people when we meet them. Often, these stereotypes often get in the way of business and personal relationships. Here’s a humorous and unfortunately, not entirely untrue look at what one might see if they put on “racist’ eyeglasses. The lesson here?

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Small Business Design Social Media Marketing 62

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 21, 2016

The idea for this post came this morning when I saw these two tweets from Benedict Evans. One shows the newspaper industry growing steadily for fifty years and then declining for ten and the other shows the Japanese fixed lens digital camera market growing from nothing to 120m unit sales in ten years and then dropping by 80% in the seven years after that.

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Marketing Venture Capital Software Review IPO 70

ConversionXL

JANUARY 29, 2016

You already know retargeting works. But what if you’re doing it all wrong? What if grouping all audiences into the same retargeting campaign is actually doing more harm than good? The truth is that a lot of people never give the attention or resources that’s needed to improve their retargeting campaigns. It’s an afterthought. So today, we’re going to look at seven retargeting case studies that use some seriously creative tactics that I’ve never thought of… or even heard of.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 25, 2016

If you can’t provide a memorable customer experience, your startup won’t survive very long these days. According to many observers , we can thank or blame technology for these higher expectations, providing information at the speed of light, leading everyone to expect more. You now need more than loyalty from your customers -- they need to be your best advocates.

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Customer Technical Review Differentiation Metrics 131

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 28, 2016

By Omer Tadjer, CEO and co-founder of Comeet. Hiring mistakes and turnover can be costly for any organization; according to the Society for Human Resource Management , it can cost as much as half of an employee’s annual salary to replace them. Hiring the right employees in the first place can help prevent your losses by ensuring that the people you add to your team truly belong there and will stick around for the long term.

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Hearpreneur

JANUARY 23, 2016

The idea of exactly what your business is going to be usually comes first. Secondly, most often, is giving a title to your idea. What exactly is going to be the name of your business? Some people turn to their childhood for inspiration or a beloved family pet. It could be a made up word you dream of one night and feel it has the right ring to it. Even still there are some people who study foreign words for the perfect meaning behind their chosen business.

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Naming Ohio Entrepreneur LLC 63

YFS Magazine

JANUARY 18, 2016

Hiring the right application development team can be the key to turning your app idea into a reality.

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Hiring Developer Application Development Mobile 60

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 25, 2016

What is Structured Data & Schema for Websites & SEO? written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. For business owners and even for many marketing consultants, search engine optimization can seem like a headache – especially when it comes to any level of technical SEO. The good news is that a professional marketing strategy that is powered by a search engine friendly website and consistent content marketing, many small business websites can achieve at least some level of sear

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SEO Kansas City Software Review HTML 44

ConversionXL

JANUARY 28, 2016

So you ran a test – and you ran it correctly, following A/B testing best practices – and you’ve reached inconclusive results. What now? A surprising amount of tests end up inconclusive. According to Experiment Engine’s data, anywhere from 50% to 80% of test results are inconclusive, depending on the vertical and stage of the testing program.

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Conversion Technical Review Video Revenue 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2016

Most entrepreneurs work long and hard to get a handshake agreement from an investor, and then tend to relax and wait for the check to clear. What they don’t realize is that about half the investment deals fail to close at this stage, including mergers and acquisitions , during the due-diligence process. The same is true of Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank investments you see on TV.

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Technical Review Due Diligence Cap Table Intellectual Property 132

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 26, 2016

by Gareth Wilson, Head of Marketing at Fog Creek Software. Follow the leader in business and you’re almost certainly doomed to fail, especially when you consider that 90% of new companies go under. Those that end up in that successful 10% follow a less obvious, even counterintuitive trajectory. Although it’s key for every business to forge its own path, there are certain non-obvious hacks any entrepreneur or small business can take on board to swing the odds in their favor.

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Software Review New York City Salary Employee 100

deal architect

JANUARY 31, 2016

Nearly half of next Sunday’s Super Bowl 50 Host Committee's 18 primary sponsors are tech companies — Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Intuit, SAP, Seagate, Yahoo and Verizon. Lots of corporate parties expected to be hosted by tech companies in.

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Hosting 174

YFS Magazine

JANUARY 18, 2016

Hiring the right application development team can be the key to turning your app idea into a reality.

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Hiring Developer Application Development Mobile 60

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 24, 2016

I’ve been spending a lot more time on Facebook as a blogger than I ever did. So I thought it was worth explaining why. And I’m going to cross post this entire post on Facebook as an experiment rather than just posting a link on FB and trying to drive people to my blog. If you want to follow me on Facebook I’m here. So if you’re reading this on Facebook (or on my blog!

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Social Network eCommerce Conversion Networking 165

ConversionXL

JANUARY 22, 2016

If your site isn’t credible, you’re certainly scaring off a large amount of would-be buyers. But credibility is quite contextual, and sometimes attempts to add credibility indicators can backfire. How, then, can we create a web page that inspires trust, not skepticism? That aids a purchase instead of deters it? Credibility is “a measure of how believable and trustworthy your marketing is perceived to be.”.

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Technical Review PR Reputation Web 73

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 19, 2016

Is Remarketing the New Free? written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Let’s face it, we’ve become increasingly numb to the lead capture bait for email address exchange. In fact, I think it’s become so bad that while people still sign up for the free thing, they often don’t even bother to download, rarely if ever actually read it or watch it, and unfortunately, don’t represent the opportunity for marketers that they once did.

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Technical Review Lead Generation Audience Social Media 44

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

by Edward D. Hess, author of “ Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization “. As a new year begins, most of us are focused on the resolutions we’ve chosen to pursue. While 2016 is still relatively fresh, you might want to consider adding one (probably unexpected) goal to perennial favorites like losing weight or getting your finances in order: becoming more humble.

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Developer Technical Review Leadership Finance 103

deal architect

JANUARY 28, 2016

For a decade now, my two blogs have been yin and yang. New Florence keeps me excited about new technologies, Deal Architect keeps me level headed about the economics of technology and the slow adoption rates in most enterprises. That.

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Technology 222

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2016

Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who think the most creatively, not only in their initial product or service, but more importantly all through the stages of growth from startup to maturity. But even the best of them can easily slip into some bad decision habits that limit or hurt their business, due to natural human tendencies and the pressures of business challenges.

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Metrics Differentiation Demand Cloud 140

Steve Blank

JANUARY 29, 2016

Realizing you need help and learning how to ask for help are crucial skills for a founder. And while how much money you make at startup is a way to keep score, a successful life can’t be measured only in dollars. These topics were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern).

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View from Seed

JANUARY 28, 2016

On Tuesday, I wrote a post to help define pre-seeds and give context to their rise. You can find that here. On Wednesday, my partner David wrote about how we’ve been using our office space (and network and other resources) to support pre-seed companies. Today, we continue our look a this trend by getting more specific about our approach to these rounds as institutional seed investors.

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Cofounder Finance Founder Syndicate 163

Brandanew

JANUARY 29, 2016

There’s a ton of amazing websites out there where you’d like to pitch a new post and get some referral traffic, quality back links and new relationships onto your Startup, small business or personal brand. Being able to use someone else’s community to create something is hugely relevant. To give you an example- Startup killer (or winner) Buffer’s CEO wrote 150 guest posts in 9 months and got hundreds of thousands of referrals back to Buffer.

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Social Media Curation Community Differentiation 122

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 29, 2016

by Steve Smith, U.S. Chief Operating Officer at Esker. The efficiency of your accounts payable department can have a significant impact on your business’s financial stability and reputation among clients and vendors. However, even the most talented accounts payable team can present inefficiencies that cost your business unnecessary time and money. Here are just five of the benefits accounts payable software can provide your business: 1.

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Software Cloud Software Improvement Salary 103

deal architect

JANUARY 23, 2016

Fortune has raised a firestorm with its cover showing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as Lord Vishnu, a revered Hindu deity. Others don’t like the word “invade” in the title because it smacks of colonialism. After Charlie Hebdo, it is surprising.

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India Global Technology 163

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 30, 2016

It’s easy to declare yourself an entrepreneur, but it’s not so easy to convince investors, your team and customers that you are that special one to fund and follow. If you don’t consistently display the right entrepreneur mindset traits, people won’t follow and business success will likely elude you. And don’t even think you can fake the important attributes once the going gets tough.

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Metrics Entrepreneur Founder Startup 137

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Introducing Hacking for Defense – Connecting Silicon Valley Innovation Culture and Mindset to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. Hacking for Defense is a new course at Stanford’s Engineering School in the Spring of 2016. It is being taught by Tom Byers, Steve Blank, Joe Felter and Pete Newell and is advised by former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry.

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View from Seed

JANUARY 26, 2016

This is the first of several blog posts discussing pre-seed rounds. To ensure you receive the rest, subscribe here. In this post, I want to answer the question, “What are pre-seed rounds?” I’ll also address why they’ve become fairly common. In the next post, I’ll talk about how we think about pre-seeds at NextView. It’s become increasingly common for startups to raise several seed rounds, and this has led to a bifurcation in the seed stage between what are kn

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