May, 2011

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Startup Mantra: Hire Fast, Fire Fast

Both Sides of the Table

This post originally appeared on TechCrunch. I have often said that what separates real entrepreneurs from pundits and bystanders is a bias towards getting things done versus over analyzing things. My credo has always been JFDI. It’s the hardest thing to teach people who come out of big companies, out of conservative jobs. At the big consulting firms, investment banks and established large technology companies we’re taught to produce long reports, make sure that every document is perfect quali

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Non-Technical Entrepreneurs Need the Right Partner

Startup Professionals Musings

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Then the question becomes “How do I evaluate and attract the best technical talent?

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Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – The Startup Genome Project

Steve Blank

In April 2010 I received an email that said, “I’m an incoming Stanford student in the fall and working on a project that a number of people suggested I get in touch with you about.&#. Ok, I get a lot of these. Is this some grad student or post doc who wanted to do some independent study? The email continued, &# The problem I’m working on is that many founders are either making uninformed decisions or inefficiently learning the new skills they need.

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Do I dare call bullshit aloud? Do you?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

A daily side-effect of my moderate fame is a barrage of “special&# offers, guest-post requests, pleas for attention, and modest, tasteful bribery. It’s not bad; most are sincere, and even those blatant marketing ploys requesting me to “review this fantastic new book that’s so relevant to your readers who are aching to read it&# are professional, direct, and come bearing gifts (even if it is just a free book).

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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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LinkedIn: The Series A Fundraising Story ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. LinkedIn: The Series A Fundraising Story. May 26, 2011. This also appears as a guest post at Fortune’s Term Sheet. LinkedIn went public last week. As a shareholder I’m obviously pleased with the investor reception LinkedIn has received, but more importantly it’s a great milestone for the company we started nearly 9 years ago.

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Hiring A Web Developer: 11 Questions You Must Ask Ahead Of Time

YoungUpstarts

By Uri Foox, founder of Pixafy. If you are a business owner who is not an expert in web development, finding someone (or an agency) you can trust to build your website is critical. To help with your vetting process, here are eleven questions to ask your would-be developers before making a decision: 1. What do you do? Developers should be able to explain what they do in terms you can understand.

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The Right Startup Advisory Board Has A Big Payback

Startup Professionals Musings

Every startup faces a myriad of challenges that are well beyond the scope of any founder, so you need a few guiding lights to illuminate the road ahead. These should be carefully selected, with a proven track record, willing and available to help, and be completely trustworthy. Make sure they are willing to check their egos at the door. Let’s talk specifics.

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Implementing Social Media’s Secret Weapon

Feld Thoughts

Fred Wilson had an excellent post up this morning titled Social Media’s Secret Weapon – Email. I completely agree that email is the key communications channel for social media and have written about this before in posts like 100% Click Through Rate , Email – The Original Social Graph and Email Is Still The Best Login. I’ve been investing in email related stuff for over 15 years going back to Email Publishing, my very first Boulder-based investment which I believe was the

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1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Making Money From Blogs

ReadWriteStart

During today's roundtable, we opened the session with a discussion of the existential crisis in media and how talented bloggers and journalists are facing a tough time sustaining themselves due to lack of business models. As a business blogger myself, I have given an inordinate amount of thought to the subject, and it has led me to create the 1M/1M Affiliate Program to support the work of media professionals who advocate entrepreneurship and innovation.

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Twitter Link Roundup #87 – 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!

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SwiftSharing – Age Is No Barrier To Ideas

YoungUpstarts

Swiftsharing ( www.swiftsharing.net ) is a new and growing social network site that has seen over 8,000 members signed up and has more than 20,000 posts since launching in January this year. If that doesn’t sound impressive to you – compared to Facebook ‘s 500 million users – consider the fact that none on the Swiftsharing team are over the age of 19.

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HOW TO: Hire the Perfect CTO

mashable.com

); // Welcome to Mashable! Sign in with Facebook or Twitter to get started! Close Mashable | The Social Media Guide Top Stories My Stories Topics People Activity Viral Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video About Mashable Company About Us Advertise Submit News Contact Us Announcements Mashable Follow Resources Guidebooks Lists How To Trending Mashable Awards Subscriptions Partners W3 EDGE Rackspace Concentric Sky Dynect DNS Intridea Welcome to Mashable!

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Your Toughest Competitor May be Your Best Partner

Startup Professionals Musings

Companies today are paranoid, afraid that even their friends will steal their business. Yet a creative collaboration with your biggest competitor may be the best opportunity for revenue and survival. But remember that “dancing with the wolves” can also get you eaten for lunch. You have to take the risk, but keep your wits about you. Your goal is “ coopetition ” - to find a way to partner with your competitor in such a way that both parties can substantially benefit from the other's resources - w

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How Federal Government Can Help Entrepreneurship

Feld Thoughts

This afternoon in Boulder I’ll be on a panel as part of the White House Startup America Roundtable. If you weren’t invited to the event, there is a web site called Reducing Barriers to Innovation that you can participate in. Over the past few years, I’ve spent some time thinking about how the government can help entrepreneurship. It started with my role as the co-chairman of the Colorado Governors Innovation Council which was my first involvement in any formal way with any gove

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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Incubators Are Reaching Out To 1M/1M

ReadWriteStart

After hosting three live roundtables and being on stage for six to seven hours a day last month during my trip to Pune , I almost lost my voice. At the final roundtable, we worked with just two entrepreneurs and then spent the rest of the time on Q&A, which in itself was interesting. First up, Satya Choppadhandi from Bangalore, India, presented Evolutech Networks, a company that manufactures wireless energy monitoring devices for the smart home.

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Why Winning Matters (Especially When You’re Young)

OnlyOnce

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has long been a leading voice for direct marketing for nearly 100 years – back when direct marketing was really only about postal. It has evolved in that time to include phone, fax (for the nanosecond that was relevant), and then interactive tactics, including email. While the DMA has not always incorporated the new technologies in the most elegant way – the tendency has been to apply previous best practices, even when consumers have demanded a new way of t

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14 Interesting Findings From The Startup Genome Project

YoungUpstarts

Silicon Valley technology startup accelerator blackbox earlier this year launched the Startup Genome Project , which seeks to type startups, identify their developmental stage and the metrics that matter, and build a system to integrate the methodologies of many of the Valley’s leading thinkers such as Steve Blank , Eric Ries , Sean Ellis and Dave McClure.

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Worked Up about Unrealistic Venture Capital Valuation

Growthink Blog

Yes, this blog post is going to piss off somebody. Specifically, the guy who wrote me this email. But, it will provide a good lesson for everyone else's. So it's worth posting. So, here's the story. I received an email last week from an entrepreneur (let's call him Mike) Now to begin, I was pretty impressed with Mike since he used a nice technique to get his email in my inbox (due to the volume of emails I receive, they are screened by others before they get to me).

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Innovative Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

www.smashingmagazine.com

Magazine Network Shop Jobs RSS Facebook Twitter Newsletter All categories Coding Design Graphics Inspiration CSS Freebies HTML5 JavaScript Photoshop Typography Usability Wallpapers WordPress Smashing Magazine Innovative Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins By Anthony T May 5th, 2011 Design 48 Comments Publishing Policy Advertisement There are many ways to design sign-up and log-in forms.

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Flying Software Engineers To Boulder For Startup Week

Feld Thoughts

Boulder is full of software engineers, but we need more. A lot more. So, several local companies pitched in some bucks and the organizers of Boulder Startup Week are buying plane tickets for five people to come out between May 18th and May 22nd. If you don’t know about Boulder Startup Week, take a look at the killer agenda. If you are a software engineer, send ryanwanger at gmail a note containing the following: 1.

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If you’re in the cloud you really need a parachute

VC Adventure

Fred Wilson recently posted about his move to the cloud and the freedom that having his data always available has given him. More and more people and companies are freeing themselves from the constraints of desktop software and captive data stores in favor of cloud based applications and the freedom of readily (and always) available data. We recently went through a similar move at Foundry – although we haven’t completely moved to Google Apps for all of our documents and spreadsheets

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The Co-Founder Mythology

Both Sides of the Table

I spoke at Stanford last year about starting a tech company. They really cleverly chopped the video up into small bite-sized segments. So for anybody who reads my “This Week in VC&# transcripts but doesn’t watch the video – this one’s for you! It’s only 3 minutes, 44 seconds. I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# So embedded is this conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that it feels like heresy to even question it.

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What Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About Accountability And Leadership

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Growing up, I could be described as very sensitive and at times even shy and introverted. I always thought that leaders were very loud, extroverted, had great senses of humor and that they had to be very arrogant. I have come to know there is no direct correlation between arrogance or likability and leadership. There will always be those who follow the arrogant, however, they’re so unsure of themselves that these are the types of people that you do not want on your team, and whom you specificall

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Entrepreneurship and Youth Go Hand-in-Hand

Growthink Blog

Younger workers – the so-called Millenials or those born after 1982 - with all of their creative talent and intellectual savvy, and all of their flightiness and senses of entitlement - offer unique challenges and opportunities for 21st Century managers seeking to build well-functioning teams that work and win together. Here are five best practices: #5.

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Philadelphia University Commencement Speech – May 15th 2011

Steve Blank

I am honored to be with you as we gather to celebrate your graduation from Philadelphia University. While I teach at Stanford and Berkeley, to be honest… this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. I realize that my 15 minutes up here is all that’s between you and the rest or your life, so if I can keep you awake, I’m going to share 4 short stories from my life.

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Gnip Is On Fire

Feld Thoughts

One of my favorite times for me in the life of a company is when it finds its sweet spot and really turns on the juice. Over the past year, we’ve had a number of our Boulder-based investments find this magic moment, including Trada and SendGrid. The most recent Boulder-based company to really hit its stride is Gnip. Gnip is around three years old and is a testament to our belief at Foundry Group that it often takes several years for a brand new company to really find its mojo.

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How to Say Thank You :: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct.

Duct Tape Marketing

SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND AFFORDABLE SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING Home About Consulting Products Programs Workshops Blog Resources Contact Subscribe by RSS Subscribe to Duct Tape Marketing by Email Small Business Week 2011 Our winners! Mon – Justin Severidt Tues – Elizabeth Frederick Wed – Denise Sheehan Thurs – Nicholas Hammernik Fri – Jennifer Nagel Books by John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – by John J

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Quick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations

Both Sides of the Table

In the past I’ve given some tips for handling meetings effectively, covering topics like: - How not to let your meeting go down a rat hole ; - Dealing with the elephant in the room ; - Dealing with skeletons in your closet ; - How to make meetings discussions, not “pitches&#. - A tale of two pitches (I eventually invested in the first company that pitched).

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How Helping Newbies Led To Big Profits And A Closing Down Sale (Discount Price Ends Friday)

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

One the factors I like to hammer home to people when they create any kind of information, whether it’s blog or website content, membership content, or any kind of paid info product, is not to underestimate how much of your audience truly are beginners. Everyone starts as a beginner. If you are teaching something that requires any kind of practice or knowledge to become proficient in it, then you have a market of beginners ready to be helped.

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Fighting micro-burn-out

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This guest-post was written by Noah Kagan, Chief Sumo of AppSumo.com , the daily deals site for web entrepreneurs. He was formerly an early employee at Facebook and Mint. I woke up and rolled over to the left side of the bed as I do almost every morning and snapped up my iPhone. My heart beats a little faster as I roll back over, my girlfriends naked back is showing and I click open the iPhone mail app.

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Website review to improve website ranking and conversion

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

Today I would like to show you how to quickly review a website and find low hanging fruits in terms of SEO, marketing and other technicalities. The website I will review the website of Blue Tea that offers kitchen designs in Sydney. Google Webmaster Tools. Did you register your website to Google Webmaster Tools ? If no, do it now. Done? Now, please set up your preferred domain name inside Google Webmaster Tools.

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8 questions for SAP

deal architect

In preparation for the visit to Sapphire I have been polling the industry and have come up with a few questions I hope SAP executives answer next week On behalf of Apple: We expect our major suppliers to reflect our.

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Investors Expect Ten Essentials in a Business Plan

Startup Professionals Musings

People ask me if they really need ANY business plan, unless they are looking for an outside investor. In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Things that make it investment-grade for outside investors will also benefit you, since you are the ultimate investor.

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The Importance of The Narrative

Both Sides of the Table

I went to undergrad at UCSD, which is not a place known for its Greek institutions and my father grew up in South America and had know idea what a fraternity was. So I went to college with no expectation that I would ever join a fraternity let alone aspire to become president one day. Yet being in a fraternity was one of the most transformative experiences I had in college and prepared me better for becoming an entrepreneur than any class that I took.

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Greatest Hits – The Gigaom Interview

Steve Blank

Om Malik runs Gigaom , probably the most interesting and technically accurate sites on the blogosphere. He had me in for an interview. We covered a wide range of topics. 0:22 – the Entrepreneurial explosion. 1:45 – Are we in a Bubble? 3:20 - The Last Bubble. 6:30 – Rules for the New Bubble. 8:05 – Metrics for Success. 10:10 – Total Available Market in the Billions. 11:45 – Is this a Really a Bubble – the greater fool theory. 13:00 – VC’s – The Pact Wit

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What is Marketing Strategy and How Do I Get One 5 :: Small.

Duct Tape Marketing

SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND AFFORDABLE SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING Home About Consulting Products Programs Workshops Blog Resources Contact Subscribe by RSS Subscribe to Duct Tape Marketing by Email Small Business Week 2011 Our winners! Mon – Justin Severidt Tues – Elizabeth Frederick Wed – Denise Sheehan Thurs – Nicholas Hammernik Fri – Jennifer Nagel Books by John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – by John J