Both Sides of the Table
JULY 22, 2010
Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. It was accept the terms or go into bankruptcy so we took the money.
Genuine VC
JULY 19, 2010
Before I wrote a couple detailed posts on Micro VCs, I thought I’d write an overview one sharing my broad perspective on this portion of the VC world. It’s clear that despite the varied terminology (Super Angel, Micro VC, Seed Stage VC, Seed Firms, etc.), a new segment of the institutional venture market is emerging. Both super-angels are institutionalizing “up” and formerly traditional VCs shifting “down” to fill a market opportunity.
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crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 21, 2010
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!
Austin Startup
JULY 23, 2010
My next door neighbor is Dave Thomas. (No, not related to the famous Wendy’s founder.) Dave, Karen, and their family have been great neighbors over the years and, while we may go weeks sometimes not seeing much of each other, due to being involved in our separate professional and personal pursuits, we always know they have our back, just as we have theirs.
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
Both Sides of the Table
JULY 19, 2010
Startups are hard. When you read the press you only read the glamorous bits. You read about Mark Zuckerberg or the guys at FourSquare, Twitter or Zynga. But that’s a bit like reading about your state lottery winner and feeling bummed out because you haven’t won despite years of trying. The reality is that most of you will never hit it BIG yet you’ll lead fulfilled and productive lives.
femgineer.com
JULY 18, 2010
Femgineer Coder. Speaker. Writer. HOME About the Femgineer Speaking Engagements Reading List Recruiting Startup Engineers With the startup market taking off, there is always a clamor to find good engineers, developers, and designers. People constantly ask if I know people, where to find the so-called ’startup-engineers’, or even where the can find someone like me.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Software By Rob
JULY 22, 2010
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Book Review: Never Eat Alone Two Recent Press Appearances: Inc.com and the TechZing Podcast → Three Tips for Getting People to Read Your Email Newsletter Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Both Sides of the Table
JULY 20, 2010
Yesterday I wrote about the importance of choosing happiness. Today I want to write about a related topic: not taking the little things in life for granted. I promise not to turn this blog into a personal self-help blog! But today is a special day and I’m thinking about this topic so please humor me just one more time. More later in the post.
deal architect
JULY 19, 2010
John had just returned from a trip to Italy. His sisters, each a year or two older had come back from similar trips to Portugal, Egypt and Turkey. His cousin was headed to Amsterdam today, and another was describing her. Tags: Industry Commentary.
Steve Blank
JULY 22, 2010
Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Here’s an example in a direct sales channel. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch. A VC asked me to have lunch with the CEO of a startup building cloud-based enterprise software. (Boy did I feel like Rip Van Winkle.) The board was getting nervous as the company was missing its revenue plan.
Software By Rob
JULY 20, 2010
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Lessons Learned Taking Parental Leave as a Solo Entrepreneur Three Tips for Getting People to Read Your Email Newsletter → Book Review: Never Eat Alone Cool News, Links & Reviews If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 23, 2010
In previous articles, I have occasionally mentioned “red flags” which every potential investor unconsciously listens for. Other writers, like Guy Kawasaki, have irreverently called some of these “entrepreneur lies,” but I prefer to think of them as innocent over-enthusiasm or over-confidence that can kill your deal. At any rate, here is my summary of the top ten from my experience with hundreds of elevator pitches, business plans, and executive presentations: “ Our product is truly disruptive te
deal architect
JULY 20, 2010
Extract from my new book: As we know, the 1990s were a chaotic time for Russia as the Soviet Union’s centralized, defense - heavy infrastructure was gradually torn down and replaced by decentralized, commercial enterprises. Seth Ravin describes his work.
Steve Blank
JULY 19, 2010
As a founder I fought with VC’s over vesting as they brought in a new CEO and walked me out the door. As a board member I negotiated with founding CEO’s over vesting when I thought it was their time to go. At best this is an argument where no one wins, at worst it’s like a nasty divorce. I’ll offer that both entrepreneurs and VC’s have the wrong model for founding CEO equity compensation.
Rembrandt Communications
JULY 20, 2010
As a small business owner, getting the media attention you deserve is not as difficult as it may seem. In fact, it’s just a matter of picking up the phone and being a good sales person! Here are five tips to help you get started. 1. Research.Before you contact reporters, be sure you know what [.].
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 22, 2010
If you want people to invest in your idea, then my best advice is first write a business plan, and keep it simple. Don't confuse your business plan with a doctoral thesis or the back of a napkin. Keep the wording and formatting straightforward, and keep the plan short. For minimum content, see my article “ Ten Tips to an Investment-Grade Business Plan.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 21, 2010
Last week there was a kerfuffle over Standing Cloud’s use of the Papyrus font for their logo. It was kind of cute and endearing and my pals at Standing Cloud reacted with appropriate contrition over offending the font police. Today I came across a brilliant McSweeney article (thanks to @daveschappell ) on Comic Sans titled I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
JULY 19, 2010
This is Part 2 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.??? What if someone copies your awesome business idea? About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may ask: "What if a big company copies your idea and develops the same website as yours after your website goes public?".
crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 19, 2010
Customer loyalty is critical to all businesses, and this loyalty can be built by small businesses by engaging their audience with their own brands through content creation. Blog posts, videos, advertising, and social media interaction should be designed to serve a larger engagement strategy. The last few weeks have seen an explosion online, on TV, and in the press about an old, (and frankly) washed-up brand, turned new again through a strong, consistent, and creative campaign.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 21, 2010
A question that I often hear debated these days is whether a new startup should focus on growth or profits. First of all, the glory days of “dot.coms” are gone, when investors “didn’t care” about profitability, and all the money went to growth. In the long run, everyone wants both profitability and growth, but the question is still which comes first.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 20, 2010
Well my Mac experiment is going extremely well. I’m not sure I remember how to use a Windows PC, nor am I sure why I’d want to. I’m using a Mac that is at least a year old (2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM) so I’m not even tuned to the max but I’m absolutely loving the overall experience. As so many people have told me, “shit just works.&# And so far, whenever I’ve had a problem, I’ve been able to quickly find the answer with a Google sear
Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook
JULY 21, 2010
There is quite a bandwagon rolling right now about Creativity. 5 years ago it seemed that Creativity was a bad word. You could never say it aloud at a corporation because what it meant wasn’t new ideas, it was interpreted as “lack of control&# or, even worse, those touchy-feely things that have nothing to do [.]. Tags: Cartoons by Gregg Fraley Creativity and Self-Expression Humor Innovation Politics & Government Trends, Futurism, and Research Alltop cartoon creative thinking Crea
crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 19, 2010
Customer loyalty is critical to all businesses, and this loyalty can be built by small businesses by engaging their audience with their own brands through content creation. Blog posts, videos, advertising, and social media interaction should be designed to serve a larger engagement strategy. The last few weeks have seen an explosion online, on TV, and in the press about an old, (and frankly) washed-up brand, turned new again through a strong, consistent, and creative campaign.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 18, 2010
If you are addicted to Facebook, you may be in for a big shock when you go to work in the corporate world. Based on a survey just last year by Robert Half Technology , over half of today’s companies block social networks completely, while another 19 percent only permit it "for business purposes." The blocking percentages are still going up, rather than down.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 21, 2010
Eric Ries is this week’s guest star on The Founders. Eric is an incredible speaker and is traveling the world on a mission to help people stop wasting other people’s time. If you don’t follow Eric’s thoughts on Lean Startups on his blog Lessons Learned , you should. You get a little taste of the shift Omniar is making while they wander around the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art along with a surprise birthday party for David Cohen at The Lazy Dog on a beautiful Boulde
This is going to be BIG.
JULY 23, 2010
“So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.” I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever.
crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 19, 2010
Customer loyalty is critical to all businesses, and this loyalty can be built by small businesses by engaging their audience with their own brands through content creation. Blog posts, videos, advertising, and social media interaction should be designed to serve a larger engagement strategy. The last few weeks have seen an explosion online, on TV, and in the press about an old, (and frankly) washed-up brand, turned new again through a strong, consistent, and creative campaign.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 20, 2010
I still get business plans, looking for an investor, that say all too clearly that the first goal of the new business is to do research and development (R&D) on some promising new technology, like superconductivity or cancer research. Investors are looking for commercial products to make money, rather than R&D sunk costs, so your investment hopes are sunk as well.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 18, 2010
Emily Eveleth, a favorite artist of mine and Amy’s, was profiled in the Boston Globe this weekend in an article titled It’s Time To Paint The Doughnuts. My long time friend Shawn Broderick (who runs TechStars Boston) knows about our Emily doughnut obsession and pointed it out to me. Amy and I are huge collectors of Emily’s work and have tons of doughnuts, some hula hoops, and as of this month, a magic eight ball and a dinosaur which Amy bought for me as my life dinner present
Growthink Blog
JULY 19, 2010
Both my parents were schoolteachers, and when I was born, my mother temporarily stopped working to take care of my brother (2 years older than me) and I. So, to earn some extra income, my father got a second job selling vacuums at a local department store. One day, my father noticed a sketchy-looking guy in the store. The guy was dressed strangely and was walking around and touching a lot of the merchandise.
crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 23, 2010
A few weeks ago, Wieden + Kennedy began executing a ground-breaking social media campaign on behalf of its client, Old Spice. The foundation for the campaign was set when Old Spice introduced during the Superbowl , the “Old Spice Man,” played by Isaiah Mustafa , a television actor and a former NFL wide receiver. Mustafa, playing “The man your man could smell like”, generated a great deal of buzz about Old Spice (a bit more background in our post from earlier this week – Small business a
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 17, 2010
By Ernst Gemassmer You have successfully conceived a new business, obtained funding and are now planning to capitalize on the large markets opportunities existing outside of the USA. In this article I would like to share with you recommendations for staffing international businesses, based on my personal long-term hands-on experience in this arena. The head of international must be experienced in building international businesses and must operate from corporate headquarters.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 20, 2010
When my partners and I started Foundry Group , one of our key principles was to be “theme-based investors.&# At the time the phrase “theme&# wasn’t being used in VC-land so we got to make up what it meant, at least for us. We decided that a theme was a “broadly horizontal technology area that would have dramatic impact and opportunity over the next 10+ years.&# (see Jason Mendelson’s post titled What Is Thematic Investing for a deeper explanation.).
This is going to be BIG.
JULY 23, 2010
I don't often subway thumb because I don't take the subway much anymore. This week, though, I decided to give my body a rest after the triathlon, so I've been taking it all week. I just missed the R train, leaving the maximum amount of waiting time, which I believe is now 8 minutes. Seems like an eternity in the stuffy heat. These two Chinese men have just run into each other.
crowdSPRING Blog
JULY 23, 2010
A few weeks ago, Wieden + Kennedy began executing a ground-breaking social media campaign on behalf of its client, Old Spice. The foundation for the campaign was set when Old Spice introduced during the Superbowl , the “Old Spice Man,” played by Isaiah Mustafa , a television actor and a former NFL wide receiver. Mustafa, playing “The man your man could smell like”, generated a great deal of buzz about Old Spice (a bit more background in our post from earlier this week – Small business a
Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook
JULY 23, 2010
Those of you who read this blog will know of the recent online debate I had with author Ashley Merryman. Essentially, I was not letting her get away with dismissing brainstorming. Ashley co-wrote a recent Newsweek article titled “Forget Brainstorming.&# While I liked the article generally, I hated the title, and disagree and dispute the [.]. Tags: Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Innovation Marketing Ashley Merryman brainstorming brainstorming controvery Creativity facilitation Forget Brains
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