Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 15, 2010

When someone introduces me to an “idea person,” I automatically jump to the down-side conclusion that this person doesn’t do follow-up. Of course there are people who are great at getting things done, but haven’t had an original idea in their life. Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both. I was with IBM in the early PC days when Bill worked with us to provide PC DOS and other software.

Entrepreneur 237

Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review Retention 237

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Teaching in Chile. I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Valaparaiso houses. Entrepreneurship and innovation in what I call “Chilecon Valley” is being talked about continually here. In my next post I’ll share a longer description of my impressions.

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Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 235

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 15, 2010

Small businesses and startups face many challenges when marketing their products and services. Small businesses and startups have minimal brand recognition, are often located in geographic or demographic areas that limit their marketing options, and most have small (or non-existent) marketing budgets. Some marketers advise small businesses and startups to research and create strategic marketing plans.

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Lean Small Business Marketing Startup 129

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 17, 2010

This was the first time I had ever heard about del.icio.us (I still like to use the old naming convention)… note the date. This was about three months before Union Square Ventures closed an investment in the company—and a month before I actually joined them fulltime. As I look at my e-mail archive, I had already started to do some project work before my start date, looking into companies, doing some competitive analysis.

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Guinea Open Source Community Web 127

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

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2010

By Francine Hardaway, Ph.D. Taking other people’s money to fund your startup changes your life in ways you cannot predict. And many of those ways are negative. I meet with dozens of entrepreneurs a week. No matter how they couch it, they are asking for money. They come to me wanting to know first, will I invest myself? Doubtful, unless I already know them really well, know the company really well, and have some spare cash.

Advisory Board 233

Advisory Board Cofounder Phoenix Arizona 233

Ben's Blog

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Snap yo fingers, do yo step. You can do it all by yo self. —Lil Jon, Snap Yo Fingers. Gaurav Dhillon was one of the great enterprise entrepreneurs of the ‘90s and early 2000s. He founded and ran the premier integration company of the era, Informatica, took it public and built it into the number one company in the market. Informatica is currently worth over $4B.

Technical Review 77

Technical Review Memphis Software Review Software 77

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2010

I sit through a lot of presentations. It’s usually people wanting to raise money and/or persuade me of something. Many of these are not as effective as they could be. 1. Understand Personality Types – One of the benefits of working for a big company (Accenture) was that we had lots of speakers come in and train us in topics like leadership, creativity, presentations, strategy, etc.

Analytics 358

Analytics Audience Entrepreneur Portfolio 358

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 16, 2010

A few months ago, for our “I’m in Logo Love” series, I wrote about the Big Ten logo, and how awesome it was. It used negative space in a clever way to show that the Big Ten athletic conference actually had eleven teams. I also mentioned how excited I was to see what they would come up with when the Big Ten added Nebraska to their ranks, changing the number of participating colleges to twelve.

North Carolina 64

North Carolina Fort Worth Nebraska Vesting 64

Altgate

DECEMBER 15, 2010

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly More on Liquidation Preferences → Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Posted on December 15, 2010 by admin Here’s a chart of the day worth sharing. I was working on some data analysis around the topic of angel round pre-money valuations (which I’ll post soon) and came up with the following interesting charts.

Pre-Money Valuation 66

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Cofounder Founder 66

deal architect

DECEMBER 11, 2010

The tech industry loves to brag about “openness”. Indeed ‘open” may be the most abused tech marketing term over the last couple of decades. So, when I first heard Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com talk a few years ago about.

Marketing 294

Marketing Cloud 294

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2010

I was recently speaking with some founders about their fund raising process. They had received a term sheet from a VC and were wondering whether to work with this firm. I personally had three separate data points from entrepreneurs who took money from the firm that said “never again.&# I really try to stay out of the middle of these things so I softly said to the team, “maybe you should contact these companies and see how their experience went?

Term Sheet 298

Term Sheet Venture Capital Stealth Cofounder 298

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 15, 2010

While I was teaching at Columbia in New York in November I was interviewed for the Shoshin Project by my friend Christian Jorg. Filed under: Customer Development.

Customer Development 269

Customer Development Developer Customer New York 269

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 12, 2010

If you think "I better not start a startup now, because the economy is still bad" you will be making a comparable mistake to the people who thought during the dot-com bubble "all I have to do is a startup, and I'll be rich." In reality, what matters more is who you are, not when you do it. Like Paul Graham says, I see startups succeed or fail every day based on the qualities of the founders.

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Startup Cofounder Salary Social Network 234

deal architect

DECEMBER 12, 2010

In the last week, you have read plenty about salesforce and its Dreamforce event and SAP and its influencer event. NetSuite had a small gathering for a few of us in town for those big events. And while that event.

Cloud 278

Cloud 278

Altgate

DECEMBER 16, 2010

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Where Do Tech VCs Invest? → More on Liquidation Preferences Posted on December 16, 2010 by admin A long time ago I had asked a VC about what pre-money valuation he was planning to put in a term sheet he had promised to send over.

Liquidation Preference 39

Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet Valuation 39

For Entrepreneurs

DECEMBER 16, 2010

I presented the following set of slides to the Mass TLC group as the keynote for the “SaaS Business Model Update — Creating and Managing Revenues&# event. The slides should be useful for anyone interested in learning about the key drivers for a SaaS business, including the SaaS cash flow trough, cost of customer acquisition, [.].

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Business Model Acquisition Revenue Cost 167

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 13, 2010

If you are new to the startup space and angel investing, you probably don’t realize that some groups of angel investors charge entrepreneurs a fee to pitch to their groups. This practice has caused a rousing debate among key players, with some calling it a scam, and others defending it as necessary to cover expenses. Jason Calacanis, a well-known entrepreneur and angel investor, opened the debate about a year ago in a strongly-worded article on his blog which attacked the practice on ethical gro

Angel Groups 234

Angel Groups Entrepreneur Angel Investor Due Diligence 234

deal architect

DECEMBER 12, 2010

Mighty Microsoft shared real estate outside the Dreamforce conference with tiny SugarCRM. But while Sugar had a amusing team of Christmas carollers, Microsoft had an intimidating team of Segways that the thousands of attendees went out of their way to.

Cloud 275

Cloud Software 275

Rembrandt Communications

DECEMBER 12, 2010

So I just got off of a publicized teleseminar with one of the top gurus in the information marketing industry. But get this… there were only three people on the call! I couldn’t believe it! Here I had access to free information and answers that could make me money… so I asked question after question [.].

Marketing 138

Marketing Sales 138

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

One of the wisest people I worked with in my career was Ameet Shah. Ameet always had the quietly reflective view of “why things were&# that always came from a unique angle that I hadn’t considered. He taught me, amongst other things, the benefit of “ top down thinking &# that changed the way I analyzed markets, companies and people.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2010

Every organization, no matter how small, has one or more people who are quite simply obnoxious, and they drain energy from everyone and can strangle your company. Sometimes they are also intellectually brilliant, or closely related to the boss, so there is no easy way out. In fact, they may even be the boss. So if you find this article taped to your desk, it may be time to look in the mirror.

Startup 229

Startup Leadership Conversion Entrepreneur 229

deal architect

DECEMBER 16, 2010

I should have blogged about this when I wrote about the Workday session in August. The fact that co-founder Aneel Bhusri went out of his way to praise Marc Benioff of salesforce.com on several occasions during the day. Aneel is.

Cofounder 186

Cofounder Founder Cloud 186

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Often when we talk about domain names and startups, it's in terms of selecting a good one. Having a good name for your startup may not be the key to your success, but it's still a critical piece and you certainly do want to choose wisely. The advice around picking a name is worth repeating, because you don't want to be stuck with a lousy name: Avoid long or impossible-to-remember names.

Naming 147

Naming Startup Stock Search 147

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Want to see a robotic ball controlled by a smartphone? Take a look at the Orbotix Sphero Sneak Peek Video below. Sphero Sneak Peek from Paul Berberian on Vimeo. My friends at Orbortix will be at CES in Booth #5422 North Hall from January 6th to 9th showing off real working robotic balls. So psyched.

Video 124

Video 124

Rembrandt Communications

DECEMBER 12, 2010

So I just got off of a publicized teleseminar with one of the top gurus in the information marketing industry. But get this… there were only three people on the call! I couldn’t believe it! Here I had access to free information and answers that could make me money… so I asked question after question [.].

Marketing 100

Marketing Sales 100

Lightspeed Venture Partners

DECEMBER 17, 2010

'Both virality and direct response advertising are areas where getting the details right are critical. One element in both chains is the page on your website that a new user lands on (either from a friend invite, or from an ad.) Many developers don’t sweat the details on what they regard as “aesthetics” Many designers focus more on making a page look good than getting users to do what you want them to.

Viral 108

Viral eCommerce Advertising Design 108

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 14, 2010

It's a longstanding debate: are entrepreneurs made or born? In other words, are certain people just naturally inclined to become entrepreneurs? Or are there particular skills and training afforded by (business) schools that can make you (to misquote Daft Punk) smarter, better, faster, stronger? "Born or made" - that was the subject of a talk given by Jose Ferreira, founder and CEO of adaptive learning, test-prep company Knewton at the recent " Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge " event.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Finance Founder 145

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Periodically I pimp the conferences we helped create with Eric Norlin – Defrag , Glue , and most recently Blur. If you’ve been to any of these conferences, you know why I get so excited about them – it’s a chance for me and my partners to spend two days immersed in a theme we are investing in while surrounded with some of the smartest people working in that area.

Florida 119

Florida Software Partner Founder 119

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Filed under:

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Lightspeed Venture Partners

DECEMBER 16, 2010

'Today we’re announcing that Lightpseed and Accel are investing in Bonobos , a vertically-integrated men’s apparel etailer. Bonobos was founded in 2007 by a couple of Stanford Business school students, selling better fitting pants out of their dorm room. Initially their focus was on pants, cut for modern American men who had played sports growing up.

Vertical 107

Vertical eCommerce Curation Acquisition 107

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Maintaining a sensible work-life balance can be difficult for anyone. But if you're launching your own company, the challenge is thousand-fold. Back in September, BankSimple founder Alex Payne wrote a post detailing some of his suggestions on how to "stay healthy and sane at a startup.". The post should be required reading for those that are facing what Payne describes as the "unrelenting stress and chaos of a fast-growing startup.

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Startup Engineer Email Management 127

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 15, 2010

I’ve been quiet since the weekend. It’s not because I’ve had nothing to say (that would be a first), but because I was absolutely slaughtered by the flu. I spent all of Sunday and Monday in bed. I managed to work yesterday and stay on top of the things flying around and today was more or less normal (with a long afternoon nap). But that was easily the worst kick in the ass I’ve had from a cold in many years.

Partner 110

Partner Management 110

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 14, 2010

Ever try to schedule a meeting with someone in a different time zone? It probably fails half the time, mostly because your calendar doesn’t make even the smallest attempt to understand you, despite the data that it has. I could type in a location in San Francisco for a meeting and it doesn’t even so much as ask “Did you mean to schedule this for New York time or San Fran time?

Social Network 99

Social Network San Francisco Networking Algorithm 99

Growthink Blog

DECEMBER 14, 2010

Pepperdine University's Center for Applied Research came out with an interesting report last week about the future of venture capital. The report was the result of surveys of 213 venture capitalists and found the following: read more.

Venture Capital 91

Venture Capital 91

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 16, 2010

We started this week's roundtable with a discussion of the top 10 tech trends to watch for the upcoming decade. The trends include Cloud computing, outsourcing, social Web, vertical and local Web, smartphones and tablets, online advertising, online video, online gaming, e-books, and bootstrapped entrepreneurship. You can find details in the blog post on [link].

Senegal 117

Senegal Nevada Bootstrapping Silicon Valley 117

Up and Running

DECEMBER 14, 2010

The problem with this idea is that I’m not sure how you’d make money doing it, but it’s a web app I wish existed, so maybe this suggestion is useful to you. It’s related to twitter. And it would use both the Twitter and the klout.com APIs (application programming interfaces). I want to be able to browse through the people I follow and those who follow me in a more organized way.

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API Programming Web Management 81