Sat.Nov 10, 2018 - Fri.Nov 16, 2018

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Early Adopters Are Not Enough To Assure Your Success

Startup Professionals Musings

Every technical entrepreneur is an early adopter of technology, so naturally they build things with people like themselves in mind. Unfortunately, for most solution markets, early adopters represent only 10 to 15 percent of the total opportunity, so it’s easy to get mislead on the real requirements of mainstream customers. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias.

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How to Keep Your Job As Your Company Grows

Steve Blank

I know a change is going to come. If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. Most painfully, you’ll learn that your role in the company has to change.

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7 Skills Every Startup Team Needs To Get Things Done

Startup Professionals Musings

Isn’t it amazing that some people you know always seem to be working hard, but never seem to get anything done? As an entrepreneur, you need to avoid partnering with these people, or hiring them into your startup. The challenge is to find people who get things done, as well as work hard. LinkedIn profiles and resumes still focus too much on responsibilities rather than results.

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Chasing Stars – How To Improve Reviews As A Restaurant Owner

YoungUpstarts

It seems like social media makes the world go ‘round these days, and if you are a retailer or restaurant owner you may understand this more than most! Getting great reviews online is so important in attracting new customers (and, sometimes even keeping your regulars as perceptions can change over time). So, how do you improve your reviews as a restaurant owner… and, what’s a sure fire way to ensure you patrons get clicking on those stars?

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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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Are Agile Innovation Methods Right for Your Team?

The Startup Magazine

Developing successful agile innovation methods can drive companies to great new heights. Wanting to avoid digital disruptions and enable better decision-making in the workplace? Then implementing agile innovation methods should be top on your list of to-dos. Taking an agile approach to project management means taking large tasks and splitting them into smaller tasks, as well as finding ways to be more innovative.

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Why Sites in High-Growth Industries Have Terrible UX

ConversionXL

If you generate a $200 million quarterly profit with an online product, your website’s user experience must be world class, right? Wrong. Your homepage can still look like the one above, which is from one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. But terrible UX isn’t a shortcoming of the cryptocurrency industry—it’s common in every high-growth industry, including, perhaps, your own.

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Public Speeches Made Easier

YoungUpstarts

Very few people relish speaking before crowds of strangers. Most of us try our best to avoid public speaking situations because of the feelings we’re likely to experience. That isn’t the right move according to Theo Tsaousides, Ph.D., who shared his expert opinion on the matter in Psychology Today. “Communicating your ideas clearly and presenting them openly in a public forum is an essential component of success across several domains of life,” explained Mr.

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Top 3 Startup Winner: Digs

The Startup Magazine

At this year’s FUND Conference in Chicago, Illinois, over 100 startups presented their early-stage companies in front of hundreds of investors and industry leaders. FUND is a national connector of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on deal flow and making connections. The startups ranked most highly by investors and startup enthusiasts in terms of scalability and longevity received votes on how well they connected with investors.

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An interview with founder, author, and Lean Startup Conference 2018 speaker Aaron Dignan

Startup Lessons Learned

Aaron Dignan --who has described himself as "obsessed with organizational adaptivity" --is one of the speakers at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in Las Vegas , where he’ll be talking about How to Reinvent Your Organization. I recently spoke with Aaron about everything from his work to his forthcoming book, Brave New Work , his personal theory about why best practices aren't usually the best, and how he uses lean startup at the drugstore. ** What is work in the 21st century?

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Go global or grow local? The Kiwi startup quandary

NZ Entrepreneur

Growing your company from the bottom of the world can be both challenging and rewarding. A new study considers whether it is better to “go global” from day one, or to grow locally first. Auckland-based startup Niesh, which has developed a student discount platform, is on a rapid growth trajectory and has had to decide if it should grow locally, or prioritise opportunities overseas.

Global 50
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Should Your Startup Be an Agile Company

Women Entrepreneurs Can

In the very early days of any startup, the matters of company strategy , structure, culture and leadership are rarely formally addressed. They are allowed to develop organically which, unfortunately, can have some negative consequences well into the future. These days, one of the decisions that startup owners make (or at least should think about making) is whether to be an agile company from the very start, to try to adopt it later or to do things the more traditional way.

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SAP and Qualtrics: Experiences matter, but how much?

deal architect

My daughter, Rita is about to embark on what she calls a Gap Quarter. I don’t want to steal her thunder as she plans to blog about it but it is a play on a Gap Year and what us.

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Shortcuts For Simplifying How To Think, Act, and Lead

Startup Professionals Musings

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Anyone can build a new web site, or publish a smartphone app for a few thousand dollars, but getting market penetration requires a lot more. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction.

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When Is An Idea Just An Idea?

YoungUpstarts

by Georgianna W. Oliver, founder of tour24. Entrepreneurs are funny people. They are problem solvers, and are everywhere in every walk-of-life! They are engineers, computer scientists, doctors, detectives, teachers, parents, politicians, and even your barista or Uber driver. Virtually anyone you may meet on a given day wants to solve a problem, or make the world a better place.

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Boost Positive Word-of-Mouth with Small Business Public Relations

Rembrandt Communications

No Money for Growth? PR Makes It No Problem. If you want to grow your B2B, you probably struggle with financial limitations. Well, even if you can’t afford major advertising and marketing initiatives, you can still boost positive awareness without spending a dime. How? (Que the angelic music…) Start public relations (PR) activities. How to […].

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Plex: The Past, Present and Future of Manufacturing

deal architect

Plex hosted its annual Future of Manufacturing Roundtable in Michigan last week. I was actually as excited about the past and present of manufacturing I saw during the visit. They hosted a dinner at a Birmingham restaurant which used to.

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5 Strategy Realities For Running Your Small Business

Startup Professionals Musings

As an advisor and mentor for many startups and small business founders, following my initial career in big business, I realize that the key strategies to achieve success in small businesses are often different from those that make larger businesses successful. The primary difference is the amount of time you have to spend working in the business versus on the business.

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30 Ways To Be A More Engaged Citizen

YoungUpstarts

by Quint Studer, author of “ Building A Vibrant Community: How Citizen-Powered Change Is Reshaping America “ In recent years the issues communities face have become a lot more complex—and it’s become more and more evident that one group alone cannot solve them. In today’s volatile environment, elected officials often lack the resources to do so.

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Top 3 Startup Winner: Happenstance

The Startup Magazine

At this year’s FUND Conference in Chicago, Illinois, over 100 startups presented their early-stage companies in front of hundreds of investors and industry leaders. FUND is a national connector of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on deal flow and making connections. The startups ranked most highly by investors and startup enthusiasts in terms of scalability and longevity received votes on how well they connected with investors.

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Not your Dad's SAP

deal architect

It’s been the longest research phase of any of my 7 books but I hope to deliver the first draft of the manuscript for SAP Nation 3.0 to my editor in early January. As I work my way through over.

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2018 Private SAAS Company Survey- Part 2

For Entrepreneurs

We recently released Part 1 results of our private SaaS company survey in partnership with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities). This is the sixth annual survey we’ve produced together, which provides data to help SaaS companies benchmark their performance against their competition. In Part 1, we covered growth rates, go-to-market trends, and CAC Rations and CAC Payback.

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5 Ways CEOs Can Change Their Behaviors To Lead More Efficiently

YoungUpstarts

by Mark Green , author of “ Activators: A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done “ In business, the adage “it starts at the top” can prompt an uncomfortable question: “Can the boss finish what he or she started?”. Many CEOs and entrepreneurs wrestle with this challenge, with both short- and long-term implications. Meanwhile, a disconnect develops between the CEO’s initial big-picture vision for the company and its seemingly sporadic execution toward those goals.

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10 of the Most Successful Investors of the Last 10 Years

The Startup Magazine

The global financial crisis started in 2007 and it went on for much of 2008. Investments from capital markets to real estate plummeted. Ten years have passed since this crisis occurred. What have entrepreneurs been up to since then? Well, here is a comprehensive list of 10 of the most successful investors of the last 10 years. Source: Pexels. Sean Belnick.

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Boost Positive Word-of-Mouth with Small Business Public Relations

Rembrandt Communications

No Money for Growth? PR Makes It No Problem. If you want to grow your B2B, you probably struggle with financial limitations. Well, even if you can’t afford major advertising and marketing initiatives, you can still boost positive awareness without spending a dime. How? (Que the angelic music…) Start public relations (PR) activities. How to Generate Fast Growth with PR.

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How to File an International Trademark When You’re Ready to Take Your Business Global

ReadWriteStart

Congratulations on eyeing the international market for your business growth. We are living in an age of globalization and more and more companies are recognizing the profitability of taking their products and service offerings globally at a relatively small incremental cost. It is an easy calculus to recognize that international consumers are able to be […].

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Cool Logo Ideas: Tips To Design A Killer Business Logo

YoungUpstarts

Picture the McDonald’s logo without its golden arches or Starbucks without the siren. It seems odd, doesn’t it? While a logo may appear like a minor attribute of a company, it’s actually a powerful sales tool that communicates the message and personality of your brand. So it’s development must not be overlooked. There are a few steps in making a logo cool that goes beyond artistic talent.

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Commercial Real Estate for Your Startup or Investment in Ohio

The Startup Magazine

Getting the right property to lease for your business forms the basis of your business’ success. The right commercial real estate will appeal to clients considering location and aesthetic value. This is not always the case in hot real estate markets like in the United States. You have to up your game for you to land on the best commercial real estate deals.

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Quickly Unpacking SAP’s $8B Acquisition Of Qualtrics

Haystack

Qualtrics recently filed to go public. Last night, SAP bought the company before it could IPO. There are plenty of well-deserved articles by Axios and Forbes and tweets of praise for Qualtrics (must read Utah-based VC Bryce Roberts’ storm here ), which you can and should read. By all accounts, the Utah-HQ’d company did everything the right way, was an overnight success 16 years in the making, and only raised venture capital as a growth company after years of bootstrapping.

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How to Run a Tech Conference in NYC

This is going to be BIG.

Over the years, I’ve spoken at a bunch of NY tech conferences—and they vary widely in terms of their success. A few things remain consistent: Organizers complain how difficult it is to get people to show up. Attendees don’t stay. Even when they do stay, they’re not super engaged. Here are a few tips for organizers if you’re going to put on a conference here.

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How To Choose A VPN Provider: 6 Factors To Consider

YoungUpstarts

Choosing a VPN can sometimes seem like playing a lottery. There are so many options to pick from, and all of them have slick marketing operations. The more you look, the more confusing things become, as you compare huge lists of features. And that’s before thinking about price, ease of use, and what reviewers think. But there’s no need to feel overwhelmed.

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Cut Your Startup Customer Support Costs

The Startup Magazine

As a startup, the one thing you are unlikely to have an abundance of is cash. Therefore, you have to spend on only what you absolutely need. Many startups fail not because they have an unviable business idea but because they run into cash flow challenges. Customer support can take up plenty of your time and money. If you can reduce that cost so you can have enough to spend on valuable crucial tools such as network monitoring software , the better for your business.

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How To Find The Right Social Media Platform For Your Business

YFS Magazine

Do you know which social media platforms to invest your time and money in and reach ideal customers? If not, here are a few quick tips.

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As a Seed Investor, Do I Want Softbank to Invest In My Best Companies Or Not?

Hunter Walker

Oh boy, conference season in the venture world and one enduring question this year has been “What to do about the Vision Fund?” It’s been a topic of lobby conversations, off-the-record chats and sometimes even an honest public panel ! What’s my answer to The Softbank Effect? First you need to separate the investments into two categories: Mature Growth Investments a la Uber : Multi-billion dollar commitments to companies that are already at scale.

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A Blogger’s Guide To Trademarks And Copyrights

YoungUpstarts

Alright, so you’re a blogger. Or you plan to start your own blog. Or perhaps you’re a company looking into establishing your online presence? Whatever the case may be, one thing’s for sure — you work hard on creating original content. Unfortunately, all your hard work can disappear in the abyss of plagiarism lawsuits. That photo you took from Google thinking it was okay to upload on your blog?

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As You Accumulate Bitcoin or Cash, Where Should Startups Invest It?

The Startup Magazine

Source: Pixabay. Investing is one way to build your wealth with a less hands-on approach. Startups and entrepreneurs will accumulate bitcoin and cash, hopefully. While investing in stocks, cryptocurrency, and companies can boost your wealth in less time, choosing the right path to take is essential to avoid missing out on growth opportunities. Knowing where to invest your hard earned cash, crypto, real estate, and stocks help to prevent financial losses while providing you with more flexibility

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Should Your Startup Consider Crowdfunding?

YFS Magazine

There are some important questions startups should ask before diving into crowdfunding. Here’s what to consider before you launch a crowdfunding campaign.

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