Sat.Apr 13, 2013 - Fri.Apr 19, 2013

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When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank

'“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Groucho Marx. In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with.

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[Review] Heart, Smarts, Guts, And Luck

YoungUpstarts

'What are entrepreneurs and business builders made of? Who should you bring to your team at different stages of growth, and why? The answers, according to venture capitalists and business leaders Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington and Tsun-Yan Hsieh , are contained their book “ Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business “, or HSGL for short.

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How To Cut Costs In Your Business, Without Hurting It

Mike Michalowicz

'The formula is simple. You fix your bottom line by increasing revenue or cutting costs or both. Yet, most entrepreneurs put all their efforts on the sell side only. They try to “sell their way out” of an unprofitable business. Its not necessarily the best thing to do, and not even logical at times. Selling is unpredictable. You can’t guarantee that you will increase revenue by next month, but you can guarantee that your rent will be due.

Cost 151
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TechStars Cloud’s Drifty.co Plans to Double in Size

SiliconHills

'Drifty.co already has 140,000 people using its web development tools. Founded in 2012, the company, based in Madison, Wisc., makes cloud-based tools that let anyone easily create mobile apps and websites. Max Lynch and Ben Sperry have created two products: Codiqa for mobile sites and websites and Jetstrap for developers. Sperry said he expects up [.

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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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China Startups – The Gold Rush and Fire Extinguishers (Part 5 of 5)

Steve Blank

'I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. In these series of 5 posts, I thought I’d share what I learned in China. All the usual caveats apply. I was only in China for a week so this a cursory view. Thanks to Kai-Fu Lee of Innovation Works, David Lin of Microsoft Accelerator, Kevin Dewalt and Frank Hawke of the Stanford Center in Beijing , and my publisher China Machine Press. .

China 323
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Through the Looking Glass: Hiring Sales People

Ben's Blog

'He’s a big bad wolf in your neighborhood. Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good. —Run DMC, Peter Piper. Perhaps the most common mistake that I see a technical founder make when building her sales organization is she applies strategies that worked in building the engineering team to the sales hiring process. This may sound shocking, but sales people are different than engineers and treating them like engineers does not work well at all.

Hiring 78

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Consumerization of IT with a Capital C

deal architect

'Consumerization is not a new concept. In 2005, Gartner defined it as "the growing practice of introducing new technologies into consumer markets prior to industrial markets". Unfortunately, in the years since, the definition has gotten narrower - to where many.

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When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank

'“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Groucho Marx. In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with.

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Through the Looking Glass: Hiring Sales People

Ben's Blog

'He''s a big bad wolf in your neighborhood Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good —Run DMC, Peter Piper. Perhaps the most common mistake that I see a technical founder make when building her sales organization is she applies strategies that worked in building the engineering team to the sales hiring process. This may sound shocking, but sales people are different than engineers and treating them like engineers does not work well at all.

Hiring 77
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How to Better Manage Relationships with Your VC

Both Sides of the Table

'Just back from 2 solid weeks on the road in Boston, New York & Philly. I spent countless hours with VC firms, startups & LPs (the people who invest in VC firms). I find these trips invaluable both from a relationship-building perspective as well as stretching my mind about our industry. I ask questions, test theories, debate topics of the day and then reflect upon what I’ve learned.

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Sales Is a Function of Marketing Pure and Simple

Duct Tape Marketing

'Over the years one of the great breakdowns in many of the small businesses that I’ve worked with lies in area of sales. Now it might be tempting to conclude that what I referring to is a lack of sales, but what I’m really getting at is a misunderstanding there’s actually a distinction between sales and marketing. Some of this might simply be semantics because the terms are widely fumbled around in various places, but here’s what I find to be true.

Sales 69
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China Startups – The Gold Rush and Fire Extinguishers (Part 5 of 5)

Steve Blank

'I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. In these series of 5 posts, I thought I’d share what I learned in China. All the usual caveats apply. I was only in China for a week so this a cursory view. Thanks to Kai-Fu Lee of Innovation Works, David Lin of Microsoft Accelerator, Kevin Dewalt and Frank Hawke of the Stanford Center in Beijing , and my publisher China Machine Press. .

China 215
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The Technology Switch Hitter

deal architect

'Oliver Bussmann, CIO of SAP is leaving to become CIO of UBS Group and this article has a comment "the idea of somebody moving from an IT services company into an end user company is quite uncommon" Actually it is.

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How to Sell Your Roadmap Without Selling Your Soul

Both Sides of the Table

'This is my third post in a series on Enterprise Software. In part one I covered the need for early-stage enterprise software companies to build up professional services staff to ensure successful implementation projects. This goes against the conventional wisdom of VCs. In part two I talked about how to ensure that your professional services practice doesn’t take over your software company although I’m on record that there is nothing wrong with a services company as long as youR

Egypt 297
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Don’t Wait for the Next Bubble to Start a Business

Startup Professionals Musings

'If you think "I better not start a startup now, because the economy is still not booming" 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 , of Y-Combinator fame, said a while back, I see startups succeed or fail every day based on the qualities of the founders.

Cofounder 248
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Zhongguancun in Beijing – China’s Silicon Valley (Part 4 of 5)

Steve Blank

'I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. In these series of 5 posts, I thought I’d share what I learned in China. All the usual caveats apply. I was only in China for a week so this a cursory view. Thanks to Kai-Fu Lee of Innovation Works, David Lin of Microsoft Accelerator, Frank Hawke of the Stanford Center in Beijing , and my publisher China Machine Press.

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Geeky Mad Men

deal architect

'I am constantly amazed people talk about the CMO "becoming" tech savvy. 50+ years of work with Nielsen TV ratings, 30+ years of POS data parsing, and 10+ years of web optimization with Google appear to have gone unnoticed.

Web 262
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E-tailers: Boost Your eCatalog With Pinterest

YoungUpstarts

'By Kfir Bar-Levav , WRNTY ‘s VP of Business Development. Pinterest has quickly grown to become one of the most popular social sharing sites used today. Initially, Pinterest used to be seen simply as a site to share personal photos or images found online. However, businesses are beginning to realize the marketing potential it offers and are utilizing it to bolster their eCatalogs and E-commerce websites.

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An Entitlement Culture in Business is Usually Fatal

Startup Professionals Musings

'Where did this pervasive sense of entitlement in our business culture come from? I’ve written about this before, but I was surprised again recently at a conference for startups when a couple of entrepreneurs started berating investors for their low rate of funding for early-stage startups. It sounded to investors like me that they expected a funding entitlement for their startup idea.

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Zhongguancun in Beijing – China’s Silicon Valley (Part 4 of 5)

Steve Blank

'I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. In these series of 5 posts, I thought I’d share what I learned in China. All the usual caveats apply. I was only in China for a week so this a cursory view. Thanks to Kai-Fu Lee of Innovation Works, David Lin of Microsoft Accelerator, Frank Hawke of the Stanford Center in Beijing , and my publisher China Machine Press.

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The three seasons

deal architect

'There is something very reassuring when Stan Swete, CTO of Workday signs off a presentation (as he did today) on the latest release of his product with "we look forward to doing this again in 4 months" Now in 19th.

Product 239
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Top 3 Mistakes New Businesses Make

YoungUpstarts

'by Elisha Tan, founder of Learnemy. Having mentored over 200 business owners, Boyd Au is no stranger to the mistakes that new businesses make. Boyd Au is the co-founder of Enzer Corporation and served as the CEO from 1984 to 2007. During his term, he switched the business from selling components to companies such as Apple and HP, to designing and producing Enzer consumer electronics.

Singapore 156
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Don’t Hurt Friends and Family Investors Who Love You

Startup Professionals Musings

'In their passion to succeed, too many entrepreneurs treat friends and family investments as “low-hanging” fruit, only to find out later, after a stumble, that the pain of lost relationships is greater than the loss of their beloved startup. Other entrepreneurs never start their adventure, because they can’t face the prospect of even approaching friends and family for an investment kick-start.

Cram Down 230
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Government Shouldn’t Be In The Accelerator Business

Feld Thoughts

'This article originally appeared online at Inc.com in an article titled Government Shouldn’t Be In The Accelerator Business. I talk more about this and lots of other topics in my recent book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. . As a co-founder of TechStars , I’m a huge believer in the mentor-driven accelerator model.

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Pause your ERP investment?

deal architect

'Time magazine has a cover story on the bounce back of American manufacturing. Worth a proper read (sub required) but they outline several drivers: a) Smarter products with sensors/software and supported with advanced analytics b) 3D printing c) Energy economics.

Analytics 239
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[Infographic] Reports Of The Death Of Email May Be Greatly Exaggerated

YoungUpstarts

'We keep hearing about how email has become obsolete , and that the communication medium is dying a slow and painful death. But some in the industry aren’t convinced. Email organizer TheSwizzle.com – a free utility that helps you unsubscribe from unwanted emails and better manage the ones you do actually want – put together this infographic to prove why email still has its place and is going to be sticking around for quite some time longer.

Email 157
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10 Winning Steps for Finding a Job or a Partner

Startup Professionals Musings

'These days I see a surge of new startups as the economy seems to be recovering. If you are not starting one yourself, the next best thing is joining one as a partner, or as an early employee. It takes much the same preparation to make you the best entrepreneur, or the best job candidate. Of course experience is the best teacher, but you need to get the job to get the experience.

Partner 222
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Public Relations Results Not Possible? Phooey!

Rembrandt Communications

'Are You Getting the PR Reports You Need for Success? By Melanie Rembrandt For many years, it was very difficult to show the results of a public relations, or PR, campaign. After all, you could spend hours on the phone pitching media members and not see any results. Plus, due to the nature of public [.].

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The Real Deal: Mark Herring on "APIs everywhere, but not many I can reuse"

deal architect

'This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. This time it is Mark Herring, SVP of Product Marketing at Software AG. I recently heard him talk about "Big Services" as a.

API 230
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[Asia] Small Businesses Look To The Internet For Growth Opportunities

YoungUpstarts

'How big are small businesses in Asia? Apparently, very very big. Did you know, for example, that in Asia small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute between 25% to 60% percent to a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), constitute 16% to 69% of its exports, and employ between 52% to 97% of its workforce? Anu Madgavkar, senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute , shared these and more interesting insights into small businesses in Asia during a sharing session organized by search g

Asia 150
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Don’t listen to most of the advice you are getting

Version One Ventures

'Good Advice (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Getting good advice is critical for any entrepreneur and fortunately there’s plenty of advice to go around. Unfortunately, not all advice is worth listening to. Angel investor Allen Morgan (@allenmorgan) summed it up in a recent Tweet : “It’s a power law relationship: for entrepreneurs, >90% of the advice worth heeding comes from <10% of the advice givers.

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The Feld Fiberhouse Is Now The Handprint House

Feld Thoughts

'The winners of the Feld KC FiberHouse competition , that I’ve done in conjunction with the Kauffman Foundation , is a company called Handprint ! Handprint is working on some amazing 3D printing and editing technology. We had plenty of applications for the competition – many of them very interesting – but Handprint really captured our imagination.

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More innovation off the global beaten path

deal architect

'We hear so much about Silicon Valley and Bangalore and Shanghai that is refreshing to hear about innovations in unexpected places: Back to the future in St. Augustine, one of the US''s oldest cities The Big Data of Antarctica''s sea.

Global 220
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Will Your New Hire Be A Good Team Player? Seven Interview Tips To Make Sure The Answer Is Yes

YoungUpstarts

'by Bruce Piasecki, author of “ Doing More with Teams: The New Way to Winning ”. Today’s workplace demands high-functioning teams. In the global economy, collaboration and innovation are how work gets done, and the complexity of that work necessitates a dizzying array of skill sets. In this kind of environment, it’s not surprising that what I call “fierce individualists” are becoming all but obsolete.

Hiring 146
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Have a kitchen cabinet of advisors

Eric Friedman

'Building a Kitchen Cabinet. In the early stages of of an idea, project, or Company it’s very helpful to form a set of people you can lean on and get feedback from. I have heard this called a “kitchen cabinet” of advisors, and I love the name. I recommend everyone in this early stage form this core group. I have had early discussions and feedback sessions with entrepreneurs, which sometimes leads to using an early alpha version of a product, service, or app.

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The 2013 Boston Marathon

Feld Thoughts

'At 3:55pm yesterday I cried. I was getting ready for a Google Hangout back to my office with my partners and I noticed something about an explosion at the Boston Marathon on twitter. I did a quick scan of Twitter, clicked through to a few links, and realized a bomb had gone off near the finish line. I went blank – just stared at my computer screen – and then started crying.

Boston 139