Sat.Sep 01, 2012 - Fri.Sep 07, 2012

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Accelerate Startup Growth by Looking Outside the Box

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur tries to maximize his startup growth by building and selling more product and services for the widest geographic area that he can support. This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

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Smart Bear Live 7: More from AZ Disruptors

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Welcome back to Smart Bear Live, the call-in show with Jason Cohen, sponsored by Software Promotions. In this episode, we share three more interviews from our AZ Disruptors meeting last fall. Hamid Shojaee, CEO of Axosoft , cohosts a group of Phoenix-area startup founders (Jason was on Skype video – everyone else was in the room … it works way better than you’d think): Dan from Member Desk Cofounder question Gelie from Networking Phoenix Pin It Listen to this episode if you wan

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[Competition] Expand My Brand

YoungUpstarts

If you run a social marketing technology startup, check out the U.S.-based EXPANDMYBRAND Startup Challenge , organized by social media agency EDGE Collective. Touted as the first-ever startup competition for marketing technology companies where the brands and customers have the final say in the winner, EXPANDMYBRAND is looking for five lucky emerging social technology startups who will get to pitch to a panel of representatives from top brands such as Starbucks, Nike, Macy’s and Gap as wel

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How To Get Tons of Amazon Reviews For Your Book (Or Product)

Mike Michalowicz

Unlimited Real, Legit Amazon Reviews. Being that I am an, admittedly, relatively unknown author of business books, it was clear that I needed to show credibility immediately. A pretty book cover with a catchy title may get someone to look at your page on Amazon , but it is unlikely to get them to buy it. Ultimately, for a consumer to buy your book, product or service, they want to trust they are making a good decision.

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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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A full day of Lean Startup Workshops on December 4, 2012

Startup Lessons Learned

This post was co-written by Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. This year, for the first time, we've added a day of workshops and site visits to The Lean Startup Conference. We’re really proud to present the workshops, which we're holding on December 4, and we wanted to tell you more about them. (We’ll talk about the cool site visits in a separate post.

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Here are the secrets to giving an engaging presentation

The Next Web

Giving a presentation is as much an art as it is a craft. And it’s becoming increasingly important in today’s world of startups that those who are going to pitch and present need to have a sense of what to do not just when they’re up in front of everyone, but what to do before and afterward as well. There’s much to do when putting together a presentation that just can’t be covered up by the passion the speaker feels for their subject matter, and I’ve seen plenty of presentations and pitches both

More Trending

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Tips for building a minimum viable product

The Equity Kicker

UPDATE: Step 2 added following feedback on Twitter. The developer behind Appbot – a service for app developers who want their app store reviews and features in their email inbox – has posted the lessons he learned when building his minimum viable product. There is nothing revolutionary here, but it is a good list of things to do. This is my summary: Build something for yourself, that you would use, especially if you are a first time entrepreneur.

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Twitter Link Roundup #144 – 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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General Motors to Hire 500 for Austin Innovation Center

SiliconHills

Car giant General Motors announced today plans to hire 500 people for a new Information Technology Innovation Center in Austin. The Detroit auto maker is looking for software developers, project managers, database experts, business analyts and other IT workers to staff its new center. The center is “intended to drive breakthrough ideas into GM vehicles [.

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[Review] Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets

YoungUpstarts

Known as the “Oracle of Omaha”, Warren Buffett was once the richest man in the world. With an uncanny ability to sniff out good companies that beat the market time and again, Buffett was able to amass an amazing fortune of US$44 billion. What’s amazing is that he also intends to give most of it away to charity. Buffett’s company, the world famous Berkshire Hathaway group, own some 88 businesses and employ 233,000 workers worldwide.

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Plan A Web Development Business – Part #1

Up and Running

I didn’t start with a plan. In 2006, I began accepting new web development clients. I hadn’t planned for it, they just came to me asking for work and I said yes. Business boomed. But I didn’t have a plan. Some would argue that the lack of a plan and the apparent success in business was the very evidence that no plan was needed. I thought that too, at one time.

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Labor Day! Let’s Celebrate the Workers

crowdSPRING Blog

“The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.” ~ Samuel Gompers . Most of our posts on the crowdSPRING Blog focus on managing businesses and startups; we often write about best practices, and offer plenty of practical tips for managers. Today is a little different, because in the US, today is Labor Day.

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Grapevine wins $25,000 from Geekdom Fund

SiliconHills

One of the first recipients of the Geekdom Fund is Grapevine in San Antonio. The company, founded last year by Richard Ortega and Eric Larson, is a reputation management system right now targeted at restaurants and hotels. The site aggregates customer reviews from several different sites including Yelp, OpenTable, UrbanSpoon, GoogleLocal, CitySearch, InsiderPages and YellowPages [.

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The many shades of consumerization

deal architect

Talk to most CIOs and vendors and a conversation on consumerization quickly turns into a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) discussion – the risks, the range of devices to be allowed etc. In many ways, that is so yesterday. On.

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An Entrepreneur With No Strategic Plan is a Dreamer

Startup Professionals Musings

Deciding to be an entrepreneur is a lifestyle move, and should be part of a long-term strategic plan. You shouldn’t be making this decision just because you are mad at your boss, you would like to be rich, or someone else thinks it’s a good idea. In these changing times, if you already have a startup, with no plan, maybe it’s time to think ahead for a change.

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Scaling is Hard, Case Study: athenahealth

Seeing Both Sides

There are many companies that are competing to be the “operating system” for small businesses. The theory is that with the advent of the cloud in the digital age, small businesses can leverage a suite of services from a technology vendor to manage all aspects of their work – from payments to record-keeping to marketing to customer communications. Among those competing for this vision are PayPal/eBay, Square and Groupon, with each struggling to pull together pieces of the equation and, important

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The Truth About Convertible Debt at Startups and The Hidden Terms You Didn’t Understand

Both Sides of the Table

This article initially appeared on TechCrunch - with a minor update highlighted in red below. Ah. We’re back to discussing convertible debt again. This time by the efforts of Adeo Ressi to introduce a new kind of structure called “ convertible equity.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which d

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

deal architect

When he still in the Presidential race, Governor Rick Perry frequently talked about creating more jobs in his state than his competition. I heard a Texan wisecrack “Yeah, I have 3 of those jobs and still struggle to make ends.

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10 Entrepreneur Tips to Keep Your Health and Sanity

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the most common complaints I hear from entrepreneurs is that they are overwhelmed by the workload and stress of starting their company. Then there are the additional challenges of balancing the demands of family and friends. Having too much on your plate can turn your dream into a nightmare. Some people will tell you to just get a bigger plate, meaning hire some help.

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Startuppers.org – A Community Of Upstarts

YoungUpstarts

Here’s yet another new resource for startup folks – Startuppers.org is a new social network geared towards startup entrepreneurs. Touted as a new way for people in the startup ecosystem to communicate with one another, networking with each other, and creating connections and sharing advice within the community. Created by Bratislava, Slovakia-based Marek Novotny, it’s meant to help plug a gap he saw in the ecosystem. “I personally attended Startup Weekend in Bratislava an

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Post-Seed Funding Checklist for Founder/CEOs

Genuine VC

You’ve just closed your seed round. Other than starting to build, hire, and take over the world, there are a bunch of mundane things to do right away. The following is a first pass at a checklist of items for Founder CEOs to take care of in the first couple weeks after they’ve closed their initial round of seed funding. Funding Announcement Figure out your PR strategy for announcing the round to get your plan in order.

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Rapid Genome Sequencing TechShop for tinkerers Protecting New York City MapMyRide The Digital Swiss Army Knife The CERN Asset Management challenge Technology and Summer Camps Activist Capitalism.

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10 Marketing Rules to Command Customer Attention

Startup Professionals Musings

Viral marketing and word-of-mouth are not enough these days to make your product and brand visible in the relentless onslaught of new promotional media out there today. Innovation in marketing is perhaps more important than product innovation. Yet in the business plans I see, the marketing content and budget are smaller than ever. More than just spending, you need to create an “experience” in this digital age which sets you apart from the banner ads, email blasts, and old-school websites out the

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21 Communication Mistakes That Could Be Holding Your Career Back

YoungUpstarts

Communication is an essential part of being human, helping us establish relationships, express needs and wants, and live together in society. In the modern world, it’s also an essential skill to hone to get ahead in the business world. While most of us can hold a conversation, present information, and get along with coworkers reasonably well, there are other finer points of communication that may just be influencing your success at work, sometimes without you even being aware that they’re doing

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For a Startup, Two Heads are Always Better Than One

Gust

Sergey Bin and Larry Page image via Wikipedia for Google. If you are a first-time entrepreneur, I recommend that you team with a co-founder with experiences, connections, and a skill set that complements, but doesn’t duplicate yours. Even experienced entrepreneurs need a partner to back up each other and improve fundability. The question is how to find that elusive perfect-fit partner.

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More Innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog One SQM House ChargeCard Sally Ride, a great role model The Desk Treadmill Social Media Command Centers The non-stick ketchup bottle Innovative Fruit “You talk. We draw”.

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Entrepreneurs Can Be The Key To Global Connectivity

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs are always looking for “the next big thing,” when maybe in fact it’s a lot of little things that are only recognized after the fact as components of a big evolution or revolution. In my view, the Internet “connectivity anywhere” has already spawned several of these, but the global change has only begun. Emily Nagle Green, in her book from a while back “ ANYWHERE ,” argues effectively that the future of the world and business is ubiquitous connectivity, the total interconnection of

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[Infographic] Learning Analytics 101

YoungUpstarts

We hear a lot about the use of analytics to measure online statistics or in social media, but how using it to improve education? Learning analytics employs the same approach to dissect data about learning, using intelligent data gathered through online education tools and then analyzed to help create a more integrated and customized learning experience.

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Introduction to Growth Hacking for Startups

VC Cafe

The term "Growth Hacking", invented by Sean Ellis, and made popular by Andrew Chen, a Silicon valley marketer and entrepreneur, is a combination of two disciplines - marketing and coding. Learn the. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

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Its going to be a nice Fall

deal architect

Happy Labor Day. Matt Ridley has a column in the latest Wired titled Apocalypse Not. Thank you, Mr. Rational Optimist for calming us about December 22 and other nightmares. Now, I can enjoy a few treats as we enter Fall.

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Business Plan Financial Models are Not Black Magic

Startup Professionals Musings

Most entrepreneurs tend to avoid this area of the business, and as a result are badly surprised by cost realities, and investor expectations. They seem to think that financial projections are simply invented numbers for investors, and not useful. In reality, it’s like jumping in your car for a long hard drive with no destination in mind. Chances are, you won’t enjoy success from the trip.

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[Review] The Face-To-Face Book

YoungUpstarts

The problem with the prophetic proclamations about the rise of social media and its impending dominance? It’s that we can focus too much on the ‘media’ part of ‘social media’, instead of the ‘social’ aspect, according to the authors of ‘ The Face-to-Face Book “ But it’s true that social media has taken the world by storm.

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Convertible Debt: Worst Form Of Seed Financing — Except For All The Others

Gust

How to finance a new seed-stage startup? Equity? Convertible debt? Convertible equity? As of August 2010, Paul Graham famously proclaimed , “Convertible notes have won. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note.” Yet in my little corner of Wonksville, Founder Institute CEO Adeo Ressi and Yoichiro “Yokum” Taku , a partner at my “alma mater” law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati , created

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Do Startup Benchmarks Really Make A Difference?

ReadWriteStart

By necessity, running a startup is like flying by the seat of your pants. Because the company is new, founders often have to make up things as they go along - with little opportunity to check and see how they're doing. That's starting to change, though, as new startup benchmarking services promise insight on how well your startup stacks up against peers and competitors.

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HTML5: Will It Ever Live Up To The Hype?

VC Cafe

HTML5 is the latest iteration of the standard used by web programmers and developers. When completed in 2014, it will enable developers to write-once-run-anywhere (WORA) for consistent, [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]. HTML5 is the latest iteration of the standard used by web programmers and developers.

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[Event] [Singapore] Techventure 2012, Failcon Singapore And TechInnovation 2012

YoungUpstarts

. Techventure , one of Asia’s topmost events for the venture capital community to engage with the latest technology entrepreneurs, is back. This year Techventure 2012 , which is presented by National Research Foundation (NRF) , will take place on October 16-18 and looks again to connect entrepreneurs, corporate chiefs of info-communications, bio-technology and new materials corporations, wealthy high-tech founders, high net worth individuals from the technology, venture capital and private equi

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