SoCal CTO
MARCH 3, 2011
I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 2, 2011
After the weekend kerfuffle over AngelList I was reading Brad Feld’s post on Signal vs. Noise. It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. that it’s sometimes hard to know when to pay attention and when to keep your head down. Mostly during the day I’m in meetings or doing work.
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Steve Blank
MARCH 2, 2011
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.&#. Attributed to Ernest Shackleton. In 1912 Ernest Shackleton placed this ad to recruit a crew for the ship Endurance and his expedition to the South Pole. This would be one of the most heroic journeys of exploration ever undertaken.
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
We hear all the time about the importance of hiring the right people and the expanding universe of advice can be overwhelming; hire slow and fire fast, only hire the “right&# candidate; ask probing questions; check all references; blah blah blah. For a small business with constantly-strained capacity it can be incredibly difficult to post a job, sort through the resumes, vet the candidates, check those references, negotiate salary and benefits packages, execute the employment agreement, an
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
SoCal CTO
MARCH 3, 2011
I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. I attempted to do a fair balance job of an increasingly important service – AngelList – started by a friend of mine – Nivi with the feelings of a colleague who I respect – Bryce – who has opted out of the service. I hope I straddled people’s points of view well enough not to have offended anybody while adding a framework for how I think about the service.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
crowdSPRING Blog
MARCH 2, 2011
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!
ReadWriteStart
MARCH 1, 2011
Over the weekend there has been some controversy surrounding AngelList , the network that connects startup entrepreneurs and investors. Before AngelList, investment dealflow was private and networks revolved around a few connected angels and VC?s. Since the angel network was created, transparent angel investing has exploded and entrepreneurs from any background can get funded.
Austin Startup
MARCH 1, 2011
mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich. As we’ve discussed in this column before, Austin has a very robust mobile scene. But, then so do the Bay Area, New York City, the Boston 128 corridor, and for that matter Houston and Dallas. And, of course, if you start counting non-US domestic hotbeds, you’ve got thriving mobile scenes in Western and Eastern EU countries, China, Japan, India, Korea, Brazil, etc.
Ben's Blog
MARCH 1, 2011
The silence, the dark, the mind, so fragile. The wish, that the streets, would have took you, when they had you. The days, the months, the years, dispair. One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer. —DMX, Who We Be. In my career, I have never seen a position in any industry with more varying criteria than General Partner at a venture capital firm.
Growthink Blog
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
America is getting its risk-taking mojo back. Driven by the return to normalcy in the stock market, at long-last signs of life in the residential and commercial real estate markets, and most excitingly by veritable boom-time conditions in “Web 3.0” technologies like social networking, mobile gaming, and interactive advertising, in 2011 new fortunes and legends are being made.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
I’ve been there. It sucks. You know most startups fail “only&# because the founders stop working on them, and often, it’s because it’s emotionally draining. I don’t care who you are or how strong your ego is, you will have these moments — perhaps a continuous stream of moments — when you can’t take it anymore.
Austin Startup
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
I just opened up 50 more tickets for blog readers, but we’re just about at capacity for this event. So get your tickets while they last. It’s our biggest, busiest, craziest happy hour of the year. The best part is that this is not an official SXSW event, so you don’t need a badge in order to attend! We’re happy to announce our final sponsor for the event.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 1, 2011
Business success begins in the mind of the startup founder and his team. A winning startup is a team of entrepreneurs who build and run the business as an extension of who they are, rather than some extrapolation of the Google or Facebook model. It’s not so easy to fake the important attributes when the going gets rough. So before you risk it all by jumping into a startup, do a reality check on your own mind to see if you can find a majority of the following attributes, summarized from the book
deal architect
MARCH 2, 2011
Josh Greenbaum caught my eye with his blog title. No, not mind games, but actual gamification of analyst relations. I have been generous to SAP over the last few years for their blogger relations. Making the sharing experience more playful.
Diego Basch
MARCH 4, 2011
I just saw this post on Hacker News, and I thought I’d write my answer here. Disclaimer: I don’t know if I am (or ever was) a hardcore back-end developer. I did make money for a long time doing web-scale development work for a bunch of companies. I started coding in the 80s. No web, no connectivity for the most part, just simple games, random programs, hardware drivers, random utilities.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 1, 2011
This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. I know what you’re thinking – link bait title, right? Wrong. I will stand 100% behind my assertions in this post. Justin Bieber is unbelievably entrepreneurial and most of you will never know it because he serves a target demo that doesn’t include you. I promise you can learn from him and this movie.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 3, 2011
Making the decision to become an entrepreneur is a major commitment, with huge implications for skills and lifestyle. Yet there is no standardized testing or certification required or available anywhere to help you decide if you are a good fit for entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurship is right for you. An MBA or other academic credentials just don’t do it.
deal architect
MARCH 2, 2011
Pete Swabey at Information Age interviewed me and others for a list of 11 ideas to inspire IT strategy: 1. Use the Internet as your WAN 2. Allow staff to use their own laptops 3. Hire educators in the IT.
Feld Thoughts
MARCH 1, 2011
If you’ve been following the Startup Visa , you may know that the bills that were submitted in both the House and the Senate expired at the end of the 2010 Congress. I’ve been on a number of calls lately discussing re-introducing these bills with updates to reflect the renewed understanding of the impact on high growth entrepreneurship on jobs in our country.
Genuine VC
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
With a systematic approach to identifying the hot companies in a sector , connecting to them, and then evaluating the best opportunities , hopefully you’ll be able to decide between a few offers. Even if there’s only one offer on the table, there is always room for (at least some) negotiation. This post doesn’t going into general tactical approaches of job offer negotiation, but rather focuses on the fact that with startups a significant part of compensation is related to equit
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 4, 2011
Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any other components of their job. Some entrepreneurs are so in love with themselves (narcissistic) that they insist on answering every question, and making every decision.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 26, 2011
on the innovation blog Technology at the Oscars Innovation in Glass Florida’s surprising diversity in technologies and technologists Technology at the Daytona 500 Good Housekeeping’s Most Innovative Home Products Obama’s Polymath Valley Dinner.
Feld Thoughts
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
At the end of each day, I encourage you to reflect on whether you spent your day on “signal&# or “noise.&# Let me explain. Recently, I wrote a post titled Managing Priorities. In it I talked about the idea of P1′s. My weeks start on Monday morning so my P1 for the current week (which ends in about 20 hours since I usually get up at 5am on Monday morning) is to get a draft of the new book I’m writing with Jason Mendelson to our publisher (Wiley).
ReadWriteStart
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
The Toronto-based social network for entrepreneurs Sprouter is announcing a redesign today that involves streamlining its services and pivoting to focus on Q&A. Sprouter launched its Q&A platform last year and it's become quite a popular way to get advice from experts, investors and seasoned entrepreneurs. According to founder Sarah Prevette, "We've been blown away by the amazing people who have come forward to share their advice and by the rich content that continues to be generated.".
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
I’m seeing a renewed appreciation of culture and values in business these days. Maybe it’s just another example of nature abhorring a vacuum, but I prefer to think it’s a natural evolution of the pervasive social networking communities, where people relate to and expect to interact with businesses and products they like. They drive the market, rather than the other way around.
Start Up Blog
MARCH 2, 2011
Prufrock coffee who created the worlds first disloyalty card. The card to encourages their clients to sample the wares of quality coffee shops around their local region in London. Which is completely counter intuitive to sound business practice. How does it work? If a disloyalty member tries all 8 coffees on the above card , it will earn you a free coffee at your next visit to Prufrock Coffee.
Feld Thoughts
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
My partner Jason Mendelson and I are in the final stretch of writing a new book. The project started as an extension of our Term Sheet series and Letter of Intent series that we wrote on this blog in 2005 and 2006. It’s evolved into a much broader book covering financings, acquisitions, how VC firms work, and a bunch of other random things we think are important to entrepreneurs.
Rembrandt Communications
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Yes, the economy is ugly. Yes, customers are tightening their purse strings. Yes, it’s harder to bring in new sales. Blah. Blah. Blah. Things are tough for many people right now, but that’s no reason to just sit back and wait for things to get better. It’s time to take action! No one said being [.].
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 28, 2011
For survival, the objective of every business should be to bring in revenues which exceed their costs. Even non-profits have to do this to cover overhead costs, unless they rely totally on donations. Yet I continue to see business plans, or even talk to founders, and can’t find the specifics of the business model anywhere. As Guy Kawasaki says in his book “ The Art of the Start ,” if you can’t describe your business model in ten words or less, you don’t have a business model.
ReadWriteStart
MARCH 3, 2011
At this week's One Million by One Million roundtable, we put a special focus on entrepreneurs in the northwestern part of the United States, and we had three presenters, all from Washington. The first, Nitie Mehta from Redmond, Washington, presented Dental Office Services, a business process outsourcing (BPO) concept targeted to help small dental offices handle their office management, financial processing, claims collections, and patient communication functions.
Feld Thoughts
MARCH 2, 2011
My partners at Foundry Group and I decided not to do something after a month of thoughtful deliberation. The decision is fresh so I’m not going to talk about the specifics, but our conclusion was that while it would be relatively easy to do and potential financially lucrative, it wasn’t consistent with our strategy. I used it as an example this morning during my run with @reecepacheco about fully engaging with your mentors.
Up and Running
MARCH 1, 2011
Tweet I was never a fan of Lady Gaga. I grew up in the age of Madonna rolling and gyrating all over the stage in her fetish-style costumes and Ozzy Osbourne biting the heads off bats. Lady Gaga and her outrageous outfits and risqué lyrics didn’t faze me. She was just another wannabe exorbitant artist that the general public was eating up and I didn’t pay much attention.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 26, 2011
If you are an entrepreneur starting a business for the first time, I recommend that you find a product concept that is already accepted and improve on it, rather than tackling that ultimate disruptive technology. Notice that I’m not suggesting that you steal someone else’s idea, but simply limit your risk by adding innovation to a proven entity. Evidence of success using this approach is all around us.
ReadWriteStart
MARCH 1, 2011
hackNY is a program that brings student hackers from universities around the country to New York City for paid summer internships. The hackNY Fellows are matched with startups in the city and participate in a ten-week program that includes mentoring and lectures by investors and entrepreneurs. The program is co-organized by Professor Evan Korth from NYU and Columbia University's Chris Wiggins, and this will be its second summer.
Feld Thoughts
MARCH 3, 2011
My latest foray into the Daily Deal universe is up – and it’s a 50% offer on Manpacks. If you are a guy and aren’t familiar with Manpacks , it’s an easy way to get essentials (undies, socks, razors) mailed to you every few months. Why spend time shopping for undies and socks when you can climb mountains, slay dragons, and conquer the world?
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