Sat.Aug 04, 2012 - Fri.Aug 10, 2012

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The 20 Coolest CoWorking Spaces In The U.S.

YoungUpstarts

Coworking spaces are a really cool option for a lot of workers that, for whatever reason, don’t really fit in to a traditional office space like startups, telecommuters, small businesses, and especially creatives in search of collaboration. With free coffee and Internet, workspaces, and built-in community, coworking spaces provide a great place to get things done without feeling the isolation of working at home, or trying to overcome the frenetic nature of working in a coffee shop.

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Why A/B testing is essential to your startup’s campaigns

The Next Web

If you’ve read any of my previous marketing focused articles, you might notice a common, underlying theme : If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing. In my professional life, this is a credo I live by. Companies live and die by how agile they are and how they’re meeting the demands of their customers. But the age old question is: “How do I know what customers want?

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Can An App Boost Your Business?

Up and Running

A recent report from Nielsen sums up why small businesses need to start taking the mobile Web seriously. According to the study, 79 percent of smartphone and tablet owners have used their mobile devices at some point in the purchase process. The most common use for a smartphone was finding a store, followed by checking the price, researching and reading product reviews, and using lists while shopping.

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How To Win Startup Competitions

VC Cafe

Photo credit: Images_of_Money, Flickr. Guest post by Nitzan Yudan*. Building a good reputation is one of the most fundamental components to a successful start-up and is particularly invaluable in the early stages. Without positive feedback and growing popularity, the critical first few sales become even harder as well as funding being tough to secure.

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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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10 College Business Incubators We’re Most Excited About

YoungUpstarts

College campuses are ripe with innovation, as students grow through education and experimentation in school. To help foster this innovation, many colleges and universities have opened business incubators, helping students and others in their community to help make their innovative dreams a reality. Whether they’re offering tricked-out labs or incredible funding opportunities, these incubators offer a great opportunity for students who are smart (and lucky!

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The Best Place to Work, Part 3: Manage yourself very, very well

OnlyOnce

Part of creating the best place to work is learning how to self manage – very, very well. This is an essential part of Creating an environment of trust , but only one part. What does self-management mean? First, and most important, it means realizing that you are in a fishbowl. You are always on display. You are a role model in everything you do, from how you dress, to how you talk on the phone, to the way you treat others, to when you show up to work. .

More Trending

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Smart Bear Live 6: Jared from Padseeker.com

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, Jason speaks with Jared from Padseeker.com. Pin It Listen to this episode if you want to hear a really tough conversation about refining a cool idea into a profit-making business. This is a long episode (1:20), but it’s a conversation that will resonate with a lot of early-stage startup founders.

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5 Ways For Your Website To Provide Customer Service

YoungUpstarts

When you think of customer service, websites rarely come to mind. Instead you probably envision smiling faces and helpful staff guiding customers through the buying experience or handling a question or concern for an existing customer. However, the world is changing, and many consumers want a new kind of customer service; they want one that is accessible to them night and day, without having to talk to or interact with anyone in person.

Customer 147
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The Olympics for every industry

deal architect

Britain is a remarkable Olympics turnaround story. The country won just one Gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Embarrassed and focused, it has gradually improved every four years and in London it is running 3rd behind China and.

Atlanta 257
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10 Simple Actions Will Inspire More Startup Results

Startup Professionals Musings

Everyone recognizes a great entrepreneur when they work with one, but most entrepreneurs don’t know what to look for in themselves that will drive that perception by others. In my experience, there is no magic gene involved, just simple good habits executed consistently and convincingly until everyone around you in a startup wants to follow your example.

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Sparrow is a great email client

Jeff Hilimire

Having upgraded to Mountain Lion out of the gates (of course I did) and because I have the Retina Pro (again, no surprise), I have found myself in the odd position of actually feeling the pain of what some call the “early adopter” Typically with Mac products there isn’t a problem with upgrading when a new operating system or hardware comes out.

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Priced To Sell: 10 Tips For Finding The Right Price For Your Goods

YoungUpstarts

by Chip Averwater, author of “ Retail Truths ”. There’s no denying how much the Internet has empowered today’s consumers. They can find what they want for the price they want without ever leaving their couches. And today, many of them are entering brick-and-mortar stores wielding another powerful weapon — their smartphones. Now consumers can compare a product’s price while they’re in a store to what it’s going for at other brick-and-mortar and online stores before they even step out of the aisle

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More fears than cheers

deal architect

My friend, Jim Spath is one of the best book draft reviewers there is. Eagle eyes, encyclopedic knowledge, English mastery – great combination. While reviewing one of my drafts he suggested I was using the word “hacking” pejoratively. He is.

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In-House Business Innovation Requires a New Mantra

Startup Professionals Musings

It seems to be an accepted fact these days that big companies normally innovate by buying a startup with innovative products, rather than focusing on in-house innovations. This is a good thing for entrepreneurs and investors, who can win big, but it’s not a given. I see many startups who seem satisfied with a “me too” approach, building yet another social network or e-commerce site, rather than being truly innovative.

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These 10 Key Elements Make a Business Plan Fundable

Gust

People ask me if they really need ANY business plan, unless they are looking for an outside investor. In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Things that make it investment-grade for outside investors will also benefit you, since you are the ultimate investor.

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Seven Ways Leaders Can Unearth (And Neutralize) The Fear That Lurks Behind The Blame Game

YoungUpstarts

by Mike Staver, author of “ Leadership Isn’t For Cowards: How to Drive Performance by Challenging People and Confronting Problems ”. When you arrive at the office each morning, you find yourself in a blame-free zone. Your team attacks projects proactively and with confidence. When a problem arises, everyone involved “owns it” and takes corrective action.

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The Real Deal: Matt Haller on the pinch when comparing Cloud/On-premise TCO

deal architect

This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well. This time it is Matt Haller, a Senior Principal at Baker Tilly, who leads the Enterprise Solutions group in its Management Consulting practice.

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How to be Socially-Conscious and an Entrepreneur

Startup Professionals Musings

A term I’m hearing more and more these days is “social entrepreneur.” In the simplest of terms, these are people who seek to generate “social value”, rather than profits, and use traditional business principles to create and manage a venture to make social change. On the surface, this sounds like entrepreneurs who want to build a non-profit organization.

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When Does Zynga Become a Value Stock?

Agile VC

Draw something… other than this painful chart. Zynga’s faced a lot of pressure in the public markets recently. The company’s lost nearly 80% of its value from the peak earlier this year, in the run up to Facebook’s IPO, and currently trades below $3/share… a fraction of it’s IPO price of $10. That much we all know.

Stock 160
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[Review] An Innocent Story

YoungUpstarts

Written by writer and brand consultant John Simmons , “ Innocent ” narrates the brand story of how Cambridge graduates Jon Wright, Adam Balon and Richard Reed built a “tasty little juice company” with a unique culture founded on strong values. Embodying the informal, casual wit of the company, the founding of Innocent is summarized on their website in the form of a charming story as follows: “We started innocent in 1999 after selling our smoothies at a music festiv

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Improving Incumbency learning from British Cycling

deal architect

I recently read Chris Pappas, CEO of Styron, a plastics and other specialty materials spinoff from Dow Chemical say in his chemist view of the world “People think of innovation as the creation of brand-new things. But if you take.

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7 Tips for an Introvert Who Wants to Run a Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

You can’t win as an entrepreneur working alone. You need to have business relationships with team members, investors, customers, and a myriad of other support people. That doesn’t mean you have to be a social butterfly to succeed, or introverts need not apply. It does mean that you need to look, listen, and participate in the business world around you, and network through all available channels, like business-oriented social networks online (LinkedIn), local business organizations (Chamber of Co

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How to Increase Your Chances of Getting Good Publicity

Rembrandt Communications

If you are an entrepreneur or just trying to get some publicity for a new business and haven’t had any luck with reporters, you may want to stop and review your process. There are three, key things to do before pitching a media member. Conduct research. Are you just sending a press release or a [.].

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15 Storytelling Techniques To Boost Your Career

YoungUpstarts

If the whole world’s a stage, everyone’s life is a story being played out. And there are no bad stories, just bad storytellers. Whether you are applying for a new job or are being interviewed for a promotion by your current employer, your chances of success can be greatly enhanced by transforming yourself from a walking set of skills into an unforgettable lead actor in your own play.

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More Innovation

deal architect

on the New Florence blog BELVIQ – anti-obesity pill Wimbledon in 2036 The Gamification of Captchas Most Creative People Austin, TX Mobile Food Capital Extreme Tech at X Games.

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How to Reduce Your Budget and Reduce Startup Risk

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the biggest myths I still see in the community of new entrepreneurs is the assumption that “All I need is a good idea, and some investor will give me the big money I need to build the business.” In reality, investors fund good business plans, not big dreams. It’s all in the execution. A related myth is that it takes a lot of money to start a business.

Bandwidth 236
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All CEOs Should Be An Outside Director For One Company

Feld Thoughts

This week I had two meetings with CEOs of companies we’ve recently invested in where the question of “what is an ideal board meeting” came up. I’m writing an entire book on it called Startup Boards: Reinventing the Board of Directors to Better Support the Entrepreneur so it’s easy for me to define my ideal board meeting at this point since my head is pretty deep into it intellectually.

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A System For Rapid Realignment

YoungUpstarts

By Dr. George H. Labovitz and Victor Rosansky, co-authors of “ Rapid Realignment: How to Quickly Integrate People, Processes, and Strategy for Unbeatable Performance “ If you’ve ever skippered a sailboat, you know that you cannot simply set a course and then sit back, relax, and watch the waves roll by. Some combination of external and internal factors will be driving your boat off course: a shift in the direction or speed of the wind, a hidden current, your own force on the ti

Cofounder 147
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How To Win Startup Competitions

VC Cafe

Competitions provide start-ups with the invaluable means to improve their reputation, enhance their profile and help them on the road to expansion and success. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

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Entrepreneurs Better Enjoy Getting Their Hands Dirty

Startup Professionals Musings

There is no substitute for diving into the key details of a new startup. Executives from large companies have sometimes long forgotten how to do this (“My people will contact your people to work out the details.”). Others hire consultants, or outsource much of the real work. These executives won’t survive long in a startup environment. An obvious reason is limited funds, but a more important reason is the need to know and intimately understand what is really going on in the business and the mark

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Does Social Media Really Drive Startup Sales?

ReadWriteStart

Everyone knows that you need to incorporate social media into your startup’s marketing strategy. It’s a no-brainer, right? Social media builds brand awareness and increases revenues. Or does it? Several months ago General Motors and its $10 million marketing budget walked away from Facebook , announcing that advertising on the largest social media platform in the world had “no value.

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Inside Job: Why Dealing with “Difficult” Colleagues Will Lead to Happier Customers

YoungUpstarts

By Ron Kaufman, author of “ Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet ”. Too often, organizations promise satisfaction to external customers and then allow internal politics to frustrate their employees’ good intentions to deliver. It’s important to remember that your customers aren’t the only ones who come through your organization’s door every day seeking quality service.

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Market Opportunity From Customer Hostility, Exhibit 802.11: Airline WiFi

Gust

Entrepreneurship is often born of founders’ sheer frustration with the status quo. One class of clear business opportunity, which wouldn’t exist in an ideal world, is created by the service that seemingly makes it as difficult as possible for potential paying customers to make it take their money. This sort of thing flies in the face of both common sense and economic theory, yet it persists in countless contexts.

Customer 143
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12 things to consider when deciding where to start up

The Next Web

Entrepreneurship has an attractive set of freedoms: create any kind of business, set your own hours and manifest an ever changing job description, one free of geographical bounds. Thanks to the Internet, you can choose to start up anywhere in the world that you want to. But just like selecting a home for your family or a school district for your kids, there are a few important factors to consider when picking a place to start a business.

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Launching Startup Revolution

Feld Thoughts

Many of you know that I’ve been working on several new books this summer. I’m completely obsessed with the radical transformation of our society from a hierarchy to a network, the integration of the machines into every aspect of our lives, and the radical transformation of the way – as humans and organizations – we work. Hopefully this shows through in what we invest in (for example, most recently Full Contact and Modular Robotics ).

Startup 140
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Clone The Best, Dump The Rest

Mike Michalowicz

The Good. For a moment, picture your best client and only your best client. You know who I am talking about – that client of yours who pays you extremely well and you love working with. Now picture having ten exact clones of them. Now picture one hundred. One thousand. What would your business look like? I suspect with just ten clones of your top client, your business would improve dramatically.

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