Both Sides of the Table

MAY 26, 2011

This post originally appeared on TechCrunch. I have often said that what separates real entrepreneurs from pundits and bystanders is a bias towards getting things done versus over analyzing things. My credo has always been JFDI. It’s the hardest thing to teach people who come out of big companies, out of conservative jobs. At the big consulting firms, investment banks and established large technology companies we’re taught to produce long reports, make sure that every document is perfect quali

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Hiring Technical Review Startup Framework 335

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. LinkedIn: The Series A Fundraising Story. May 26, 2011. This also appears as a guest post at Fortune’s Term Sheet. LinkedIn went public last week. As a shareholder I’m obviously pleased with the investor reception LinkedIn has received, but more importantly it’s a great milestone for the company we started nearly 9 years ago.

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Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2011

As someone who is always interested at how social technologies can be harnessed for business and enterprise use, I can’t recommend Scott Klososky’s new book “ Enterprise Social Technology: Helping Organizations Harness the Power of Social Media, Social Networking, Social Relevance &# quite enough. Unlike many of books out there, this book doesn’t attempt to preach and tout the wonderful goodness of social technologies and how they can help companies revolutionize they app

Technical Review 171

Technical Review Technology Social Media Flash 171

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 25, 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!

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 86

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

Startup

Up and Running

MAY 26, 2011

Tweet. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico is frequently cited as one of the top ten travel destinations in the world. Expensive resorts line pristine beaches and cater to the rich and famous. Yet one of the most popular beachfront restaurants in the area isn’t associated with any of the typical tourist venues. Zipper’s Beachfront Restaurant is a little off the beaten path, and there’s nothing fancy about it other than great ocean view courtesy of Mother Nature.

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Customer Mexico Cofounder Web Development 74

VC Adventure

MAY 25, 2011

Fred Wilson recently posted about his move to the cloud and the freedom that having his data always available has given him. More and more people and companies are freeing themselves from the constraints of desktop software and captive data stores in favor of cloud based applications and the freedom of readily (and always) available data. We recently went through a similar move at Foundry – although we haven’t completely moved to Google Apps for all of our documents and spreadsheets

Cloud 87

Cloud Turkey Denver Software Review 87

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 23, 2011

This guest-post was written by Noah Kagan, Chief Sumo of AppSumo.com , the daily deals site for web entrepreneurs. He was formerly an early employee at Facebook and Mint. I woke up and rolled over to the left side of the bed as I do almost every morning and snapped up my iPhone. My heart beats a little faster as I roll back over, my girlfriends naked back is showing and I click open the iPhone mail app.

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Argentina Email Web SEO 316

Steve Blank

MAY 27, 2011

Om Malik runs Gigaom , probably the most interesting and technically accurate sites on the blogosphere. He had me in for an interview. We covered a wide range of topics. 0:22 – the Entrepreneurial explosion. 1:45 – Are we in a Bubble? 3:20 - The Last Bubble. 6:30 – Rules for the New Bubble. 8:05 – Metrics for Success. 10:10 – Total Available Market in the Billions. 11:45 – Is this a Really a Bubble – the greater fool theory. 13:00 – VC’s – The Pact Wit

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Lean Social Network 287

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2011

Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. They run into difficulty when their business reaches the $1-2 million annual sales range, or their employee count exceeds 5-10. It’s here that entrepreneurs must shift their thinking from tactical and operational, to strategic and managerial.

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Management Entrepreneur Revenue Internet 279

VC Adventure

MAY 25, 2011

Fred Wilson recently posted about his move to the cloud and the freedom that having his data always available has given him. More and more people and companies are freeing themselves from the constraints of desktop software and captive data stores in favor of cloud based applications and the freedom of readily (and always) available data. We recently went through a similar move at Foundry – although we haven’t completely moved to Google Apps for all of our documents and spreadsheets

Cloud 48

Cloud Turkey Denver Software Review 48

deal architect

MAY 25, 2011

Nick Carr raised a firestorm when he asked that question almost a decade ago. The world has moved on considerably since but Larry Dignan’s post this morning begs the question again: “Peter Thiel, an investor in such technology hits as.

Technology 225

Technology 225

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2011

The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Les quatre étapes vers l’épiphanie) is now available in French. Order it from the Bookediton.com (Search for Les quatre étapes vers l’épiphanie). Thanks to Antoine Bruyns for making the French version happen. It joins the Japanese version (???????????? [???????????available on Amazon. Thanks to Tsutsumi Takashi for making it happen in Japanese.

Search 218

Search 218

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2011

The business world has been watching this emerging generation with trepidation, and a lot of us haven’t been sure who would be the winners, and who would be the losers. Can they survive as entrepreneurs, and do they have the passion it takes to run a startup and attract investors? My own perspective is that the recession has been good for Gen-Y (Millennials), because it has forced them to face reality, often for the first time in their life.

Vietnam 246

Vietnam Entrepreneur Restful Community 246

YoungUpstarts

MAY 26, 2011

Startup Open , has launched its search for the 50 most promising new companies with high growth potential around the world. A featured event of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) – founded by the Kauffman Foundation to spur new ideas, ingenuity and firm creation through through local, national and global activities in more than 100 countries – Startup Open invites any and every entrepreneur who have a “startup moment” to enter and compete to become one of the “GEW 50”.

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Virgin Islands Startup Global Networking 217

deal architect

MAY 24, 2011

Two great interviewers/moderators – Dennis Howlett and David Vellante - bring out plenty of banter in these interviews about innovation and where it is coming from. Both were conducted at the SAP event, Sapphire last week but the conversations are.

Conversion 225

Conversion Technology 225

ReadWriteStart

MAY 23, 2011

There's an enormous communication gap between we digital marketers and the startups that are trying to attract our dollars. Over the past several months, I have met with about four dozen emerging companies that hope to become a part of brand marketing plans. Almost to the company, they appear to think that my colleagues and I are desperate for new ways to cut prices by distributing digital coupons and free product.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Distribution Revenue Salary 148

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 21, 2011

If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, “One of these days, I’m going to start my own company,” I’d be rich. If this day ever comes for all these people, we will be overrun by startups. Yet I don’t lose any sleep over either of these possibilities. Most people procrastinate from time to time, but I suspect that the challenge here is somewhat deeper than that.

Entrepreneur 244

Entrepreneur Business Plan Developer Product 244

YoungUpstarts

MAY 23, 2011

Ariella Vaccarino is not only an accomplished voice teacher and opera singer over the past 18 years, she also happens to be a mompreneur. The mother of three boys started She Sings Out, Inc and created the “Voice Lessons To Go™” CD series of vocal warm-up exercises that to date has sold over 50,000 copies and downloads. She also has released “Voice Lessons To Go for Kids!

Audience 208

Audience Hiring Design Management 208

deal architect

MAY 26, 2011

on the innovation blog Google: From Paper mill to efficient data center Under Armour’s Smart Shirt The event technology at SAP’s Sapphire Toyota “Friend” 2011 Space Odyssey – the Immersive Cocoon.

Technology 210

Technology 210

Feld Thoughts

MAY 27, 2011

I had several conversations with entrepreneurs this week who were struggling with a specific issue that had plagued them for a while. In each case these are strong, capable entrepreneurs who I’ve known for a long time. As with all entrepreneurs (and humans), they have strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots. In each case, I felt like self-doubt had crept into their brains around the specific weakness they were struggling with.

Conversion 139

Conversion Entrepreneur 139

Rembrandt Communications

MAY 23, 2011

As Memorial Day approaches, I thought it would be nice to post a little, inspirational message. After all, it’s almost time to celebrate grads, dads and the arrival of summer. However, many of you may be dealing with tough times or financial difficulties with your business and unable to truly celebrate anything. Hang in there. [.].

SEO 124

SEO Small Business Entrepreneur 124

YoungUpstarts

MAY 26, 2011

One of these days, you might just chance across a person wearing what looks like a dead animal on their head as you pass them by along the street. The new form of headgear is not exactly a PETA protest, or the latest example of hillbilly style, but one of the latest fashion crazes to hit town – a SpiritHood. The SpiritHood is a unique, yet functional, headgear accessory to keep your head comfortably warm in cold weather (or just make a fashion statement).

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Cofounder Community Design Founder 174

deal architect

MAY 22, 2011

On the New Florence blog The Pope’s call to astronauts in space Tandoor 2.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 23, 2011

Suddenly, title inflation is everywhere. I’ve seen more business cards or email sigs lately with adjectives like “executive&# or “senior&# or “senior executive&# or “special&# or “chief&# in front of more traditional titles (e.g. “vice president&# ). The “chief&# one is especially bizarre since it’s not always obvious whether the CSO is a “Chief Sales Officer&# or a “Chief Security Officer&# which in and of itself is a problem.

Security 139

Security Email Sales Technology 139

ReadWriteStart

MAY 24, 2011

Never underestimate the power of having a good story - whether it's to pitch potential investors or customers or whether it's to share with other entrepreneurs. The importance of storytelling for entrepreneurs is the foundation for FounderLY , a project that I profiled back in April when it launched its platform. FounderLY collects video interviews with entrepreneurs as part of a media project to document their stories.

Entrepreneur 141

Entrepreneur Video Channel Founder 141

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2011

We’ve seen how we can make a socially responsible enterprise out of a web hosting business , but what about email? The latest free email service to be launched, GiveBackMail ( www.GiveBackMail.com ), looks to do the same by donating to causes you care about every time you use email. Launched earlier this week, the free service allows you to keep your current email address and still take advantage of features including sharing large files – up to 100MB, managing multiple accounts, previewin

Email 171

Email Cofounder Social Media Hosting 171

Life Beyond Code

MAY 23, 2011

This story sent by Senthil Raja touched my heart. I won’t reveal anything – it’s a short one and it’s worth a read. A tired man came home late from his whole day hard work. His 5 year old son was waiting for him at the door. Son: Dad, May I ask you a question? Dad: Yes. Son: Dad, how much do you make an hour? Dad: That’s not your business.

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K9 Ventures

MAY 27, 2011

There is this common adage that gets thrown around in startup circles that “ Ideas don’t matter, and it’s all about the execution “ In fact, you can see for yourself what Google says when you search for “ It’s not the idea, it’s the execution.” I was fed this “conventional wisdom” as well, and for a long time I believed it too.

Equity 133

Equity Cofounder Silicon Valley Stealth 133

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 23, 2011

There's no silver bullet way to get a job these days--or at any time--but what college grads should be optimizing for is a) making sure they're choosing something they're actually interested in, b) casting a wide enough net to find the best path possible in their field and c) making sure they have enough skills and connections to be the right candidate when they do find the job they want.

PR 126

PR eCommerce .Net Search 126

YoungUpstarts

MAY 23, 2011

by Kevin Kaiser , Startup Biz Blog. When you are starting out as a business, it can become obvious pretty quickly that you need to establish some sort of business credit. While some enterprises can be run without the worry of high start-up costs, there are plenty of other businesses that require a fairly large chunk of capital. Whether you need to buy equipment, pay employees or start a supply chain, some sort of business credit loan becomes a necessity.

Reputation 162

Reputation Small Business Employee Cost 162

Feld Thoughts

MAY 24, 2011

Many of our Foundry Group portfolio companies are growing rapidly. As a result, we just put up a new page on the Foundry Group website listing all of the jobs in Foundry Group portfolio companies that we are aware of. We also have a new Foundry Group Jobs twitter feed to follow – it’ll tweet out a link whenever a new job is posted. This page is built on top of Indeed , in our opinion the best job search engine.

Portfolio 119

Portfolio Engineer Internet Search 119

ReadWriteStart

MAY 26, 2011

During today's roundtable, I opened with a question that was going to be a key topic of discussion at the end of the show: Why do large sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. make so little use of the affiliate business model for monetization purposes? This is a question I would like to address to you guys as well. Please use the comments below to give your thoughts and analyses on why you think Twitter is not using the affiliate business model to monetize its immense traffic.

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Affiliate India Nevada Silicon Valley 117

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 25, 2011

I've been thinking about bread for the last couple of days. No, not bread. bre.ad , a new startup launching whose founder has perfected the art of the conference pitch. I was sitting at lunch at Techcrunch Disrupt in the middle of a bunch of people. The guy leans in and says, "Hey Charlie, sorry to interrupt, my name is Alan, I'm with bre.ad, I'm going to follow up with an e-mail to you about our startup.

Elevator Pitch 113

Elevator Pitch Lean Mobile Naming 113

YoungUpstarts

MAY 25, 2011

Echelon , Southeast Asia’s biggest conference for technology startups, is back for its 2011 edition and looks to be even more exciting than before. Previously known as UnConference Singapore (in 2007-2009), Echelon has been primarily responsible, over the past few years, for unearthing some of Singapore’s and the region’s most promising technology startup companies.

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Singapore Asia Angel Investor Cofounder 160

VC Cafe

MAY 22, 2011

This post takes a look at 10 Israeli startups funded in the last year. The descriptions of the startups are self reported. 1) Caftor (button in Hebrew). Caftor is two things: 1) a platform for connecting the real world with the social network. It allows you to easily create Quick Response codes (QR codes) to represent nouns and verbs in the social network.

Startup 111

Startup Affiliate Social Network Database 111

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

The typical wisdom regarding the appropriate financing course for a new company goes as follows: 1. An entrepreneur starts a company in classic " bootstrap " fashion - with a combination of sweat equity and their own financial resources. This usually consists of personal savings, credit cards, and small loans from relatives (Mom, Dad, Uncle Bob, etc.). 2.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112