Sat.Oct 08, 2016 - Fri.Oct 14, 2016

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Venture Capital is About Human Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca For the first 5 years or so after I became a VC I didn’t talk much about what I thought a VC should be excellent at since frankly I wasn’t sure. I was mostly doing my job and trying to figure out how to be better every day. After a decade on the job I’ve started to speak more openly when newer industry colleagues now ask me what I’ve learned.

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7 Startup Scenarios That May Be Judged Non-Fundable

Startup Professionals Musings

If you aren’t willing to take some risk as an entrepreneur, then don’t expect any gain. Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. If you need investors, it’s important that you understand their filters, and even if you are funding your own efforts, you need to recognize the red flags.

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Does Your Website Have Amnesia? Because It Sure Looks Like It’s Forgetting Something

YoungUpstarts

There’s nothing more exciting than launching a new business, getting a website up and running, and waiting for the customers to roll in. But unless your site contains all the necessary features, you’ll struggle to make sales. Some startups are so keen to get their businesses off the ground that their websites end up suffering. They omit vital information and features in a rush to get their products and services out of the door.

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How to Build A Massive Community on Instagram For Your Brand

Brandanew

When utilized in the most proper manner, a large community on Instagram for your brand can be a highly-effective visual advertising channel. Recent studies showcase that this platform can provide 25% more engagement with consumers when compared to other social media channels. This means that Instagram could be a prime channel for building your brand or e-commerce business.

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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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The Future of Corporate Agility

Startup Lessons Learned

Guest post by by Jennifer Maerz, contributing editor of Lean Startup Co. The solution to long-term innovation in companies obviously isn’t having one person come up with all the bright ideas and then translating those ideas to teams that execute them. We’re looking at huge shifts in workplace structures that involve reimagining things like who holds the power to make decisions and how we judge performance, all the way down to how we run meetings to encourage constructive disagreement and a diver

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Join The Unicorn Club Of Billion-Dollar Companies

Startup Professionals Musings

I’m sure all of you know one or more of the 200 or more young companies that are currently valued at one billion or more by investors and stockholders. These are popularly called “unicorns.” Some of the most well-known include Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, Xiaomi, and Pinterest. What every entrepreneur is asking me these days, is “How do I get to be a unicorn?

More Trending

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What I’ve learned from seeing 20k company pitches

Hippoland

I just passed my 2 year mark at 500 Startups. The other day, my colleague asked me how many company pitches I’ve personally seen. When we were calculating it out, it came out to about 20k! To be fair, this number includes pitch emails like this (incl a response from my former colleague Sean Percival). (In fact, the vast majority of pitches I’ve seen probably fall under this category and these only take a few seconds to read and archive, so this is how you get to see 20k pitches!

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Lean Planning: A Curated List of Our Best Content

Up and Running

When it comes to business planning, unless an investor has asked you to provide a formal business plan, we recommend writing a Lean Plan instead—it’s faster, more flexible, and will remain relevant throughout the life of your business. Usually, a Lean Plan will include your “pitch”—an overview of your strategy, tactics, and business model, and a schedule of who is doing what and when—as well as some core financials like a sales forecast, an expense budget, and a cash flow forecast.

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The 11 Bad Habits Killing Innovation in Your Company

Steve Blank

Alexander Osterwalder invented the Business Model Canvas , co-founded strategyzer.com and was the lead author of Business Model Generation which sold a million copies in 30 languages. Alexander and I often collaborate on new ideas for corporate innovation. Here’s his guest post on what bad habits to avoid inside of a company. Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions.

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How Lemming VCs Cause Venture Recessions

Mucker Lab

Following the inevitable ups and downs of the VC investment cycle, and what founders can do when it all turns cold. The “venture recession” of 2016 is in full swing. Combined with the usual summer slowdown, some are already raising the spectre of 2001 or 2008. Recession or not, what is universal is the bewilderment of many entrepreneurs on how negative VCs have become over the past nine months after almost five years of non-stop cheerleading.

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Some Business People Talk While Smarter Ones Listen

Startup Professionals Musings

As a business advisor, I certainly recognize the need for talking to make an investment case, close a sale, or communicate with your team. I also recognize the need for active listening. The challenge is to know when it’s time to switch from one to the other. You can’t learn anything new while you’re talking, yet many business professionals and entrepreneurs seem to never stop.

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7 Fintech Start-up Companies Changing Our Relationship With Money

YoungUpstarts

Fintech has become a huge industry in the tech arena and thousands of companies each year are looking to create the next disruptive technology to break into the field. Money makes the world go round and humans love it, almost as much as they love innovation. So, here are 7 fintech start-ups looking to change how we save, spend, invest and create money: 1.

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The 11 Bad Habits Killing Innovation in Your Company

Steve Blank

Alexander Osterwalder invented the Business Model Canvas , co-founded strategyzer.com and was the lead author of Business Model Generation which sold a million copies in 30 languages. Alexander and I often collaborate on new ideas for corporate innovation. Here’s his guest post on what bad habits to avoid inside of a company. Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions.

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Unbelievers in the age of Big Data

deal architect

Cold hearted orb that rules the night, Removes the colours from our sight, Red is gray and yellow white, But we decide which is right. And which is an illusion? The Moody Blues wrote those famous lyrics nearly 50 years.

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How To Master Business Decisions And Problem Solving

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the most important skills for every entrepreneur is timely and effective decision making. In a startup, any decision is better than no decision. One of the primary roles of every founder is to solve problems, make a decision, and manage the decision to results. The best entrepreneurs relish this role, while others struggle mightily and ultimately lose their health and their company.

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Millennials Dream Of Being Entrepreneurs: 7 Tips For Starting A Small Business

YoungUpstarts

By Lou Casale, Head of Communications, Hiscox USA. More than one-in-three American workers today are millennials, and this year they surpassed Gen X to become the largest share of the American workforce, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by Pew Research Center. While many millennials have gone the more traditional route of working for an established organization, others have elected to start their own business.

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The Road to Autonomous Vehicles & Our Investment in Optimus Ride

Agile VC

Today Optimus Ride announced a $5.25M seed round of funding to continue developing their unique approach to autonomous transportation. NextView is pleased to co-lead this round along with our friends at FirstMark Capital as well as participation by other investors, and I’m excited to join Optimus’s board. For those who follow my writings on my AgileVC blog or on Medium, you’ll know that I’ve been thinking about the autonomous vehicle space for some time.

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The Alt-Job economy

deal architect

Many of us work in corporate settings as managers, developers, doctors etc. That is the backbone of our job economy. I have spent most of my life in corporations and consulting with corporate clients. So I was staggered to learn.

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A Positive Business Strategy Is Key To Success Today

Startup Professionals Musings

Does your business have a visible positive strategy, or do your customers and employees still see your primary focus as closing more sales and killing competitors? Certainly that has been the strategy of many companies, and has worked in the past, but today’s customers and workers are looking for more. They want relationships, positive experiences, and a win-win for society.

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Taking A Chance On Life

YoungUpstarts

by Bill Thompson, author of “ Order of Succession: Getting Away with Murder “ What’s harder than getting fired? What if you’re a baby boomer plugging away at a job you’ve had for years, and suddenly everything is turned upside down the day your much younger boss strolls into your office to let you know your services are no longer needed?

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GiveFirst: I Feel Like I Don’t Know How To Help You

Feld Thoughts

Periodically, at the end of a conversation, someone will ask me, “Is there something I can do for you?” I used to answer with “Do something that is helpful to something or someone in my world.” I usually get a pause and occasionally get a response similar to “I’m not really sure what to do to help you.” Over time, I modified my response to “Do whatever you think is useful to grow your startup community.” I thought this was a good answer until

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How to Make Your Bookkeeper Really Work for Your Business

Up and Running

As the owner of a business, you are constantly pushing yourself to perform to the best of your abilities. You invest in the best quality goods and services you can, in order to provide the best service or product to your customers. So, when it comes to ensuring that you are keeping on top of your finances, you need to ensure you get the best from the person you hire to be your bookkeeper.

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15 Entrepreneurs Explain Why They Started Their Business

Hearpreneur

Share Each business has a story. No matter if the business is a Goliath like Wal-Mart, or a local business owned by a couple or family, the business has roots in an idea. For each business owner, the story of their journey can range from monetary needs or the passion for a unique project. Each story is different though the reasons may remain the same.

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5 Ways To Improve Your Business Processes

YoungUpstarts

by Cameron Johnson. In an increasingly competitive business world, corporate leaders who want to emerge as industry leaders who consistently earn excellent conversion rates need to optimize their business processes. Luckily, there are several strategies you can implement to accomplish this objective. Here are five of them: 1. Develop A Strategic Plan.

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2016 Portland Marathon

Feld Thoughts

I can now check Oregon off the “marathon in every state list.” After a four year hiatus, I ran marathon #24 in Portland today. My official time was 5:38 but there are some caveats that bring it down almost 20 minutes (to around 5:20). More on that in a bit. Once again I ran it with my running buddy Matt Shobe. This is the fourth marathon we’ve done together (Portland, Detroit, St.

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Becoming Your Own Boss: A Bplans Guide

Up and Running

You’ve spent years working, day after day, at jobs that left you feeling uninspired, unfulfilled, and tired. You’re ready for a change. You want to be in charge of your own future. You want to have control over your days, and work on something you are passionate about and truly enjoy. You want to become your own boss. But how do you make this dream a reality?

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Our Q3 round-up

Version One Ventures

We’re enjoying the first few weeks of Fall and before we know it, 2017 will be upon us. It has been a busy summer for our portfolio companies – here’s a quick recap of some of the highlights from Q3. Portfolio companies in the news. Several V1 portfolio companies were recognized for their growth. Top Hat was named the 12th fastest growing company in Canada by PROFIT 500, with a five-year revenue growth of 5,359%!

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How Can I Get My New Business Off The Ground And Running?

YoungUpstarts

If you’ve pursued your entrepreneurial dream of running your own business, now is the time to implement strategies which will ensure professional success. In some cases, new business owners feel overwhelmed or lack general understanding regarding how to make outstanding performance and forward growth inevitable. Luckily, there are hundreds of simple techniques you can implement to make it happen.

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5 Surprising Ways To Ease The Stress Of Running Your Business

YFS Magazine

It’s late at night. Your palms are sweating. You’re racing to get everything done in time.
 We’ve all been there.
 
Entrepreneur hell.

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Your Organization Really Doesn’t Want Optimization To Succeed

ConversionXL

Here’s something not many people talk about: no one at your organization really wants optimization to succeed – at least not in way that is most powerful and revenue impacting. Let that sink in. They will all talk about it, they will assist in practice, they will push you to do more and they will say all the right things. But the second a result does not go there way, they will turn on you faster than it takes you to read this overly wordy introduction.

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On #WorldMentalHealthDay, Praise for Neurodiverse Creatives

crowdSPRING Blog

Image Source: Imagine Therapies. On October 10th every year, folks around the globe recognize World Mental Health Day, and this year is no exception. Established in 1992, the day is intended to raise awareness related to struggles involving mental illness and mobilize resources to address those struggles. With the rise of social media, the visibility of the day and the conversations that surround it have been, thankfully, greatly enhanced.

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Why Losing Is A Step Towards Winning In Forex Trading

YoungUpstarts

If there are winners there are bound to be losers. That’s life and that’s also Forex trading. There are all sorts of reasons why traders become losers rather than winners. To take a few: their approach may be wrong, they may not understand how the market works or know the key indicators and key numbers and the best trading times. They may be risking too much and generally “not on the ball”.

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Startup Angels Brings its Workshop to Austin to Teach People to Become Angel Investors

SiliconHills

By LAURA LOREK Reporter with Silicon Hills News Entrepreneurs are everywhere in Austin and Central Texas. Investment dollars are not. But Startup Angels, based in Washington, D.C., is trying to change that. And Leslie Jump, its founder, is coming to Austin next week to do a workshop to train high-net worth individuals how to be […] The post Startup Angels Brings its Workshop to Austin to Teach People to Become Angel Investors appeared first on SiliconHills.

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Supercharged storytelling

The Equity Kicker

Every company has to strike a balance between focusing on being great at what they do and telling the world about it. Some very successful companies lead with hype and have their people permanently scrabbling to keep up. You might call that the Elon Musk school of entrepreneurship. Other successful companies focus on delivering value rather than making promises – Google and Facebook spring to mind as examples here.

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3 Business Lessons From Cult Hit Show ‘American Ninja Warrior’

YFS Magazine

The skills that make an American Ninja Warrior a cult hit are the same ones that lead to business success.

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How To Create A Stream Of Income Through Airbnb

YoungUpstarts

You’ve probably heard stories of people making a lot of money renting out a spare room on Airbnb. Perhaps even making enough to go full-time and earn a decent living. But how easy is it to make genuine cash renting out rooms on the site? Airbnb has been around for close to eight years now. Over that time the site has attracted 50 million users and over half a million hosts.