Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. I visited Bend last year and caught up with his progress. Today with every city, state and country trying to build out a technology cluster, following Dino’s progress can provide others with a roadmap of what’s worked and what has not.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Picking a VC is hard. You don’t really have much to go on to decide who would make a good fit. Reputation of firm? Of partner? Deals done in your industry? It’s a bit of all of these. I had an enjoyable conversation this morning with a young team straight out of college this morning and they were calling to ask advice on how to approach fund raising (angels vs.

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2014

'I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries , called “nail it then scale it” (NISI).

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor Technical Review 283

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 21, 2014

'by Melissa Thompson, CEO of TalkSession. 2014 will be a formative year for new business owners and early-stage entrepreneurs. For those would-be entrepreneurs debating the startup leap? There is no time like the present. For current founders, in our hyper-pressurized worlds of being incubated, accelerated, and constantly switching modes between pitching and executing, how do we successfully navigate the labyrinth to success?

Entrepreneur 188

Entrepreneur Startup Balance Sheet Non-Compete 188

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

The Next Web

JANUARY 23, 2014

'Timo Rein is the cofounder & CEO of Pipedrive , and was previously the cofounder of Vain & Partners - the leading Sales Training company in the Baltics. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’re an American, and that means you don’t know how good you have it. Nowhere in the world offers the kind of business climate that is so conducive to innovation, creativity and success for the aspiring entrepreneur.

Estonia 143

Estonia Software Review Europe San Francisco 143

Gust

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Academic snobs such as myself often place a lot of value on hard skills when hiring. No news here. Of course, we also look for great attitude and fit, given that so much – if not all – one conquers at the workplace nowadays is the result of collaboration and teamwork. While most people in managerial positions agree with this approach at a hiring moment, there are often different perspectives when it comes to a potential firing moment.

Management 137

Management Employee .Net Hiring 137

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2014

'We know that new careers being invented every day due to the evolution of the workplace as well as technological innovations that can totally disrupt entire industries. Think about the iOS developer, the big data architect, the UX/UI designer, social media intern or even the zumba instructor – these are incredibly popular jobs today seeing explosive growth that just five years back saw a bare handful of people with such job titles.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Social Media Technology Developer 166

The Next Web

JANUARY 19, 2014

'Brian Honigman is a marketing consultant, a freelance writer and a social media enthusiast. This post originally appeared on AdKnowledge. Networking will forever be the lifeblood of a professional’s career. No matter how old you are, what year it is and what technology is used, networking will continue to affect an individual’s professional growth, in addition to skillset and experience.

Networking 167

Networking Social Media Technical Review Media 167

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

'Today, I was fortunate enough to get Hunter Boyle – Senior Business Development Director of AWeber to talk with us about what exactly business development is, and the role it can play on conversions. Because this is a new feature for ConversionXL, I would love to get your feedback so we can keep making it better. In my interview with Hunter, we discuss: The key responsibilities of a business development professional.

Developer 104

Developer API Cofounder New Jersey 104

Up and Running

JANUARY 22, 2014

'True Story: Lately I’ve been working with very good friends to develop a new startup. It’s not ready to go yet and it’s not the subject of this post, so I’ll offer no more detail on that here in this post. What it’s done for me, and my partners, is a reminder of how much I like the basic idea of business planning to help define a new venture. . We live in four different places to we meet a lot by phone and via online meetings.

Forecast 91

Forecast Startup Web Development Business Plan 91

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 23, 2014

'by Julie Miller and Brian Bedford, co-authors of “ Culture Without Accountability: WTF? What’s The Fix? “ Are you accountable? If you’re like most people, your answer to that question is an automatic “Yes” or maybe even an indignant “Of course, why are you even asking me?” After all, you don’t believe that you’re above the law or lie about your behavior like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Reputation 154

Reputation Finder Leadership Email 154

The Next Web

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Our report last week on the salaries that startup founders pay themselves stirred up a lot of discussion here on The Next Web, Hacker News , Twitter and beyond. Now startup benchmarking firm Compass , the source of the original data, has provided us with further information that helps answer some of the questions you had about it. While most readers saw it as a good thing that founders of early-stage companies tended to pay themselves low salaries, some readers pointed out that the self-reporte

Salary 152

Salary Founder Entrepreneur Burn Rate 152

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 24, 2014

'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!

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

Up and Running

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Jessie Seaman, a tax attorney, offers tips to help startups avoid common tax pitfalls. As a new business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. From creating a business plan to hiring employees , your to-do list is a hefty one. But while you’re juggling startup tasks, you’ll also want to think about how taxes will impact your business.

Entrepreneur 123

Entrepreneur Software Review Security Employee 123

SiliconHills

JANUARY 23, 2014

'By LESLIE ANNE JONES Reporter with Silicon Hills News If you want a hamburger, there are thousands of reviews available online for Austin joints. But until recently, if you wanted a business software package – which might cost a thousand times more than a gruyere-smothered Angus patty – it was much harder to find aggregated […] The post TrustRadius Aims to be the Yelp of Business Software appeared first on SiliconHills.

Software Review 122

Software Review Software Aggregator Austin 122

The Next Web

JANUARY 23, 2014

'Prerna Gupta is an author and futurist. She previously served as the Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Smule , where she remains an advisor to the Board of Directors. This post originally appeared on the Clarity.fm blog. Marketing is often treated as a bad word in Silicon Valley. To many, it connotes bloated budgets and the use of psychological trickery to make up for the fact that your product sucks.

Product 147

Product Elevator Pitch Silicon Valley Vertical 147

Growthink Blog

JANUARY 19, 2014

'The technology age has brought with it a long list of business related success stories. There are plenty of cases where a small startup has managed to grow into a billion-dollar company. While most people will think of companies such as Facebook and Amazon, GoDaddy.com is actually one of the greatest successes in recent history. What started as a small company has since grown into an easily recognizable brand which owns a significant portion of its own market.

Technical Review 104

Technical Review Private Equity Hosting Advertising 104

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 24, 2014

'I’ve blogged before that 45% of jobs are at risk from automation , and this morning our Senior Designer Peter Main tweeted a breakdown of which industries are most at risk: It is easy to think about automation in apocalyptic terms – e.g. all telemarketers will be replaced by computers in the next twenty years, but the way it works in practice is that computers make existing workers more efficient and only a percentage of jobs are automated.

Artificial Inteligence 96

Artificial Inteligence Algorithm Technical Review Stock 96

Gust

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Academic snobs such as myself often place a lot of value on hard skills when hiring. No news here. Of course, we also look for great attitude and fit, given that so much – if not all – one conquers at the workplace nowadays is the result of collaboration and teamwork. While most people in managerial positions agree with this approach at a hiring moment, there are often different perspectives when it comes to a potential firing moment.

Management 70

Management Employee .Net Hiring 70

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2014

'In my recent post “ Why Am I So Lucky? Why You Need to Be Sure You’re Not the Sucker ” I talked about how VCs (or other investors) get deals sent to them and how to interpret a referral. I tried to make a simple point: People have motives when they send you a deal. Sometimes those motives are positive (they really want the chance to work with you, they think you have unique skills) and sometimes they are less positive (their first-tier of “go to” referrals passed on the

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Syndicate Syndication Angel Investor 337

The Entrepreneurial Mind

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Great opportunity for you to pitch your ideas/ventures. The Nashville Social Enterprise Alliance Business For Good Competition provides potential and serial social entrepreneurs with a unique forum for submitting novel ideas to solve various social problems. Teams or solo social entrepreneurs from across the USA can apply to pitch their idea at the Social Enterprise Alliance 2014 National Summit in front of a national audience of leading entrepreneurs, funders, policy makers and educators.

Nashville 64

Nashville Technical Review Entrepreneur Incubator 64

Jeff Hilimire

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Yesterday I was on a panel at an AMA (American Marketing Association) event with Del Ross , Mike Racic, and Rick Radermacher, moderated by the great Glen Caruso. The topic was (and I’m paraphrasing), “Why is the advertising agency and client relationship so screwed up?!” At least that’s what I would have called it. Having been in the agency world for 15 years ( started my first agency building websites for companies in 1998 , sold that in 2008 and stayed with the new age

Advertising 67

Advertising Technical Review Demand Mobile 67

deal architect

JANUARY 23, 2014

'I like to vary the events I go to each year to get more of a industry and geographic diversity and am looking forward to some new ones over next couple of months (or ones I have not been to.

300

300

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

'When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 19, 2014

'Too many entrepreneurs confuse actions with momentum and results. We all know someone who repeatedly tells us how “busy” they are, when it’s hard to see what they get done. Momentum is moving things forward (mass x velocity). Founders or employees in constant motion, but with no momentum, will never get off the ground. It is true that motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all.

Entrepreneur 284

Entrepreneur Hiring Employee Operations 284

Agile VC

JANUARY 22, 2014

'Change Collective announced their seed round today , in conjunction with their broader launch of the company. I thought I’d share a little of what makes us enthusiastic to partner with Ben, Derek, and their team to help them as they build their business. I first met Ben about 5-6 years ago. This was before we started NextView and at the time Ben was still building Zeo, the prior company he co-founded.

Term Sheet 173

Term Sheet Cofounder Mobile Cloud 173

deal architect

JANUARY 24, 2014

'Workday showcased to a few of us yesterday Release 21 and the repeated and striking theme was the drop-dead gorgeous UI design in the screenshots we saw from a web screen (as in home menu below with move away from.

Web 290

Web Design 290

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 23, 2014

'American Express loves to charge large fees on their product. I have met many employees of Amex , and the golden rule is to charge a fee. They want affluent customers, and affluent customers can afford fees. How very 1980s of them! However, sometimes the fee can be justified. The real question is whether you would normally purchase the benefits offered by Amex.

Global 158

Global Cost Video Product 158

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2014

'Many entrepreneurs forget that their success is more about helping other people than about personally becoming famous, or overcoming the odds and getting rich. A successful business has to satisfy customers with a strong team, by helping them solve problems, save money, or experience more pleasure. That means more focus on helping others achieve their goals.

Leadership 258

Leadership Sweat Equity Bootstrapping Early Stage 258

Gust

JANUARY 19, 2014

'Image via Flickr (Creative Commons). Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. On the average, the entrepreneurs I know are living on Ramen noodles. But one thing they all seem to have in common is a love for learning and change. They rush in with a passion to better the world, and money is just an indication of their progress.

Entrepreneur 172

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Social Network Restful 172

deal architect

JANUARY 19, 2014

'I requested an introduction to Arne Josefsberg, the new CIO at GoDaddy. I have profiled innovations in the Microsoft Azure, the Facebook Prineville and Google’s data centers in my books. I wanted to learn more about the infrastructure at the.

Azure 290

Azure 290

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2014

'by Geoffrey Tumlin, author of “ Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counterintuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life “ Bad news is no fun to deliver. That’s why even distinguished leaders and otherwise successful people will go to great lengths to avoid doing it. For example, you might tolerate a longstanding, but mediocre, vendor instead of giving the contract to another company.

LLC 155

LLC Leadership Conversion Demand 155

The Next Web

JANUARY 23, 2014

'Len Kendall is the founder of CentUp. Prior to starting a company he worked in PR where he helped put out fires and manage digital communications. You’re a permanent freelancer or an early stage entrepreneur and you don’t have an office to go to. Your options are usually one of these three things: Work at home . Work at a coffee shop. Work at a coworking space.

Chicago 164

Chicago Early Stage PR Cost 164

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 22, 2014

'I''m announcing two things today. First, I''ve finished raising the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures fund--tallying $8.3 million. This is what I set out to do just about two years ago when I first broke out on my own and started raising, so I''m thrilled to say that it has finally happened. I''m not going to do too much of a victory lap, though, because it bugs me a little when startups do it, and I''m a startup, too.

Portfolio 162

Portfolio Partner Founder Startup 162

Gust

JANUARY 18, 2014

'I’ve written on this topic previously, including David S. Rose’s answer to Startups: What is the worst startup pitch ever? While I’ve never laughed outright during a pitch, I’ve certainly had quite a few occasions where I had to work hard not to wince. The problems with bad pitches tend to fall into the following major categories: The content is just bad, off-base or not thought-through.

Audience 157

Audience Startup Product 157

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2014

'by Nathan Parcells, co-founder and CMO of InternMatch. The new year is upon us! While you may be formulating new business plans or trying to find funding for your next venture in 2014, you likely have a new intern or two on your hands as well. Long thought to be paper pushers or errand runners, interns can actually contribute to the success of your organization.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Programming Hiring Operations 155