Sat.Dec 30, 2017 - Fri.Jan 05, 2018

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AVIXA’s Heidi A. Voorhees on Thinking Differently

Startup Professionals Musings

Heidi A. Voorhees, CAE. EDUCATION Bachelor of arts, majoring in commercial recreation/business, Central Michigan University; master of business administration, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. MY FIRST INDUSTRY JOB Straight out of college — convention assistant, SmithBucklin. MY PREVIOUS THREE JOBS Vice president of strategic initiatives, Institute of Food Technologists; senior vice president of housing, Experient; and two short stints at tech startups (BOB.tv and Eved).

Michigan 214
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[Review] Brother ScanNCut

YoungUpstarts

The Advantages. The die cutter also features a 300-dpi scanner, which means you are able to capture your very own backgrounds and images to use at a later stage. The Drawbacks. The die cutter comes with limitations in regard to materials of up to a thickness of 2 millimeters even though it features multiple settings when it comes to depth, pressure and cutting speed.

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WP Engine passes $100M in revenue and secures $250M investment from Silver Lake

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

People said there’s no money in hosting. WordPress is just a toy. After the success of Smart Bear, I should be setting my sights on something big, not this. I’m sure people said similar things to Heather when she joined as our CEO. The Silicon Valley-oriented technology press outlets don’t cover us because we’re not in San Francisco, even though we’re more successful than most of the startups they cover.

Engineer 152
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15 Entrepreneurs Reveal What They Look Forward To in 2018

Hearpreneur

Happy New Year! Every new year brings with it a new form of excitement and anticipation. The reason is that every new year brings about a “newness” for lack of a better term when we are able to start fresh and erase those things that we did bad or things we have been thinking about doing. For us at CEO Blog Nation, we get it. So that’s why we are excited about 2018 because there will be more and more entrepreneurs and businesses.

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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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How to Describe Your Startup

Austin Startup

Originally published on the Shep Blog As an entrepreneur, particularly at the beginning of your journey, you will constantly have to come up with and refine your message in a multitude of different formats. Whether it’s a thirty-page business plan, a ten-page pitch deck, a five-minute presentation, a one-page executive summary or a twenty-second elevator pitch, your primary goal is to answer the question, “What does your company do?

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Why You Should Encourage Customer Reviews (And How To Do It)

YoungUpstarts

by Megan Headley, Research Director at TrustRadius. There’s no two ways about it: the Internet has changed how we do business. Now consumers can order a product online and have it sent to their home the same day, access streaming media in a split second and even hire someone to do their shopping for them if they don’t feel like it! Now that’s diversity of service!

More Trending

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The Year of Intelligent Apps

deal architect

Happy New Year! John Sumser at HR Examiner recently tweeted Next year's primary software marketing message in #HRTech: "They don't make decisions for me. They make me a better decision maker." He need not have limited that statement to HR.

Software 186
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8 Ways Startups Are Changing The Way Businesses Work

Startup Professionals Musings

The new era of highly connected and interactive technology is changing not only how business employees interact with customers, but also how they interact with each other, and with their company. I am happy to see reports that young companies are leading the way in these trends, on both the customer and the employee side. Both are required to stay competitive.

Startup 154
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Five Signs It’s Time To Outsource Your Business Finances

YoungUpstarts

Better control over F&A (finance and accounting) processes, reduced management costs, and access to the best technology and accountant talent pool are some of the benefits that come to mind. While you can achieve all these on your own, there are some indicators that when seen, you should know that it’s time to outsource your business finances. We will take a look at five signs that indicate to CFOs that it’s time to outsource their F&A operations: When you’re insufficiently leverag

Finance 100
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Will Millennials Change Manufacturing?

Duct Tape Marketing

Will Millennials Change Manufacturing? The largest generation in the U.S. is taking its place in manufacturing — and the experts are betting this tech-savvy cohort is ready to stir things up. By Steve Minter, Industry Week . Dark, dirty and dangerous — mention the 3Ds of old-time manufacturing and HR managers shudder. It’s exactly the image they don’t want the public — or millennials considering careers in manufacturing — to have of the industry.

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Top Two Reasons for Churn

For Entrepreneurs

In working with a number of SaaS portfolio companies, I have found that there are two causes of churn that occur more frequently than any others. They are: Failure to successfully onboard the customer Loss of the champion who drove the purchase Looking at these in order: Failure to successfully onboard It’s easy to understand.

Portfolio 161
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10 Steps To More Health And Happiness At Work In 2018

Startup Professionals Musings

Welcome to another challenging new year ahead! You’ve probably already made your resolutions for 2018, but if not, I suggest a renewed commitment to finding happiness and satisfaction in your chosen business lifestyle. After all, most of us spend more hours in this role than any other, and life is too short to spend most of your life unhappy. As a mentor to entrepreneurs and business owners, and seeing their workload and challenges, it would be easy for me to conclude that starting a business is

Restful 151
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5 Cs Of Servant Leadership

YoungUpstarts

by Vijay Eswaran, author of “ Two Minutes from the Abyss: 11 Pillars of Life Management “ Leadership is not about telling people what to do. A true leader is one who knows how to serve. Servant leadership means different things to different people. The philosophy closest to my heart, one that I learned at an early age from my father is of “service above self.

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25 education trends for 2018

This is going to be BIG.

Year after year, educators and those invested in education love to speculate about what will take off in the near future. And as far as riveting news goes, nothing quite peaks the interest like new trends that have the potential to fundamentally change learning. In almost all of the commentary from both educators and industry, the mention of AR and VR for 2018’s big trends were ubiquitous.

Media 160
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How to Set Smart Business Goals for 2018

Up and Running

There’s nothing like the start of a new year to get us all goal setting like crazy. I don’t know about you, but I can count the number of New Year’s Resolutions that I’ve made and actually kept past January on the fingers of, well, one finger! So why is it that we find goals so exciting to make, but so difficult to actually achieve? Well, there are a number of reasons but mostly, it’s because the goals we set just aren’t smart.

Metrics 147
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10 Steps To Develop Your Ability To Think Differently

Startup Professionals Musings

Every culture and community puts pressure on its members to follow the norms. Even young people who start out wanting to be different are called “freaks,” and most are slowly bent back into the norm by the time they “grow up.” Maybe that’s why so many entrepreneurs struggle with building a disruptive new business, where breaks from the norm are the key to success.

Developer 144
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The 8 Factors Needed For High Performance Living

YoungUpstarts

by Gustavo Oliveira, teacher of the DeRose Method. Since we were born, we have been conditioned by specific patterns of behaviors. We are what we repeatedly think, feel, eat and behave. Even when we see that our behaviors are not rewarding, rarely are we able to change these habits and attitudes. It is much easier to plan around them than to change them.

New York 202
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4 Elements of Great Storytelling, Backed by Neuroscience

Austin Startup

Content marketing is in a crisis. Once you sign up for a few brand newsletters, you get pounded with the same generic how-to articles. How to Use Social Media to Boost Your Small Business. How to Make Your Team More Productive. How to Save Money for Your Kid’s Future. And, most ironically, How to Deal With Email Overload. The onslaught of the status quo drives us crazy because, deep down, we all know this strategy doesn’t work.

Cofounder 127
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Industry Research Versus Market Research: What’s the Difference?

Up and Running

If you’re writing a business plan , you’ve probably encountered the sections for industry analysis and market analysis. These sections are where you present your research on your market and your industry, but they can be confusing. Lots of people aren’t sure what goes into each section and why they’re different. What’s an industry? An industry is a group of businesses that make or sell similar products and services.

Marketing 121
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Why The Best Entrepreneurs Enjoy The Hunter Lifestyle

Startup Professionals Musings

Most entrepreneurs believe they are “different,” but they can’t quite understand how. They usually explain it by insisting that they are driven to follow their passion, need to be their own boss, want to get rich quick, or want to change the world. I now believe that the roots of the difference may go back more than 10,000 years, when hunting and farming became two different lifestyles.

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The End of ‘Do Not Disturb’?

YoungUpstarts

These are disturbing times. A few days before Christmas, four Walt Disney World hotels in Orlando replaced their “do not disturb” signs with ones that read “room occupied.” A Disney employee is now required to enter every room at least once every 24 hours. Disney told The New York Times it plans to make the same change at all Disney World resorts, as well as at Disneyland properties in Anaheim, California.

Las Vegas 173
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The technology shifts you need to focus on in 2018

Start Up Blog

I’ve always believed the technology shifts we ought focus on shouldn’t be the abrupt, but changes in the tide of consumer behaviour and the economy. The reasons shifts are more important than definitive events is that we have time to react to them, build around the movement and benefit from the change. Disruptive events are. Continue reading → The post The technology shifts you need to focus on in 2018 appeared first on Steve Sammartino.

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Empathetic Leaders Are The Best Leaders

YFS Magazine

Investing in people is expensive, so budget for it. However, managing uninspired people, high turnover or a disengaged workforce will cost you everything.

Cost 120
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Must Go Faster

Eric Friedman

The only startup analogy I like to make is to the real life Tyrannosaurus Rex – a giant carnivore, awesomely represented in Jurassic Park running after Jeff Goldblum and co. In the movie, Dr. Ian Malcolm utters the semi infamous phrase “Must go faster” and I love it. For those playing at home, this line is also in Independence Day (but not really )It represents everything to me in the fast paced world of early stage companies and a constant reminder of what you need to do to s

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4 Hot Tech Topics to Watch in 2018

YoungUpstarts

We’re well past the point of keeping up with every advancement in the tech field – things are simply moving too fast. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t affected when things move forward. New technology makes its way into our lives and businesses faster every year. Unsurprisingly, that will continue in 2018. But since it’s almost impossible to keep up with every tech change that will affect you this year, we’ve collected four that are on our radar.

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What Valuation Should I Expect in My Seed Round?

This is going to be BIG.

Powered by OpenReel I have to be honest, I'm a little suspect when one of the first questions a founder asks me is about valuation. So many things about startups are difficult and so few startups raise *at all* versus the number who try, that this seems like not the most important question. That being said, you want to feel like you got a good deal--and your lead investor should be able to walk you through how they got to a particular valuation and why they thought it was appropriate.

Valuation 101
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Online Marketing Is Confusing – But It Doesn’t Have To Be

YFS Magazine

Online marketing includes a set of powerful tools and methods used to promote your business on the internet. If you find it difficult to leave a mark online, try these six tips.

Marketing 109
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Walmart’s Been On A Buying Spree. Which Company Could It Acquire Next?

Up and Running

Walmart’s $3.3B acquisition of Jet.com in August 2016 transformed the company beyond the addition of the Jet platform. Jet.com founder Marc Lore ascended to CEO of Walmart’s US e-commerce operations, and since joining has taken the company on an e-commerce/apparel acquisition spree. Driven by Lore, Walmart acquired e-commerce platform Shoebuy in January 2017, followed by outdoor apparel retailer Moosejaw in February, womenswear site Modcloth in March, direct-to-consumer premium mens

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Are we Heading Towards a Cyber-security Meltdown?

YoungUpstarts

Photo credit: meltdownattack.com. You’ve probably seen the terms Meltdown and Spectre this week. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with James Bond, though the news might get your heart racing. Information was recently leaked that nearly every computer, smartphone, tablet, laptop and cloud system in the world is subject to critical vulnerabilities in modern processors.

Security 140
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What if you come across juicy competitor information?

Berkonomics

Close. Many of us belong to industry associations and find ourselves at conferences and trade shows with time to spend with competitors. Some of these are old friends; some even former associates. It is natural to want to associate with these people for many reasons, certainly socially. Most CEOs want to obtain information about their competitors in the most subtle and non-obvious ways.

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Top 3 Free Project Management Apps For Small Businesses

YFS Magazine

These project management apps are built to help team members stay organized and meet deadlines, as well as give project managers accountability without having to solicit updates or schedule inconvenient meetings.

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Book: Principles by Ray Dalio

Feld Thoughts

Several people recommended Ray Dalio’s book Principles to me. I read it a few days ago and thought it was spectacular. I’ve gone out and bought a copy for each of my partners and I recommend that every VC, as well as anyone who is building an organization of any kind, buy and read it. Dalio is famous for his extremely successful firm Bridgewater Associates which is known for its goal of achieving excellence in their work and their relationships through radical truth and radical tran

Partner 86
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How A New Boss Can Be A Fresh Start

YoungUpstarts

by Cheryl Hyatt, partner at Hyatt-Fennell . You’ve worked for your current boss for years. You know how each other works, your strengths, your weaknesses. She remembers your son’s birthday every year. You know she always likes to take Black Friday off. Both of you know the company inside and out. All of the built-up experience allow your whole department to function with efficiency.

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19 Entrepreneurs Share Their Business Goals for 2018

Hearpreneur

It’s a new year and right after the ball drops, it’s time to go to work. Often entrepreneurs and business owners create their New Year’s Resolutions around their business. It could be more revenue, hiring clients or launching a new product or service, but every new year is an exciting time because it’s ripe with opportunity. We asked 19 entrepreneurs to share their business goals and what they were looking forward to in 2018. #1- Increased networking and public service opportunities.

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5 Tips For Total Life And Business Transformation

YFS Magazine

Real and lasting change in your life and business is possible. As you step into the new year, consider these 5 approaches.

Developer 122
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Books I Read In 2018

Hunter Walker

Not gonna lie. All those “Books of 2017” posts made me kinda wishing I kept a list of my own. No way for me to go back and figure out what I read last year (I give away most books once I’ve completed them) so instead will make this a living post, where I add as I finish. If we generously start 2018 on 12/26/2017, here’s what I’ve read so far in reverse-chron order: 4) Finding Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [non-fiction].

Jordan 95