Sat.Aug 27, 2011 - Fri.Sep 02, 2011

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It’s Not How Big It Is – It’s How Well It Performs: The Startup Genome Compass

Steve Blank

What makes startups succeed or fail? More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather than competition. For the less than 10% of startups that do succeed, most encounter several near death experiences along the way. Simply put, while we now have some good theory , we just are not very good at creating startups yet. After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it’s still an art.

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Improving the worst experience

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Tame bugs like a boss! The visual bug tracker for web developers & designers. (Powered by LaunchBit ). Tweet. --> At this moment I’m in the worst seat on the plane. In 32B , jet engines thunder mere feet from my eardrums, a fact confirmed by a window whose proximity to the engine affords a vista only of three sheets of metal and 37 rivets.

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Inconsistency And Premature Scaling Main Cause For Startup Failure: Blackbox

YoungUpstarts

Silicon Valley technology startup accelerator Blackbox earlier this year launched the Startup Genome Project , which seeks to type startups, identify their developmental stage and the metrics that matter, and build a system to integrate the methodologies of many of the Valley’s leading thinkers such as Steve Blank , Eric Ries , Sean Ellis and Dave McClure.

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Introducing the Cap Table and Hiring the CTO

Feld Thoughts

As Finance Fridays continues, we are introducing the concept of the Cap Table. We recognize that we are still at the very early basics stage, but as we are taking a case study approach to this we feel like we have to set up all of the pieces before we get into the messy guts. Hopefully you are staying with us and finding this useful – feedback welcome!

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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 Direction of Success: The Startup Genome Compass

ReadWriteStart

What makes startups succeed or fail? More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather than competition. For the less than 10% of startups that do succeed, most encounter several near-death experiences along the way. Simply put, while we now have some good theory , we just are not very good at creating startups yet. After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it's still an art.

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When being an “expert” is harmful

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

In a recent Capital Factory all-hands discussion, one of the founders started a question with a well-worn preamble: “I talked to a bunch of the mentors and they all told me the same thing about pricing, but I’m telling you, they’re wrong. I know our industry , I know how our customers think, and in our industry …&#. What followed was well-reasoned and sensible.

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More Trending

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Twitter Link Roundup #100 – Small Business, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, Marketing And More

crowdSPRING Blog

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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5 Tips for Raising a Venture Round

ReadWriteStart

While certainly not every business needs to raise venture financing, it is the path for many high-growth technology startups. Therefore, going down the fundraising path is something many technology entrepreneurs will need to do and a critical step in the development of their business. This can be an intimidating experience so I've put together a list of five tips for raising a venture round.

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Tracking the Hiring Funnel

This is going to be BIG.

At a board meeting yesterday, a management team was talking about their hiring needs and some of the challenges they're having hiring great people. This conversation seems to take place at nearly every growing company in just about every board meeting. over and over again. It's clearly one of the most important things a company can do--yet companies don't ever get as organized around it, with dedicated resources, until much later in their lives.

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[Event] [Singapore] AppsWorld Asia: Rise Of The Planet Of The Apps

YoungUpstarts

Social Media World Forum (SMWF) Asia is happening right now and the event space in Suntec City is buzzing with the chatter of the gathered social media glitterati, brand managers and communications professionals from Singapore and the region. But what is really interesting this year is the accompanying Apps World Asia 2011 , where there are specific tracks applicable to developers and programmers working in the web and mobile application spaces.

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How 99Designs.com came to be

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

I love hearing stories of entrepreneurs, it keeps me motivated and there are always great lessons to be learned. Today, I went to an event in the city of Campbell to hear Matt Mickiewicz, Founder of SitePoint, Flippa, and 99Designs, talk about how he got started. At first glance, Mickiewicz is a very happy-g0-lucky type of guy, but don’t be fooled because he is a serious entrepreneur.

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My Daily Productivity Routine

Duct Tape Marketing

My Daily Productivity Routine This content from: Duct Tape Marketing gagilas via Flickr I’ve been accused over the years of getting a lot done in a day. So much so that the assumption is I don’t sleep much. But, the truth of the matter is that I don’t really work that many hours at all (Okay, I know that’s relative, I work more than some, but I love it.).

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Workday during Hurricane Dreamforce

deal architect

As kids in the Northeast found in the wake of Irene, there are Snow days even in the summer. Hurricane Dreamforce blew into San Francisco (what else can you call an event with an attendance of 45,000?) this week and.

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10 Funding Quotes Every Entrepreneur Should Skip

Startup Professionals Musings

In previous articles, I have occasionally mentioned “red flags” which every potential investor unconsciously listens for. Other writers, like Guy Kawasaki, have irreverently called some of these “entrepreneur lies,” but I prefer to think of them as innocent over-enthusiasm or over-confidence that can kill your deal. At any rate, here is my summary of the top ten from my experience with hundreds of elevator pitches, business plans, and executive presentations: “Our product is truly disruptive tec

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Bloapp Converts Your Blog Into An iPhone App

YoungUpstarts

Creating a mobile application can be very time-consuming and expensive, which is why a lot of bloggers and blog sites don’t bother coming out with a mobile app of their own. Not any more – Bloapp ( www.bloapp.com ) is a free web tool that helps converts blogs into a native iPhone app in less than five minutes. And the best part? It’s free to use.

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The Best Vacation Responder Ever

Feld Thoughts

I go off the grid four times a year for a week at a time. During these weeks I put up a vacation reminder that says I’m off the grid, not checking email or phone, but if it’s an emergency I can be found by my assistant Kelly. While I leave her email and phone info in the vacation responder text, she still checks my email to make sure that nothing critical is going on.

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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Do – Atlanta’s chic, high-tech restaurant FBI Child ID App Next-Gen 911 Large Touch-Screen Panels.

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10 Simple Ways to Maximize Business Plan Impact

Startup Professionals Musings

If you want people to invest in your idea, then my best advice is first write a business plan, and keep it simple. Don't confuse your business plan with a doctoral thesis or the back of a napkin. Keep the wording and formatting straightforward, and keep the plan short. For minimum content, see my article “ Investors Expect Ten Essentials in a Business Plan.

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How To Be Extremely Productive

YoungUpstarts

From organisational speed , let’s move on next to individual productivity. Once again, Harvard Business Review’s Ideacast features good ideas worth considering. In “ Productivity Secrets of a Very Busy Man “, Bob Posen , a senior lecturer at Harvard and executive chairman of a major investment firm, offers some great tips. Other than holding down two jobs, Posen sits on a few boards and manages to write a couple of articles a year.

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Uh Oh. Is your SEO Website Old?

Rembrandt Communications

Ok. Be honest. When is the last time you updated your Website? I know that you have many, other priorities. But, if your Website is old, you are losing customers! After all, who wants to look at the same old data all the time? And I’m not talking about drastic, expensive changes. I’m talking about [.].

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More innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog The amazing range of 3D printing National Science Board’s Science and Technology Indicators Adobe + EchoSign State Farm’s Mash-up.

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How You Talk About Competitors Speaks Volumes

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur should spend plenty of time thinking about competitors, and how they relate to your business, but you need to be very careful what you say out loud about them to your team, your investors, and your customers. What you say speaks volumes about how you think about your startup, how smart you are, and your personal integrity. I’ve spent hours talking to startup founders, and heard a thousand startup pitches, and I always listen carefully to what is said (or not said) about compet

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[Review] Your Company Sucks: It’s Time To Declare War On Yourself

YoungUpstarts

Sales have plateaued, your employees are griping, customers are unhappy and you have no idea what is going wrong. Yes, your company sucks and you’re at your wits’ end. It’s time for some self-reflection, and the book “ Your Company Sucks: It’s Time to Declare War on Yourself &# may be able to help you find out what’s wrong.

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The ink is on the dead trees

Startup Lessons Learned

I am holding in my hand one of the very first print editions of The Lean Startup. The Zen-inspired design by Marcus Gosling looks amazing in physical form. And in just two weeks, on September 13, 2011 , it will be in bookstores everywhere. Read below for details on the book tour, how to get a free book, and more. Excitement about the book continues to build, and I am a little overwhelmed by all the attention.

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Build a Business Not a Job.

Up and Running

MYTOP is an acronym I created to describe a key strategy business strategy. I’ll explain what it means and how it works momentarily. But first, I need to preface why the MYTOP theory is a critical element for business success and sustainability. With unemployment rates at unprecedented levels, more and more Americans are finding the best path to a new job is creating it themselves.

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7 Reasons For Your Startup to Skip Stealth Mode

Startup Professionals Musings

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. Of course they pretend that they are trying to avoid alerting competitors prior to launch, but too often it becomes an excuse to move slowly in a world that’s all about getting to market fast. I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor.

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Chatterfly, A Mobile Loyalty Rewards Platform

YoungUpstarts

We previously highlighted around! , a mobile application built around the idea of location-based social buying and allows users to snap QR codes to unlock special privileges and “loyalty points” at partipating retailers and other outlets in Southeast Asia and Australia. It so happens that there’s a similar application for the U.S. market called Chatterfly.

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Why many smart people hit a plateau (and stay there)

Life Beyond Code

The magic number is 40. Yes, it is at the age of forty that many smart people realize that they are stuck. I am not saying that smart people don’t get stuck some other time but 40 is the age where I have heard about “getting stuck&# a lot more than other ages. I first wrote about this in my book “ Beyond Code &# (foreword by my hero Tom Peters , free download ) but it’s worth revisiting again.

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Disruptive Companies in Asset Management

David Teten

We recently hosted an idea dinner on “Disruptive Companies in the Asset Management Industry” The most attractive industries to disrupt are highly profitable ones, and asset management is traditionally a highly profitable industry. IMHO, the most successful disrupters in this area to date have been Vanguard (who popularized index funds) and the ETF industry.

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How Much is Your Million Dollar Idea Really Worth?

Startup Professionals Musings

A popular approach for aspiring entrepreneurs these days seems to be to corner anyone who will listen, with a pitch on their current “million dollar idea.” The initial monologue usually ends with the question “How much money do you think this is worth?” In my humble opinion, ideas are a commodity, and are really not worth much, outside the context of a visionary leader and a plan.

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Asian Exporters Drive e-Commerce Growth: eBay

YoungUpstarts

We’ve always known anecdotally that Singaporeans spent a lot of time – and money – on e-commerce, buying a whole range of goods from fashion to jewelry. But what most don’t realize is that Singaporeans actually sell plenty of goods online as well. According to the first-ever Asian Exporters’ Index launched by online auction and shopping platform eBay , Singapore-based exporters on the site have the second largest sales in Southeast Asia after Thailand.

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Reinvent Vacations For a Global Mobile Era

Feld Thoughts

Rosabeth Moss Kanter has an excellent post up on the HBR Blog titled Should Leaders Go on Vacation? Recently, I’ve seen plenty of commentary in the popular press (especially Fox News articles) about the inappropriateness of leaders taking vacation. Kanter does a nice job of dissecting the dynamics around leaders going on vacation and suggests the leader address five questions in the context of the vacation.

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And now for something a little different: First Round portfolio company chloe + isabel launches [#frc]

This is going to be BIG.

Tweet. Last August, Chantel Waterbury walked into First Round's New York City office and told me all about jewelry, empowering women entrepreneurs in the fashion space, and what it means to design inspiring accessories. She expounded on the completely missed opportunity to combine offline and online direct selling into a singular complementary vision.

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Every Entrepreneur Needs to Embrace Team Conflict

Startup Professionals Musings

Many entrepreneurs are not prepared for conflict, or actively avoid it. Their vision, passion, and focus are so strong that they can’t imagine someone disagreeing, much less fighting them to the death. But the reality is that startups are composed of smart people, with emotions as well as intellects, working in close proximity under much pressure, so conflicts will occur.

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Divalicious Puts A Shopping Mall In Your Hand

YoungUpstarts

If you can’t enough of shopping, there are always online shopping sites to get your fix. But if even those cannot satisfy you, you may want to look at Divalicious , a mobile application that aims to put a full shopping mall experience in your hand for shopping on-the-go. Through the app, you get access to close to a million items of clothing, shoes and beauty products from over 300 retailers.

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The Lean Startup Amazing Deal Bundle

Feld Thoughts

Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals , we’ve got another great offering from our friends at Udemy. For $49 you can get The Lean Startup, The Lean Startup Ignite, and The Lean Startup SXSW by Eric Reis. These three courses contain over 9 hours of content and 60 talks from people like Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Steve Blank, Hiten Shah and many more.

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