Sat.Nov 02, 2013 - Fri.Nov 08, 2013

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The Code is your Enemy

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

'You’re a builder, a creator — whether a back-end programmer, a Linux hacker, a Javascript ninja, a UX magician, a designer. You make stuff. That’s great of course, because in a new startup everyone needs to be either making stuff or selling stuff — there’s no room for managers and executives and strategists. But this also produces a natural weakness , and when I look at what made me a successful entrepreneur — not just a great coder — it’s that I

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10 Tenets For Adapting To A Customer Culture Shift

Startup Professionals Musings

'I’m a very logical guy, so I still fondly remember when new solutions and technologies started trends on the basis of their logical strengths. In today’s world, it seems that emotion, not logic, sparks the new trends that become culture, and drives our devotion or disappointment in new products and brands. How does an entrepreneur best deal with that environment?

Customer 210
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Funding Computer Science Education In NY

Feld Thoughts

'Last week Fred and Joanne Wilson announced that they are helping create a $5m seed fund to invest in computer science education in the NYC public school system. A few weeks ago Fred sent me a note and asked if Amy and I would make a contribution from our foundation. We’d previously contributed to another project Fred and Joanne spearheaded for the Academy of Software Engineering last year.

New York 135
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Best Ways Small Businesses Can Save Money

YoungUpstarts

'by Jessica Oaks. If the recent news out of Washington, D.C. has taught us anything, it’s that staying under budget is essential. It’s natural for businesses, especially small businesses, to constantly seek ways to reduce costs in order to be profitable. It takes a combination of dedication and innovation to cut the fat and stay afloat in today’s economy.

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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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“I hired a developer on Elance to build my first iPhone app, this was my experience”

The Next Web

'This is a guest post by Mike Lemovitz which originally appeared on his blog. He lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters. He works in marketing for a large healthcare organization, and moonlights as a photographer, filmmaker, and entrepreneur. Learn more at [link]. Now that SantaDispatch is in the app store , I thought fellow entrepreneurs would be interested in what it was like to have an iPhone app developed through Elance.

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Twitter Link Roundup #201 – Small Business, Startups, Innovation, Social Media, Design, 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! Can you believe this is Roundup number 200!?!? Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

More Trending

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A New Way to Look at Competitors

Steve Blank

'Every startup I see invariably puts up a competitive analysis slide that plots performance on a X/Y graph with their company in the top right. The slide is a holdover from when existing companies launched products into crowded markets. Most of the time this graph is inappropriate for startups or existing companies creating new markets. Here’s what you need to do instead. ——-.

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6 ways to use technology to find your work-life balance

The Next Web

'Ilya Pozin is an entrepreneur, writer and investor. He is the founder of Open Me , a social greeting card company, and Ciplex , a digital marketing agency. He’s a columnist on entrepreneurship and marketing. As technology evolves, so do the cries against its impact on our personal lives To some, more apps means more time spent staring at a smartphone and less time spent with loved ones.

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PwC-Booz: The seven year itch

deal architect

'The recent PwC decision to acquire Booz took me back to younger days when I was an reluctant accountant at PW (the C came later after it merged with Coopers). I had little desire to do time in auditing or.

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Hummingbird and Hashtags: Keeping Your Google Plus Content Strategy Alive

Duct Tape Marketing

'Hummingbird and Hashtags: Keeping Your Google Plus Content Strategy Alive written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Lauren Hogan – Enjoy! Photo credit: misspixels. With Google’s recent Hummingbird update, anyone who does online marketing was forced to review & revamp their marketing strategy.

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How To Begin Using Social Media In Your Business

Startup Professionals Musings

'When my friend’s small business was struggling a while back, I suggested he add some social media marketing initiatives, and his answer was that he was “too busy.” His business has since closed, but his mindset is still out there. According to a study of 1700 CEOs last year, only 60% of companies today use social media for marketing, and only 12% of those feel that they are using it effectively.

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Why you should brag (just a little more) about your accomplishments

The Next Web

'Herbert Lui is the author of a free guide to building credibility online. This post was originally published on his Medium blog. You know people whose main gig appears to be self-promotion? The ones who talk a lot more than they actually do? If you’re anything like me, you despise bragging and try not to do too much of it yourself. Unfortunately, being a writer already inherently involves a lot of sharing of thoughts, so in a way I already feel like I talk too much.

B2B 144
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From process to product innovation

deal architect

'Talking to a CIO a few weeks ago, I was struck by the realism and humility of one of his comments “Innovation technology in our vernacular happens in the business. We (IT) have to earn our place in those projects.

Product 249
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Why I’ve switched to the iPad Air from the iPad Mini

Jeff Hilimire

'It was almost a year ago that I made the switch to the iPad Mini. I did that for the following reasons: It was perfect for the middle seat on an airplane (i.e. for crowded situations). And I was traveling. A lot. The non-retina screen didn’t bother me as much as I thought. Typing was better than on the bigger iPad (in portrait). Battery life was great.

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The Next Business Stage Requires Aggressive Growth

Startup Professionals Musings

'Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and Founders being replaced, to their chagrin.

Mezzanine 240
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Strategies for getting mobile-savvy shoppers back in retail stores

The Next Web

'Carin van Vuuren is Chief Marketing Officer of Usablenet , a global leader in mobile and multi-channel technology and a pioneer in mobile usability. She is an experienced marketer with a diverse background and over 15 years of experience in brand-building and strategic marketing communications. Today’s shoppers are increasingly mobile-savvy and comfortable with using multiple devices and screens in different ways to achieve their goals.

Mobile 136
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The Consumerization of Big Data

deal architect

'The Sunday night v Monday morning disconnect forced enterprises to adopt BYOD and web services – as the retina displays and mobile apps and other attractiveness of consumer tech contrasted with aging laptops and ugly enterprise systems. I get the.

Mobile 246
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Putting Twitter’s IPO in Perspective

Agile VC

'As many of you know, in the past I’ve done a series of posts deconstructing the S-1s of VC-backed internet startups going public. A few years ago this was sort of a novelty… not that many startups were going public and not that many bloggers or mainstream journalists took the time or had familiarity with combing these SEC filings. But now there’s a lot of info reported and a number of good, thorough analyses of S-1s as we enjoy a quiet but very real “boom” in the tech ec

IPO 194
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Startup Decisions Must Be Quick And Disciplined

Startup Professionals Musings

'Every so often a promising entrepreneur seems to freeze in the oncoming headlights and gets run over by his competition. Why is it that his idea which seemed so fundable only months ago fails to attract investors today? The team is the same. The company''s market is the same. The only change might be a visible new competitor, or another economy downturn, resulting in investors holding their money, and that makes all the difference.

Startup 226
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Using affiliate marketing and the Internet to boost your company’s revenue

The Next Web

'Rick Boerebach is a co-founder of ZEEF.com , a curated link directory built by passionate experts. He has a background in affiliate marketing and development and is a startup enthusiast in general. If your startup’s goal is to sell a product or service but you’re having a hard time with your revenue model, affiliate marketing might be the perfect match to give you that much-needed boost.

Affiliate 134
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After Mossberg and Pogue, who?

deal architect

'Walt Mossberg at the WSJ and David Pogue at The New York Times have created amazing personal brands over the last few years with their coverage of Apple and other consumer technologies. And in doing so, of course, helped the.

New York 220
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6 Reasons Your Startup Needs A Chief Marketing Officer

YoungUpstarts

'by Morgan Sims. Running a startup company takes blood, sweat, and tears. It could take years to build a solid foundation, with every step toward success feeling like a failure. Once you’ve planted your feet firmly on stable ground and have a clear sense of direction, though, you can start expanding your team and delegating tasks to other experienced professionals.

Marketing 191
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When A Startup Chooses IPO Most Founders Are Out

Startup Professionals Musings

'Many entrepreneurs still dream of “going public,” making billions of dollars, and playing with the big boys. They don’t realize that this option would likely be their worst nightmare, since it costs millions for the road show, usually dilutes your equity to a tiny fraction, and takes away all your entrepreneurial control. Consider the recent example of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

IPO 224
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The roles of designers and clients: How to avoid clashing over projects

The Next Web

'This post was originally published on the Thoughtbot blog. There has been a lot of talk about empathy with the end user in UX design over the last few years. The importance of understanding what type of product you are building and for whom you are doing it, what needs and knowledge the intended user group has. While this is important, and really hard to get to, there is another type of empathy, that is almost as important during the development of a product and that is the communication and

Design 133
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SMEs: Everything-as-a-service

deal architect

'You know SaaS, IaaS, PaaS are all penetrating larger enterprises but the spend is fragmented across several vendors, so you have to go down market to see the full reach of the as-a-service phenomenon Mike Monocello, editor-in-chief, Business Solutions magazine.

Cloud 210
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Creating Loyal Customers – A Different Perspective

YoungUpstarts

'by Bill McBean, author of “ The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows that You Don’t “ Every business owner knows that satisfying – and retaining – customers is as important as anything they do to achieve and maintain success. They, as well as most of their employees, understand that customers coming back time and time again translates into both business stability and job security.

Customer 180
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10 Common Startup Flaws Leading To An Early Demise

Gust

'Image via TheSocialRobot.com. Based on my experience as a mentor and an entrepreneur, if you fail on your first startup, you are about average. That’s not bad, but who wants to be average? Every young entrepreneur knows implicitly that startup success is a long hard road. Statistics show that the failure rate for new startups within the first 5 years is higher than 50 percent.

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Don’t get hit by the beer truck: Preparing for your startup’s worst case scenario

The Next Web

'David Hassell is the CEO of 15Five. This post was originally published on the 15Five blog. If there is one thing we can say for sure, it’s that life is unpredictable. No matter how much we try to control the outcome of our actions and the consequences of our choices, we are powerless to the unforeseen variables. Sometimes these variables help create a positive result, other times, we’re left shaking our heads in disbelief.

Startup 123
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Too much STEM education?

deal architect

'As technologists we like to hire engineers and technologists, and encourage our young to look at Science, Technology, Engineering and Math disciplines, but Christina Paxson, President of Brown U makes the case we may have tilted the world a little.

Engineer 207
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The Top Five Mistakes People Make When They Join A New Firm

YoungUpstarts

'by Thomas Moran, CEO of Addison Group. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This saying is never truer than when applied to a person starting a new job. While the thrill of landing a dream position can be exciting, joining a new company can also be quite overwhelming, and it can lead to awkward social interactions and overstepped boundaries.

Chicago 169
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Blogging Does Not Need to Be A Pain!

Rembrandt Communications

'Remove the stress and take advantage of this content strategy You know you need a blog. Your competitors have one, and you know it’s a great way to provide insights and valuable information to your target market. You actually wrote a few blog entries… several months ago. And then, well, other priorities just came up. […].

SEO 150
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Why dealing with underperforming employees is essential for your startup’s success

The Next Web

'Dan Finnigan is the CEO of Jobvite. He spent his career launching and growing Internet businesses with a focus on the recruitment market. Previously, Dan served as Senior Vice President of Yahoo! and General Manager of Yahoo! HotJobs, and was CEO of Smartpages.com (now Yellowpages.com). Dealing with an underperforming employee is never easy, especially in the case of a startup.

Employee 123
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Authors and Technology Executives

deal architect

'With the whole world going digital, it is fairly poignant that in the last couple of years we have seen dead-tree books which profile three of the technology industry’s most powerful executives – Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison.

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[Review] The Secrets Of My Success: The Story Of Boost Juice

YoungUpstarts

'If you’re a little of a health freak, you may have heard of Boost Juice , the international chain of juice bars with over 6000 employees and $160million in global sales that started from a humble little store in Adelaide, Australia. Founded by Janine Allis, Boost Juice was inspired by the juice bar fad that was sweeping across United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Australia 154
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Manage Customer Success to Reduce Churn

For Entrepreneurs

'The health of a SaaS business is directly tied to its ability to retain its customers and prevent churn. To do this, they have to ensure that their customers are happy. That means making sure they get the promised business benefits they signed up for. This blog post discusses how to measure customer happiness, and […].

Customer 168
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A Different Kind of Entrepreneurship Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

'This post was co-written by Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. We’ve just published the program for this year’s Lean Startup Conference , December 9 to 11 in San Francisco, and we can say without hesitation that it’s completely unlike any other entrepreneurship conference in existence. The difference matters, because while there are more than enough conferences aimed at startups—more of them every year it seems—so many of them look the same: a succession of

Lean 166