A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
My fingers trembled as I fed page 34 of 72 into the fax machine, deftly pressing the head of each page into its creaky jaws so that this shitty cheap-o machine wouldn’t snag two pages at once, slantways, obscuring the precious scribblings adorning the footer of each page where it read: “Seller’s Initials: _” This is what the last six years were all for.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 23, 2013
My friend Ron Ashkenas interviewed me for his blog on the Harvard Business Review. Ron is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting , and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective. For what I had thought were a few simple ideas about taking what we’ve learned about startups and applying it to corporate innovation, the post
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YoungUpstarts
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
If you’re a small business owner and you’re looking to contract a certain type of service, the tendency is to go online and Google for relevant service providers. You may also decide to trawl relevant forums to see what kind of reviews and feedback have been provided by other business owners who have used the service. But that takes time.
Startup Lessons Learned
FEBRUARY 23, 2013
Lean Startups require cross-functional teams working closely together. This is especially true when designing a great product. In this excerpt from the newest addition to the Lean Series , Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden discuss the idea of collaborative design -- an opening up of the product design process to all members of the team -- and why they feel this way of working produces not just better products but better teams as well.
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
Version One Ventures
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Guest post by Mischa Steiner-Jovic, founder and CEO of Awesense Wireless. You can follow him on Twitter. My skin thickens every time I hear a VC say “You’re building what? Why? You’re selling to whom?” or just a flat-out “that’s not a good idea.” Stepping outside the norm often elicits strong reactions and disbelief. Of course, there are quite a few No’s that go along with those reactions too.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
“What’s gone and what’s past help. Should be past grief.” William Shakespeare - The Winter’s Tale. We give abundant advice to founders about how to make startups succeed yet we offer few models about dealing with failure. So here’s mine. ——– In my experience, living through failure has 6 stages: Stage 1: Shock and Surprise.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Feld Thoughts
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
I don’t invest in movies. Unless a long time friend, like Rajat Bhargava, asks me to join him for fun in an investment. Several years ago Raj asked me to invest with him in a movie a cousin of his – Prashant Bhargava – was making called Patang. I wrote a modest check without thinking twice. The result of Prashant and the work of his team is a beautiful movie.
crowdSPRING Blog
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
In addition to a desktop computer at work and a laptop for home and on the road, I also own an iPhone 4s and an iPad 2. I am not a Road Warrior type – I travel perhaps 20 days per year – but do need to work when I am on the road and I am constantly on the lookout for ways to improve my productivity when away from the office. When I first got the a few years back, I had high hopes that it would allow me to leave the laptop at home when making trips of just a few days.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 23, 2013
'My friend Ron Ashkenas interviewed me for his blog on the Harvard Business Review. Ron is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting , and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective. For what I had thought were a few simple ideas about taking what we’ve learned about startups and applying it to corporate innovation, the pos
SiliconHills
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
BY ANDREW MOORE Reporter for Silicon Hills News How influential are online reviews? Have you used a review site such as Yelp to find a restaurant lately? If you have, you may be one of the 100 million people to use Yelp in January of 2013. Did you review that restaurant? I hope it was [.] The post Grapevine Alerts Businesses to Online Customer Reviews appeared first on SiliconHills.
Duct Tape Marketing
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
Today’s guest post is from Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Dan Kraus. – Enjoy! photo credit: jean-louis zimmermann via photopin cc. C O N T E N T. One little 7-letter word that makes marketers and business owners alike cringe a bit. We know we need new, fresh, content to attract prospects. The old world of outbound, hunt-down-a-prospect marketing isn’t working any more.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Marc Benioff has always been respectful of consumer tech pioneers. In my book, The New Polymath I quoted him saying “ We stand on the shoulders of giants like Jerry Yang [founder of Yahoo!], Pierre Omidyar [of eBay], Jeff Bezos.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
'“What’s gone and what’s past help. Should be past grief.” William Shakespeare - The Winter’s Tale. We give abundant advice to founders about how to make startups succeed yet we offer few models about dealing with failure. So here’s mine. ——– In my experience, living through failure has 6 stages: Stage 1: Shock and Surprise.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
Steve Jobs was one of those entrepreneurs who seemed universally either loved or hated, but not many will argue with his ability to innovate in the technology product arena over the years. He was instrumental in creating Apple, which has pioneered a dazzling array of new products, and even surpassed Microsoft, to become the world’s most valuable technology company.
Rob Go
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
Early stage companies are often refining their stories or narratives. It’s important for lots of reasons – inspiring team members, recruiting, creating focus, getting effective press, fundraising, etc. From a fundraising perspective, one of the challenges of telling one’s story is that as an early stage company, you are by definition very very small, but you are trying to convince an investor that you can be very very big.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
Dion Hinchcliffe talks about the growing shift of tech dollars to the CMO, and even more shrinking of the CIO’s role. Several reactions: a) Marketing is only the latest buying center to come to the attention of tech market watchers.
YoungUpstarts
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Being an industry-disrupting new company is always extremely challenging, and none more so if you’re looking at a highly-regulated one with just a small number of strong players like that of Singapore’s telecommunications industry. Largely dominated by SingTel , Starhub and M1 , these three telecommunications providers have a near stranglehold on mobile, broadband, and mobile broadband services in Singapore.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” What does traction really mean to investors, and how much is enough? Let me try to clarify the rules, and what it takes to win at this game. First of all, a definition. Traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model,
Agile VC
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Yesterday was Apple’s shareholder meeting and as many of you know, there’s obviously been healthy debate about what they should do with the ~$137 billion in cash they’re sitting on. I had read somewhere that Apple’s cash pile was equivalent to Hungary’s GDP so I tweeted out the suggestion that perhaps an activist shareholder should push an acquisition of Hungary rather than thinking small (e.g. increasing dividends or issuing preferred stock).
deal architect
MARCH 1, 2013
Michael Lewis was describing how controversial his book, Moneyball, was when it first came out in 2003. Baseball coaches and scouts didn’t need no stinkin’ analytical rigor or new metrics. A decade later, as I attend the MIT Sloan Sports.
YoungUpstarts
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
by Maureen Francisco, author of “ It Takes Moxie “ The job search landscape continues to change every year. I would know: my current line of work forces me to be on the forefront of hiring and placing people into positions. If you are looking to switch careers or enter the workforce for the first time, here are the three steps to make sure opportunities come your way: 1.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
Go-to people get things done. As an entrepreneur, you need these people, and you need to be one, if you expect your startup to be successful. That may be easier said than done, since resumes do not tell the story, and without real nurturing, the best people won’t stay around long. To highlight how rare this breed is, Jeffrey Gandz of the Richard Ivey School of Business relates a quote from a new CEO in a large company, "I have more than 1000 people in my head office organization, 900 can te
Feld Thoughts
MARCH 1, 2013
I’ve had a shitty morning. After a really fun day yesterday in Waterloo at Communitech , which is really impressive, I woke up at 4:30am to make my 6:30am flight from Toronto to Chicago on my way to Little Rock, Arkansas where I’m speaking at the launch of Startup Arkansas. I was going to run the Little Rock Marathon on Sunday but I’m undertrained and – while I could get it done – decided I wasn’t ready to deal with the physical and emotional recovery cycle gi
deal architect
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
Nothing against Denzel or Bradley or Ang, but I hope Lincoln does especially well on Sunday night. Spielberg/Lewis and co. did a masterful job bringing out the President’s amazing knack of telling stories - to entertain, to diffuse tension, to.
YoungUpstarts
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Bryan Goode, CEO of Infratel. If 2013 is the year you decide to take the plunge and open up shop, keeping an eye on technology will be critical. Nationwide, small businesses are heading optimistically into 2013, with 54 percent expecting revenue to increase in the next 12 months and 31 percent planning to add headcount this year according to a recent Bank of America survey.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Entrepreneurship is not a job for the Lone Ranger. Every startup requires building and maintaining effective relationships with people, including partners, team members, customers, and investors. That means giving and asking for feedback, and learning from it, especially negative feedback. “Friction” is feedback mixed with emotion or drama, making it all the more difficult to sort out the value.
Rembrandt Communications
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Accomplish Your Goals With Less Stress It’s tax time, and if you are a small business owner, you are probably dealing with financial statements, legal payments and lots of paperwork. Even if you have a team of people to help you, this time of year can be overwhelming. After all, you have to make sure [.].
deal architect
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
It is on Fortune’s World’s Most Admired List. It is on Forbes Fast 25 Tech list. Its revenues grew 2.5 times through the deep recession. Things are peachy. So why has CEO Francisco D’Souza been tinkering with the company over.
YoungUpstarts
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
If you’re not aware, Pasedena, California-based online business search platform Bizshark ( www.bizshark.com ) has a business contact search platform that helps business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals, small businesses, freelancers, journalists and others who are looking for a way to create and manage business relationships. Bizshark has a database of around 40 million business contacts and more than 14 million company listings that are searchable by individual and company name as we
Feld Thoughts
FEBRUARY 23, 2013
The phrase “work-life balance” is a vexing one. Some people think it is impossible. Others strive for it. Many entrepreneurs, and pundits about entrepreneurship, reject it as impossible. Others believe that figuring out how to balance work and life is a sign of a more enlightened entrepreneurial perspective. In Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur Amy and I talk about many of the tactics we use to integrate work and life, which Amy loving refe
Mike Michalowicz
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
Advertising keeps getting more creative as time goes by. A newer type of advertising includes tattooing companies logos on your body as permanent ads. Below are some of the tattoo advertising examples I came across. Enjoy! 1. From The Neck Up. The worst part about this gutsy tattoo is the fact that only one of those websites still exists. 2. Geeks “R” Us.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
My jaw dropped a few times during Seth McFarlane’s MC of the Oscars. But I fact checked most of his snarks, and while he should have stayed away from many of the digs, they are based on incidents that actually.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 1, 2013
The financial industry may be (often wrongfully) accused of being one of the least innovative when it comes to the adoption and implementation of new technology, but that isn’t stopping those who believe they can help transform that sector. Just take Innotribe Startup Challenge for example. The year-round competition is targeted at emerging startup companies and innovators that look at transforming the financial services industry.
VC Cafe
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
If Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Quora, LinkedIn and HackerNews weren't sufficient for sharing links and professional thoughts, there's now a new kid on the block. What it says on the tin: "Quibb lets you share what you're reading for work. Use Quibb to post newsworthy articles, see what colleagues are reading, and discuss the day's industry news". But isn't it a social network for professionals. [[ This is a content summary only.
The Equity Kicker
MARCH 1, 2013
In the video embedded below freelance data scientist Marck Vaisman lists out what he describes as common pitfalls for big data projects that he listed in a chapter he wrote for an O’Reilly book published last year called the Bad Data Handbook. I think the list is better described as prerequisites for success, but either way, it’s a good list.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
on the innovation blog Essential Android Apps for Business Grand Central Station: a throwback to century old technologies Yves Behar – a serial designer The Big Data of Groundhog Day Google’s HR Analytical Rigor Innovating Innovation What your hotel knows.
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