Sat.May 11, 2019 - Fri.May 17, 2019

article thumbnail

“Nail It Then Scale It” - The New Mantra For Startups

Startup Professionals Musings

Steve Blank via Flickr by jdlasica 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).

Startup 245
article thumbnail

Repeat Founders and the Risk of a False Positive

View from Seed

A number of blog posts recently have mentioned this, but we seem to be experiencing a rise in repeat founders starting new businesses and raising seed capital. We’re also seeing a wave of folks who were not founders, but were star players among the first 25 folks at a unicorn company also starting new companies. As a founder with that kind of experience, you are likely to find that a lot of the typical advice for startups on the internet isn’t quite applicable.

Founder 256
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Diversity And Discrimination: Is Your Workplace Getting It Right?

YoungUpstarts

From the largest corporations to small startups, diversity is a hot topic. Too often, though, employers are unprepared to support hires from all backgrounds, which is how we end up with superficially diverse workplaces that alienate women and minority employees. Whether it’s subconscious bias or actively discriminatory policies, as an employer, you need to be prepared to create an inclusive workplace because embracing diversity doesn’t stop with hiring.

article thumbnail

Empower Your Day With These 3 Simple Tips

Rembrandt Communications

Get Energized and Accomplish More! It’s Monday morning, and you really don’t want to get out of bed. You hit the snooze button a few times, and you are exhausted. Your chores, deadlines and responsibilities loom, and the blankets just seem softer and cozier than usual. Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to boost your energy and feel good again about pursuing your goals.

article thumbnail

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

article thumbnail

Creating Customers Who Are Loyal for Life

Duct Tape Marketing

Creating Customers Who Are Loyal for Life written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Sandy Rogers. Podcast Transcript. Today’s guest on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, is Sandy Rogers. He is managing director of FranklinCovey’s loyalty practice, where he guides businesses in the retail, healthcare, food service, financial services and lodging spaces through the process of creating lifelong customer loyalty.

article thumbnail

How to Navigate a Perceived Conflict of Interest for a Board

Board Effect

Everyone has a different sphere of influence and circle of friends. The wider your circle, the greater chance you have of being part of an actual or perceived conflict of interest. There are two ways that boards should be concerned about potential conflicts of interest. First, organizations can present a conflict of interest. Second, and more commonly, people can present a conflict of interest.

More Trending

article thumbnail

Empower Your Day With These 3 Simple Tips

Rembrandt Communications

Get Energized and Accomplish More! It’s Monday morning, and you really don’t want to get out of bed. You hit the snooze button a few times, and you are exhausted. Your chores, deadlines and responsibilities loom, and the blankets just seem softer and cozier than usual. Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to boost your energy and feel good again about pursuing your goals.

article thumbnail

How to Become a Digital Minimalist

Duct Tape Marketing

How to Become a Digital Minimalist written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Cal Newport. Podcast Transcript. Today on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I chat with computer scientist Cal Newport. He is a professor at Georgetown University and the author of several books including his latest, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.

article thumbnail

Why Should Boards Conduct Board Self-Assessments?

Board Effect

In a nutshell, boards should conduct board self-assessments because it’s considered a best practice. Whether it’s a public board, private board or nonprofit board, all board members are accountable to those they serve and it’s important for them to do the best job that they can during their board service. The nominating and governance committee is normally tasked with ensuring that boards complete their annual board self-assessments.

article thumbnail

My Secrets To Success For Leading As A Woman Entrepreneur In A Male-Dominated Industry

YoungUpstarts

by Rene Banglesdorf , author of “ Stand Up: How to Flourish When the Odds Are Stacked Against You “ Aviation has long been thought of as a male-dominated industry, and rightfully so. Pilots, air traffic controllers and grounds crew members have been and still are mostly positions held down by men. Even as you work your way up the ladder, men still significantly outnumber women even in the C suite of aviation.

article thumbnail

How to build a healthy sales pipeline

NZ Entrepreneur

“How’s business? How are sales?” These two questions give a quick pulse check on your current sales health. But the bigger question business owners really need to be asked is, “How’s your sales pipeline?” Why? Because your sales today are the result of the health of your sales pipeline last month. But your sales next month, next quarter or next year will be a reflection of the health of your pipeline today.

Sales 49
article thumbnail

Getting Salespeople and Prospects on the Same Side

Duct Tape Marketing

Getting Salespeople and Prospects on the Same Side written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Ian Altman. Podcast Transcript. On today’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, I visit with B2B strategic consultant and sales expert Ian Altman. Altman created, built, and sold his own business-services and technology companies over two decades.

B2B 57
article thumbnail

6 Keys To Making Timely Changes To Save Your Business

Startup Professionals Musings

Image via Wikipedia Change is about the only thing constant in the world of startups. Despite their own focus on changing the world, they often forget that they too have to change rapidly and often as the market evolves. Too many find that out too late, and are left chasing a rabbit that is long gone. The solution is to establish and maintain a culture and processes that don’t view change as a discrete event to be spotted and managed, but as an ongoing opportunity to improve competitiveness.

Agile 235
article thumbnail

Here’s What Startups Really Need To Focus On During The Website Development Phase

YoungUpstarts

For startups and their founding teams, it’s easy to spend too much time designing a website, yet not enough getting the developmental side of things right. If you want your startup to have a solid footing in a digital marketplace, this has to change. Acing the Developmental Side of Startup Website Design. Building out a website for your startup is one of the first steps you take toward moving from “idea” to “actual business.

article thumbnail

FinCEN Weighs In

thebarefootvc

Greetings from the very beginning of NYC Blockchain Week. This is where it all started just two years ago, when ETH and BTC prices began their meteoric rise in 2017, soon to be followed by the ICO boom and bust. The feeling is less frothy and more realistic, but just as exciting in my opinion. We’ve already lived through a major cycle in these past two years, and the energy I see reflects the building that’s been happening over the past year.

SEC 40
article thumbnail

Slack S-1: Will ARPU Drive Long Term Value?

View from Seed

Slack dropped their S-1 a couple weeks ago. Even before that, we all knew that it was among the most rapidly growing SaaS companies in recent years and a product used (and loved) by millions of people. But now we have a chance to really dig in and understand Slack’s business a bit better. I have friends who are execs or shareholders of the company, but I have no stake in Slack nor intent to invest in the IPO.

Retention 168
article thumbnail

5 Exciting Technologies That Need Your Execution Help

Startup Professionals Musings

DNA image via Wikipedia As a business advisor and technologist, I often think about the large array of opportunities for entrepreneurs as technology seems to be evolving faster and faster. Yet I still too often hear the question, “Can you give me a really sure-fire idea for starting my own business?” My standard answer is that ideas are a dime a dozen, and success is all about smart execution, not ideas.

article thumbnail

How To Find Your Employees’ Location By Phone Number

YoungUpstarts

If you run a busy company or have a marketing team out in the field, you might want to have access to their cell phones to keep track of their location or make sure that they are not spending valuable time doing other activities that are not work-related. Another reason why it may be critical to monitor their phones is that they could be leaking company secrets to the competition or other criminals.

Employee 100
article thumbnail

The Role of IT or an IT Consultant Provider for Business Growth

ReadWriteStart

A good IT support and a robust business run hand at hand. allow us to take a glance at few major points that show an IT consultancy services and businesses to deliver results that define the success of your business. So, what role is IT consultancy for your business growth? 1. Information Management: A business […]. The post The Role of IT or an IT Consultant Provider for Business Growth appeared first on ReadWrite.

article thumbnail

Friday Fun-ism: “Time Kills All Deals”

View from Seed

This week’s Friday Fun-ism goes hand-in-hand with a previous, “ It moves slow until it moves fast.” The venture fundraising process for founders has a certain rhythm to it, and so a lot can be read into the timing and pacing of the conversations. How quickly & intensely the communications & responses are moving between parties signals a lot about the interest-level and commitment towards progressing towards a finalized agreement.

article thumbnail

5 Steps To A Winning Assault On The Army Of Investors

Startup Professionals Musings

Image via Flickr by lumaxart Don’t charge the hill until you are “ready.” This probably seems obvious to military types, but I see entrepreneurs violating this rule all the time. They approach key potential investors way too early, trying to talk their way up the hill, with no supporting business plan, and before they have a support team around them.

article thumbnail

[Interview] Bill Treasurer, Author Of ‘Courage Goes To Work’

YoungUpstarts

Tired of managing “com fear table” employees — workers who are either too comfortable or too fearful to do things differently? Meet Bill Treasurer. A workplace expert specializing in courage-building, Treasurer is on a mission to help entrepreneurs and small businesses create a more courageous workforce that delivers results. For the tenth-anniversary edition of his trailblazing book, “ Courage Goes to Work: How to Build Backbones, Boost Performance, and Get Results “, we sat down wi

article thumbnail

How These Apps Will Make You A Better Photographer

ReadWriteStart

We cannot argue that the photography world is in an exciting place right now. The new tech trends in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are being developed and implemented at an unprecedented rate. Even Facebook tried to downplay the incident in June 2017 — reported August 2017 — when their AI bots invented their own language […].

article thumbnail

Slack S-1: Will APRU Drive Long Term Value?

Agile VC

Reading Time: 6 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. Slack dropped their S-1 a couple weeks ago. Even before that, we all knew that it was among the most rapidly growing SaaS companies in recent years and a product used (and loved) by millions of people. But now we have a chance to really dig in and understand Slack’s business a bit better.

Retention 100
article thumbnail

6 Ways To Prepare Your Company For The Future Of Work

Startup Professionals Musings

Image via Pixabay It’s time to take the drudgery and dread out of work at your business. You don’t like it, millennials won’t put up with it, and current productivity levels at work continue to decline. Only 32 percent of American workers are even engaged at work today. Most workers are still rushing to retirement, where they hope to escape to more stimulating activities with a real sense of accomplishment.

Matching 196
article thumbnail

5 Risks Of Buying A Business And Profiting Off The Opportunities They Create

YoungUpstarts

by LJ Suzuki of CFOshare. Why start from scratch when you can get a great deal on what someone else started? In today’s sexy startup culture, buying an existing business has lost its vogue. But every year thousands of entrepreneurs become millionaires by buying and growing businesses without the startup headaches of venture capitalists, zero revenue, and no business processes.

article thumbnail

SKU Graduates 7 Consumer Goods Startups

SiliconHills

Startup activity for the consumer packed goods industry in Austin is booming. That was evident as the seventh cohort of the SKU Accelerator did their pitches for Demo Day at Native Hostel Tuesday night. It was a standing room only crowd as Bhoomi Cane Water, Grocery Pup, LAMIK, Pure Active CBD, MODEQ, PickleSmash and YVY […]. The post SKU Graduates 7 Consumer Goods Startups appeared first on SiliconHills.

Startup 120
article thumbnail

University of Michigan Joins the Global EIR Network

Feld Thoughts

I’ve been working on the Startup Visa since I first wrote about it 2009 in my post The Founders Visa Movement. After a decade, it’s clear that our federal government has broadly failed us on this front. In 2015, I announced the Global EIR initiative to try something different. Today, I’m happy to welcome the University of Michigan to the Global EIR network.

Michigan 108
article thumbnail

How to Find Beta Testers to Validate Your Business Idea

Up and Running

You’ve got a business idea that’s been burning at the back of your mind for months, and it’s finally time to do something about it. The concept gets you excited—the butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms kind of excited, and you know that people are going to love it. But how do you really know that it’s going to be a hit? How do you know that people will get as excited as you do about it?

Audience 110
article thumbnail

My Secret Weapon For AI Investing Revealed

YoungUpstarts

by Alex Bates, Managing Director at Neocortex Ventures. “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”. “Your network is your net worth.”. However you phrase it, the truism holds for everyone: the people you associate with on a regular basis play a major role in helping you solve problems and meet goals. It only stands to reason that you want close friends and trusted experts in your corner every time you go up against the unknown.

article thumbnail

MassChallenge Texas Selects 74 Startups for its Austin Accelerator

SiliconHills

MassChallenge Texas announced it has accepted 74 startups into its latest program in Austin which kicks off in June. The startups hail from five countries, 14 states and five industries, said Mike Millard, managing director of MassChallenge Texas. The largest industry represented is high tech which comprises 42 percent of the startups, followed by general […].

Texas 119
article thumbnail

How to land new clients for your startup business

The Startup Magazine

Starting up your own business venture is never easy. But it is one of the most rewarding career moves you can ever do in your life. Having a good idea is one of the most important steps towards a successful business plan, as originality is always rewarded in the competitive, modern marketplace. However, this is not enough to make sure you are making profits and growing your business for the better.

article thumbnail

10 Empowering Quotes From Successful Mompreneurs

YFS Magazine

Consider these powerful words from successful female business owners who balance the role of mom and the role of entrepreneur.

article thumbnail

The Importance Of LinkedIn For The Marketing Of Your Company

YoungUpstarts

There are companies and professionals who continue to question their presence in the largest social network of professionals … Because they do not know how to use LinkedIn. And the fact that it is the largest professional network in the world seems not to be enough: more than 365 million professionals worldwide have their profile on LinkedIn and more than 7 million companies have their company page on Linkedin.

article thumbnail

A s Are Sometimes OK, But I Can’t Stand Weathervanes or Grin F **s

Hunter Walker

“Ugh, he’s such an a **e,” a friend sighed to me about a mutual acquaintance. I shrugged, and proceeded to explain my complicated relationship with some folks who I know are a s, or selfish, or blowhards, or any other combination of qualities that can be disqualifying. “Yeah, but he’s consistently an a **e,” I replied, “so you know what you’re getting and he knows he’s an a **e.” I’ve historically had a bit of tolerance for people

Product 97
article thumbnail

7 Things To Know About Running Your Business

The Startup Magazine

Thinking of starting a business or already up and running? There’s much to learn and know about running a business, and the effectiveness of how it’s run will determine whether it survives – not just whether your product or service meets a need in the marketplace. Photo by Gabriel Santos Fotografia from Pexels. It’s a tragedy if an otherwise potentially successful business fails due to being poorly run.