Sat.Jul 30, 2011 - Fri.Aug 05, 2011

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32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder

SoCal CTO

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. I tend to ask a lot of questions, challenge aspects, make suggestions. But I've often been very surprised by one aspect of these conversations. Many of these founders have talked with several developers or development firms about their plans.

Developer 396
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You Won’t Find Startup Funding From These Sources

Startup Professionals Musings

Some aspiring entrepreneurs are so desperate for funding, or naïve, that they ignore the obvious signs of scams and rip-offs on the Internet, praying for a windfall. One would think that with all the sad stories and tools published over the past twenty years, this problem would be behind us. But people are still begging for more technology or laws, often to protect them from themselves.

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10 Old Brands That Managed To Stay Modern

YoungUpstarts

You might have more in common with your great-grandparents than that receding hairline or cleft chin; some of your favorite brands might have been used by your predecessors, even as early as the Civil War. And while your elders may not be transitioning into the digital age with ease (or at all), several of America’s oldest brands have thrived through multiple technology changes.

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Progress On The Startup Visa Movement

Feld Thoughts

Yesterday there was solid progress on the Startup Visa Movement – specifically making it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to start their companies in the US. The WSJ had a good summary article titled U.S. to Assist Immigrant Job Creators that discusses two formal communications from the Obama administration. Press release from the Department of Homeland Security titled Secretary Napolitano Announces Initiatives to Promote Startup Enterprises and Spur Job Creation.

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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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32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder

SoCal CTO

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. I tend to ask a lot of questions, challenge aspects, make suggestions. But I've often been very surprised by one aspect of these conversations. Many of these founders have talked with several developers or development firms about their plans.

Developer 384
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9 Web Resources To Help You Accomplish Your Goals Faster

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

In this post I will share with you some of my favorite resources on the web that I keep in my bookmark. They range from inspiration to graphics, content to money. As an online entrepreneur, I am constantly working on web projects. I am not just delegating but working in the trenches, honing the design, optimizing conversion, testing usability and adding functionality.

Web 81

More Trending

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Cracking The Code: In search of Europe's next tech stars.

Cracking the Code

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Wednesday, August 03, 2011. In search of Europes next tech stars. A short interview on Bloomberg about where I see venture opportunities in Europe. Posted by Philippe Botteri. at 11:03 AM. 2 comments: Best hosting company for small business. said.

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Small Business Spotlight of the Week: PagPresente

crowdSPRING Blog

This week, our small business spotlight comes to us all the way from Brazil (quick shout out to our team of Brazilian software engineers, Jonas and Adriano!). Most of us have probably thought at least once in our lives after receiving a less than desirable gift, “Wow, I wish I had just received money.” It may not be admirable to admit, but it’s pretty universal.

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How To Up The Antics And Go Viral With Your Next Publicity Campaign

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

In my previous posts I introduced the concept of publicity stunts , and because this is a concept that has worked extraordinarily well for some companies and individuals, I thought I would discuss the concept further in depth. Make sure you check out my previous posts first to get an understanding of publicity and publicity stunts: Is All Publicity Good Publicity?

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How Tech People Can Make a Difference in the Lives of Under-Privileged Children

Both Sides of the Table

I’d like to start by asking each of you to consider helping under-privileged children in America get a little bit more than they have today. Sure, you can give a small amount of money. Even $10. Please. It’s better than zero. You can combine that with supporting Fred & Joanne Wilson. (if you click no other links on theis site click that one).

America 295
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Lottery Avoidance: Have a Real Asset

Andrew Payne

If you’re one of the five people that read this blog, you know I’ve become negative on many pure-software/Internet/mobile entrepreneurial projects. Low barriers to entry create a competitive, weedy ecosystem that becomes a lottery for many entrepreneurs. (Investors have a slightly different situation: they can pick break-out winners from a field of options, where entrepreneurs have to start from zero).

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Bonfire of the Vanities

Steve Blank

When I was in my 20’s, I was taught the relationship between marketing and sales over a bonfire. — Over thirty years ago, before the arrival of the personal computer, there were desktop computers called office workstations. Designed around the first generation of microprocessors, these computers ran business applications like word processing, spreadsheets, and accounting.

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Six Ways Corporations Can Kill Your Startup Dream

Startup Professionals Musings

I hear many executives and professionals in large corporations talking about their dream of jumping ship, and starting their own company. What they don’t realize is that the longer they wait, the more big-company habits they are acquiring, which will make their eventual decision harder and entrepreneurial efforts less and less likely to succeed. Certainly, the longer they wait, the greater the variety of excuses they will find for why now is not the time.

Startup 258
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Discount to HR Tech Conference

deal architect

Good friend Bill Kutik is again offering a nice discount to readers of this blog to the 14th annual HR Technology Conference ,this year for a change in Las Vegas starting October 2- easily the best HR software and best.

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ThriftyComputers.com – A Lesson In Overcoming Obstacles

YoungUpstarts

Elchonon Hellinger has tasted the bitter tears of failure. Hellinger, who founded Miami, Florida-based ThriftyComputer ( ThriftyComputer.com ) at the age of 19, saw that business crash and burn in early 2009 from inexperience. “It was a very dreadful cycle of lack of cash, upset customers, (and the) company not functioning right,&# Hellinger revealed.

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Marketing Research Ideas for Small Businesses

entrepreMusings

Following is a guest post by Taylor Laurents, a twenty something freelance writer from Lincoln, NE. She was bitten early by the entrepreneurial bug, selling Girl Scout cookies like many young girls, and hopes one day to run her own business and be her own boss. Those of us with big business ideas operating on small budgets don’t exactly have the bankroll it takes to recruit a talented market research team to help us.

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Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the toughest challenges of an entrepreneur in building a startup is the fact that there are so many things that you don’t know how to do, or don’t like to do. Things like raising money, building a business plan, or hiring and firing people. These aren’t fun, especially for a visionary. That’s when the curse of procrastination steps in. The result is that certain things just never seem to get done.

Hiring 257
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Government and IT: A recipe for rip-offs

deal architect

That’s the title of a report by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) of the UK House of Commons. It says “The Government's over-reliance on large contractors for its IT needs combined with a lack of in-house skills is a.

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Edelman Launches Social Influence Measurement Tools BlogLevel and TweetLevel

YoungUpstarts

Edelman , one of the world’s leading public relations firms, recently launched two free online tools to help you measure your social influence: TweetLevel calculates influence on Twitter , while BlogLevel gauges how impactful a blog is. Both these tools use a proprietary algorithm consisting of 40 different metrics, to track and score bloggers and tweeters – in any language and country – according to their influence.

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Link Post (weekly)

Venture Chronicles

Number of Corporate Social Media Accounts On Rise: Risk of “Social Media Help Desk” « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing. tags: blog socialCRM. SuperNova Awards | Constellation Research. tags: blog. Designers, apply for a boarding pass — Shipment Beta. tags: blog. Nice timing: Facebook debuts “Facebook for Business” — Tech News and Analysis. tags: blog facebook.

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Have You Created a Citadel for Your Startup?

Startup Professionals Musings

By Bob La Loggia, CEO StormSource Software Business is often compared to war and waging battle with enemies. Indeed, Sun Tzu’s “ The Art of War ” is one of the most popular business books ever written, and it was originally written as a military strategy guide. Battle terminology has been a mainstay in the business lexicon for decades. The list of war references used in business is almost endless, from “gathering the troops” to “losing a battle but winning the war.

Startup 238
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Verizons repeated miscues with the iPhone

deal architect

Its unlimited iPhone data plan was a differentiator from AT&T, but it could not resist moving to tiered plans. Why? Ostensibly because smartphone users are “data hogs”. Well, here is a reality check from Consumer Reports “…the median Verizon smart.

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Must-Have Tips To Help Small Businesses Utilize Social Media

YoungUpstarts

by Jerry Nettuno, founder/CEO/ chairman of Schedulicity. Having a credible social media presence is paramount for small business owners and service providers looking to build credibility in their field. As a company that has revolutionized the online appointment scheduling industry, Schedulicity understands the importance of having a strong web presence and how it can translate into a successful business.

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Public Service Announcement For Entrepreneurs: Ignore the Dow

Feld Thoughts

Today is Finance Friday and post #2 has been drafted by the Finance Friday team from University of Chicago Booth and is waiting for my edits. I’m procrastinating so I thought I’d write one of my periodic public service announcement for entrepreneurs. This one is more specific than “ignore the macro economy&# – instead, it’s “ignore the Dow and the stock market and get back to work on your business.&#.

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Research and Development are Investor Red Flags

Startup Professionals Musings

I still get business plans, looking for an investor, that say all too clearly that the first goal of the new business is to do research and development (R&D) on some promising new technology, like superconductivity or cancer research. Investors are looking for commercial products to make money, rather than R&D sunk costs, so your investment hopes are sunk as well.

Developer 233
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The future of work at Foxconn

deal architect

It can take credit for having assembled over 200 million iOS devices for Apple, and countless others for just about every major device and hardware manufacturer, but Foxconn has also taken its share of criticism for various suicides and explosions.

Global 186
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Avoiding Consensus Overload: Seven Tips To Help Leaders Make Thoughtful, Yet Rapid Key Decisions

YoungUpstarts

by Michael Feuer, author of “ The Benevolent Dictator “. Often, the biggest roadblock to execution at companies is consensus. Leaders spend valuable time and money trying to get everyone on board with a decision, and end up stalled in a state of extended debate — a.k.a. analysis paralysis. But in today’s business environment, it’s those who can make speedy (yet thoughtful) decisions — sometimes in hours, days, and weeks instead of months — who not only survive, but excel.

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SEO Keywords, SEO Keywords – Is your Copy Stuffed?

Rembrandt Communications

Woo Hoo! You are finally done with your search engine optimization (SEO) research and have a great list of keywords to use in your copy. You add all of your coding to your Website and write all of your online copy. Then, you wait to see your site traffic increase… and you wait… and you [.].

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Be The First Mover

Feld Thoughts

Recently I wrote a post titled Competition where I listed out a set of topics that summarizes my philosophy around competition. I’m involved in a lot of companies, many of which are either the market leader in their segment, fighting head to head with a few other companies for clear market leadership, going after an existing incumbent, or creating a new segment entirely.

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More Innovation

deal architect

On the New Florence blog Space Shuttle spinoffs for every day life S. Korea’s plans for paperless schools Icecream from flowers Bayes’ rule.

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Managing Success

YoungUpstarts

by Thom Holland , CEO of Beckon. Often times, as entrepreneurs, we continually think of ways to make our businesses work better. We tend to fine tune the ability to identify potential challenges and mange them in a way that gives us the upper hand. Most of these challenges have a negative connotation and tend to be correlated to “failure” rather than “success”.

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Stormannsgalskap: The Madness of Great Men ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Stormannsgalskap: The Madness of Great Men. August 2, 2011. I was reading a column in the Economist the other day in which I learned a new word… stormannsgalskap. It’s Norweigan. I don’t know a lick of Norweigan but my understanding is that it roughly translates to “the madness of great men” [or women].

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TechStars Show On Bloomberg TV

Feld Thoughts

Ever since David Cohen and I started talking about TechStars in 2006, one of our goals was to be open about everything we did in the program. We viewed TechStars as an experiment in building companies, creating entrepreneurial communities, teaching people (and learning ourselves) about entrepreneurship and what’s required to create a high growth company, and working hard at perfecting a vision David had which we now call a “mentor-driven accelerator&#.

New York 135
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More New Florence

deal architect

on the innovation blog Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Wave Powered Ships 3M’s Periodic Table Crowdsourcing Legal Advice.

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Six Ways To An Effective Team Meeting

YoungUpstarts

by Lior Levin. Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Every business manager wants to ensure that his team performs. In order to ensure performance, team meetings need to be effective. But what does this actually mean? In management, the word “effective” simply means to obtain a desired effect or outcome by getting your team to do the right things first hand.

New York 167
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Eureka! National Science Foundation's I-Corps Trains a New Generation of Scientists in Business

ReadWriteStart

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. It wasn't pure research, but rather a culture of taking sufficient risks to get products to market through learning, discovery, iteration and execution. This approach would shape Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money).