Sat.Apr 02, 2016 - Fri.Apr 08, 2016

article thumbnail

True Grit: It’s Not Just Founders We Should Celebrate

View from Seed

This is a story from the Traction community. There are few things in this world that human beings value more than stability. For better or for worse, we get most comfortable as we fall into a consistent routine. There are no surprises, no one gets blindsided—when everything goes the same each and every day, the ecosystem remains in a comfortable equilibrium.

Founder 131
article thumbnail

My Advice To Entrepreneurs: Consider Canada For Your Startup

YoungUpstarts

Photo credit: Canada flag from Shutterstock. By Raj Narayanaswamy, cofounder and Co-CEO, Replicon. For aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s hard to resist the allure of Silicon Valley. The access to some of the world’s brightest minds in technology, the proximity to some of the industry’s most influential brands, and the vast networking opportunities in both start-up and investor communities is hard to ignore.

Canada 105
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

10 Shortcuts To Startup Success I Don’t Recommend

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur I know has their favorite excuse for a previous failure – an investor backed out, the economy took a downturn, or a supplier delivered bad quality. These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and angel investor, I still see too many shortcuts leading to failure that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm.

article thumbnail

Managing Up

OnlyOnce

(The following post was written by one of Return Path’s long-time senior managers, Chris Borgia , who runs one of our data science teams and has run other support organizations in the past, both at Return Path and at AOL. I don’t usually run guest posts, but I loved the topic with Chris suggested it, and it’s a topic that I’d only have a limited perspective on!).

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

15 Entrepreneurs Explain How They Came Up With Their Business Name

Hearpreneur

Share The idea of exactly what your business is going to be usually comes first. Secondly, most often, is giving a title to your idea. What exactly is going to be the name of your business? Some people turn to their childhood for inspiration or a beloved family pet. It could be a made up word you dream of one night and feel it has the right ring to it.

Naming 66
article thumbnail

A Crash Course In Startup Labs: What Every Tech Entrepreneur Needs To Know

YoungUpstarts

By Konstantine Sukherman, CEO of Bit Olive Ventures. One of a startup’s biggest problems is its rocky ascent to success. With countless roadblocks along the way, it’s not uncommon for a startup to falter to the point of folding before it has ever reached even the simplest of business goals. The rub is that a startup likely has the ideas to take it straight to the top, but it’s also likely that the company lacks the business skills to make it truly successful.

More Trending

article thumbnail

Four Things to Do Before Emailing an Influencer

Duct Tape Marketing

Four Things to Do Before Emailing an Influencer written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Pixabay. It’s a common scenario: you find an influencer on social media, and you want to contact them for a project. Maybe you think they would make a great guest blogger, or you just want to feature their story on your site. But is it time for a cold email yet?

Email 39
article thumbnail

5 Elements Of Success Every Startup Should Celebrate

Startup Professionals Musings

Many experts are certain that successful entrepreneurs are the ones with the most inspiration (passion and dream), while others will assert that it’s about more perspiration (working harder). In my experience, both are always required in heavy doses. There are no “can’t fail” shortcuts or “get rich quick” scenarios. That’s why all those so-called million dollar ideas I hear about as an investor don’t get me excited, and entrepreneurs find that working twenty hours a day often generates nothing m

article thumbnail

5 Ways To Promote A Safe Startup Environment

YoungUpstarts

As the owner of a startup, health and safety probably aren’t the first things on your mind. After all, you’re busy building a company from the ground up! You’re meeting investors and keeping the company ticking over. There are hundreds of other things to consider and thousands of decisions to make. Health and safety hardly seems like an issue when you’re working with just a small group.

Startup 102
article thumbnail

S/4HANAthe anti R/3

deal architect

I recently heard from the Price Waterhouse partner who was instrumental in our moving to Tampa in 1990. It was nice to catch up and it took me down memory lane. In many ways, my group was at the epicenter.

Tampa 174
article thumbnail

WordPress Plays a Key Role in Improving Reviews and Ratings

Duct Tape Marketing

WordPress Plays a Key Role in Improving Reviews and Ratings written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. photo credit: Pixabay. Blogging is a great way to let your inner author awaken. The best part about blogging is that you don’t have to stick to a set of topics or even a theme. Even if you own a food blog, you can create a post or two about travelling.

article thumbnail

Hacking for Defense (H4D) @ Stanford – Week 1

Steve Blank

We just had our first Hacking for Defense class and the 8 teams have hit the ground running. They talked to 86 customers/stakeholders before the class started. (Because of the embedded presentations this post is best viewed on the website.). Hacking for Defense is a new class in Stanford’s School Engineering, where students learn about the nation’s security challenges by working with innovators inside the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community.

Lean 141
article thumbnail

Bootstrapping Is Much More Fun Than Investors

Startup Professionals Musings

If you really want to start a business your way without a boss or professional investor hovering over you, then just fund it yourself or through friends and family, and grow it organically. It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. According to many experts , over 90 percent of successful businesses currently start this way.

article thumbnail

Interview with Malcolm Frank of Cognizant: Davos and Digital

deal architect

Malcolm Frank is, in my opinion, the best "analyst" on the outsourcing sector. He is not an analyst per se, but as EVP of Strategy and Marketing at Cognizant, he has a ringside view of trends in the sector. I.

Marketing 174
article thumbnail

Global Access To Your Content Marketing eCourse!

Brandanew

Last week, we hit a small technical glitch, which left us distraught (it was quite a bummer, you’re right). Globally many of you could not make easy payments and we’re so sorry for that experience. But now we have good news, wooHoo! To help all of us get full access to our Content Marketing for Beginners eCourse , we’ve now fully recorded the course, created all the course material AND made it available for everyone globally.

Global 136
article thumbnail

Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 27: Brandon Bruce and Jack Sundell

Steve Blank

When your customers are grabbing your Minimal Viable Product out of your hands, it’s time to launch the product. The latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere explained why. The radio show airs on SiriusXM Channel 111 (weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). It follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more.

Cofounder 136
article thumbnail

6 Key Risk Factors When Scaling A Business To Global

Startup Professionals Musings

With the availability of high-speed Internet and social media access around the world, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to assume that the world is just one big homogeneous market, and project their business will scale accordingly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Large businesses, as well as small, still fail often by not addressing the very real cultural, economic and political differences.

Global 135
article thumbnail

Infor: an inflection point in the software market

deal architect

Just before I had flown up to New York for the Infor Innovation Summit, I had interviewed Malcolm Frank, EVP of Strategy at Cognizant about trends he is seeing in the outsourcing and software markets. Malcolm talked about what he.

Software 174
article thumbnail

Good Morning! Stay ‘In the Zone’ All Day Long!

YoungUpstarts

by Regan Hillyer, author of “ Be Your Brand: From Unknown To Unforgettable “ Everyone has a morning routine. The question is, how effective is yours? Are you accomplishing the goals you want to reach? Are you filled with energy and vitality as you move through your day? Do you have the things you say you want, or do you find yourself falling into habits of procrastination, posting pictures on social media, and getting distracted by other people’s demands?

Europe 131
article thumbnail

The Team Slide: You Had Me At Hello

For Entrepreneurs

This is part of our series “Pitching to Investors” that shares real examples and practical advice from the Matrix General Partners on creating your pitch deck. See intro to the series here: Five Ways to Nail Your Pitch and Win Over Investors. Our goal in this series is to help entrepreneurs nail their pitch so.

Partner 112
article thumbnail

8 Leadership Practices That Will Make You Memorable

Startup Professionals Musings

Almost every employee or team member can remember that one special boss in their career who was the role model of a leader, always commanded respect, and was able to get the most voluntarily from everyone all the time. Every entrepreneur and business executive I know wants to emulate that boss, but most don’t can’t even describe the attributes required.

article thumbnail

A Digital Assistant for the Enterprise

deal architect

Business Insider has a nice article on how the Echo has become a huge success for Amazon. Its Alexa is the digital assistant in many a household as she helps them play music and with new extensions like Dot and.

Software 163
article thumbnail

Vital Advice For An Awesome Office

YoungUpstarts

The office is a very important part of your business. It’s the main hub of activity; where all the money gets made. If your business has a great office, then it can do great things. Keeping that in mind, here’s some of my best advice for an amazing office: Make It Modern. You may not think this is a major point, but having a modern office can make a big difference.

Design 105
article thumbnail

The Venture Deals Course – Spring 2016 – Is Free

Feld Thoughts

The Kauffman Fellows Academy is offering another session of the Venture Deals course on the NovoEd platform. This time it is free and runs from April 24, 2016 – June 13, 2016. We’ve done this course several times in the past with classes of around 100 people and have gotten great feedback. Last year, we started talking to the Kauffman Fellows Academy and NovoEd about doing it for free to reach a wider audience, and in the context of #GiveFirst offer it for free, as the primary motiva

Audience 103
article thumbnail

Amazon Echo Is Magical. It’s Also Turning My Kid Into an A **e.

Hunter Walker

We love our Amazon Echo. Among other tasks, my four year old finds the knock knock jokes hilarious, the weather captivating, the ability to summon songs comparable to magic and Echo to be the best speller in the house. But I fear it’s also turning our daughter into a raging a **e. Because Alexa tolerates poor manners. You see, the prompt command to activate the Echo is “Alexa…” not “Alexa, please.” And Alexa doesn’t require a ‘thank you’ befo

102
102
article thumbnail

Stubborn on vision, flexible on the details

Version One Ventures

We have all seen Jeff Bezos’ great quote on being stubbornly flexible at Amazon: “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily. Our third-party seller business is an example of that. It took us three tries to get the third-party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.” Whether you’re building a business or your own career, a long-term focus creates the most successful outcomes.

Germany 101
article thumbnail

Visualizing Success For Your Business: 3 Tips Before You Seek Financing

YoungUpstarts

By Jay DesMarteau, head of small business and government banking distribution for TD Bank. Last year the U.S. economy saw the reversal of a troubling downward trend in small business development that began in 2010. According to the Kauffman Index, which measures the economic impact of American entrepreneurs, new small business creation experienced its largest year-over-year growth in 2015, resulting in around 530,000 new business owners per month.

Finance 103
article thumbnail

UK micro-VC

The Equity Kicker

I’ve been reading a lot about the development of micro-VC this afternoon. It’s currently the fastest growing subsector of the VC market has mushroomed into quite a phenomenon. You can see the number of funds in the chart above (note that the 2015 figure was as of last August), and chart author Samir Kaji , a bit of an authority on this sector, predicts the total will grow to 350.

article thumbnail

How to Start a Luxury Day Spa

Up and Running

If you dream of operating your own luxury day spa, now may be the perfect time to get started. While running a successful spa can be challenging, according to Lynne McNees, president of the International Spa Association, the spa industry has the bonus of being (nearly) recession proof. The reason is simple: When times get tough, the need for stress relief increases.

article thumbnail

A Great Analyst's Best Friends: Skepticism & Wisdom!

Occam's Razor

Here's something important I've observed in my experience in working with data, and changing organizations with ideas: Great Analysts are always skeptical. Deeply so. This was always true, of course. But, it has become mission critical over the last few years as the depth, breadth, quantity and every other dimension you could apply to data has simply exploded.

Salary 82
article thumbnail

How Video Conferencing Can Take Your Business To The Next Level

YoungUpstarts

by Nicole Swartwout, partner at CallTeks. As your business grows, the need for video conferencing across multiple sites becomes essential. Having the right solution in place can help take your business to new highs and keep a healthy spirit of collaboration alive and well. On the other hand, a system that isn’t well planned can quickly become a lingering IT nightmare plagued with spotty connection, audio issues and low-quality video.

Video 102
article thumbnail

Global wealth inequality has reached egregious levels

The Equity Kicker

This data was posted on Twitter today by Anonymous. The first bullet is the killer for me – 62 rich individuals have the same wealth 3.6bn poor people. They don’t source the data so I don’t know how accurate it is, but somehow I’m not surprised by this statistic. I’m shocked, but not surprised. As you can see from the other bullets wealth inequality has been getting worse and worse recently.

Global 82
article thumbnail

How To Effectively Cope With Entrepreneurship Setbacks

YFS Magazine

The following tips will help you deal with setbacks better by subduing your self-critic, boosting your self-compassion and achieving more emotional balance during challenging times.

article thumbnail

The real reason why investors say your market size is small

Hippoland

It’s super annoying when investors say your market size is small. So, you do all this extra research – you look for Gartner’s excerpts and articles about projected market sizes, etc, and you come back with research to argue that your market is much bigger. Unfortunately, it’s ineffective. The investor passes. And you walk away thinking he/she’s a dimwit.

article thumbnail

Shark Tank Lessons for Startups

YoungUpstarts

by Amit Damani , cofounder of Vista Rooms. Anyone who watches Shark Tank would swear that it is by far the best reality show ever. The 2009 series was a hit in the US and albeit we got it a few years late, this show has got Indians hooked on. Currently in its 7th season, the show features a panel of potential venture capital investors, called “sharks”, that considers offers from aspiring entrepreneurs seeking investments for their business or products.

Cofounder 100
article thumbnail

Tesla Model 3 & the start of the end of petrol cars

Start Up Blog

The hype of the new Tesla model 3 is understated as far as I can tell. While it is true Tesla hasn’t actually sold any of the cars – they haven’t made any yet – it is also true that there has never been a car in history (any product?) which achieved $8.86B in pre-order sales. Yes, 253,000 on order at the time of publishing. The hype is understated for a simple reason: most people are yet to discover their annual fuel bill costs will cover a $35,000 car repayments.

Search 76