This is going to be BIG.
AUGUST 22, 2012
You have a million things to get done at your startup, yet you only have a handful of people to do them. How are you ever going to get it done? Who should you hire? What should be the makeup of a founding team? What is the Minimum Viable Team, if you will, for a startup? To make life simpler, I'll take a page from George Carlin, who masterfully widdled down the Ten Commandments down to two simple rules.
Gust
AUGUST 22, 2012
At the threshold of one of the most recognizable landmarks in human history — the sole survivor among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World , dating back nearly five thousand years — my host was engaged in heated debate with a rotating phalanx of functionaries. As our group sweltered in the July heat on the outskirts of Cairo , each of these purported minions of the state — none of whom wore a uniform or badge — in turn blocked our entry, determined to exercise the modest amount of authority b
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David Cohen
AUGUST 22, 2012
I was recently interviewed for a WSJ article that was exploring the trends associated with the popularity (or lack thereof) of the freemium model called “ When Freemium Fails.” In researching my answers for the WSJ reporter, I dug up some data on TechStars companies over the last several years that use the freemium model. Here’s the data: 2007: 10%. 2008: 30%. 2009: 42%. 2010: 20%. 2011: 12%. 2012: 21%.
crowdSPRING Blog
AUGUST 24, 2012
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! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
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
Up and Running
AUGUST 23, 2012
The internet can present a treasure trove of information on almost any subject …including you. What are your target customers finding when they type your name, company, product, or brand into search? You have the power to influence what they see, and given that 78% of internet users claim to research products online , it’s more important than ever to assure those online signals paint a respectable picture.
Gust
AUGUST 23, 2012
Startups usually begin with one or two founders who play many roles. The lead founder is likely to wear the hats of Founder, Chairman, CEO, President, CFO, CRO and CMO, while a co-founder may well be CTO, Chief Product Officer, and Programming Team Lead. As the company grows and brings on more people, even in cases where everyone wants to keep the organization ‘flat’, it simply becomes too unwieldy for the CEO to have more than six or so direct reports, or for the CTO to both code ev
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
SiliconHills
AUGUST 24, 2012
A new tech startup in San Antonio seeks to change the way companies hire technical talent. TrueAbility, a cloud-based technical assessment tool can help hiring managers and recruiters assess technical skills of job candidates, said Frederick Mendler, one of the company’s cofounders and its CEO. It puts “candidates in a real environment to test their [.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 23, 2012
This is one of the best episodes of This Week in VC for a long time. I had the chance to speak with Andrew Siegel who runs corp dev & strategy for Condé Nast (aka Advance Publications). In case you don’t know, they are one of the biggest media companies in the world. They are best known for their magazine titles such as The New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair and Vogue.
deal architect
AUGUST 20, 2012
My books, while overwhelmingly about innovation case studies, have a few chapters on elements of the economy which are not keeping up with rapid changes in technology. In my recent book, I highlighted how regulators and analysts are lagging. I.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 19, 2012
Some people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs. This is a good thing, or the business world would be chaos, with everyone trying to do their own thing. So what about you? How do you know if you should be running your own company, or concentrating on that queue of work that someone else has built for you? I’ve hit this before, but I still hear from too many unhappy entrepreneurs.
Steve Blank
AUGUST 20, 2012
By 1997 E.piphany was a fast growing startup with customers, revenue and something approaching a repeatable business model. Somewhere that year we decided to professionalize our logo (you should have seen the first one.) With a massive leap of creativity we decided that it should it should have our company name and the letter “E” with a swoop over it. 1997 was also that year that Microsoft was in the middle of the browser wars with Netscape.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
AUGUST 21, 2012
Pin It If you run your own software company, or you want to, going to Business of Software is possibly the most useful thing you can do this year. It’s certainly more useful than spending that time reading static blog posts or business books. Of course it costs $3000 more than reading blog posts (including airfare and hotel), which sounds steep.
deal architect
AUGUST 22, 2012
on the innovation blog Traveling at the speed of Hertz We’ll leave the light on for you 10 Regular Use Green Innovations Consumer Ingenuity Riverside, CA: Government, Business, Academic Innovation Intel and Click & Mortar Retail Bill Gates on India’s.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 23, 2012
Assuming no one would demotivate their team intentionally, then why do we see it happen so often? I believe it’s because too many entrepreneurs and leaders are so self-centered that they really don’t see what impact their actions have on others. What these leaders need to do is spend more time eliminating their own demotivating habits, rather than delivering more motivation.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 21, 2012
Almost 80-percent of students in Singapore are interested in entrepreneurship, if the results from a recent survey are to be believed. According to the results from the latest Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey (GUESSS), 79.8% of students here showed “Entrepreneurial Interest”, defined by the study as having given some thought to founding their own business.
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 22, 2012
I regularly get emails and have discussions with entrepreneurs who are on the receiving end of a software patent lawsuit. Many of these are young companies, often with little or no revenue. It’s total, completely madness. If you don’t believe me, read the latest rant from a young entrepreneur on the receiving end of a software patent lawsuit from a troll.
deal architect
AUGUST 19, 2012
On the New Florence blog Smart – and rich- homes How sustainability transformed all aspects of Puma Sony’s alternate reality without Apple Google Now Higgs for the rest of us Consumerization and the NFL SPE: “sanitas per escam” – health.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 21, 2012
When you are not presenting to investors or your team, try to spend more time listening than talking. You can’t learn anything new while you’re talking, yet many entrepreneurs seem to never stop. It’s a sad spiral, since the more you talk, the less people really hear, meaning they don’t learn anything either. If someone left this article on your desk, read extra carefully.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 23, 2012
by Christina Tangora Schlachter and Terry Hildebrandt, authors of “ Leading Business Change For Dummies “ The global economy has turned the rules of leadership upside down and shaken them vigorously for good measure. Where there was once a fairly defined hierarchy — Boss A tells Worker B what to do and Worker B does it — there’s now a flat landscape where everyone is expected to take the reins as needed.
Steve Blank
AUGUST 24, 2012
Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad.
deal architect
AUGUST 21, 2012
Henry Blodget gets some snide comments for just waking to the large software revenue that defines IBM. Actually you cannot fault him. If you see IBM’s TV commercials, or their social marketing or their pitches to media and investors, they.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 22, 2012
If you are an entrepreneur today, and not using social media to promote your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free. Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 22, 2012
You’ve crossed the stage, thrown your hat in the air, and entered the real world. You’re probably eager to get your career started and are already thinking ahead 10 years when you’ll be running a company, saving the world, and making wads of cash. But slow down there, new grad. Your career starts with baby steps and avoiding some of the common mistakes young workers make.
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 22, 2012
Dark Side of the Moon is my favorite album of all time. When I was a sophomore in college, I had an early NAD CD player. I put Dark Side of the Moon on at the beginning of the fall semester, pressed repeat, then play, and listened. I’d turn the volume down occasionally but not very often; usually I turned it way up. At the end of the semester, I pressed the stop button and turned my CD player off and then flew home to Dallas for winter break.
deal architect
AUGUST 23, 2012
I read this Wall Street Journal article on “Five Ways CIOs let vendors outsmart them” and wished the author had joined me at a meeting this week with a CIO whose IT backbone has components from each of the MISO.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 18, 2012
All true entrepreneurs operate off a set of tenets that are built into their psyche, or drilled into them from training and mentors. These are represented by sayings like “You never get anywhere unless you take a chance” and “Passion and persistence are the keys to success,” Unfortunately, there are still other old, reliable tenets that don’t work anymore.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 21, 2012
by Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, authors of “ The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built a Bestseller “ So you’re starting up a small business. Or maybe you’re already established, but still in the exciting, nail-biting initial phases of your venture. Either way, congrats… and bring on the customers! What’s that? No one seems to know about your fantastic product or service, and your shoestring budget (okay, dental floss budget might be more accurate!
ReadWriteStart
AUGUST 24, 2012
Combine their penchant for creating social change with their innate entrepreneurial inclinations, and it you might expect a wave of Gen Y-owned non-profits to launch in the next few years. That might still happen, but the latest research suggests that non-profits may not actually be the best way to drive social change. Much has been made of Gen Y’s dedication to social change.
deal architect
AUGUST 21, 2012
apologies to Fleetwood Mac, but as Dennis Howlett writes, Workday goes its own way. Over and over again. Parker Harrison, co-founder of Salesforce.com told us a few years ago he missed not having bigger vendors like SAP and Oracle in.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 20, 2012
Why is it that most of the business plans I see are really product plans? I define a product plan as a detailed description of your product or service, with a bit of business thrown in at the end. A business plan is a detailed description of your business, with a bit of product description thrown in near the front. Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely positive to have a product plan.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 23, 2012
If you’re a small business and you use Facebook a lot to connect with your customers, you may not realize that the social network has an excellent resource for you – Facebook for Business , a site which provides plenty of advice for small- and medium-sized businesses reach more customers and grow their businesses. And if you already know of its existence, Facebook for Business recently underwent a redesign to provide even more in-depth tips, tools and tutorials for small and mid-size
Rembrandt Communications
AUGUST 22, 2012
The holiday weekend is coming up, and the last thing you want to worry about is working long hours. But if you’re an entrepreneur, how do you please all of your customers without giving up some free time with family and friends? Here are a few suggestions to reclaim your personal time: 1. Hire a [.].
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 21, 2012
It was the second week of TechStars and I was doing office hours with each of the 11 teams going through the Boulder 2010 program. I was sitting across the table from Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein who each looked tired and dejected. In front of them were three slides. I asked them what was wrong. They said they were having trouble deciding which of three different products to pursue.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 24, 2012
A good entrepreneur is not necessarily born a good salesman. In fact, they are often the opposite, more focused on building things rather than selling them. Yet, in today’s world of information overload, marketing and selling skills are critical to the success of every startup. The alternative “If we build it, they will come” approach has long been relegated to the field of dreams , after Kevin Costner’s movie by the same name.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 23, 2012
The explosion of online social networking continues worldwide, fueled by a recent slew of new niche social networks that range from the sharing of “filtered” snapshots with Instagram , or the social sharing of images with online pinboard Pinterest. In fact, global information services company Experian has revealed in a study that Instagram and Pinterest are the two niche social networks that has seen the most growth worldwide – both sites now feature in the top 20 social media
Mike Michalowicz
AUGUST 19, 2012
The Rules Of Your Life. Immutable Laws are the rules of our lives. They define you. They define your business. Immutable Laws are a blend of ethics , core values and self-assigned law, all wrapped up into one. They are the rules we have defined for ourselves, almost subconsciously, on what is right and what is wrong. What is acceptable and what is not.
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