Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
OMG. This is super funny. I wrote the post below after work. I had to race to meet my wife for dinner & a movie (we have “date night&# once / week) and went to see Town (which was awesome). I figured I needed time to spell check and edit before publishing so I would hit publish when I got home. Wow! I returned to my house, flipped on my Mac and see AngelGate, The Sequel.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 21, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about “ Ten of the Worst Reasons for Starting a Business ,” so naturally a reader challenged me to turn that around and talk about the right reasons for starting a business. That’s a fair challenge, and probably more productive than the negative approach for all the people out there who are budding entrepreneurs. In doing some research on this one, I found out that everyone has a favorite list of good reasons for starting a business, so mine really reflects more my
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Occam's Razor
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Make love? Direct Traffic? Really? I am not kidding. Direct traffic contains visitors that proactively seek you out, everyone else you have to "beg" to show up on your site! Yet this question seems to bedevil a lot of people: What the heck is Direct Traffic? As if that was not sad enough, even people who do know what the definition of Direct traffic is rarely focus on it or work hard to tease out the opportunity that exists in Direct traffic.
ReadWriteStart
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
At today's roundtable, we had three niche e-commerce entrepreneurs and two e-commerce infrastructure entrepreneurs. I will describe their businesses briefly, below. You can vote on which one you like most by clicking on our Facebook page. If you missed the session, please listen to the recording before voting. Sponsor. GrillGrate. First up was Brad Barrett presenting GrillGrate , a grill accessory with which Brad has built a year-to-date revenue of $400,000.
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
Feld Thoughts
SEPTEMBER 22, 2010
I think I’ll avoid all the “ are super angels colluding “, “ no they aren’t “, “ go fuck yourself and stop talking horseshit “, and “ guys, quit being narcissistic and do something productive &# blog chatter today and focus on something that came up yesterday. I was on a call when someone asked a straightforward question that had a binary answer (yes or no).
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
Every new startup I know dreams of being funded by an angel investor. Yet according to the latest data from AngelSoft , only about 3 out of 100 companies who initiate the formal request process actually get funded. The AngelSoft Deal Funnel from the last 12 months indicates is that 70% of the interested companies never make it past the initial screening process.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
ReadWriteStart
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Startup conferences - like last week's DEMO Conference in Santa Clara, California - are great opportunities for young companies to not only gain some exposure, but to network with other like-minded entrepreneurs. One company I spoke to at DEMO, Zappli , makes a social shopping app that leverages many existing services through partnerships and APIs - a strategy many young startups could benefit from.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
SEPTEMBER 22, 2010
Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link. Download the MP3 [ 49 Minutes - 71 MB ] I was speaking to Michael Fountain on a 30 minute coaching call, which he qualified for as a bonus because he purchased a product via my affiliate link recently, and he happened to mention his previous life as a software developer.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
I think we’ve all come to accept that “ banner blindness &# is a real phenomenon. Sometimes you see solutions and immediately know they just make sense. Solve Media is that. In the early days of the Internet as an advertising medium the industry organized to create “standard ad units&# for which most media companies would sell their inventory.
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 21, 2010
This is an awkward post to write. I am at Oracle Open World as a guest of the some very hospitable individuals at the vendor. Yet, something happened yesterday which I think is important for the social world to discuss. Tags: Industry analysts (Gartner, Forrester, AMR, others) Industry Commentary.
Growthink Blog
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Gordon Gekko may have a new movie coming out, but the days of the jolly old stock market he once knew are gone forever. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised as to how little known the horrific U.S. public stock market performance over the past 11 years has been. But I was shocked by the number of people who expressed incredulity regarding the note in my column last week that all major U.S. market indices (Dow, S and P, NASDAQ) are trading lower today than they were in September 1999.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
One of the ironies of being a startup is that when you are small no one can put you out of business but you. Paradoxically, as your revenues and market share increase the risk of competitors damaging your company increases. Often the cause is the inability to grow the startup past the worldview of its founders. We’re Getting Our Butts Kicked. One of my ex-engineering students helped start a six-year old company headquartered in Los Angeles that sells to government agencies.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
This is the fifth & final (I promise!) article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here. After that it’s domain experience, access to VCs and deep pockets. 5. Access to buyers – I saved the least obvious for last. Most people think that being a successful investor is about finding the right deals and nurturing the teams through the difficult times to come out with
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
A relatively new CIO asked me what top metricsI would recommend he measure his IT organization against. I remembered what Maynard Webb, recounting his experience as CIO of eBay had written when he reviewed my book “ “CIOs have to. Tags: Burning Questions.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 18, 2010
By Mahesh Raj Mohan Writing a business plan can be a difficult process. Even if you know your product/service suite down cold, understand the strengths/weaknesses of the competition, and have built pro forma financials that are sane. you still have to write the plan for a particular audience. What does that mean? A loan officer, angel investor, and venture capitalist are all looking for different things in a business plan.
Seeing Both Sides
SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
Fred Wilson posted a blog last week regarding the "Two Venture Capital Industries" -- observing that the Internet/software industry, where he invests, has undergone great change due to the lower-cost model (commonly known as the "lean start-up" movement) but the more capital-intensive industries, such as life sciences and cleantech, where the fundamental economic model has not been altered.
entrepreMusings
SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
A couple of friends of mine: Chris (entrepreneur and founder of Sparksight ) and Amanda Justice (they are siblings) are organizing the The Endless Referrals Event. When Amanda sent out an email seemingly a year or so ago about a book she had read called The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea (Amazon link), I bought it on her recommendation.
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
The painfully long NDAs Oracle has had industry analysts under expired yesterday. Last evening was supposed to be the finally here (after “half way” was celebrated in 2006) coming out for Fusion applications. Instead, Larry Ellison sounded tentative. Go ahead. Tags: Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP).
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Many writers have outlined the critical success factors for product companies, like sell every unit at a profit, patent the design, and continuous product improvement. But recently I was asked about success factors for services startups, and I quickly realized that there is very little published to help the thousands of startups that fall in this category.
ReadWriteStart
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Research Triangle Park is one of the oldest and largest research parks in the United States. Created in the 1950s, the RTP development now spans over 7000 acres and is home to over 170 companies and some 42,000 full-time employees. But the concentration of tech research and development extends beyond the bounds of just the research park itself, and the surrounding Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary, North Carolina metro areas are commonly labeled together as the Research Triangle, or "The Tri
Feld Thoughts
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
About a year ago David Cohen and I were having a beer together talking about ways to capture all the different things we’d learned about early stage entrepreneurship from running the TechStars program. In a moment of insanity, we decided to write a book. The result is Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup. Over the next six months, we worked with many of the mentors and entrepreneurs that have participated in TechStars.
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 22, 2010
So, Karen Tillman, VP of Corporate Communications at Oracle asked to meet Dennis Howlett and me after this post about bloggers versus analysts. It could have been a screaming match or worse. Instead it was a civil drink at a. Tags: Industry Commentary.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 24, 2010
Successful startups are all about turning ideas into action. These actions must be the hard part, since entrepreneurs always seem to come to me with ideas, and ask me for help on the actions. That has always seemed strange to me, since the magic is supposed to be in the ideas, and the actions are the same for every business. In fact, the actions required to start and run a business are well documented, the subject of many books, and taught in college courses across the land.
Life Beyond Code
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
(Even when they know change is good for them). Change is hard. Change is hard whether you are smart are not smart. If you are smart, it’s harder, I guess. What is change? Change in this context is to do different things than what you are already very familiar with. For example, if you are good at sales but now you are looking at a new way of selling ( let’s say you go from selling shoes to selling timeshare ) it is change but not the CHANGE that we are talking about.
ReadWriteStart
SEPTEMBER 21, 2010
Game mechanics have become a popular way of increasing user engagement and pushing user adoption, referral and retention, and many startups have sought ways to incorporate game mechanics into their sites. In a recent blog post, David Feinleib , a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, lists the following 10 ways to incorporate game mechanics into a non-game service: Sponsor.
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
SAP is introducing an Innovation Weekend around its annual TechEd event in Berlin and Las Vegas next month. It gives participants a chance to “Gain hands-on experience with some of SAP's coolest and newest innovative technologies, taking an idea from. Tags: Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) People Commentary.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 22, 2010
In the world of business, you only get one chance for a great first impression. The stakes are high – you are asking an investor for money, a customer for an order, or another executive for a partnership. Badly written letters, long rambling or emotional emails, or an obvious lack of spell checking will brand you as a poor business risk before the message is even considered.
Feld Thoughts
SEPTEMBER 24, 2010
Earlier this week I did a one hour interview on “ Meet the Angels &# sponsored by Tech Coast Angels (one of the LA Angel groups.) It was supposed to live but for some reason there were some problems getting into the webcast. It’s now up on the web – if you were trying to watch it and couldn’t, it’s posted below. Live video event with Brad Feld from TechCoastAngels on Vimeo.
ReadWriteStart
SEPTEMBER 22, 2010
Part of me feels compelled to invoke the folktale of the frog and the scorpion. You know the story: The scorpion seeks a ride across the river, and the frog refuses, fearing the scorpion's poisonous sting. The scorpion pleads, "You can trust me." And the frog acquiesces. But as the frog bears the scorpion across the water, he feels the sting. And as the poison spreads through the frog's body, paralyzing his limbs, he asks the scorpion why he stung him as now, they both will drown.
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 24, 2010
In the sea of people that is OOW, I want to call out a few people for special mention Steve Miranda – Kudos for getting Fusion applications to the shape they are in with all the executive turmoil, rumor and. Tags: Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP).
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
It used to be true that “everyone” incorporated in Delaware due to its more favorable terms, but many of these terms simply don’t apply to startups, or the differences don’t exist anymore. Most business professionals now recommend that your first choice should be your home state, or the state where your startup resides. I live in Arizona, so I’ll use that state as an example.
Rembrandt Communications
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
The new Google Instant promises to make searches faster and easier, and you’ll be able to see results as you type. But what does this mean for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts? Well, first of all, if you are overwhelmed with all of the information you hear about search engine optimization and have stopped [.].
ReadWriteStart
SEPTEMBER 18, 2010
As someone with limited (ok, minimal. ok, zero) technical background, I am sympathetic to those entrepreneurs who are looking for co-founders in order to help them build and launch their startups. Sometimes you don't have the right skills to do so on your own. But often you do, and the time spent searching for a co-founder could instead be funneled into developing the business.
deal architect
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
The economy may be in turmoil, and the national mood is screaming for fiscal conservatism, but for a few days this week there were no “tea parties” in downtown San Francisco. There was Larry Ellison invoking amazon a few times.
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
A day or two after I joined First Round , back in October, I ran into Ari Jacoby at the Ace Hotel. I had just finished reading “ Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom.” Needless to say, how the brain works and how it interprets messages was on my mind—especially around the ones we want to keep there, like education and in this case, branding.
crowdSPRING Blog
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Google has many terrific free resources for small businesses. Below, we summarize our six favorite free resources for small business from Google. In each case, we describe the resource, help you understand why you should consider using it, and offer tips on using with links to additional information if you’d like to read more about that resource. 1.
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