Sat.Aug 08, 2015 - Fri.Aug 14, 2015

article thumbnail

Why You Must Really Know Yourself Before A Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

If you're an aspiring entrepreneur, you need to take a hard look at yourself before leaving that regular paycheck. Don't assume you will be happier and make more money starting the business of your dreams. The good and the bad news is that as an entrepreneur, you won’t have a manager charged with directing your efforts or peers helping you implement, and your new team will be quick to tell you only what you want to hear.

Cofounder 221
article thumbnail

Seasonal Collections Tips For The Dog Days Of Summer

YoungUpstarts

by Todd McDaniel, Vice President at Dynavistics Inc. With the changing of the seasons, your collection strategies may need to be changed. The time of year can alter how apt and able your customers are to pay you. The biggest seasonal factor for collections is vacations and holidays. During the summer months, more than half of Americans take vacation days and collections may slow down while customers’ personnel are on vacation or even while your collectors are out of the office, but there a

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

The first sign that teenage social media use will stop scaring parents

The Equity Kicker

I’ve long held the opinion that scaremongering about teenagers’ use of social media is more a reflection of parents unease with a new medium than anything else. There is, of course, good and bad in everything and teenagers do make mistakes and hurt themselves on social media but that’s true in the offline world too and not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

article thumbnail

Small Business and Startups: Build Teams, Have Fun

crowdSPRING Blog

Who says business can’t be fun? Leadership is not just about productivity, strategy, and tactics – much more important is the fact that great leadership is about people. Strong leaders never lose sight of the individuals who make up their team and never stop working to make the team stronger. A great team is at once a reflection of its leadership, but it also defines its leaders.

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

The Market Size Fallacy for Seed-Stage Startups

View from Seed

I once showed a company to another VC for an investment we were syndicating. This investor loved the team and thought the solution they were building was compelling. Ultimately, this firm passed because they couldn’t get comfortable with the “market size” given that they were a big fund and only targeted $1B+ opportunities. Similarly, I remember years ago when I was looking at the series A investment in a company called Lumos Labs.

article thumbnail

Revenue Growth For Lenovo In 2Q15 Obscures Unfamiliar Challenges For Its PC And Smartphones Business: TBR

YoungUpstarts

by Jack Narcotta, Devices Analyst at Technology Business Research. Lenovo’s modest overall revenue growth in calendar 2Q15 – 3.1% year-to-year to $10.7 billion – masks how sagging performance from its PC business wiped out the momentum Lenovo had generated since 2013 and has forced Lenovo to reset its profit and revenue growth expectations for its enterprise and mobile device businesses.

Revenue 136

More Trending

article thumbnail

Indian Women Online- An Alternate Narrative: A Digital Media Survey

Brandanew

Being an Indian Startup founder has meant that Brandanew naturally started with an Indian base, along with our German presence, making it global from day one. It also meant, that many new clients and teams that we’ve worked with, happen to be Indian. Close to the Indian freedom week (accidentally so!) and for the next 2 weeks (ending August 24th, 2015), we are running a short survey with Indian women online, and urge you to participate!

Media 211
article thumbnail

How Great Entrepreneurs Spell Continuous Innovation

Startup Professionals Musings

As a startup investor in this age of the entrepreneur, I see many more startups, but innovation is still hard to find. The most common proposals I hear are for yet another social networking site ( over 200 active ), or another dating site (now over 2500 in the US alone). Startups which display real innovation, such as alternative energy sources and new medical treatments, are still rare.

article thumbnail

SEO: Quality, Not Quantity, Is The Order Of The Day

YoungUpstarts

What do we do when we want to drive targeted traffic to our websites? We resort to knocking the door of real guest blogs that invite high quality content. Considering how priceless good writing is, there is no denying that it can take a particular website to peaks of unparalleled success. Well, needless to say like everything under the sun, this piece of art is also being exploited to its extremities, resulting in content that is not only repetitive but also disengaging and of poor quality.

SEO 186
article thumbnail

Why the Fortune 500 turns over so rapidly

deal architect

90% of the companies which were on the Fortune 500 list in 1955 no longer exist or are no longer independent. Most of us are loyal to brands so why that much churn? Because companies do incredibly stupid things to.

214
214
article thumbnail

5 Creative Ways In Which Brands Can Create Remarkable Content

Brandanew

Organic content is very good for your online health and certainly adds longevity to your brand presence. This kind of evergreen content is usually that which is inspired. The inspiration can come from anywhere including movies, books or influencers that you follow. Mine usually happens to come from graphic novelists and authors. Here are a few tricks with which your brands can create remarkable content to talk to your consumers because that’s what creates a real bond. 5 Creative Ways In W

Texas 161
article thumbnail

8 Ways To Prepare Your Startup For Obstacles Ahead

Startup Professionals Musings

Too many entrepreneurs tackle starting a business as a random walk into a business minefield, and they count on their street smarts, thick skin and pure determination to get them to their destinations alive. That does work once in a while, usually with some serious collateral damage, but a less painful approach is to prepare and plan for each step along the way.

article thumbnail

Top 10 Wearable Tech For 2015

YoungUpstarts

Technology is now not only changing the way we use mobile phones, but also the way we tell the time, track our fitness and so much more. Rather than this technology just being available in a device that we hold in our hands, it can now be worn on many parts of the body, including our wrists, heads, feet and even on our fingers! There are so many futuristic devices available that it can be hard to keep up.

Flash 152
article thumbnail

The SAP Nation Electoral College

deal architect

I did one of my last proofs of the SAP Nation 2.0 manuscript (available for preorder at Amazon) while watching the GOP debate last week. I should say I tried to do both, but the debate dominated my attention In.

Software 209
article thumbnail

#FollowFriday: 10 Branding Experts On Twitter You Must Follow NOW!

Brandanew

While most of us like to believe that branding comes naturally with digital marketing, the fact could not be further off. Branding is a different ballgame and if done wrong, you may get something nasty stuck to your image for as long as forever, hampering your growth in your niche field. Like every other marketing technique, executing successful branding strategies needs some inspiration as well.

article thumbnail

5 Strategies To Make Your Solution Really Memorable

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur believes that their product or service is memorable, and that every customer will quickly see the advantage over competitors. Yet true product differentiation in the eye of the customer is rarely achieved. According to a classic survey by Bain & Company , 80% of businesses believe they have differentiated offerings, but only 8% of customers agree.

article thumbnail

Launching Your First Business Event? Here Are Four Key Areas To Watch.

YoungUpstarts

Launching your first business event can be an exciting yet daunting prospect if you’re a start-up or SME. Your budgets, and your contingency funds, feel vulnerable and inadequate by comparison to the generous resources thrown at large corporate events. Add in the fact that careful planning can’t always mitigate against the unknowns, and that prospect can easily spin out of control in your imagination.

Forecast 147
article thumbnail

Trust, but verify

deal architect

There has been plenty of scorn about the scolding Oracle’s CSO delivered to her customers for “reverse engineering’ its code to test for security vulnerabilities. While Oracle, as usual, comes across as the “bad guy”, it is challenge most large.

Security 188
article thumbnail

Your Cheatsheet to Finding More Ideas For Great Content

Brandanew

With content marketing the current trend of this digital industry, the creative individuals are churning out content pieces at a rate like never before! Marketers these days are using about 12 to 14 formats of content , on an average to promote the businesses they are working for. If that already did sound overwhelming, here’s your cheatsheet to finding more ideas for great content and be distinctive!

Curation 146
article thumbnail

Are Your Customers Actually Reading Your BtoB Content?

Rembrandt Communications

You may be wasting time, money and resources on all that copywriting You hire an experienced copywriter to write your BtoB content. You have some excellent newsletters, blogs, e-mails, and articles going out on a regular basis. But do you know if your customers are actually reading it? Here are some ways to find out […]. The post Are Your Customers Actually Reading Your BtoB Content?

Customer 136
article thumbnail

[Infographic] Do We Have To Work 8 Hours Per Day?

YoungUpstarts

Many of us have gone through the drudgery of a full 8-hour working day in order to make a living – waking up early to catch the morning commute, and slogging through the day at work before finally heading back home again just to repeat the process the next day. If that sounds tiring, it’s because it is. What many of us may not realize is that the standard 8-hour work day came from the time of the British Industrial Revolution, when factories set fixed schedules for workers in order t

Product 145
article thumbnail

The supply chain software enigma

deal architect

Infor just announced its acquisition of GT Nexus. I like it because it is not just a simplistic business network where you order paper and pencils and then burden those suppliers with the costs of running the network. GT Nexus’s.

Software 183
article thumbnail

Sales and Employee Onboarding Best Practices

For Entrepreneurs

An Interview with Andrew Quinn of HubSpot Having a high performing team means: Hiring the right people Creating a structure and culture for them to do great work Equipping them with the knowledge and skills to work effectively These first two topics have received a lot of attention in the startup community. In fact, I […].

Sales 131
article thumbnail

Should you outsource your financial operations?

Version One Ventures

This week everyone has been talking about Zirtual – the on-demand virtual assistant company that collapsed on Sunday night, suddenly laying off more than 400 employees (the company now is going to be acquired by Startups.co). Zirtual CEO Maren Kate Donovan blamed the collapse partly on an outsourced CFO firm and numbers that failed to account for two additional pay periods.

article thumbnail

[Infographic] Working From Home – Is It For You?

YoungUpstarts

Flexible work is now a huge trend – essentially, the world doesn’t work 9-5 any more. From freelance work to telecommuting, there has in recent years been an massive uptrend in the number of people working from home. Once frowned upon by companies, remote work, for example, is now very well accepted – even encouraged – by more progressive businesses.

Employee 141
article thumbnail

10 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Chance of Startup Failure

This is going to be BIG.

1. Don't bother creating any kind of cash flow model, because it's b t, right? 2. Overestimate the value and volume of the "data" that you'll collect when lots of users are on your platform. 3. Assume that lots of users will be using your platform when you don't even have a good plan to get the first 500. 4. Skip talking to the specific person at that big customer who you believe will one day spend lots of money on your platform. 5.

Dilution 127
article thumbnail

The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning

Feld Thoughts

I was in a conversation last week with a friend who asked “do you think this is the beginning of the end?” We were discussing something totally wacky that had just happened that clearly could be viewed as an indicator that we have crested the peak of this economic cycle. Then, earlier today, I was on the phone with one of my favorite lawyers and he made a joke about a deal I’m doing as harkening back to the late 1990s.

article thumbnail

How to start a business (right now!) with less than $20

The Next Web

Jason Zook is best known for being the guy that made over $1,000,000 wearing t-shirts for a living and selling his last name (twice). He writes an action-packed newsletter that’s free to join called The Action Army. If I were to start a new business right now and had no experience, no connections, no specific idea, and very little money, here’s exactly what I’d do.

Web 129
article thumbnail

Is Your Brand Hitting The Mark?

YoungUpstarts

By JR Reichl, Senior Director, Marketing Communications at Hostway Services, Inc. The e-commerce industry is always changing. Emerging technology, shifting customer demands and habits all make it difficult for brands to keep up. So how do you ensure you’re addressing current needs and maintaining a favorable position in the marketplace? What benchmarks can you use to compare your business with today’s industry leaders?

Hosting 140
article thumbnail

The average musician gets $23 for every $1,000 of music sold

The Equity Kicker

I used to write a lot about the music industry but it because less interesting once Spotify became dominant and everyone accepted that streaming is the future. This chart got me excited again though. Pop stars regularly complain about how little they get when their music is streamed, but they are mistaken in blaming the streaming services. It’s the labels that have the biggest take.

Media 127
article thumbnail

12 Tips for a Wildly Productive Home Office

Up and Running

Maybe you’re working from home doing freelance work, or you started your own business and don’t have an office space. Perhaps you’ve been working remotely for a company, so you spend a lot of time in your living room. In any case, no matter how hard you attempt to keep a productive home office, it can be hard to stay focused at home with the distraction of your comfortable bed, TV and Netflix, and various gadgets so easily accessible.

Product 122
article thumbnail

9 ways wearables could change health and fitness

The Next Web

With the advent of the smart watch, there’s potential for a lot more innovation in the realm of health and fitness. As more and more customers move to wearables, data collection becomes ever more robust. To find out what could be next for these tech companies, I asked nine entrepreneurs from YEC the following question: As the Apple Watch and other smart watches become part of everyday life for consumers, what is one way you predict health/fitness tech companies will (or should) expand or improve

Internet 122
article thumbnail

Create The Perfect Twitter Header Image With These 8 Tips

YoungUpstarts

By Sarah Matista, Marketing Communications Manager, Pagemodo. From websites and advertisements to Pinterest boards and Facebook cover photos, brands can occupy almost any space on the Internet. Often overlooked, however, is the Twitter header image, which is actually one of the largest pieces of branding real estate to work with. So why not make your company’s Twitter presence stand out with a well-designed header image?

New York 140
article thumbnail

The Market Size Fallacy for Seed-Stage Startups

View from Seed

I once showed a company to another VC for an investment we were syndicating. This investor loved the team and thought the solution they were building was compelling. Ultimately, this firm passed because they couldn’t get comfortable with the “market size” given that they were a big fund and only targeted $1B+ opportunities. Similarly, I remember years ago when I was looking at the series A investment in a company called Lumos Labs.

article thumbnail

Dr. Evil’s Milk Run

Feld Thoughts

Following is a guest post from my friend Eliot Peper. I met Eliot several years ago when he approached me about his first book. I loved his writing and FG Press went on to publish Eliot’s first two books – Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 and Uncommon Stock: Power Play. Eliot’s third book, Uncommon Stock: Exit Strategy came out recently and the topic is particularly timely.

Stock 119
article thumbnail

Inventors: 10 Do’s And Don’ts For Your Elevator Pitch

YFS Magazine

If you can sell your idea to companies or potential investors, your product could become the bestseller every inventor dreams of creating.