2018

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Why Entrepreneurs Start Companies Rather Than Join Them

Steve Blank

If you asked me why I gravitated to startups rather than work in a large company I would have answered at various times: “I want to be my own boss.” “I love risk.” “I want flexible work hours.” “I want to work on tough problems that matter.” “I have a vision and want to see it through.” “I saw a better opportunity and grabbed it. …”. It never crossed my mind that I gravitated to startups because I thought more of my abilities than the value a large company would put on them.

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5 Misconceptions You Should Know About Before Launching Your Tech Startup

ReadWriteStart

With multibillion-dollar tech companies and growth startups making headlines left and right, it’s natural to want to get a piece of the action. Ant Financial, for example, recently closed a ridiculous Series C funding round of $14 billion — one of the largest VC funding rounds in history. The China-based fintech company pushed its value to $150 billion with the latest […].

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Selling your business? Find the emotional buyer

Berkonomics

This is one of my favorite insights, since I lived this one in a positive exit from my computer business. Types of business buyers expanded. Most people will tell you that there are two kinds of eventual buyers for your business: financial and strategic. A financial buyer will analyze your numbers, past and forecast, to the n’th degree, and calculate the price based upon the result, after carefully comparing your numbers with those of others in the same and similar industries.

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7 Must-Dos Before Starting a Company

Up and Running

There are so many things I wish I’d known before I started my first company. Hindsight’s 20/20, but I wish someone had sat me down before I wasted a lot of time and money on a company I wasn’t ready to start. While the project quickly fizzled out, it did give me some valuable insights into all the groundwork that needs to be done before getting started which helped me succeed in my second endeavor.

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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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What Top Performers at Startups and Large Organizations Have in Common…More Than You Would Think

Startup Lessons Learned

While doing research for his extraordinary new book, Great at Work , Morten Hansen studied more than 5,000 managers and employees in corporate America to identify the key practices that explain why some perform better than others. What he and his research team discovered is that seven key practices explain a whopping 66% of the difference in performance among people in the sample.

Metrics 349
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Designing the Ideal Board Meeting – The Board Meeting

VC Adventure

This is the 4th post in my Designing the Ideal Board Meetin g series. I hope this series so far has helped you think a bit differently about how you approach the lead-up to your board meetings. By the time you walk into the meeting you should have a clear agenda that everyone has agreed to, one or two areas of the business that you plan to dive more deeply into, prepared materials that are of a style, length, detail and consistency that efficiently and effectively brings your board up to speed o

Design 257

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Scaling from maker to manager

Version One Ventures

A few weeks ago I shared some important leadership lessons from Stewart Butterfield , including investing in your own growth to make sure that the founder scales as fast as the company. Growing with your start-up can be a very tough undertaking for a founder. It requires reinventing yourself dramatically in very little time. When you start your company, you will be a “maker” for most of your days, wearing a thousand hats and tackling whatever needs to be tackled.

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XYO Network: How Blockchain Is Navigating Location Tracking Into The Future

YoungUpstarts

From flying drones to autonomous vehicles that can navigate a shipment to your door within an hour of clicking “Buy!” — the future of eCommerce is looking pretty flash. …or at least it does up to that final, awkward step of the fulfillment cycle when your order is just waiting there, exposed to the world until you take physical possession of it.

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For the sake of productivity, developers need to learn to say “no”

The Next Web

Whoever coined the mantra ‘The customer is always right’ has never tried to undertake development tasks for clients with grandiose ideas, but zero technical background. Nowadays, every company might be a software company, but not everyone knows how to effectively manage software development projects. But give them the option, and they will sure as hell try.

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Top Startup Winner: Balodana

The Startup Magazine

The Startup Magazine recently featured two of the FUND Conference Top 3 Exhibitor winners, Happenstance , and Digs. We’ve saved the best for last. The top startup at this year’s FUND Conference in Chicago, Illinois was Balodana , a fashion purchasing platform disrupting the women’s e-commerce fashion industry. The event presenter, FUND, is a national connector of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on deal flow and making connections.

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Leadership is More Than a Memo

Steve Blank

I just read Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley. It was both eye-opening and cringe-worthy. The book explores the role of gender in the tech industry – at startups and venture capital firms – and the interaction between men and women in the two. While Silicon Valley has grown to have global influence, in many ways the cultural leadership from the venture community has dramatically shrunk in the last decade.

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The Best Programming Languages for Digital Marketers

ConversionXL

In the world of data-driven marketing, more and more tasks require a bit of coding. You might need to add an extra parameter to your tracking code or pull raw data from Google Analytics. You may want to create a simple prediction—or automate a few repetitive tasks in your PPC campaigns. Or maybe you simply want to speak a common language with your developers so that you can brief them better and understand they may say, “This will take two weeks.” Regardless, knowing one or two data

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5 Tips for Starting a Successful Clothing Brand: The Definitive Guide (2018)

crowdSPRING Blog

Many people want to start a clothing brand or clothing line. After all, how difficult could it be? The truth is that successful clothing brands become successful in part because they’re created by people who are passionate about clothing. But, a clothing brand needs more than just exquisite apparel design to create a lasting business. It needs all the trappings of a successful business as well.

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How to Write a Business Plan for a Cannabis Company

Up and Running

It’s a very exciting time in the cannabis industry right now. One of our Bplans writers described going into business in cannabis as a “ once-in-a-generation opportunity ,” with the product rapidly becoming legal for recreational as well as medical use in many states. Legal cannabis generated $16 billion in total economic output in the United States in 2017, and research indicates it will increase 150 percent by 2021, according to a report from cannabis industry analysts Arcview Market Research

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Looking Back On Tech, Startups, And VC In 2018

Haystack

It’s that time of year, time to look back and reflect on the most significant storylines in the tech, startup, and VC world. A comprehensive post on this topic could be 5,000+ words, but we do not do such things here. We kept detailed notes month by month and today, I tried to organize them by key sections, what you’ll see below. There’s a good chance I’ve missed something — if you feel that way, by all means, please share your point of view on Twitter (or email) an

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A Non-Profit Lean Startup: The Story of Adopt-a-Pet

Startup Lessons Learned

David Meyer founded Adopt-a-Pet.com (formerly 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com) in 2000 as a way of ending pet overpopulation. Today it’s North America's largest non-profit pet adoption website, with millions of visitors to the site each month and partnerships with more than 17,000 animal shelters, pet rescue groups, humane societies and shelters. When the non-profit was nearly acquired by a for-profit company several years ago, the time came to take a step back and re-evaluate what they were doing.

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Enterprise Software Platforms have underperformed

deal architect

My first exposure to a software “platform” was back in 1983 when McCormack and Dodge introduced Millennium and started to migrate all its modules to have the same look and feel, extensibility, queries and other features. I was part of.

Software 512
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The Willingness to Learn and the Pressure to Be Confident

This is going to be BIG.

Being a founder means showing confidence. It’s nearly impossible to fundraise, hire, or lead without it—but at the same time, founders don’t know everything. There are many things they’re going to be doing for the first time that are ridiculous to expect them to know how to do right off the bat. Just because you start a company doesn’t necessarily mean you’re automatically a good manager, a good recruiter, or good at PR.

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Honest Startup Advice From Somebody Who’s Been Through It

Duct Tape Marketing

Honest Startup Advice From Somebody Who’s Been Through It written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Rand Fishkin. Podcast Transcript. My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Rand Fishkin. He is the founder and former CEO of Moz and currently has a new venture called SparkToro , a software and data company focused on helping people understand how and where to reach their target audiences.

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Keep A Real Job Until Your New Venture Shows Traction

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the big decisions every aspiring entrepreneur has to make is when to quit your current job to devote yourself fulltime to your new startup. Some of you are so committed to the new passion that you quit your day job early, and dedicate all your time and resources to the new venture. Others wait until the new business starts to generate revenue and profit before making the move.

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Should you include a Series A investor in your seed round?

Version One Ventures

One of the most important decisions for a founder of an early stage company is deciding who should be on the cap table. We’ve written about doing your due diligence on investors and funds to make sure you find the right partners for the journey. Lately, we have seen more founders grappling with the question of whether to include a Series A investor in their seed round.

Cap Table 351
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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital.

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10 Ways to Add Value to Your “Thank You” Page

ConversionXL

If you’ve ignored the design and content of your “thank you” page, you’re neglecting: Recent purchasers. New leads. These are some of the highest value segments of an online audience, yet what most sites decide to show them is an afterthought. Whether you’re confirming access to a PDF download or thanking someone for a four-figure purchase, there are ways to add value for users—and get more value for your business.

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How Minnesota Became the Land of 10,000 Startups

ReadWriteStart

Minnesota is no stranger to big business. It’s home to such names as Target, Best Buy, General Mills, and Ecolab — all of which have made their homes in Minnesota for generations and have become a source of pride. But a new industry — technology — is taking Minnesota by storm, boosting the local economy […]. The post How Minnesota Became the Land of 10,000 Startups appeared first on ReadWrite.

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How to Pitch to Investors in 10 Minutes and Get Funded

Up and Running

Image via WOCinTechChat. I know what it’s like to pitch to investors—both angels and venture capitalists. I’ve raised close to $1 million from angel investors for my previous technology startups. Sometimes you only get 10 minutes to pitch your business opportunity to the investors (or less in some cases). Here’s how to get started. Create a presentation.

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We’re Overthinking Seed Round Signaling Effects

For Entrepreneurs

There is much hand wringing in the startup ecosystem about various forms of signaling between the seed and A rounds. Conventional wisdom, and advice, abounds: entrepreneurs should never include a venture firm in their seed round because it’ll scare other VCs off from pursuing the A. After all, the “insider” VC has more information and.

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Designing the Ideal Board Meeting – Before the Meeting

VC Adventure

All good board meetings start well before the meeting itself, so let’s start there for this series on board meetings. Timing – how frequently should you meet? Most boards plan meetings a year at a time. That makes sense given busy schedules, but leads to the question of when and how often should a board meet. As a good rule of thumb, most startup boards meet quarterly (in fact, most boards of any kind meet about this frequently).

Design 270
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Oracles streak of missed opportunities

deal architect

No, this does not have much to do with Oracle’s recent quarter. Nor is it about intrigue and gossip so many analysts use to compare Oracle to the Trumpian White House. It has more to do with two decades of.

Software 362
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How Nils Grossberg Fueled His Mission Of Community Service Through Dagcoin

YoungUpstarts

Dagcoin is a new name in the cryptocurrency sector. Developed by the software company Dagcoin which is founded by Nils Grossberg , Dagcoin cryptocurrency is entirely based on Nils’ vision to serve the community. According to Nils Grossberg , cryptocurrency must not be considered merely as an investment option. Cryptocurrency is not something that you buy and hold, waiting for its price to rise and selling it thereafter.

Community 280
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How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

Duct Tape Marketing

How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. As we are all aware at this point, voice recognition technology is continuing to get better and better, in fact, it is now believed to be 95% accurate. As users, we’re adapting to this new voice revolution rather quickly (almost 1/4 of mobile search queries are voice search), yet marketers and SEO specialists seem to be lagging behind a bit when it comes to optimizing for this new way to

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Five Strategies for Slaying the Data Puking Dragon.

Occam's Razor

If you bring sharp focus, you increase chances of attention being diverted to the right places. That in turn will drive smarter questions, which will elicit thoughtful answers from available data. The result will be data-influenced actions that result in a long-term strategic advantage. It all starts with sharp focus. Consider these three scenarios….

Metrics 263
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A Great Example of A Professor’s Involvement With A Startup Community

Feld Thoughts

I received a Silicon Flatirons email from Phil Weiser this morning in his role as Silicon Flatirons Founder and Executive Director. My partners and I, especially Jason Mendelson, have been very involved with Silicon Flatirons over the past decade. I have a chapter in Startup Communities that uses CU Boulder – and specifically Silicon Flatirons – as an example of a much better way than the traditional approach (circa 2012) for a university to engage with the startup community.

Community 238
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How to Keep Your Job As Your Company Grows

Steve Blank

I know a change is going to come. If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. Most painfully, you’ll learn that your role in the company has to change.

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Mixpanel vs. Google Analytics: The 2018 Guide

ConversionXL

This post is not a dry feature-by-feature comparison, nor does it include a winner-take-all verdict. Your business won’t benefit from either of those things. Instead, we’re comparing Mixpanel and Google Analytics in the terms that drive business growth—identifying the core use cases for each tool and the business problems they solve, while highlighting the features that make it possible.

Analytics 119
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Why not share your liquidity success with those who got you there?

Berkonomics

So, you are close to selling your company, and counting the profits a bit early. Well, that’s human nature. Here’s a thought for you to recall later when and if the event happens. Remember those who got you there. And for tax reasons, remember them before the closing of the deal, so that you can do so by sharing a bit of your proceeds without paying personal income tax upon those amounts.

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How to Get Funding for a Business

Up and Running

Most healthy businesses need business financing at some point. Startups have to deal with starting costs and ongoing businesses have to finance growth and working capital. Deciding to take on some kind of debt is quite common. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the big picture, and then talk through options for funding. Financing options depend on what kind of business you have.

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