Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2018

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.

Entrepreneur 334

Entrepreneur Startup Business Model Venture Capital 334

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 29, 2018

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 […].

Startup 388

Startup China 388

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

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.

Intellectual Property 240

Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Acquisition Revenue 240

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

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.

Elevator Pitch 242

Elevator Pitch Due Diligence Startup Networking 242

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

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 16, 2018

I still know some entrepreneurs who boast of simply following their gut instincts, rather than listen to anyone or any data, to make strategic decisions. We’ve all worked with autocratic leaders in large companies who seem to thrive in this mode. They all forget or ignore the high-profile failures that have resulted from some single-handed business decisions.

Merger 283

Merger Analytics Open Source Social Media 283

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2018

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.

Startup 349

Startup Metrics Lean Cofounder 349

deal architect

JANUARY 18, 2018

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

Software Cloud 512

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 15, 2018

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.

Early Stage 413

Early Stage Founder PR Hiring 413

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

by Judith Nowlin, Chief Growth Officer for Babyscripts. If I had a dime for every time someone told me “you can’t do this” on my entrepreneurial journey, I would be swimming in a pool of coins like Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales, my favorite after school cartoon from the late 80’s. I had every reason to listen to the naysayers. I never paid my dues at a corporate job.

Venture Capital 370

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Bootstrapping Startup 370

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

You had an amazing meeting with an investor. Your product demo crushed. The dialog was great. They told you how much they loved your space. The meeting was only supposed to last 45 minutes but you ran 90. The assistant tried to end the meeting twice but was shoooshed away. You race back to the office to tell everybody how well it went and you wait for the follow-up call to have a partners’ meeting or talk about term sheets or at least dip into due diligence.

Cofounder 381

Cofounder Entrepreneur Due Diligence Churn Rate 381

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

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.

Early Stage 351

Early Stage Cap Table Due Diligence Founder 351

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

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.

Lean 334

Lean Startup Venture Capital Burn Rate 334

Grasshopper Herder

JANUARY 22, 2018

As corporate innovation gets more trendy, businesses are keen to put clear KPIs in place to measure the effectiveness of innovation teams and hold them accountable for making progress. There is a rush to replace traditional KPIs with more actionable metrics such as experiment velocity. The post In Defense of Experiment Velocity appeared first on GrasshopperHerder.com.

Metrics 311

Metrics Startup Design Leadership 311

For Entrepreneurs

SEPTEMBER 25, 2018

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.

Entrepreneur 323

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital 323

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

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.

Entrepreneur 377

Entrepreneur Startup Salary Cofounder 377

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 31, 2018

One of the speakers at this year’s Lean Startup Conference , which kicks off on November 14th in Las Vegas, is Giff Constable. Giff is a repeat entrepreneur whose companies include Neo, a product innovation consulting firm where he worked with organizations like the Mayo Clinic and Time, Inc. before it was acquired by Pivotal. He was most recently VP of product at Axial, a fintech startup that connected medium-sized businesses with capital providers and buyers, where he oversaw product managemen

Lean 335

Lean Startup Las Vegas Entrepreneur 335

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 22, 2018

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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Minnesota Startup Naming Technology 308

deal architect

SEPTEMBER 18, 2018

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

Software 362

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 22, 2018

In almost every single investment I’ve ever made, I can think of a singular moment in my relationship with a founder that, no matter what came before or what might come after, defined our relationship. Often times, it came in a very vulnerable and down moment for the founder—perhaps they just lost out on a big opportunity, had someone from the team leave, or they’re running low on capital before sales have come around.

Founder 402

Founder Reputation Demand Conversion 402

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

Right now, there is a tsunami that’s coming to wipe out thousands of SaaS companies. In this article, I’ll walk you through the three tidal waves coming ashore and show you how to avoid their potentially disastrous consequences. The Three Tidal Waves Coming for Your SaaS Business. Tidal Wave 1: Buyers now prefer to self-educate. This isn’t limited to the B2C space.

Marketing 287

Marketing Acquisition Sales Cycle Sales 287

VC Adventure

OCTOBER 18, 2018

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

Design Email Operations Government 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 5, 2018

Pricing is often more about positioning and perceived value than it is about cost-analysis and unconvincing ROI calculators. As a result, repositioning can allow you to charge many times more than you think. Here’s how. You’ve created a marketing tool called DoubleDown that doubles the cost-efficiency of AdWords campaigns. You heard that right folks — as a marketer, you can generate the same impact, the same number of conversions, the same quality of sales leads, but with half

Product 283

Product Cost PR Lead Generation 283

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

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.

Startup 331

Startup Cofounder Employee Hiring 331

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2018

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

Community Finder Cost Developer 280

Grasshopper Herder

MAY 22, 2018

Whether the companies are private or public, shareholders are demanding a vision for the future. How will these old, inflexible companies survive in industries facing. The post Strategy of Innovation vs. Innovation Strategy appeared first on GrasshopperHerder.com.

Demand 274

Demand Lean Metrics Startup 274

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

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

Metrics Analytics Forecast Non-Compete 263

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 25, 2018

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.

Management 260

Management Silicon Valley Founder San Francisco 260

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 1, 2018

Artificial intelligence is a game changer and will continue to influence how we do things. San Francisco-based Beautiful.AI , a first-of-its-kind tool that applies artificial intelligence to automate the design process, has just released new product features to help SMBs create modern, clean and professionally designed slides in minutes. New features include: animation, audio, auto-advance, Easy come, easy go (back) and Revision History.

Design 219

Design Developer Early Stage San Francisco 219

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

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.

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Startup Community Venture Capital Colorado 235

Up and Running

OCTOBER 8, 2018

Crowdfunding can be an effective way for startups and entrepreneurs to raise funds and to test the market for new ideas, but there are a few secrets to organizing a successful crowdfunding campaign that every business should know. Whichever crowdfunding platform you choose , creating a video for it is one of the best things you can do. Kickstarter hosts thousands of startup crowdfunding campaigns every month, and it has helped over 117,000 startups get funding, facilitating contributions from ov

Startup 201

Startup Video Audio Campaign 201

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 1, 2018

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.

Stock Options 192

Stock Options Stock Entrepreneur Employee 192

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

You’ve got a great resume. You went to top schools, trained at a prestigious bank/consulting firm/etc, and you’ve succeeded in the corporate world doing some important and impactful stuff. Now you want to take that skillset over to the startup world and you’ve got a lot to offer. You can bring some serious business chops to a company that is going up and to the right but needs to take it to the next level.

Startup 202

Startup Cofounder Angel Groups Networking 202

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 10, 2018

“Look, I’m incredibly thankful for this industry. It made me a millionaire.” The person seated across the table from me went through a series of facial microexpressions as I said this — surprise, disgust, analysis and finally, calm. We don’t really talk about money in Silicon Valley. At least not in public in a personal way with near strangers.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley San Francisco Vesting .Net 201

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

I just received a thank-you note from a student who attended a fireside chat I held at the ranch. Something I said seemed to inspire her: “I always thought you needed to be innovative, original to be an entrepreneur. Now I have a different perception. Entrepreneurs are the ones that make things happen. (That) takes focus, diligence, discipline, flexibility and perseverance.

Entrepreneur 330

Entrepreneur Cofounder Startup Finance 330

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 8, 2018

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.

Networking 279

Networking eCommerce Flash United States 279

Grasshopper Herder

MARCH 20, 2018

Reverse mentoring involves the pairing of employees from different generations who can offer unique experiences and perspectives to their partner. The post Reverse Mentoring: What Millennials Can Teach Executives and Senior Managers appeared first on GrasshopperHerder.com.

Management 251

Management Partner Employee Startup 251