2012

article thumbnail

10,000 Startups – Startup Weekend Next

Steve Blank

Today we are announcing the biggest entrepreneurial program ever launched – Startup Weekend Next. A partnership of Startup Weekend , Startup America , TechStars and Udacity , Startup Weekend Next brings four weeks of amazing hands-on training learning to build your startup to cities around the world. Our goal– to inspire, educate and empower hundred’s of thousands of entrepreneurs and help create 10,000 startups.

Startup 335
article thumbnail

10 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Beat the Odds

Startup Professionals Musings

Did you ever wonder why some entrepreneurs always seem to have all the luck and success, while others never seem to catch a break? As an Angel investor, I quickly learned that luck has very little to do with it, and I now look for some personal characteristics and leadership styles that separate the potential winners from the losers. These differences are the reason that investors say that they invest in people, rather than ideas.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

Eight Ways To Retrain Your Brain To Notice The Little Things

YoungUpstarts

by Jason Womack, author of “ Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More “ For many Americans, the 21st century has gone from being the age of information to feeling more like the age of information overload. Between the e-mails, memos, and other miscellaneous information you have to read at work, your friends’ Facebook updates, your Twitter community recommending articles for you to read, and that book that’s been sitting on your nightstand (unopened) for the pa

Product 277
article thumbnail

6 Skills Every Startup Team Needs

ReadWriteStart

So many tech startups begin the same way: One founder, one dream and a plan to make it happen. Most businesses stay that way - there are many more solo entrepreneurs than business owners with employees. But to succeed, most startups need a much broader set of skills and experience. If you intend to build a scalable business, you know you can’t do it alone.

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

A new field guide for entrepreneurs of all stripes

Startup Lessons Learned

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today. It's been just about two years since Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits released their self-published book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development (you can see my original review here ).

article thumbnail

Facebook Advertising / Marketing: Best Metrics, ROI, Business Value

Occam's Razor

Facebook has an incredible audience, 950 million strong and counting. This audience is immensely attractive to Brands and Marketers around the world. We've seen explosive growth in brand pages, types of advertising and other fun ways to monetize this audience. Increased investment in Facebook as an engagement/acquisition channel has translated into requests from CEOs, CMOs and other CxOs about the return on that investment.

Metrics 165

More Trending

article thumbnail

Forget Presidential Politics: Here’s How We Create Jobs — And How You Can Help

Gust

As I write this, days after the 2012 presidential election, I’m probably not alone in feeling relieved that the political jeering and soapboxing that reached a feverish pitch during the seemingly endless campaign season has finally subsided. Yet amidst all the partisan cheerleading and name-calling, there has been some discussion of substance.

article thumbnail

How To Get Tons of Amazon Reviews For Your Book (Or Product)

Mike Michalowicz

Unlimited Real, Legit Amazon Reviews. Being that I am an, admittedly, relatively unknown author of business books, it was clear that I needed to show credibility immediately. A pretty book cover with a catchy title may get someone to look at your page on Amazon , but it is unlikely to get them to buy it. Ultimately, for a consumer to buy your book, product or service, they want to trust they are making a good decision.

article thumbnail

Troubled media sharing startup Color Labs said to be acquired by Apple

The Next Web

Color Labs, the photo-and-video-sharing social network that received much criticism over its pre-launch $41 million funding round, is about to be acquired by Apple. We’ve heard through trusted sources that the startup was nabbed for a price that is in the ‘high double digits’, as in millions, and that the deal is ‘done’, though papers have yet to be signed.

article thumbnail

Steve Would Be Proud: How Apple Won The War Against Flash

techcrunch.com

Late Thursday, an extraordinary thing happened: Adobe announced in a blog post that it would not provide Flash Player support for devices running Android 4.1 , and that it would pull the plugin from the Google Play store on August 15. The retreat comes five years after the introduction of the iPhone, the device which thwarted Flash’s mobile ambitions, almost even before they began.

Flash 110
article thumbnail

Why Too Many Startups (er) Suck

Steve Blank

This is a guest post by my Startup Owner’s Manual co-author Bob Dorf. ——————-. While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that 2 in 1000 venture backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation. Another stat puts that number at 2% rather than 0.2%. Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase.

Startup 332
article thumbnail

First Impressions Matter: The Importance of Great Visual Design

ConversionXL

People make snap judgements. It takes only 1/10th of a second to form a first impression about a person, and websites are no different. It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave. This number comes from specific studies.

Design 134
article thumbnail

100 Smart Ways To Invest Your Time When You’re Unemployed

YoungUpstarts

Unemployment can strike unexpectedly and leave you feeling frustrated, stressed out, and upset. Yet it doesn’t have to be an entirely bad experience. Aside from the financial woes it might create, unemployment can sometimes be a blessing in disguise, helping you take care of things you’ve been putting off, building career skills, or even pushing you in a totally new direction in life — that is, if you choose to use your time away from the workplace wisely.

article thumbnail

Better Than Getting Rich Quick: Startup Geoloqi Gets A Deal For The Long Haul

ReadWriteStart

Geoloqi was a smart little startup from Portland, Ore., that made software for telling a smartphone where in the world it is. All kinds of investors wanted a piece of the action, but Geoloqi said no, no, no. Its founders wanted to find a fit , not an “exit,” a place where they could keep building the apps and maps thy love. Now they have. Geoloqi has been acquired by Esri.

Portland 163
article thumbnail

Bringing Lean Startup to Life at GE

Startup Lessons Learned

Guest post by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. At a party in NYC recently, I was challenged by a VC to name the biggest company currently using Lean Startup practices. I think he expected me to describe a medium-sized startup or maybe some small, old-school media organization. So his eyebrows jumped when I said that GE is the largest company we know of.

Lean 167
article thumbnail

The Nike+ Accelerator, powered by TechStars

David Cohen

Today, Nike announced their first Nike+ Accelerator program, powered by TechStars. Ten companies will participate in a three-month, mentorship-driven program. The technology focus will be about leveraging the success of the Nike+ FuelBand, Nike+ Running and NikeFuel to support digital innovation. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m a quantified self geek and enjoy data.

Portland 131
article thumbnail

The only 2 ways to build a $100 million business

Version One Ventures

With tens of thousands of new start-ups being created every year, the potential of a company to truly scale and become a large, stand-alone business is more crucial than ever before. A great product is always the foundation but a clear distribution strategy becomes essential to cut through the noise. So most early-stage VCs have started to evaluate investment opportunities with an imaginary benchmark in mind: can this company become a $100 million opportunity?

article thumbnail

Why Software Development Estimations Are Regularly Off

Diego Basch

Some people believe that carrying out a large software project is like building a bridge. You look at your past projects and use the data to estimate the time and resources needed. This view has been debunked decades ago; this analogy was frequently seen as an aspiration for the future when I did my Master in Software Engineering at Carnegie Mellon in the late nineties.

article thumbnail

Revolution at the Edge

Ben's Blog

This is a guest post by Christian Gheorghe, founder and CEO of Tidemark. It’s a start, a work of art. To revolutionize make a change nothing’s strange. People, people we are the same. No we’re not the same. Cause we don’t know the game. What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless. You say what is this? —Public Enemy, Fight The Power.

Romania 77
article thumbnail

How and Why to Make Your WebsiteTablet and Mobile Friendly Now

Duct Tape Marketing

Talk about mobile and tablet usage dominates computer hardware conversations and the implications are one of the hottest topics in marketing right now as well. photo credit: waferbaby via photopin cc. Website visitors are now consuming content from our sites in a dizzying array of devices, formats and orientations. There was a time when browser compatibility was a designer’s primary concern.

Mobile 74
article thumbnail

Entrepreneurshit. The Blog Post on What It’s Really Like.

Both Sides of the Table

It’s 4.50am. Sunday morning. And I couldn’t sleep. I have much on my mind since I just returned from a week on the road. 5 days. 3 cities. Late night Mexican food. Beers. Airports. Delays. I left on a Sunday. I had to miss a full day with my family, camping in the mountains. I returned home Friday night at 10pm – too late to see my kids.

Cofounder 420
article thumbnail

Careers Start by Peeling Potatoes

Steve Blank

Listening to my the family talk about dividing up the cooking chores for this Thanksgiving dinner, including who would peel the potatoes, reminded me that most careers start by peeling potatoes. KP – Kitchen Patrol. One of the iconic punishments in basic training in the military was being threatened by our drill instructors of being assigned to KP – Kitchen Patrol – as a penalty for breaking some rule.

Thailand 331
article thumbnail

9 Things to Know About Influencing Purchasing Decisions

ConversionXL

If you want to get people to buy your stuff, you need to understand how people make purchasing decisions. Product quality and seller reputation matter , goes without saying. What about when the product matches the customer’s needs and wants, and they trust the seller? What are the things that influence purchasing decisions once those fundamentals are in place?

article thumbnail

Think Twice Before Starting a Company

Rob Go

I sent a tweet out last week that resulted in some healthy debate: “three years ago, I was telling everyone I met to start companies. These days, I’m telling everyone to think twice” Of course, it’s not fair to give general advice like that. But what I meant was, 3-5 years ago, when I met someone who was thinking about starting a company, my bias was one of action.

article thumbnail

Which is better: Many customers at low price-point or few at high price?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

The results of a serendipitous live experiment were recently published as guest posts on this blog. Sacha demonstrated the benefits of selling many copies of an eBook at a low price, while Jarrod pointed out the advantages of higher prices, bringing in more revenue with 1/6th the number of units sold. The ensuing discussion swirled around the merits of selling more units (i.e. maximizing reach) versus selling more expensive units (i.e. maximizing per-unit profitability).

Customer 320
article thumbnail

The Hacker Way

Startup Lessons Learned

I don't normally comment on the day's news, but I want to make an exception today to share something from Facebook's S-1 filing. Over the next few days, astronomical amounts of attention are going to be paid to Facebook's incredible business results: the 800+ million active users, the $3.7 billion (!) in revenue, and their growth rates, too. I hope at least some of that attention will be paid to the culture and process that made those results possible.

IPO 168
article thumbnail

15 Ways Parents Can Promote Entrepreneurship

YoungUpstarts

These days, the traditional path of getting a good education and going to work in the corporate world isn’t always the best way to find success. Although it’s still a great choice, many young people prefer instead to take a path of entrepreneurship, and there’s a lot that parents can do to help them follow that path. Lemonade stands, family learning adventures, and smart financial lessons are just a few of the ways that parents can instill an entrepreneurial attitude of success

Finance 279
article thumbnail

I think bootstrapping might be impossible for non-programmers

The Startup Toolkit

(Note: In this post I’m talking specifically about tech startups, and especially non-sales-driven tech startups). Clever landing page tests and interviews can tell you whether an idea is bad , but not whether it will work. There’s still a big leap from “problem exists” to a product that delights while fitting into someones life and being able to attract new users.

article thumbnail

Business Plans Are An Historical Artifact

Feld Thoughts

This article ( Business Plans Are An Historical Artifact ) first appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal The Accelerators Column , which I’m contributing to on a regular basis. . In 1987 when I started my first company (Feld Technologies), I wrote a business plan for a course at MIT that I was in called 15.375: New Enterprises. The textbook for the course was Jeffry A.

article thumbnail

The Future of Networking

Ben's Blog

I’ve seen the future and it will be. I’ve seen the future and it works. —Prince, The Future. Major technology platforms tend to last about 25 to 30 years. This gives them time to gather sufficient developer momentum, enable a set of transformational ideas, build those ideas, and form a large industry around it. The platforms then sustain for an additional 5-10 years due to inertia and lock-in.

article thumbnail

6 Clues That You May Be Cool as an Entrepreneur

Gust

Google's Larry Page image via Coolspotters.com. A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work.

article thumbnail

The Scarcest Resource at Startups is Management Bandwidth

Both Sides of the Table

When you work inside a startup with lots of clever and motivated staff you’re never short of good ideas that you can implement. It’s tempting to take on new projects, new features, new geographies, new speaking opportunities, whatever. Each one incrementally sounds like a good idea, yet collectively they end up punishing undisciplined teams.

Bandwidth 415
article thumbnail

Open Source Entrepreneurship

Steve Blank

One of the great things about being a retired entrepreneur is that I get to give back to the community that helped me. I assembled this collection of free and almost free tools, class syllabi, presentations, books, lectures, videos in the hope that it can make your path as an entrepreneur or educator easier. Free: Startup Tools. If you’re building a startup, the Startup Tools tab on the top of this page has curated links to hundreds of startup resources.

article thumbnail

Learning Should Be Your Top 2013 New Year’s Resolution

VC Cafe

Make learning and development a key resolution in 2013. If you're a startup, you are by definition competing with the smartest people in the world - either large companies or fellow entrepreneurs who. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

Developer 167
article thumbnail

Inspired by a beetle that draws water from the air, scientist creates self-filling water bottle

The Next Web

The Namib Desert beetle lives in an area that only gets half an inch of rainfall per year, and so it draws 12 percent of its weight in water from the air to quench its thirst. NBD Nano co-founder Deckard Sorensen was inspired by the beetle to the point that he created a self-filling water bottle, which he hopes to bring to the market by 2014. Every morning, the beetle climbs to the top of a sand dune, faces away from the wind, and ensures that water condenses in hydrophilic areas of its back.

Cofounder 167
article thumbnail

Using Surveys to Validate Key Startup Decisions

For Entrepreneurs

Summary This article describes in detail how to use on-line survey tools to validate your key startup assumptions, and gain actionable insights into topics such as pricing, target demographics, messaging, etc. Introduction By now pretty much every entrepreneur knows the basics of Lean Startup methodology: start by searching for product/market fit. Get out of the [.].

Startup 167