Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 30, 2014
'When I first met Meredith Perry she was 24. That was three months ago this week. Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
'“ By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.”. Book of Five Rings. A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. —-. I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress.
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View from Seed
NOVEMBER 6, 2014
'Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make. NextView Ventures: You just experienced something that most developers don’t ever see: zero code base at a company.
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 7, 2014
'by Don Thomas Jacob, Head Geek at SolarWinds. Today’s technology landscape is littered with buzzwords and seemingly urgent exhortations for businesses: move to the cloud, spend time and money developing a mobile app, support mobility, and so on. They are also inundated with news of trendy tech gear and encouraged to spend on implementing big technologies such as BYOD or big data and associated IT infrastructure.
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
OCTOBER 15, 2014
'Guest Post By William Hertling – williamhertling.com (Author). William Hertling is a web strategist, programmer, father, short-order cook and the author of two award-winning and best-selling techothrillers: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity is Closer than It Appears and A.I. Apocalypse. You can follow him at @hertling or on his blog, williamhertling.com.
This is going to be BIG.
MAY 12, 2014
'Two years ago I started a fund. For the fund to be viable, it had to be at least $5 million, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $8-10 million would have been perfect. Thankfully, that''s what I raised--$8.3 million. So how does it work? How does one make money raising a venture fund of this size? Not easily, let me tell you. The benefit comes in the upside, and it''s very back end weighted.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Startup Lessons Learned
DECEMBER 1, 2014
'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference The Lean Startup Conference is next week--and now that we can step back and see all the speakers and mentors, we have to say: Wow. When you look through the list , you’ll see big names that we’re very pleased we landed, epic companies we really want to hear from, and people we’re particularly excited to present because they have incredible stories to share--and you won’t hear them anyplace else.
The Next Web
SEPTEMBER 6, 2014
'Dries Buytaert created Drupal, an open source content management platform, in his dorm room. He is also the co-founder and CTO at Acquia, a company providing enterprise software for websites and commerce. Society is undergoing tremendous change right now — those of us who enjoy services like Uber and Kickstarter are experiencing it firsthand. The sharing and collaboration practices of the internet are extending to transportation (Uber), hotels (Airbnb), financing (Kickstarter, LendingClub), mus
crowdSPRING Blog
MARCH 4, 2014
'If you don’t have a dedicated website for your startup or small business, you are not alone. But you’re in grave danger to fall further behind your competition. You might be slowly building a fan base on Facebook ( if you’re buying fans on Facebook by advertising, you’re very likely wasting your money ), sharing small bits of content on Twitter and posting images to Pinterest.
ConversionXL
JANUARY 31, 2014
'What follows is a list of resources that can be applied specifically to landing page optimization, found here on ConversionXL & from other great websites around the web. We’ve organized everything to best simulate a visitor’s experience on a landing page from first click to final conversion. To get the most out of this guide, please use each resource to focus on one area of your landing page experience at a time.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 5, 2014
'Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
'How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. ——-. I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 9, 2014
'This is a guest post from Stephano Kim , former co-founder of Web 1.0 success story Blackboard and veteran entrepreneur who’s held several COO and president roles at various startups. Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. But what do COOs actually do for startups? When should founders hire one? Based on what criteria?
Version One Ventures
MAY 29, 2014
'We’re all too familiar with the very real gender gap within the tech community. Women are underrepresented as engineers, management, investors, and founders. A commonly cited statistic is that only 7 percent of U.S. venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Business Insider recently crunched the numbers behind 26 of the top venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and learned that the percentage of female-founded startups in their portfolios ranged from a high of 19% to a low of just
abovethecrowd.com
JULY 10, 2014
'On June 18, Aswath Damodaran , a finance professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, published an article on FiveThirtyEight titled “ Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion. ” This post was a shortened version of a more detailed post he had written for his own blog titled “ A Disruptive Cab Ride to Riches: The Uber Payoff.” Using a combination of market data, math, and financial analysis, Professor Damodaran concluded that his best estimate of the value of Uber is $5.9 billion, far short of the value re
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
'A few weeks ago, I was talking with a founder that I backed and he was telling me how excited he was about his company. He said the path was so clear that he could literally see it--and that''s the way he''s always been since I met him. He has a quiet confidence and he''s excited to talk about his company--and he could go on and on if you let him. It''s a stark contrast to people who beg for "just five minutes" of my time.
Up and Running
OCTOBER 2, 2014
'There are plenty of popular business-advice websites that make it on these kinds of “best of” lists, but I wanted to take a different approach. The problem with many of the popular sites is that they often offer little more than fluff pieces that don’t actually help you improve your business. They’ll share entrepreneur success stories, but the details of how exactly they achieved that success is frequently vague and unhelpful.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 7, 2014
'Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. If you build products or services, then having empathy for your users is part of your job. Good news: If you build products or services, then we have empathy for you. We talked with Laura Klein, a preeminent expert on user experience, about the questions she gets asked most often by other product pros.
The Next Web
FEBRUARY 23, 2014
'This post originally appeared on the TransferWise blog. TransferWise is the clever new way to transfer money between countries, from the people the people who built Skype and PayPal. From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley, and Berlin’s hip coffee shops to East London’s Silicon Roundabout , the world is well versed in the global innovation boom towns.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
JUNE 30, 2014
'This has to be one of the best “laptop lifestyle” case studies I have ever heard. Let me introduce you to Michelle Dale. She is the founder of Virtual Miss Friday , a virtual assistant service and training company. [ Download MP3 | Transcript | iTunes | Soundcloud | Raw RSS ]. Michelle has been traveling all around Europe … Read the rest of this entry » The post Michelle Dale: Mother Of Three Takes Her Kids Around Europe On A Ten Year “Laptop Lif
ConversionXL
MARCH 16, 2014
'“Typography is the detail and the presentation of a story. It represents the voice of an atmosphere, or historical setting of some kind. It can do a lot of things.” Cyrus Highsmith. We only have a handful of tools to communicating online, really. Words, images, colors & composition are the usual suspects – but they’re stealing most of the credit for what goes into making effective websites & landing pages.
Scott Edward Walker
FEBRUARY 1, 2014
'My law firm recently entered into a new partnership with This Week in Startups and sponsored their live fireside chat last month in San Francisco with authors Nick Bilton and Brad Stone. Prior to the event, I conducted a legal workshop entitled “The 5 Biggest Legal Mistakes That Startups Make,” which I have uploaded below. If you would like to jump to different sections of the video, here’s how it breaks down: Mistake #1 : forming the wrong entity (at 1:25).
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 25, 2014
'In Oracle’s early days Kathryn Gould was the founding VP of Marketing, working there from 1982 to 1984. When I heard that Larry Ellison was stepping down as Oracle ’s CEO I asked Kathryn to think about the skills she saw in a young Larry Ellison that might make today’s founders winners. — Though I haven’t talked to Larry face-to-face for 20 years, and haven’t worked at Oracle for 30 years, he’s the yardstick I’ve used to pick entrepreneurs all of these years since.
View from Seed
AUGUST 27, 2014
'The best writer I ever hired at a startup wasn’t a former journalist. He wasn’t a former marketer or a former teacher or even a former liberal arts major. The best writer I ever hired at a startup didn’t have a resume. He didn’t have a LinkedIn profile or Google+ account or even a Twitter handle. The best writer I ever hired at a startup is trying to work at your startup all the time, but 99 out of 100 times, you pass.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 30, 2014
'7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Use Video To Grow Their New Business written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Joe Forte – Enjoy! Congratulations! Your business plans are in place, perhaps you have sought out and won investors, and gotten a foothold in the market with your product.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 18, 2014
'This week. On the phone … Me: So, you raised venture capital? Him: Yeah. We raised a seed round. About $1 million. Me: At what price? Him: It wasn’t priced. We raised a convertible note. Me: With a cap? Him: Yes, $8 million. Me: Ah. I see. So you did raise with a price. It’s just a maximum price. You’ll find out the minimum when the next round is raised.
Seeing Both Sides
FEBRUARY 5, 2014
'I love dressing informally, maybe too much. My wife frequently reprimands me for dressing down. I recently met with a US Senator in slacks and a collar shirt (which I thought was being respectfully dressy!) and he wryly cracked that I looked awfully comfortable. I sometime teach my HBS class in jeans (please don''t tell the dean). But lately, I have been wondering if entrepreneurs have taken informality too far.
Up and Running
SEPTEMBER 10, 2014
'Good bookkeeping is essential to keep your business thriving—not just surviving. Badly tracked finances can cause your business a world of problems—from poor cash flow to improper tax filings and beyond. These kinds of problems can put a young business at serious risk. Good bookkeeping habits, on the other hand, can help a business thrive—and not just survive.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 12, 2014
'Virtual team management can get a whole lot easier when you apply the right tips and tools. Truthfully, managing a virtual team is a whole lot of work and has more challenges than just psyching yourself up to get out of those nightclothes and into something snappy. Here are five Servcorp Singapore tips on making virtual team management a whole lot easier: Communicate Via the Right Channels.
The Next Web
JUNE 1, 2014
'Chris Bolman is the Director of Growth at Percolate. This post originally appeared on the Percolate blog. Over the summer of 2013, David Byttow, a former Google software developer, started building a mobile app to solve a problem he had. Byttow noticed he and the engineers he worked with were bad at giving each other feedback, and he wanted a way they could comment honestly on each other’s work without professional or personal backlash for saying something negative.
Agile VC
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'Most folks reading this will know that many startups were built in part with the help of venture capital. Most attention goes to tech companies ranging from Google to Genentech, but some non-tech companies like FedEx and Starbucks also raised VC early in their lives. However, many folks probably don’t think about exactly where those VC dollars that help fund startups actually come from.
Genuine VC
DECEMBER 3, 2014
'It’s official: now two months after the IPO, HubSpot has surpassed the $1B market cap threshold and has become that “pillar” company that the tech ecosystem long anticipated. The benefits have been touted previously : an anchor for attracting and retaining talent in Boston, as well as a breeding ground for the next set of great Boston entrepreneurs and founders.
Scott Edward Walker
FEBRUARY 1, 2014
'My law firm recently entered into a new partnership with This Week in Startups and sponsored their live fireside chat last month in San Francisco with authors Nick Bilton and Brad Stone. Prior to the event, I conducted a legal workshop entitled “The 5 Biggest Legal Mistakes That Startups Make,” which I have uploaded below. If you would like to jump to different sections of the video, here’s how it breaks down: Mistake #1: forming the wrong entity (at 1:25) Mistake #2: not buttoning-down IP
Steve Blank
MARCH 12, 2014
'While the Lean LaunchPad class has been adopted by Universities and the National Science Foundation, the question we get is, “Can students in K-12 handle an experiential entrepreneurship class?” Hawken School has now given us an answer. Their seniors just completed the school’s first-ever 3-credit semester program in evidence-based entrepreneurship.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'This post was originally published on the personal blog of NextView founding partner Lee Hower. Lee’s posts also appear regularly on View From Seed. Subscribe here for more. Most folks reading this will know that many startups were built in part with the help of venture capital. Most attention goes to tech companies ranging from Google to Genentech, but some non-tech companies like FedEx and Starbucks also raised VC early in their lives.
Duct Tape Marketing
JULY 25, 2014
'30 Tips for Great Digital Marketing written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest post is from Tara Banda – Enjoy! A man walks into a bar/restaurant/hotel/car repair shop. Chances are, he found it online. That’s because today’s consumers, 80% according to Google , rely more on the Web to find and choose local businesses.
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