2020

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5 Keys To Negotiating Your Fair Share Of Any Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. So the first question I usually get is what percent of the company or equity is that person worth? Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want.

Cofounder 435
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SAP Data & Analytics Analyst Summit - a review

deal architect

I was invited to an analyst summit on SAP's Data and Analytics portfolio of products. What a remarkable difference from last year! I had flown to a similar event in Vancouver - first to Seattle, then taken a bus across.

Analytics 488
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How To Survive The Loss Of A Main Customer

YoungUpstarts

by Zain Jaffer, serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Zain Ventures. Running a small business can come with a slew of challenges. Among the list: the loss of a major client. In many cases, this scenario is inevitable and difficult to prevent. When it occurs, the consequences can be swift and devastating, wreaking potential havoc on a once steady stream of revenue.

Customer 347
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How Remote Startups are Changing the Game for Everyone

ReadWriteStart

Based on our history, we can see that unprecedented events have the potential to cause permanent mass changes. Remember the 9/11 attack? That attack changed the face of airport security forever. Suddenly, new transit rules were enforced and sophisticated surveillance gear became commonplace. Here is how remote startups are changing the game for everyone.

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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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B2B Marketplaces Revisited

Version One Ventures

Twenty years ago – in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom – expectations were high for B2B (product) marketplaces. The assumption was that online platforms would completely automate all supplier-customer transactions including retailing, wholesaling, and procurement. Yet today, the world of B2B marketplaces still lags far behind its B2C counterpart. Alibaba is an exception.

B2B 213
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The Should-How Fallacy (Or Why “Correct” Isn’t “Useful”)

ConversionXL

Get a chicken. Cook it until it’s perfectly done. Reduce the jus to a nice pan sauce. Then finish it with some butter until it has the right balance of flavors. Enjoy. This is a useless recipe, but it’s not wrong. It assumes, however, that accurate advice on what you should do is as valuable as advice on how to do it—the “Should-How Fallacy.” But being right doesn’t create value; empowering others to succeed does.

Analytics 161

More Trending

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Technology, Innovation, and Modern War – Class 1

Steve Blank

We just had our first week of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Given the tech-centricity of Stanford and Silicon Valley, Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I thought it was natural to design a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy.

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Sizing the Ask

View from Seed

One important tactical decision when fundraising is determining the size of “the ask”. Sizing the ask incorrectly is one of the things I see founders get wrong most often, and it ends up having a meaningful impact to the fundraising process overall. Telling an investor how much money you are looking to raise seems like a simple and benign question, but it’s actually pretty complicated.

Valuation 418
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Wise Words from C.S. Lewis in 1948

Feld Thoughts

The following from C. S. Lewis. was on my fraternity email list this morning. It was written in 1948 after the dawn of the atomic age. In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are

Email 254
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5 reasons why Germany is the best country for startups

The Next Web

Germany has been a startup ecosystem on the rise for quite some time now. It’s produced a number of global success stories including SoundCloud, Zalando, Flixbus, and HelloFresh. In 2019, the country was ranked number one in Europe for startups by NimbleFins. EY reported that Germany’s top 100 startups received a total of $11.1 billion in funding in 2019, a significant increase from the $6.3 billion reached in 2018.

Germany 209
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How Bill Gates Was A Role Model For New Entrepreneurs

Startup Professionals Musings

Sometimes I like to drop the comment socially that “I knew Bill Gates back when he was a regular guy.” I know that dates me a good bit, but it also shows that I have been hanging around startups for a long time. The honest truth is that I worked directly with him in the early days of Microsoft from my “safe” perch in big IBM, during the startup of the IBM PC.

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Davos report - a conversation with Alan Alper of Cognizant

deal architect

Cognizant is a regular at the annual WEF event in Davos, Switzerland. I requested Alan Alper, VP Corporate Marketing, keep good notes on everything he observed during this year's event. Here's an excellent ground level report - you can feel.

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Is Artificial Intelligence Fusing With The Virtual Call Center?

YoungUpstarts

The current business situation has brought new techniques for improving the global market – the fusing of AI with the call center directed to improve a business’s customer interactions. Today virtual call centers are the top users of AI technology from reliable poll ratings. Most businesses in the UK are adopting AI tech to increase the reliability of their call centers.

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10 Entrepreneur Podcasts Every Founder Should Listen To

ReadWriteStart

Podcasts are one of my favorite content mediums, and I know I’m not alone. Podcasts are inexpensive, typically free, they’re incredibly diverse, they’re usually updated on a daily or weekly basis, and you can listen to them while doing other things—like driving, doing chores, or exercising. Here are ten entrepreneur podcasts every founder should listen to.

Founder 212
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A Guide to Marketplaces: Third Edition

Version One Ventures

We’re thrilled to announce the third edition of “A Guide to Marketplaces.” We published our first edition five years ago and the second nearly three years ago. So much has changed since then – from the rise of B2B marketplaces to new crypto-native platforms. . Even as we explore emerging sectors like climate and crypto, we continue to be excited about marketplaces.

B2B 218
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How to Talk About the Arc of Your Career

This is going to be BIG.

Not everyone’s career moves up and to the right from beginning to end. In fact, I don’t think that actually happens to anyone—but some people are just better at hiding the wrong turns, u-turns, and downturns than others. The key isn’t skipping over them—because a recruiter or potential employer can sniff out a story that doesn’t make sense from a mile away.

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5 Trends That Impact Consultants and Coaches in 2021

Duct Tape Marketing

5 Trends That Impact Consultants and Coaches in 2021 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. In addition to working with thousands of small business owners each year, I also work very closely with coaches, consultants, and small marketing agency owners. These folks are, of course, small business owners in their own right. Still, this work gives me particular insight into the challenges, workings, and characteristics of this specific niche of business owners.

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Rising out of the Crisis: Where to Find New Markets and Customers

Steve Blank

The pandemic has upended the business models of most startups and existing companies. As the economy reopens companies are finding that customers may have disappeared or that their spending behavior has changed. Suppliers are going out of business or requiring cash-up-front terms. Accounts receivables are stretching way out. Revenue models and forecasts are no longer valid.

Customer 436
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The Creator Economy is rising, but challenges abound

VC Cafe

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living” Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans. At the heart of the creator economy (also dubbed the “Passion Economy” or “Hustle Economy”) is the ability of a creator to monetise attention and fandom.

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Exponential Growth and Covid-19

Feld Thoughts

Most people don’t understand exponential growth. It can be counterintuitive and is easily misinterpreted. Understanding it is particularly important right now around Covid-19. The following eight-minute video is extremely well done and uses the historical Covid-19 data to help understand exponential growth. There’s a magic number in this that we should be focusing on, but gets lost in the fog of hysteria.

Green 254
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2020 SaaS Survey Results- COVID Edition!

For Entrepreneurs

KBCM TECHNOLOGY GROUP SAAS SURVEY – COVID EDITION For the eighth year in a row, we’re proud to work with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) Thank you to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in taking the survey! Thank you also to David Spitz (@dspitz) and the team at KBCM Technology Group for.

Security 197
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5 Stages Of The Market Lifecycle Gate Startup Success

Startup Professionals Musings

As a frequent advisor to new entrepreneurs and startups, I often hear your frustration with being treated differently from other startups by investors, on expectations for valuation , traction, and market size. Of course, it could be your level of experience, or the quality of your team, but the difference is often more related to the lifecycle stage of the market you are trying to enter.

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Get The Startup Way ebook for $2.99 for a limited time

Startup Lessons Learned

No company can succeed long-term without a culture of continuous innovation and systems of entrepreneurial management that encourage and support change and the visionaries who make it happen. That's why I'm so pleased that from today through March 1st, the ebook of The Startup Way is on sale for $2.99. You can find it on Amazon , at Barnes & Noble , and on Apple Books.

Lean 199
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Starting Up A Business Vs Buying An Existing Business

YoungUpstarts

If you generally have the idea of starting up a business or buying an existing business, each has its advantages and disadvantages to it (If you are looking to fund your new venture and need help comparing the market Nowloan can provide you with some of the best rates on the market just click here ). Businesses can be tricky if you aren’t careful enough.

Employee 324
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How to Name Your Tech Startup

ReadWriteStart

Starting a tech company is exciting, but there are dozens of factors you’ll need to consider if you want your startup to succeed. Much of your time brainstorming will be spent considering things like how to reduce costs, how to expand efficiently, and how to build the right team—but you’ll also need to consider the nature of your brand, including your business’s name.

Naming 207
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The Energy Revolution is (Finally) Here

Version One Ventures

It’s been exciting to see so much renewed investor interest in climate tech and clean energy startups. As Peter Thiel documented in detail, the last wave of late 2000s cleantech VC excitement ended in a trough of despair as many of the more well-funded companies went bust (with the notable exception of a few big winners like Tesla, SunRun, and Opower).

Mexico 218
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Google Will Soon Rank “Passages.” Does It Matter?

ConversionXL

On October 15, Google announced that it will integrate more artificial intelligence into its search algorithm, improve visual search, and work on 3D search functionality. When it comes to organic results, the biggest news is Google’s new focus on “passages”: By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for.

Algorithm 174
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2021 Trends for Small Business

Duct Tape Marketing

2021 Trends for Small Business written by Jenna Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch . In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I do my annual wrap up of 2020 in a way that predicts what is coming next year! I’ve been doing this post for the last 20 years and I’m usually spot on. That’s not a nod to my prediction ability but more to the fact that trends usually creep up on us and grow.

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The Covid-19 virus is not politically correct

Steve Blank

The Covid-19 virus is not politically correct. It discriminates against the old and the unhealthy. The biggest risk factor in dying from the virus is age. If you’re 60 to 70 years old, you’re 30 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than if you’re under 40. And if you’re over 80, you’re 180 times more likely. It’s not that the young don’t get sick or die, but the odds are dramatically different.

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The stars align for AR to go mainstream

VC Cafe

“I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day. It will become that much a part of you.” —Tim Cook , Apple CEO. One of the top reasons startups fail is timing. No matter how brilliant the team, idea and technology are, get the timing wrong and the chances of success are slim.

Demand 203
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The Great HQ Migration

Feld Thoughts

January 3, 2020, seems like a very long time ago. That day, I wrote a post titled The Future Of Work Is Distributed. I had no idea that four months later, all office workers in the world would be working from home, and within six months, the idea of distributed and remote work would be a topic discussed daily. When the Federal tax laws were changed in 2018 to eliminate the deductibility of state income tax, I made the assertion, in the context of Startup Communities, that this would cause moveme

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9 Steps to Repeatable, Scalable, and Profitable Growth

For Entrepreneurs

I recently did a podcast interview with Harry Stebbings of “The Twenty Minute VC” where we talked about the 9 step model for how B2B startups need to get through product/market fit, and then how they should go about finding a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process. For those of who are interested in learning.

B2B 199
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5 Keys to Ensuring Credibility, Trust, and Customers

Startup Professionals Musings

As a long-time business executive and adviser to entrepreneurs, I see a definitive shift away from customer trust in traditional business messages, and the executives who deliver them. Today’s digitally distracted consumer is led to trust only things that they see with their own eyes, senses, so they can render their own judgement. They want the raw data versus a polished message.

Customer 433
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VC Fund Returns Are More Skewed Than You Think

VC Adventure

Some of the most popular posts I’ve written over the past couple of years were the two that focused on just how rare outsized returns for an individual deal are in venture capital. You can see the original posts here and here. In those posts I was analyzing data from Correlation Ventures that showed just how skewed venture returns are, specifically that 65% of investment rounds fail to return 1x capital and only 4% return greater than 10x capital.

IRR 174
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If Your Pitch Deck Has a Competitive 2×2, I’m Going to Ask You This Question

Hunter Walker

As an early stage investor I look at A LOT of pitch decks. In the seven years since we started Homebrew there has been some evolution in this area – Docsend, videos, the occasional memo – but the lingua franca among founders and investors is still largely 10-25 slides with several expected sections. And while some of us have very strong personal reactions to certain portions ( seed decks should never include an exit slide ), we’re generally aware these are lowest common denomin

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7 Things to Consider Before Starting Your Own Business

ReadWriteStart

Starting your own business can be an exciting endeavor. As a small business owner, you’re free to make your own decisions, guide the company in the direction you see fit, and benefit from complete creative freedom. Despite the myriad of positive benefits, starting a company isn’t a decision you should be taking lightly. With that in mind, here are seven important things you should consider before starting your own business: Can You Solve a Problem?

Naming 197