2021

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Burning Platform: Flashing Red Lights around Green Policy

deal architect

In the 57th episode of Burning Platform, we host Kurt Marko of MarkoInsights. He is an IT analyst, consultant and regular contributor to a number of technology publications including Diginomica and AvidThink. Coming out of Stanford with a BS and.

Flash 439
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Why Innovation Heroes are a Sign of a Dysfunctional Organization

Steve Blank

A week ago I got invited to an “innovation hero” award ceremony at a government agency. I don’t know how many of these I’ve been to in the last couple years, but this one just made my head explode.

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5 Entrepreneur Exasperations To Moderate Your Passion

Startup Professionals Musings

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. But nobody said it would be easy.

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Announcing NextView IV

View from Seed

We are pleased to announce that we have closed on NextView IV. This is a fresh $100M fund with the same high-conviction, hands-on seed strategy that we’ve been pursuing since the start of NextView over 10 years ago.

LP 411
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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

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 their own ecosystem. He'll also go over metrics we can use to measure the health of our ecosystems as we build more resources for innovators.

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How I Gamified My Own Brain to Lose Weight & Improve Fitness

Both Sides of the Table

Socially distant hiking in Sedona (we drove there) I recently wrote about my weight-loss journey over the past 18 months where I lost 65 pounds without a fad diet and returned to my college weight. If you want to get in better shape and haven’t read that you might start there.

America 538
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5 AI Trends That Will Shape Your Business In 2021

YoungUpstarts

Christa Martin shares some of the fundamental considerations for businesses to understand prior to undertaking the deployment AI for audience segmentation. The post 5 AI Trends That Will Shape Your Business In 2021 appeared first on Young Upstarts.

Audience 360

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Framework Benchmarks Round 20

TechEmpower

Today we announce the results of the twentieth official round of the TechEmpower Framework Benchmarks project. Now in its eighth year, this project measures the high-water mark performance of server side web application frameworks and platforms using predominantly community-contributed test implementations. The project has processed more than 5,200 pull requests from contributors. Round 20 Updates from our contributors.

Framework 280
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Do You Really Need SEO?

Rembrandt Communications

What is Search Engine Optimization? How do you use it for a competitive edge? If search engine optimization ( SEO ) is not part of your content marketing strategy, why not?

SEO 262
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Techstars Accelerating Black ParentPreneurs

Feld Thoughts

I recently nominated James Oliver’s ParentPreneur Foundation for the new Techstars Accelerate Equity Program. Amy and I provided the lead gift of $100,000 through our Anchor Point Foundation.

Equity 248
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Analyst Cam: Aisera

deal architect

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ), as part of my Analyst Cam series. This time, it is Muddu Sudhakar, CEO of Aisera. He presents on their Conversational AI. Analyst Cam

Video 434
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8 Ways To Minimize Entrepreneur Burnout In A Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

New entrepreneurs routinely jump into a startup with a full charge of passion and energy, but often find themselves drained of both after a few months by the workload and challenges.

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A Path to the Minimum Viable Product

Steve Blank

I first met Shawn Carolan and his wife Jennifer at the turn of the century at 11,000 feet. I was hiking with my kids between the Yosemite High Sierra camps. Having just retired from a career as an entrepreneur I had started thinking about why startups were different from large companies.

Product 436
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10 Startup Execution Steps Highlight The Finish Line

Startup Professionals Musings

Businesses always seem to take longer to succeed than an entrepreneur expects. Seth Godin once said that overnight success in startups takes about six years, and Seth is an optimist. Thus we all look for shortcuts.

Startup 435
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Why LP’s Passed on Seed Funds 10 Years Ago (And What’s Happened Since)

View from Seed

This year will mark the 10 th year anniversary of NextView. I’ll be writing a number of posts looking back over the first decade of the life of this firm. In some ways, this feels like an eternity.

LP 399
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The Changing Venture Landscape

Both Sides of the Table

The world around us is being disrupted by the acceleration of technology into more industries and more consumer applications. Society is reorienting to a new post-pandemic norm?—?even even before the pandemic itself has been fully tamed.

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The Rise of eLearning Platforms – Types, Business Models & Solution For Startup Edupreneurs

YoungUpstarts

As people switch more to the online realm for education and knowledge, the scope and application of elearning platforms will only get bigger. The post The Rise of eLearning Platforms – Types, Business Models & Solution For Startup Edupreneurs appeared first on Young Upstarts.

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8 Keys To Maximizing Your Confidence and Self-Esteem

Startup Professionals Musings

Confidence and self-esteem are critical to your success as an entrepreneur, or any business role. As a mentor, I’m regularly frustrated by people who try to cover their lack of confidence with ego and arrogance , rather than working on the base issue.

Startup 435
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6 Keys To Getting Beyond Basic Incremental Innovation

Startup Professionals Musings

One of the business ironies that many entrepreneurs have learned the hard way in the past is that ideas which are truly disruptive carry the highest risk of failure, take the longest to gain traction, and thus are the least likely to get external funding.

Startup 434
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Are Your Marketing Messages Scary?

Rembrandt Communications

Don’t make your customers run to the competition! It’s that time of year when frightful thoughts and messages fill the air for Halloween… but your marketing messages and public relations’ pitches should not be part of this!

Marketing 254
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6 Steps To Personal Satisfaction As Well As Success

Startup Professionals Musings

It’s sad when the startup is “successful,” but the founder still feels totally unsatisfied. I see it happening all the time. The business is a winner, but the family or other relationships are broken by the stress.

Startup 435
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Burning Platform: Curmudgeon Christmas – Part 1

deal architect

In the 62nd episode of Burning Platform, we (again) host Dennis Howlett, who retired earlier in the year from Diginomica. While we spend a lot of time talking about what keeps him busy, it is also philosophical – how the. Burning Platform

Hosting 396
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7 Strategies To Prepare For The Next Customer Change

Startup Professionals Musings

If you think your business has weathered the storm, think again. In addition to obvious economic challenges, the emerging generation of customers is determined to radically change the rules for customer engagement.

Customer 433
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Your Product is Not Their Problem

Steve Blank

There are no facts inside your building, so get the heck outside. I just had a call with Lorenz, a former business school student who started a job at a biotech startup making bacteria to take CO2 out of the air. His job was to find new commercial markets for this bacteria at scale.

Product 424
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6 Keys To Finding The Right People For A Winning Team

Startup Professionals Musings

If you are a new business owner or entrepreneur, you are likely to be creative and willing to take a risk , and you probably assume that most potential team members have the same mindset.

Agile 436
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Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Crusaders

View from Seed

I’ve had the privilege to work with many great entrepreneurs, both in my operating days at the start of my career and over the last decade plus on the VC investing side. In my experience founders usually fall into one of three types: mercenaries, missionaries, and crusaders.

Detroit 367
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Introducing Trust, and the Importance of Product-Founder Fit

Both Sides of the Table

Photo by Vanna Phon on Unsplash Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of many startups from e-commerce to gaming to marketplace companies, among others.

Founder 424
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Mentors Can Help Decipher Free Advice

YoungUpstarts

Any advice - and especially free advice - should be carefully analyzed before applying it to your life, team, or business. A mentor can help, says Mary Smith, associate consultant at IA Business Advisors. The post Mentors Can Help Decipher Free Advice appeared first on Young Upstarts.

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6 Obligations That Come With Startup External Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. Would you do that if it was your money?

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7 Ways to Convince Other People To Take A Risk On You

Startup Professionals Musings

As a member of an angel investment group for years, I’m sometimes surprised to see founders with a good technical business case get rejected for funding, while others seem to have a hidden quality that gives them credibility to be fundable despite some missing elements.

Engineer 436
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5 Strategies For Recognizing Early The Need To Change

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur realizes that change is now the norm, and they have to adapt their business quickly to survive and prosper. In fact, the best entrepreneurs seem to see breakthrough changes coming even before they really happen, and are able to turn them into huge new opportunities.

Agile 432
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7 Ways Your Marketing Needs To Meet Today’s Customers

Startup Professionals Musings

Every business I know is intimately familiar with outbound marketing, or pushing your message out to customers through email, newspaper, and television advertising. Only a few really understand the process and value of inbound marketing, for pulling customers to your brand.

Customer 431
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Unit4 pioneers the “hybrid analyst summit”

deal architect

Since Workday held its first Analyst Summit in 2010 - I had called their effort exhilarating - I have encouraged vendors to adopt a similar format. User Conferences are more for customers - I find analysts intrude on their time.

Software 396
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5 Benefits Of Business Leadership By Asking Questions

Startup Professionals Musings

I’m a big fan of the old adage "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers."

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How to Find a Market? Use Jobs-To-Be-Done as the Front End of Customer Discovery

Steve Blank

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models.

Customer 406
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6 Positive Steps For Taking Control Of Your Work Life

Startup Professionals Musings

Every dedicated business professional I know can’t find enough hours in a day to do their best work, and yet they often find themselves saying yes to new requests from the people around them.

Green 431
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How Venture Capital Decision Making Has Changed During the Pandemic

View from Seed

The sudden arrival of the global pandemic has shifted the playbook for founders and venture capitalists. Despite the beginnings of a vaccine rollout, it’s likely that the conditions created by Covid-19 will continue to persist for some time.