founders, VC's, mentors and startup experts.
Last Tech Tuesday I wrote that the companies which do well on hiring engineers are the ones that "prioritize both hiring *and* having a great work environment." The post went on to talk about some of the best practices in hiring. Today's follow-up is about creating a great work environment for engineers. ...
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Via: Continuations
VC at http://usv.com |
While browsing the web, I came across a very insightful comment on burnout by Isaac Yonemoto. I'm surprised that, with all the writing that's going on about burnout and how to combat it, this isn't more common knowledge (it's certainly the first time I hear about it). ...
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Via: Stavros' Stuff
Astronaut, part-time dad, F1 driver, liar. |
Maybe more than anything else we've produced, our company's research has been the most critical to growing our brand and gaining new customers. Three years ago, the Content Marketing Institute partnered with MarketingProfs to develop a benchmark study for the content marketing industry. Today, this research is shared and engaged in by more marketing professionals than any other piece of industry r ...
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Via: Fruit Business
Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent). Get Content Get C |
When Dropbox launched, there were at least half a dozen other "online storage" businesses in existence. The Apple iPod entered a market litered with crappy MP3 players. Google was famously the Nth Internet search engine. Some good ideas have a lot of bad implementations before someone comes in and does it well enough to win big. ...
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Via: Eladgil
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Results matter. I'd much rather hear from an entrepreneur about their traction metrics than an idea with no results yet. Once the team and product are in place, it's time to focus on traction. ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
In my first startup marketing job I was given the task of attempting to call a couple hundred customers to try to rustle up a dozen or so customer references. That task opened my eyes to how important customer insight was for our startup's marketing efforts. ...
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Via: Rocket Watcher
Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing |
In a startup (or any new product) where you don't yet know whether what you produce will generate customer value, you are better served by limiting or completely forgoing production (through an MVP or concierge MVP, for example) to first test value creation. You have to first find a problem worth solving before committing resources to build and scale a solution. ...
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Via: Ash Maurya
Founder Spark59 - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed. |
Product managers spend much of their time communicating ideas, plans, designs, and tasks to their teams. This includes everything from emails communicating decisions, to presentations communicating product roadmaps, to specs communicating product designs, to bug tickets communicating errors in the product. Mastering effective communication is known to be an accelerate to the dissemination of ideas ...
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Via: Sachin Rekhi
Entrepreneur, product guy, and software engineer. Founder & |
Here is a tried and tested triangulation framework to size your opportunity Top-down: You can get an estimate of this from several secondary market research reports and analyst reports. Remember reading certain analyst firms predicting cloud spending reaching $xyz billions by 2016? That is top down estimate. ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
If there's one thing startup entrepreneurs crave, it's media and blog coverage. Attracting the media spotlight can arguably be as important to them as getting customers. How come? In many respects, media coverage somehow validates what an entrepreneur is doing ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
I mentioned "Expansion Revenue" and "Negative Churn" in my post SaaS Churn Rate: What's Acceptable? and I wanted to expand on those concepts a bit. I honestly believe that fully grasping the power of these two concepts could change your SaaS business forever. No pressure, but you might want to read this post carefully. ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
Imagine you were asked to invest in ten startups. Given numerical ratings on the Team, Product, Market and Traction but knowing nothing about the specifics of the team, the exact product or the domain they play in, can you pick those that actually received a term sheet? Take this quiz and see how you do. Do not read ahead before you do the quiz. ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
Most people expect us to give them sales pitches about our products. When we instead start asking Customer Development questions about their habits and problems, the conversation can seem really weird to them. I've found that framing the meeting by (1) asking for advice, (2) keeping the meeting short, (3) giving them unique industry insight, and (4) framing the background questions ...
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Via: Kevin Dewalt
Startup founder(4x), investor(~20 deals), advisor(a lot). H |
Use the natural wiring of your brain to your advantage and wrangle that illusive problem-solving insight by taking a break and being open to serendipity. ...
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Via: The99Percent
We're now posting under @99U - come follow for insights on m |
"He cares deeply about... the advancement of humankind, and putting the right tools in their hands." - Laurene Powell Jobs on her husband, Steve Startups aren't here to change the world, they're here to save the world--by bringing us innovation that advances humankind. ...
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Via: Venture Hacks
I started @angellist and @venturehacks. |
It's inevitable that any startup will lack expertise in some key areas needed to grow their business. The question is: should you hire and bring that expertise in-house or outsource it? ...
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Via: Version One Ventures
Early-stage investor through Version One Ventures (35+ inves |
Sometimes your customers know that you provide a feature they want, but for some reason, they don't use it. Why... Read more... You're reading Price is what you pay, Value is what you get. ...
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Via: The Intercom Blog
COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi |
I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. ...
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2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to http://salesfo |
All founders define their business as being "better" than the encumbents. But most don't say anything beyond that. Being specific about "better" leads to the good stuff. ...
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Via: A Smart Bear
Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me! |
Being a startup founder is hard, tough, frustrating and rewarding - possibly all within the space of a nanosecond. And yet, it is like a high none other. I have experienced it in others. And quietly, I have lived it for over six years. Here are some lessons I learned from my journey. ...
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Via: Om.Is.Me
Founder of GigaOM. Venture Partner at True Ventures |
I deliberately let this commonly repeated statement be the title without qualifying it. Of course statements like these, (this particular one made famous by Loyalty Effect) cannot stand by themselves regardless of how popular the Guru who said this is. Let us look at this closely. ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
Is 5% a good monthly SaaS Churn Rate? Read on to learn the answer... As a consultant to SaaS and Cloud providers that are looking to grow, I get asked what an acceptable SaaS churn rate is all the time. ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
Our Partner Reid Hoffman posted a very thoughtful, relevant post today that all of the entrepreneurs that work with Greylock should read and think about. Since it covers the the delicate topic of Founder-CEO, it could ruffle a few feathers. Still, it's a discussion that should be had. ...
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Via: Greylock VC
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"I was looking for some core fundamentals that would be applicable to most of you around making money. I found that with a Swedish group of philosophers and economists in the 1970's. They are called ABBA. In their masterpiece "Money, Money, money" they have outlined everything you need to know about sales." From the business model canvas to gold mining profiteering. ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
in arcadia ego |
Our inability to decide on executing one specific strategy resulted in procrastination, doing irrelevant work, or just having endless brainstorming meetings without ever taking action. I've come to believe, that in order to achieve flow in startup and get the business going, you need to keep the time your team spends on alternative directions to a minimum. ...
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Via: Ash Maurya
Founder Spark59 - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed. |
Often if I give a talk or I speak with someone about getting their idea off the ground, the topic of how solid the product should be comes up. In particular, people very frequently wait far too long before launching. One of the key learning for me with Buffer was that the impact of problems people have and downtime they experience are directly tied to how we, as a startup, choose to handle it. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
The best startups choose a main dimension or two of innovation and invest significant effort to truly differentiate themselves from the rest of the market along that dimension. At the same time, they leverage existing best practices along other potential dimensions of innovation and choose not to reinvent in those aspects of their business. ...
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Via: Sachin Rekhi
Entrepreneur, product guy, and software engineer. Founder & |
Here's a lie that feels like the truth: "A mother is a person who, on seeing only 4 pieces of pie for 5 people, promptly declares, 'I never did care much for pie.'" That's a lie that turns moms into martyrs, which is not what moms are supposed to be. It's one of many lies [...] ...
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Via: COPY HACKERS
Copywriter at http://CopyHackers.com. Staunch advocate of co |
A startup CEO sent me a pained email the other day. The gist was that a competitor (loosely defined) had just released a great new feature to their product. That feature had been on the drawing board for this CEO for months, and they even had a prototype built. But they hadn't finished. ...
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Via: Nabeel Hyatt
entrepreneur, investor, geek, product guy. vc @ spark. |
Take a look at this image courtesy of Planet Money What you see are the annual revenue numbers for MegaBloks and Lego. Since Lego does not have (any more) exclusive rights to make the bricks, anyone can make them. And MegaBloks does. Its bricks are perfect replacement (as for as I know) for Lego bricks only cheaper. ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
Q: Where can I get some good starting salary information for a SaaS startup? I need the information for CEO, CFO, CIO, CINO, Director of Sales. How much should the starting salaries vary for a startup? ...
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Via: Ask The VC
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
It's okay if you don't know exactly where you're going - because things are always changing - just so long as you're focused on the Right Things. BUT, this is really hard at a startup precisely because everything is always changing. It's essential that your developers are okay with these points. ...
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Via: Hacker Chick
Hacker Chick ~ startup guardian angel ~ awesomely eclectic |
When evaluating a startup idea, it's important to leverage the collective wisdom of what makes a startup successful, including evaluating the market opportunity, understanding how your product will significantly improve upon what already exists, evaluating the team's strengths, understanding your user acquisition strategy, and critiquing the business model. ...
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Via: Sachin Rekhi
Entrepreneur, product guy, and software engineer. Founder & |
How did Pinterest grow from 3,000 users to 25.3 million monthly unique visitors? According to Pinterest's CEO, Ben Silbermann, it was mostly marketing. Rather than focusing on the technological capabilities of Pinterest, Silbermann went out and connected with community, mainly to bloggers to start spreading the word ...
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Via: Under the Radar
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This sounds pretty straightforward: Make sure your product is retaining your users, THEN work on growth. Don't work on growth until your product is working. However, it's an oversimplification. For fundamentally social products, it's hard to separate retention/engagement and virality. Turns out that for fundamentally social products, retention causes virality, and vice versa too. ...
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Via: Andrew Chen Blog
Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v |
Entrepreneurs aren't quitters. To succeed you need to be resilient, thick skinned and borderline crazy. You need to have just the right amount of delusion to believe you can succeed, spurring you on despite the absurd odds. But sometimes, you have to quit. On the other hand, sometimes you need to pivot. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs use the pivot as an excuse to remain delusional ...
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Via: Instigator Blog
VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder |
Ask 10 founders about company culture and what it means and you'll get 10 different answers. It's about office design, it's about screening out the wrong kinds of employees, it's about values, it's about fun, it's about alignment, it's about finding like-minded employees, it's about being cult-like. So what is culture? ...
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Via: Bhorowitz
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A couple of years ago, I was working with a startup looking for media and blog coverage after launching a new online service. It hired a U.S. PR agency that promised the stars and the moon, and then the startup ... Continue reading →A couple of years ago, I was working with a startup looking for media and blog coverage after launching a new online service. It hired a U.S. PR agency that promise ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
Does your company have a "Growth Hacker?" 2012 has definitely been the year of the Growth Hacker (or at least the ethos). If you arean't familiar with the term, Andrew Chen wrote a great piece called "Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing" where he proclaims "No traditional marketer would have figured this out" ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
Our friend Cass Phillipps knows a bit about failure. After all, she produces FailCon, a conference where leading entrepreneurs and designers speak about their own failures. So it's no surprise that she's got a story or two of her own. And she's got a good one on how failure turned into her passion. ...
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Via: ZURB Blog
ZURB is a close-knit team of product designers who help comp |
I often reflect upon the differences between my previous startup and Buffer, and think about what changes to my mindset affected the better outcome this time compared with my previous attempts. The key thing has been to focus on a goal of succeeding overall with creating a startup, rather than to focus on being successful with a particular idea. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
The startup world today loves hacks. Growth hacks. Venture hacks. Social hacks. The result ends up being a focus on the means, rather than the ends. And I think that's a shame. In one sense, hacking a startup is a great thing. Who doesn't want to get rich quick? I certainly wouldn't turn down easy money. But in another sense, it's a terrible thing. ...
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Entrepreneur, Investor, Writer, Dad. |
Do you know why your content marketing campaign is going to fail? It's not because you can't write great content... it's actually because you don't know how to promote it. You can learn how to write great content, but if no one reads your content and links to it, there's no point in putting it. ...
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Via: Quick Sprout
I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
Should you test one thing at a time? Or many at once? A poor experimental workflow can waste loads of your time. Here's an extreme example: We've seen a company take six months to do something that took another company thirty minutes.To grow quickly, you need to implement quickly, so our work with clients goes beyond suggesting what they should test; we build their in-house capab ...
Founder Feedback gives you insight from the startup trenches. In a post from his blog, Dave Parker, Co-Founder and CEO of Bundled.com and Director of the Seattle Founder Institute, explains how to hypothesize appopriate product pricing. Instead of putting off pricing until the last minute, Founders should begin thinking about and planning their financial model early on. ...
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Husband, Dad, Entrepreneur, Board Member, Founder @OneAccord |
Have you ever been on a project team with great people? I'm not talking about super-smart people, although they might have been some of those great people. I mean a project team where the team meshed. Where the team jelled, where the team knew how to work together. Now, I bet that team didn't magically jell on day one. But I bet that team had a lot in common from day one. That's called cultural fi ...
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Via: Johanna Rothman
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One of the most common objections you hear from investors is that the market you are going after is too crowded. I have been on the receiving end of this many times and had to convince investors about the vision we saw for disrupting that market despite the existing players. ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
I was recently speaking with an entrepreneur whose company is in the same space as my previous company, Performable (which was acquired by Hubspot). He was asking how I thought they should compete with a particular competitor. This competitor is good at producing software quickly and extremely adept at copying its competitors ...
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Via: David Cancel
Entrepreneur. Chief Product Officer at @HubSpot. Previously |
Should connecting emotionally with your customers be your marketing's top priority? Not on planet startup it isn't. ...
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Via: Rocket Watcher
Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing |
To create an anxiety relievable only by a purchase... that is the job of advertising. Advertising is used to increase... Advertising increases familiarity, reminds consumers about your product, and spreads product news. We covered all that before. Today we're looking at a fourth job advertising does: it defeats inertia. ...
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Via: The Intercom Blog
COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi |
How do you determine which interview candidate to hire? How do you evaluate the candidate you decided you want to hire? (or decided you want to flush?) How do you make a call on which group is performing better? What metrics do you use? What data do you collect? And how do you analyze that to make a call? ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
Successful salespeople don't pressure or bullshit the prospect into a sale. They are persistent, but they are always focused on achieving a deal where it will benefit all parties. This means that a great salesperson will never be selling something that they don't believe actually helps the customer. And that has to be the starting point of every conversation with a potential customer. How can I he ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat |
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the markets for startup financing. Many of the discussions use words like "valuations" "bubble" "crunch" etc. Words like that generally mean the writer is discussing the world through the lens of finance. This is a useful lens, but I'd like to suggest there is another lens that is also useful: the product lens. ...
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Via: chris dixon's blog
Founder & investor |
By now we all know that successful startups focus on learning about their users -- figuring out what features, branding, and messaging resonate and perform best. Smart teams invest valuable time designing, building, testing, and iterating their own designs and prototypes based on learning from analytics and user studies.But don't forget to test your competitors' products too! ...
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Via: Design Staff
User Experience Designer, Prototyper, Storyteller. Partner a |
A startup just had its big launch. The fundraising is over and the champagne has been poured. For some, this is the great beginning. But, for others, it's the zenith. The problem? Momentum is easy to lose, especially after a big adrenaline rush. ...
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Via: James Yu
Co-founder of Parse, the mobile application platform. I'm an |
If you're trying to attract awesome developers, you need to create an awesome candidate experience (CX). Something that makes them go "WOW!". It's like UX -- but for the people interviewing to join your team. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
In my 14 years of developing and launching products, I have launched early, late and at "just the right time". Truth is there is no "right time" if you have been working with customers and getting feedback. At that point the launch event tends to be largely a PR ...
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Via: Be a Force of Good
CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator |
A lot of startups rightly aim to release a minimum viable product (MVP) as their first initiative. The goal of an MVP helps a team rally around a concrete product design that they can get out the door in a limited amount of time. And it's every startup's hope that once the MVP is released, early adopters will flock to it eagerly and tell their more mainstream friends by the millions. ...
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Via: Mark Hendrickson
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By using this email for all these purposes, it blunts our ability to be effective and to get quality responses from others. We've all had that situation arise where we try to get a response from someone and we either get a lame/vague response that requires another 8 messages to get everything nailed down, or the dreaded "no reply at all." Here are some thoughts on improving your email response and ...
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Via: Chris Brogan
CEO&President, Human Business Works, a business design compa |
In the early days (less then 10 customers) of a startup, the founder typically is expected to do most all of the selling to get the early adopters. This helps solve the problem of understanding the customer's buying process which aids in hiring the right sales person for your startup. ...
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Via: Be a Force of Good
CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator |
I always enjoy reading Paul Graham's essays and his latest one How to get startup ideas is another great read.I'm going to focus on one of the by-products of Paul's essay which is a list of indicators that an idea might be good or an idea might be bad. ...
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Via: The Equity Kicker
I'm a VC in London |
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 r ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
When recruiters ping me about open positions at hot companies, I tell them "thanks, but the next company I work for will be (another) one I start myself." It's not clear whether I'm masochistic or just dumb; life was a lot easier before I got started on this whole founder thing. ...
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Via: Numerate Choir
http://t.co/rPjQvufk; help w/ data/growth (@500startups); st |
Every so often, I meet an entrepreneur who has big ideas for their startup but who never seems to get anything done. It's a pattern that I see in smart people who haven't had experience building real world products. "It's gonna be huge! Revolutionary is only the beginning of how you would describe it." ...
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Via: James Yu
Co-founder of Parse, the mobile application platform. I'm an |
Most technical founders are not comfortable with the sales process or the disciple of selling. They tend to treat it as beneath themselves and "sleazy". Given that most entrepreneurs I interact with are engineers, I usually walk them through an engineer's approach towards selling, which tends to mirror the agile development process they are familiar with. ...
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Via: Be a Force of Good
CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator |
There are only 2 reasons why companies buy from startups - The person buying has a very good relationship with the entrepreneur, or the person buying has a dying pain that she feels can be solved by the startup's solution. ...
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Via: Be a Force of Good
CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator |
The standard nonprofit process of building a digital strategy -- or a standalone campaign -- can often be a shot in the dark. Organizations spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on a theory that users will click or donate or share or engage, and success is by no means guaranteed. To borrow a phrase, the accepted model is "build it and they'll come." We suggest that a better model, follo ...
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Digital strategist, founder of Social Contxt, social media e |
If you're running a lean startup, "launch and learn" is undoubtedly a familiar mantra. But launching a new feature can take weeks or even months, and for a scrappy startup that's a potentially make-or-break issue. We've collected a time-tested toolkit of methods for learning that are cheap, fast, and perfect for startups to find those crucial mistakes earlier. ...
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Via: Design Staff
User Experience Designer, Prototyper, Storyteller. Partner a |
This is my favourite quote by Winston Churchill: "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." Unless you're the absolute except to the rule (like the one-in-one-hundred-thousand such as Zuck) as an entrepreneur ... ...
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Via: Urban Horizon
Digital Entrepreneur with an interest in writing & film. Fou |
I've had several conversations with potential entrepreneurs who have an idea and are looking for a technical co-founder to help with the implementation. Often they are surprised that every coder they talk to doesn't immediately quit their job to sign on. After all, this is an awesome idea, so why can't I find a coder ...
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Via: The Agile League
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Call them hackers, 'ninjas', or 'rock stars' if you'd like. Other than being very talented developers, they all share one thing in common -- it's unbelievably hard to bring them on-board your company. And as if competing with other companies for the same talent was not enough, being a startup just adds more challenges to the equation. ...
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Via: On Startups
2X entrepreneur and co-founder at Takipi http://t.co/mCt1Lat |
As a VC, I have a simple motive for investing: get out for way more than I paid. My fund only makes money when we sell our companies. So, it's all about exits. You will often hear that the best companies are bought not sold. That's bullshit. ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
Every meeting is either won or lost. There are no "good" meetings. You've lost the meeting when you leave with a compliment or a stalling tactic. The parody version is "Let's talk again after Christmas... Don't call me, I'll call you[1]." ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
Spoiler: You can't hire out sales because in the early days it's about learning, not selling, and hired guns can't bring back bad news. ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
This is the post that got me kicked off my original shared hosting service and prompted the move to SquareSpace. I couldn't figure out why so many people were reading this article. But they kept on coming. The site went down and I was told to vamoose. It finally dawned on me nobody actually cared about the article, it was the name Kevin Rose that was magic. ...
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Via: High Scalability
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Whether you are recruiting a new colleague, naming a product, or planning an investment, there are no easy decisions. Should you analyze the options slowly and systematically, or stop thinking so hard and just go with your gut? ...
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Via: The99Percent
Writing Great Myths of the Brain. Creator/editor @ResearchDi |
The idea of a partner wanting to renegotiate their terms can be a major pitfall that sinks a startup, according to Noam Wasserman (The Founder's Dilemmas). This dilemma is common because we don't know well enough the contributions of each partner early in the project, and roles often change throughout the process. When a partner believes they are contributing more and their worth has increased, th ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
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When startups fail (and the vast majority must, by the laws of probability), it's hard not to search for a scapegoat. After all, doesn't everyone deserve a glowing profile in TechCrunch? Often, embittered entrepreneurs fall back on two explanations: Luck, and connections. ...
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Entrepreneur, Investor, Writer, Dad. |
Most job posts suck. Not because the founders didn't try. Not because the company and compensation are bad. They're just so damn uninspiring. When you're trying to hire, I think it's important to stop thinking like yourself. Most people don't. This is why the order in most 'job posts' is generally: 1. Description of the company 2. Requirements 3. Perks. ...
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Via: Jason Shah
product manager @yammer; creator @heatdata; learned some thi |
Ash Maurya's 10 steps to product/market fit. ...
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Via: Spark59
Founder Spark59 - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed. |
In my previous career as a journalist, I received hundreds of story pitches with press releases attached every day. Like so many other well-meaning journos, I'd make a valiant attempt to at least skim the first two lines of every one. In those two lines, I (and almost all the journalists I know) made a rapid judgement on the newsworthiness of content, never spending enough time thinking about what ...
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Via: On Startups
S12 @Seedstartup participant. Former travel/tech journo. Fou |
Listening is hard - The most obvious reason why we focus so much on monitoring and jump into analyzing is that listening is hard. ...
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Via: Conversation Agent
Sr. Director Strategy, Empathy Lab. [Make sense. Make do. Ma |
Try asking your members this. Create the thread, turn it into a sticky thread, include it in your mailing list, add your own problem, and see what response you get. ...
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Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
What's your equity split of this business and why? Are we comfortable with the thinking behind that? What is the scope of our business? What is outside the scope of what we want it to do? And More... ...
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I'm an ordinary guy with nothing to lose. VC at Brooklyn Bri |
There is no love like a first time entrepreneur's love with nondisclosure agreements. They are a romantic dream: secret pacts bonding two economic entities together as one, if only for the transaction. Promises of futures together and sweet nothings exchanged. The Humbled MBA nailed it - newpreneurs love NDAs. ...
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Via: Dan Shapiro
Google acquired @sparkbuy, so I now work on www.google.com/a |
Carlo Matic, the founder of Interactive Pioneers and HackFwd Referrer just posted a video showing how he prioritizes tasks in his startup. He calls it Prio-matic and the spreadsheet is available for download. ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and |
You probably even have a system in place to captures all those ideas no matter where you are. Later, you then go through and decide which ideas are the best, most worth your time, etc. This leads to one of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make: before too long they are overwhelmed by how many projects they have going at once. ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B |
I often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder. And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets - i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps. But Jessica Alter, Cofounder ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
Profitability is one goal that most of the SaaS CEOs who ask me for help all share. Though, while they're all focused on achieving profitability, how that is measured varies from company to company. For the sake of this post we'll consider profitability to be achieved once the Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) have been paid back ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
I enjoyed doing this interview (embedded below) with Starto.TV. I think it captures a bunch of good stuff, such as: The one big thing that changed my (business life) How TechStars got started My graceful failure and the hard lesson I learned and much more. ...
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Via: David G Cohen
Founder/CEO of TechStars. Investor 150+ Amazing Startups. Ge |
To be successful at anything, you first need to know WHY you are doing it. Anyone who blogs for business (and every other organization) needs a content marketing mission statement - an answer to WHY. Do you know why your business exists, why you do what you do? ...
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Via: Fruit Business
Geek, published researcher, award-winning teacher, eternally |
When you are part of a small team at a fast-growing company like Filepicker.io, there is a constant push to focus only on the immediate task at hand, to Get Things Done. This focus is incredibly important, and many fledgling companies fail because they try to do too many things before they're ready. On a personal level, however, it's important to actively devote time to growing your personal ...
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Via: Filepicker.io
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I often find myself advising entrepreneurs to be cautious when predicting sales volumes through distribution partners or sales channels, so I thought I would reproduce my thoughts here. In my experience these distribution deals where small company does deal with big company to sell small company's product disappoint more often than they deliver. ...
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Via: The Equity Kicker
I'm a VC in London |
Have you ever wanted something and not gotten it? I know I have. I've noticed a HUGE PROBLEM of entitlement with our generation and younger. ...
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hi* |
A common way to think of business regulations is by analogy to sports: the rules are specified up front, and the players follow the rules. But real regulations don't work that way. Businesses follow regulations as much as regulations follow businesses. Sometimes the businesses that change regulations are startups. ...
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Via: chris dixon's blog
Founder & investor |
Today I'm going to share the 2 things you should NEVER say in an email to someone you don't know. (Especially if you want that person to promote your blog and business to their readers) And then I'll walk you through a word-for-word script that I personally used to get influential people I didn't know. ...
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Via: Social Triggers
I'm 99% useless, but that 1% when I'm not, I'm dangerous. Fi |
Konstantin Guericke knows more about marketing than the typical engineering graduate. As a LinkedIn co-founder and the founding marketing vice president of the company, he helped grow the social network from zero to six million members. ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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Marketing is one of those disciplines that is a bit of a black box to startup founders who come from more of an engineering background. I've heard founders think about marketing both as something that doesn't really matter (since all that matters is the product) or something that matters a lot and requires hiring a fancy CMO or VP Marketing. ...
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Via: Robgo.org
Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle |
Nearly every entrepreneur has heard the refrain, "Get back to me when you have some traction," while seeking funding. From an unsophisticated investor ...
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Via: Infochachkie
You can check out my startup advice blog at: http://www.info |
Every entrepreneur wants to believe their product is taking on a big market. Sometimes they're kidding themselves. If they are making something fun, they'll say- "we're competing against TV! The market is huge!" If they are making something utilitarian and functional, they'll say, "everyone wants to save time- there's millions of people who want that ...
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Via: Andrew Chen Blog
Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v |
Gamification is the craft or framework to derive all the fun and addicting elements found in games and apply them to real-world or productive activities. Games have the amazing ability to keep people engaged for a long time, build relationships and trust between people, and develop their creative potentials. ...
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Via: Yu-Kai Chou
RewardMe Co-Founder. Gamification Expert and Lecturer/Speake |
I love, love, love numbers. But with time, touchy-feely neurons sprouted within my data brain. Minimum viable products, "release early, release often" philosophies, feedback loops, and A/B testing help optimization and decision-making but they can't guarantee that a product is awesome. ...
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Via: Elaine Wherry
co-founder of meebo |
Despite the recent success of this blog over the past year (250,000 uniques, hundreds of new subscribers, republished in Lifehacker and others) the truth is that I've been a failed blogger for far more time than I've been a successful one. ...
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Via: Dan Shipper
UPenn junior. Co-Founder at @UseFirefly. Jets fan. |
Early in the life of a startup, the founders dream of dominating their industry. But things may take a wrong turn. The founders may shift from being ambition-driven into "try not to die" mode. While this crisis mode can be focusing short term, it can often lead to a startup to fail or to sell too early relative to its trajectory. A founder can get stuck in "try not to die mode" even after the ...
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Via: Eladgil
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I tend to get one particular question over and over. It is some variant on "How is the UX for my product/site?" In order to get in touch with some of your users, I'd recommend that you do the following: Figure out exactly what you are concerned about with your site or product. ...
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Via: Users Know
Principal at Users Know. Director of Product & UX at One J |
If you want to stay in business forever, you have to focus on the long term. You must construct a business model that builds confidence and trust with your customers and keeps them coming back day after day, year after year. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
"The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs...one step at a time." ~Joe Girard As a community, I think entrepreneurs have gotten more knowledeable over the years. We know the difference between pre-money and post-money valuations. We've read "The Lean Startup". We've dug into the details of SaaS economics. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
There is a myth that a successful salesman must be confident, slightly arrogant, outspoken, and convincing; a salesman must have a silver tongue and be able to parry any potential-customer objections with ease. This myth leads to a fear of sales. Many entrepreneurs fear sales, choosing to exclusively focus on product development as oppose to [...]. ...
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Founder of @TourWoo, the easiest way to book a tour online. |
We've all been there: You finally carve out the time to work on a big creative project and then you... choke. After counting on this break to really produce something, you're suddenly paralyzed by performance anxiety. But instead of showing up as fear on the surface, it manifests itself as guilt. If you don't proceed with caution, you can soon fritter away your creative fortune on nickel and dime ...
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Via: The99Percent
We're now posting under @99U - come follow for insights on m |
It take significantly longer for most companies to hire their first employee than it does to hire subsequent ones. Reasons ...
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Via: Eladgil
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A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth. ...
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Via: Paul Graham
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There is a lot of focus on investment deals and negotiating with venture capitalists but bootstrappers prosper closing deals with customers and partners. Here are some tips if you are new to making deals. ...
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Via: Sean Murphy
New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome |
There's a lot of good suggestions out there for how early stage startups can approach (or improve) board meetings. There's a range of different approaches from the somewhat traditional to the more radical (e.g. single slide board mtgs). I personally think there's no single template that's "right" for all startups. Regardless of what template or style you choose, the common facets I've seen from ...
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Via: AGILEVC
Co-founder & Partner of NextView Ventures, former entreprene |
As a founder of five startups, I've seen thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of applicants in search of talented employees. It's caused me to realize that it's not always easy for businesses to find the employees they're looking to hire or for job seekers to stand out in the application process. ...
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Via: David Hauser
Young Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of @grasshopper, @chargify, @ |
Personal discipline is one of my hallmarks. I have thought a lot about how and why I do what I do so that I can get a lot of important stuff done. Doing stuff inefficiently or spending time on unimportant stuff sends me round the twist a little. Staying disciplined is an ongoing process ...
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Via: The Equity Kicker
I'm a VC in London |
The phrase "Shut up and take my money!" may have come from a cartoon, but it's not a myth. "Shut Up Money" (SU$ for short!) has happened to me and I've watched it happen to my students ...
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Via: UnicornFree
I put the Amy in anomaly. Bootstrapper, product crusader, Ru |
There's a specific step every entrepreneur needs to take that isn't talked about nearly enough. So, what is this secret phase that almost every successful entrepreneur has gone through, but that no one cares to mention? Keep reading and I'll tell you. ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founded http://PocketChanged.com | Film Maker http://calebwo |
A lean startup teams use the Validation Canvas to explicitly list their core assumptions, the assumptions that if proved false would sink their business. Then they identify the assumption that is the most important and most risky and then test it. But what happened if the first insights failed your assumptions. ...
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Via: Lean Startup Machine
product manager/designer/foodie/musician/husband/father and |
The importance of thinking about 'why' in addition to 'how' and 'what' has been coming up a lot for me over the last couple of months, most recently in this fabulous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. ...
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Via: The Equity Kicker
I'm a VC in London |
I get a lot of questions around how to get into startups. Here's my advice: ...
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Via: Gabriel Weinberg
Founder, DuckDuckGo. Angel investor. Family guy. |
You don't have to be a developer to start a tech-based company, but you'll definitely have to work with one at some point. And throughout the process, there are things that many non-technical founders learn the hard way. Here's what to know, before you get started. ...
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Via: Daily Muse
@Webgrrls CTO, Speaker, @NYCWebgrrls chapter leader, Founder |
Q: How does taking a scientific approach to your startup allow you to feel passion for the product you are building. It would seem to place you in the position of taking orders from the customer ...
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Via: Sean Murphy
New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome |
It's the problem the startup needs to solve to get to the next level. That could be the next financing, or hiring people or finishing a key project. ...
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Via: Continuations
VC at http://usv.com |
I find it really interesting to see how investors and entrepreneurs shift their money and efforts from one sector to the other. I think some of this behavior is just driven by human nature. We like looking for shortcuts and we like following the crowd. But the more crowded a space gets, the less attractive it becomes. When a few successes become apparent in other areas, the crowd shifts in that ...
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Via: Robgo.org
Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle |
Companies like Automattic (WordPress), Puppet, Fitbit, MakerBot, and Ginger.io have broken out of the pack in their industries early and fast, and one thing these companies have in common is an enormous sense of mission. Some call them "missionary entrepreneurs." Their missions are value-based and therefore quickly understood. These missions aren't the ones posted on their websites, but these are ...
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Via: True Ventures
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Samwer rose to infamy after his leaked "Blitzkrieg" email of 2011 - a directive that urged his staff to deliver plans "signed with blood" and observing that "the time for the blitzkrieg must be chosen wisely." But despite being portrayed as the comedy business villain in Europe, he's also one of the continent's most successful players. So what are the tactics that have helped "Olli" Samwer rise to ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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Trying to build a company during nights and weekends could happen, but it's going to happen at a snails pace compared to anyone doing it full time. Look at all the amazing companies that are getting funding right now and you'll notice that 99.9% of them are run by people doing it full time. There are a few reasons I think this is important: ...
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Via: The Startup Nook
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A common motivation for entrepreneurship is the craving for freedom that is supposed to come with being your own boss. Unfortunately, even the most talented people with the most marketable ideas often wind up being slaves to their new businesses instead. If you're working for the business instead of the business working for you, you desperately need a system. ...
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Via: Venture Beat
Builder of Systems. Strategic Thinker and Change Maker. Cofo |
When my mentor asked me for specific quotes from "potential customers" to demonstrate demand in an investor presentation the next day, I was up S* ...
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Co-founder at MovingWorlds. Social Entrepreneur Empowering S |
I recently wrote a blog post about how Mobile Startups are Failing Like it's 1999. The idea is that they are taking too long to ship their initial versions and then spending too much time between updates. As a result, they fail in a way that's reminiscent of 1999 "waterfall"-style product development practices. The post was meant to be a challenge to the whole tech community, and I got a bunch of ...
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Via: Andrew Chen Blog
Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v |
One way to minimize time spent creating documentation that will rarely be read and will constantly need updating is by creating prototypes. By creating a prototype of the primary workflow you're currently working on, your team can center around the interaction design in that workflow. Conversation is facilitated around that deliverable and the team can start building as the design is further refin ...
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Via: Johnny Holland
Jeff is a UX Designer, author of O'Reilly' Lean UX book, he |
A founder's skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. At times the pattern is noise, and the vision turns out to be a hallucination. Knowing how to sort between vision and hallucination can avoid chaos inside your startup. ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
In the last week I've talked with a few early stage startup founders about pricing. It seems pricing is often a large block for many. It's understandable, since there are so many decisions to make: When do you start charging? How much do you charge? Do you have a free plan? Do you have a trial period? How many tiers do you have? If you're like I was, it can also be very difficult to imagine anyone ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
In parallel, there's often a Lean Startup methodology going on that does more quantitative tests of the specific product. But in a lot of cases, the qualitative feedback at the very formative stages is just as, if not more, important to make sure you end up in the right zone to test. Underlying all of this is the regular shift away from something the founders are passionate about. ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
If you plan to go and do your own company, or a company together with a bunch of buddies or some other wild thing you plan then I want you to realize this to the core of your being or you probably should not even start until you do: you very likely will fail but it doesn't matter one bit. ...
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Via: jacquesmattheij.com
techie, coder, troubleshooter (maker ;) ), outspoken, always |
So what is the #1 advantage every business owner should be searching for? There is a story from the famous copywriter, Gary Halbert, which reveals it. Here's how the story goes ...
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Via: Passive Panda
Entrepreneur. Travel Photographer in 17 countries and counti |
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) continues to be one of the most popular tech-based business models as evidenced by the multiples for publicly-traded SaaS companies. It's easy to get excited about the model due to the recurring revenue, high gross margins, and general growth of the space. One area that doesn't get the attention it deserves is the #1 enemy of SaaS: churn. ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
Dharmesh talks quickly and packs a huge amount of insight and data into all of his talks. This one is no exception. Here are a few of the highlights, quotes and things you will learn if you watch this video: Don't play golf. (Unless you enjoy it), SaaS and Subscription Business Models, Customer Happiness Index, Raising prices in SaaS businesses and more. ...
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Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
In complex B-to-B sales, multiple "Yes" votes are required to get an order. A single "No" can kill the deal. Understanding the saboteurs in a complex sale is as important as understanding the recommenders and influencers. We needed a selling strategy that took all of this into account. In a startup not losing is sometimes more important than winning. ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
In our lean World characterized by 12 week accelerator programs and small seed rounds I worry that today's founders don't have enough time or money to screw up the way founders did in the past. ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
This article is geared toward aspiring founders and young business professionals in the SaaS industry. I wrote an article a while back about why I disagreed with a growing notion that non-technical co-founders ought to learn code. My assertion is that learning to program is a very intensive and time consuming task, not to mention one needs to figure out what language and framework to start with ...
Maximizing revenue and keeping costs down is the name of the game in business school but don't forget the value of praises sung. Calculate that value and ask yourself every day, "Did I have the opportunity to create another fan?" ...
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Via: Spin Sucks
Chief Content Officer of Spin Sucks, Idaho expat in Chicago. |
One of the things I always suggest to CEOs is that they be an outside director for one company that is not their own. I don't care how big or small the company is, whether or not I have an involvement in the company, or if the CEO knows the entrepreneurs involved. I'm much more interested in the CEO having the experience of being a board member for someone else's company. ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
Too often, I see startups measuring a ton of different things (which is good) and then making everything important (which isn't good). The idea is to measure a bunch of stuff, but for the purposes of getting all team members on the same page, there should be a minimal number of KPIs that are shared and talked about regularly with the management team and company -- the metrics that matter the most. ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
Lots of people want the personalized step-by-step map, but building a business isn't like that. Nobody but you can wade through the thousands of pages and flood of information available, sift and sort what works for you, and recreate a specific personalized guide. ...
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Via: Tim Berry
Founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software; entrepreneur, bu |
How being open with your ideas, and vocal about sharing progress can put you in a much greater position over time because you gradually grow a following and audience to use as a launchpad for future ideas. ...
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Via: Software By Rob
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
One of the ah-ha moments that many of the companies I work with go through is accepting that digital risk management (and for that matter many other aspects of risk management) are directly tied to the customer experience. It makes sense - if a user has a good experience that is supported by a great digital experience, that reduces risk. Customers don't complain as much. ...
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Via: Ronin Research
Principal Analyst @AltimeterGroup and a right proper rogue! |
There has been a lot of recent conversation about services built on top of a platform, and the problems that follow when that platform changes its strategy. Companies change their strategy all the time. The problem is when you exclusively rely on one platform to build the foundation of your service, and that platform no longer sees services like yours as useful. Or worse, it starts seeing such ser ...
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Via: Rashmi’s blog
CEO & Cofounder - SlideShare |
I always encourage entrepreneurs to get on with the business of putting their product in the market. All the planning and designing and strategizing and grand plans of taking over the world are no match for reality. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
A lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time telling when an investor is interested. This is because most investors avoid saying no. Sometimes, this is because it's awkward to tell an entrepreneur, "I'm not investing because I don't believe in your team." Sometimes it's because nobody wants to say, "I'm just not feeling it," even though star VCs like Fred Wilson and Paul Graham freely admit that gut in ...
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Entrepreneur, Investor, Writer, Dad. |
Last month I wrote about my discovery that helping others makes me happier than spending the time seeing a movie or doing some other "pleasure activity". I briefly mentioned that I've been regularly helping startup founders, and since then I've had a few people get in touch to ask how I do it and, more importantly, why I started helping others in the first place. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
Are you up against competition that has deep pockets and can outspend you in traditional advertising methods? Does it seem like a losing battle to go head-to-head with them to get new prospects? Particularly for startup companies, using traditional advertising and marketing methods can get expensive...especially if you're up against an established company with more money than you. ...
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I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
If there's only one passionate party in a relationship it's unrequited love. Here's how I learned it the hard way. ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
We all have beliefs that are holding us back. Sometimes we're aware of them, sometimes not.One entrepreneur I know, who shall remain nameless, admitted that he has a block around sending invoices. He was perhaps exaggerating when he said that before he could send an invoice he had to down a bottle of wine and get drunk so he could hit the send button, but even so, it was clear that he had a seriou ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat |
Customer development is hard. It takes work to get it right and you'll always be improving your technique. Here are a few tips I like to keep in my head while I'm getting out of the building. ...
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Via: Grasshopper Herder
#leanstartup, #custdev, #RoR, banjo, questions, tao, #bmgen, |
It seems to particularly prey on solopreneurs and micro-businesses. It's only natural. We have fewer resources. We have to wear more hats, so we're more susceptible. The problem? We're riding the revenue rollercoaster. See if this sounds familiar... ...
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Via: Carol Roth Blog
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This last weekend, I watched Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview. It's great for many, many reasons, and I wanted to write an important point I seized upon during the talk. Make it insanely great, even while you copy, steal, reinvent, or invent whatever you need to make that happen. ...
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Via: Andrew Chen Blog
Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v |
If you consider that content marketing consists of two separate but equal activities: creating and communicating. Communication is the "marketing" part of content marketing. If all of your time and energy go into creating content, you are likely to run out of time and energy for the equally important job of effectively communicating that content to the right audience. ...
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Via: Savvy B2B Marketing
Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North. Let's |
"There are two kinds of people in the business world, doers and thinkers. Which one will you be?" I was asked this question by my first boss, a very successful serial entrepreneur. He was a very impatient person, and didn't like extended debate and discussion about big decisions. He just made them- like the time a couple of years later when he determined what to bid on a billion dollar acquisiti ...
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Via: TerryStarbucker
Writer, Husband, Friend, Entrepreneur. I write about (and h |
Speed is killing our decisions. The crush of technology forces us to snap react. We blink, when we should think. Yet as our decision-making accelerates, long-term strategy becomes even more crucial. Those of us who find time to step back and think about the big picture, even for a few minutes, have a major advantage. If every one else moves too quickly, we can win by going slow. ...
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Professor, writer, procrastinator |
A board seat in and of itself has no particular value, and is often something to be *avoided*, rather than sought out. It doesn't give you more cash compensation, more equity ownership or more direct control over the operating business. So the question you need to ask yourself is "why do I want to be on the board"? ...
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Via: Gust Blog
Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, angel investor |
I saw an email from a CEO the other day. In it, he said "I" over and over again. There were numerous places where he referred to "my company", "my team", "my product", and "my plan." It bummed me out. I know the people on "his team" and they are working their asses off. But there was a huge amount of "we" in the effort and when I read the note, all I could think about was how demotivated I would b ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
"Don't take too much advice. Most people generalize whatever they did, and say that was the strategy that made it work" ...
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Co-founder of @Ridejoy, a community marketplace for rideshar |
Hiring Employee #1. When is it time to hire your first employee? Who to look for? and How to go about it? ...
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Via: The Naive Optimist
I'm a Father, entrepreneur and lover of movies. Founder and |
The first thing many entrepreneurs do when considering a new idea or startup is comb the market to see if it has already been done. The most common result is the realisation that someone thought of it, and even built it, way before we did. ...
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Trying to create. www.stevesammartino.com |
"Everyone in the team already has a reputation internally. Through blogging, Tweeting, doing interviews or speaking, they can make this reputation an external one too." ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
Don't take it personally, but your startup. Most do. Here's why. Even the best companies become complacent, over time. Successful companies fall into a common trap. Company leaders fixate on the things that made their company successful - and often ignore new things that begin to displace their company's products or services. ...
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Via: crowdSPRING Blog
Co-Founder of crowdSPRING. Interested in crowdsourcing, star |
Still working my way through my highlights from Henry Ford's stellar autobiography. What's speaking to me today is the concept of ambition. Or rather, desire and capacity for self-betterment. If there's one thing I've learned from working with others, it's that our levels of ambition are all so very different. ...
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Via: UnicornFree
I put the Amy in anomaly. Bootstrapper, product crusader, Ru |
There is no innovation without learning. Martin Kupp's areas of expertise are strategic innovation and organizational creativity and in this talk, he outlines why startups must engage in the right kind of learning to be innovative. ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and |
The interesting step to figure out, is how you setup the co-founding group both in terms of number of co-founders, titles and equity allocations. It's all too common for startups to blow up before they've left the launchpad due to disagreements and poor arrangements among the initial team. Here are some "best practices" if they can be called such in my opinion related to the founding team: ...
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Via: Nat Turner
Co-founder of Flatiron Health. Previously Co-Founder/CEO of |
I created an online persona named Pete London - a self-described JavaScript ninja - to help attract and hire the best JavaScript recruiters. While I never hired a recruiter from the experiment, I learned a ton about how to compete in today's Silicon Valley talent war. Based upon two years of non-scientific research, here's what you should know ...
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Via: Elaine Wherry
co-founder of meebo |
When to incorporate is one of those topics which comes up time and time again, and there is much conflicting advice out there. I'm lucky enough to have a number of different experiences and perspectives with this, and I now believe that by far the best option in almost all cases is to delay registering a company for as long as possible. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
I hate to see employees leave our portfolio companies for many reasons, among them the loss of continuity and camaraderie and the knowledge of how hard everyone will have to work to replace them. There isn't one secret method to retain employees but there are a few things that make a big difference. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
One of the most defensible positions for a startup is if you can achieve the network effect. The network effect is so strong that it has kept large companies in business for a long time, despite bad products and numerous competitors. Craigslist is a perfect example. ...
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Via: brianbalfour
Founder of Boundless Learning, Viximo, PopSignal |
Some people think entrepreneurship means going off and doing a startup. My definition of entrepreneurship is "finding what you believe in, and creating something meaningful by failing at it over and over again until you eventually figure out how to make it a reality." ...
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Via: Greylock VC
Data Scientist in Residence at Greylock |
Of course, trusting your gut can only get you so far. Startups live or die based on their ability to executive strategically and tactically, but that's a story for another day. ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
I once heard a would-be entrepreneur declare "I don't make any decisions with an up-front cost and a risky outcome". That's taking risk-aversion way too far. You have to take risks sometimes. The point, however, is to keep those risks as low as possible. ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat |
If you want to have a successful business you have to learn to be a successful business owner. The most important thing you have to learn to think about is money. Business owners think about money differently than employees. ...
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Via: Muddylemon
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Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with eight startups at GigTank in Chattanooga. We started with a talk plus Q ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
Value exchanged for payment constitutes the most basic aspect of business. It's why a business exists, how a business survives and why it continues to innovate. Value, however is not what the business says it is, it's what the buyer says it is by their willingness to purchase from one business over another. ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
I love the goal of Muse businesses (pay for your life without taking your time), but become extremely worried when I hear someone say they are going to start one. Here's the problem: Without significant development resources, the muse seems only to work for two types of businesses: drop-shipping and gadget innovations. ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
It's one thing to read posts from founders and investors dispensing advice on the particulars of building a team and setting company culture. It's another to have them look you in the eyes and share their experiences in their own words. This video provides the latter in a direct and concise way that you can feel. Not required, but definitely worth your time to look into their eyes ...
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Via: Bryce DOT VC
VC, Dad |
It's easy to get caught up reading about the startup that coded from the beach, or the other startup that was featured in [insert name here], or that other startup that raised a bunch of money and was valued at a billion dollars (in make believe money that is). Those are not reasons to celebrate. ...
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Via: David Cancel
Entrepreneur. Chief Product Officer at @HubSpot. Previously |
Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic. ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
Few people come out of the womb, kicking and screaming, born ready to be a startup founder. Most of us take the longer more traditional route. Usually that means 12 years of primary education, 4 years of secondary education, a few more years working at a good job before finally catching the startup bug. You can't get this idea out of your head so you make the leap of faith into entrepreneurship. ...
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Via: Silicon Prairie News
Co-founder @Zapier. I love to build things and help people d |
Laser focus vs. keeping options open. This is an eternal struggle faced by start-up founders and corporate CEOs alike. While focus brings both purpose and increased odds of meeting a particular goal, leaders are plagued by the fear of "What if the goal I've achieved is the wrong goal? ...
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Big Data VC at IA Ventures. Data junkie. Quant dude. Basebal |
I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe it comes with the territory. Or perhaps with the "tech bubble". It could have been the billion dollar valuations; or a secret dinner at Bin 38. I wish I knew. I wish that the exact moment that becoming an advisor to a company became hip. ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
CEO and founder of @graphicly. Startup advisor. Animal lover |
When a blockbuster deal happens, a lot of people get excited. The press is all over it, money comes pouring into startups in search of the next one, people quit jobs and school to get in the game. It's a gold rush. But there's another reaction that I have heard a lot in the past few weeks that is quite different. It is "why not me?" ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
If you're thinking about starting a business or even if you've already started one, don't spend your time fussing over spreadsheets, logos, budgets or competition. Those are all parts of the puzzle, but if you want to build a business that cannot fail, spend what may feel like an exorbitant amount of time focused on building and nourishing a community. ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
Me and my co-founder realized a few days ago by talking to users and doing some research that there are some serious issues with the idea we applied with to YC. The question to you is whether we should bother coming up with a new idea (which we are struggling to do) incorporating the new knowledge we have gained or simply go into the YC interview knowing that the idea they are expecting us to talk ...
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Via: MattMaroon.com
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As a business owner, I encourage you to think about your business a little differently. That is, I want you to think about your business as a product. And specifically a product that one day you might sell to an acquirer (for a lot of money of course). By thinking about your business this way, you will be more likely to build a company that an acquirer would want to buy. ...
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Via: Growthink Blog
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One thing that's stuck with me since interviewing Robert Scoble during his soapbox earlier this month was when he said entrepreneurs have to be crazy. Or as he put it: It's like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down and assuming that you're going to figure it out while you're falling. ...
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Via: ZURB Blog
Editor @ZURB, Writer, Educator, and occasional Starship Com |
Great leaders have an inherent ability to distill complexity into simplicity. A great story which reflects this talent is attributed to steel magnate Charles M. Schwab. One day one of his floor managers came to him complaining about varied schemes he had attempted in order to increase the average output per shift, without any luck. ...
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Via: Usman Sheikh
Co-Founder of IDENTIFI. On a mission to get the right people |
As the tools to create incredible inventions become more accessible to the masses, the classic "inventor" profile is being expanded, exploded, and reconfigured. Designers, web developers, and entrepreneurs are joining scientists and tinkerers to yield the next wave of world-changing inventions. ...
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Via: The99Percent
We're now posting under @99U - come follow for insights on m |
Sales Technique - Step 1: Ask a simple yes/no question to start the conversation (get your foot in the door) Step 2: Ask for something grand (like a lot of money or time) Step 3: Ask for the thing you actually want (like a couple dollars, a 20 minute phone call, a simple partnership) ...
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Via: Getting More Awesome
I tweet about funny comics, marketing, and fun facts. |
When our noses are to the grindstone, it's easy for many of us to tune out the outside world, forget about the things we need to care of outside of work. Maybe even forget to get some sleep. Imagine how much more intense that is for a young entrepreneur who's stoked about a product he's working on. The clock vanishes and so may the various challenges that life provides. ...
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Via: ZURB Blog
Editor @ZURB, Writer, Educator, and occasional Starship Com |
Before you start your first business, do a relevant project. Businesses have overhead. Projects don't. If you tell me you'll pay $20k for a solid developer hire, and I think I might be able to dig up someone great, then I don't need to go off and set up a headhunting company. I just need to do a project. ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
Many think bartering is a strange concept, completely out of the sphere of contemporary business. That's not the case though. Bartering is still a great way to build a business from the ground up, creatively expand, and run a successful company with an impressive profit margin. ...
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Via: Blogtrepreneur
Adam Toren is an award winning Author, Serial Entrepreneur, |
Here's a very big secret - if you get this it will change your life - there's a very, very small amount of everything you do each day that matters. Figure that out, focus on that and you'll never go to work the same way again. Only a handful of your clients matter when it comes to making money. Figure out who they are and how to amplify what they mean. Make your products, services, processes and v ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
Startups are tough. You're out there carving a path that no-one else has carved before. You have no idea whether you'll succeed or fail. You encounter well-meaning worriers and envious doom-sayers. And on top of that you have to get a business off the ground. If your motivation has failed you and you feel like giving up, here are eight steps that will help to get you back on track ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and |
Strong corporate culture starts from the top with the co-founders. If the co-founders don’t emphasize corporate culture it'll take on a life of its own, even more so than it already does. As the company grows, middle management will drive corporate culture if it isn't pushed from the top, and the outcome can be fine ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
It's pretty simple and obvious advice, but always discount an investor’s enthusiasm based on how excited they are about a meeting. I also never consider an investor as more than 50% likely to close until the term sheet is signed. ...
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Via: Robgo.org
Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle |
Almost every good business pivots at some point. But if you pivot too early, you'll abandon an idea or strategy that might have worked if you'd had better execution or just more time. On the other hand, if you stay the course too long, you might drive a sinking ship to the bottom even faster, squandering resources. When to stay the course, and when to pivot ...
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Via: Under30CEO
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The very first time I ever negotiated a term sheet (and then legal docs for closing the round) I found the experience very frustrating. I was desperate to get my funding finalized to derisk my business as well as to get capital in the bank to meet our growing cash needs. But my VC didn't seem to be in such a rush. Nor did their lawyer. ...
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2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to http://salesfo |
Interestingly, a story came out today where Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, took the acqui-hire route and sold his incubator to Google after their first product wasn't successful. Rose is a guy who made his FU money, started a product incubator, and has now moved on to a giant company. ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
In your startup, you must go through the roller coaster ride. The wearing off phase is scary. The trough of sorrow is horrible. The crash of ineptitude is a near death experience. But without all of them, you can't get feedback, you can't learn what is just hype, and what is reality. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
To me, Lemonade Stand Startups are practice runs, proof of concepts or smaller companies that never grow big, but serve as a basis for future startups. To me, my Lemonade startups taught me more than any other experience I’ve been through, including University. ...
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Via: Alex Blom
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I have a question for my fellow investors - is it just me, or are entrepreneurs lying to you, too? I met an entrepreneur the other day and as he walked me through his pitch he showed a slide that detailed his team and his advisors. On the Advisory Board he listed Eric, a friend of mine. After the meeting, which had gone pretty well, I called Eric. Eric replied, "I'm not on their Advisory Board." ...
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Via: Can I Buy A Vowel?
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I've been playing around with elements of design thinking in my entrepreneurship courses to help students create better ideas and identify bolder opportunities. Even at the executive level I've starting using design thinking because it creates an incredible "mindshift" among executives. Design is no longer a support function; it's strategic. ...
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Via: Bostinnovation
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For those of you who want to get in on the ground floor of a new venture, but haven't yet worked up the nerve to start your own, begin with a job at a startup. I say that it's not just the nerve to start your own; it's also the resume, experience, and resources. And that you shouldn't feel that every entrepreneur proves him or herself by jumping straight from childhood to business owner. ...
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Via: Tim Berry
Founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software; entrepreneur, bu |
Chris Dixon has one of the best posts I've seen on how startups should deal with the press. I added a few items in his comments, but thought they were worthy of sharing here. ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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A few weeks ago I had wine with some very successful entrepreneurs. How successful? On their best days they were generating $100,000 a DAY in revenue. That's $36,500,000 a year. But what was the most surprising thing to me was that they were STILL doing their own data entry and dealing with small clients. ...
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Via: On Startups
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Do not become obsessed with beating the competition. Instead, obsess over beating the problem you are out to solve. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
Is there much disagreement in your company? I'm not talking about where to head for lunch – I mean real, passionate, fundamental disagreement on product, marketing, operations, etc. I hope so. Even more so the earlier you are in your business. Running it is a messy business. There are tons of decisions to be made. ...
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Via: Forbes
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Once I attended a conference where a serial entrepreneur was sharing his advice on what works now. The people in the audience were employees from high tech companies who wanted to be entrepreneurs. The speaker shared a lot of things that were counter-intuitive but lot of it was plain bad advice ...
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Via: Rajesh Setty
Bringing Ideas to Life. With Love! Rajesh is an entrepreneur |
A friend of mine recently asked me a simple question: "After four years as a VC, knowing what you know now, what basic tips do you have for guys like me who are growing venture-backed businesses?" It got me thinking ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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Sprouter is an amazing community of some of the top startup folks in our industry that make themselves available. I’ve been answering questions for over a year and I just realized that I’m over 1200 questions. Crazy! Why do I … Continue reading → ...
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Via: Maple Butter
Canadian living in San Francisco. Founder of http://Clarity. |
If you think that you are a proud owner of your own online business, think again. We are often ignorant of this harsh truth, yet it’s there – lurking behind like a thief at night. This truth hit me on the head a few weeks back when Twitter shut down my empire of some 130K followers. Then, as… Read the rest of this entry » ...
Q. What’s one big hurdle that you had to overcome in your quest to becoming a nomadic entrepreneur and how did you do it? Victor L., San Jose, CAThe following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (Y.E.C.). Founded by Scott Gerber, the Y.E.C. is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most [...] ...
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Via: Under30CEO
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Most startups don't have an agency helping them get coverage in blogs and publications. Here are some tips based on my experience. Related posts: Infographics: 5 Tips for Product Marketers Politics in Startups vs. Big Companies Startups: 10 Reasons Customers Won’t Switch to Your Product ...
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Via: Rocket Watcher
Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing |
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