This is going to be BIG.
MARCH 24, 2014
'These days, there are a ton of options for you if you''re a startup seeking guidence. Every single topic about running a company has been written about ad nauseum, there are incubators, accelorators, mentoring programs, events, talks, etc. We''ve done a lot to make sure startups get all the help we can get--and it''s leading to higher companies getting off the ground.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 15, 2014
'By now you likely know that Marc Andreessen weighed in on anonymous apps in a 12-part Twitter diatribe. Anonymity. As the old joke goes, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” I have been weighing in slowly on the topic over the past few weeks on Twitter but have avoided writing a blog post about it until now. This was in part due to a tremendously busy 30-day period for me (in which my overall writing has been down) and in part the inevitability of knowing that weighing
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Gust
MARCH 23, 2014
'Image via Flickr by krossbow. These days, your online Internet reputation is your reputation. Of course, having no reputation is usually better than a bad one, but don’t wait for someone else to establish a good one for you. It’s time for every business and business person to proactively create a positive presence, before someone else puts you in a defensive mode that is hard to win.
Berkonomics
MARCH 13, 2014
'By David Steakley. If you are a screenplay writer, you are familiar with the dogma of the inciting incident. In a movie, the inciting incident is the event at the beginning of the story which causes the hero’s life to be completely transformed and irrevocably changed, and which makes the whole story unfold. Companies also need an inciting incident, because, more often than not, you often will depend upon selling your story to someone.
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Tomasz Tunguz
MARCH 2, 2014
Over the last 12 years, the number of startups founded has grown each year by 25%, according to Crunchbase data. That’s quite an acceleration each year! See the chart here. As the number of companies in a sector grows, do the odds of successfully raising capital decrease? The chart above shows startup company formation rates, the number of new companies formed each year from 2004-2011 by Crunchbase sector.
Startup Catalyst Brief brings together the best content for the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
This is going to be BIG.
MARCH 31, 2014
'You''ve never run a company or raised money before. Sure, you''ve built little projects and there was that lemonade stand when you were little, but this is for real. Real money is showing up at your door and you''re in the enviable position of getting to choose who you work with. Even if you haven''t gotten offers yet, your time is valuable and you can''t pitch everyone.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 11, 2014
'A few years ago I started calling the local tech ecosystem down here #LATech. I had an agenda. We graduate more engineers in our greater region than anywhere else in the US. We have top 25 engineering schools than anywhere else, too. I never wanted to be a derivative of Silicon Valley. I have the utmost respect for the tech produced by our northern colleagues and acknowledge it is the tech capital of the world and that won’t change.
Gust
MARCH 16, 2014
'Image via Flickr by BullionVault. In reality, so-called “Founder’s” shares are simply common stock, issued at the time of startup incorporation, for a very low price, and normally allocated to the multiple initial players commensurate with their investment or role. But that’s only the beginning of the story. These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later.
Berkonomics
MARCH 6, 2014
'Most innovations come from responding to a customer’s needs, or finding a niche where products need improvement or extension. It is rare to innovate using a blank sheet of paper in a room with bare walls and no other contributors. Imagine the room in which several graduate business school student groups have gathered, tasked with coming up with an idea for a business plan competition.
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Tomasz Tunguz
MARCH 26, 2014
Earlier this week, I attended the Spring YCombinator Demo Day. I’ve been attending for six years now. Each time, I’m impressed by the intelligence, ambition and the polish of the founders presenting companies only a few weeks or months old. As I listened to the pitches, I wondered if the types of startups founders decide to build at YC has changed over time and whether those trends are lagging or leading indicators of the market as a whole.
Derek Sivers
MARCH 29, 2014
I get emails from many people who want to make a big change in their career. Each one wants to quit their current career, and boldly leap into their new venture or preferred lifestyle. When they ask my advice, they think I’m going to say, “Yes! Quit! Go for it!”. But instead, they’re surprised at my suggestion: Remember how Tarzan swings through the jungle?
This is going to be BIG.
MARCH 17, 2014
'Here are two contrasting startup stories I''ve seen firsthand. With one company, a founder and his super inspirational, creative, and established buddy hatch a plan to build a very strong content brand that serves as a platform for a lot of diverse revenue streams--events, ecommerce, advertising. You could think of it as a spin on Thrillist. With the author staying close as an advisor, they build a real, cashflow positive business and start to think about where they could go with some outside c
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 24, 2014
'I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 years ago. I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel.
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Gust
MARCH 2, 2014
'Image via Wikipedia. If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, “One of these days, I’m going to start my own company,” I’d be rich. If this day ever comes for all these people, we will be overrun by startups. Yet I don’t lose any sleep over either of these possibilities. Most people procrastinate from time to time, but I suspect that the challenge here is somewhat deeper than that.
Berkonomics
MARCH 20, 2014
'Here’s more advice from professional investors for aspiring entrepreneurs. Each of us has a list of things we look for early on when identifying whether we want to go to the next step in analyzing a plan. Come to think of it, these are good for challenging any business plan. First: You must address a big market, large enough to allow a new entrant to have a shot at making a dent with a great product or service, and growing to a size that will make the company valuable at the exit.
Tomasz Tunguz
MARCH 20, 2014
Over the past few years, I’ve debated the existence of a Series A crunch and found in that analysis that the volume of Series As was increasing. This trend hasn’t abated. The number of Series As has grown by 31% annually for the past 5 years, reaching more than 831 Series As in 2013, up from 284 in 2009. In short, no founder should be concerned about the Series A market.
Fink About It
MARCH 19, 2014
In my last post, I wrote about how many startups fail because they try solving problems no one really has or cares enough about to spend money to solve. I mentioned that while poor execution is responsible for many startup failures, you can’t execute your way out of a bad idea. In the venture capital [.]. The post Pinpointing Problems Worth Solving (Part Two of Three) appeared first on Fink About It.
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This is going to be BIG.
MARCH 3, 2014
'The NYC startup community maintains a positive, supportive atmosphere. We celebrate a strong effort. However, that often makes it hard to tell who actually excels at their job and who just mails it in or got lucky. This goes for founders, employees and investors alike. I was just noticing that a professional acquaintance of mine just changed jobs for the third time in two years--going from startup to startup to startup without, ostensibly, accomplishing much at any of the companies.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 23, 2014
'We all intuitively know how important human connections are in business but for many people it’s like exercise or eating well – one of those things you keep meaning to get around to. It reminds me of a line my wife and I often jokingly say to each other after seeing the awesome film “ Notorious ” about the life of Biggie Smalls. “I know mothafuckas who know mothafuckas.” Please just take 8 seconds to listen to this clip on YouTube – it’s priceless
Gust
MARCH 9, 2014
'Image via Flickr.com. It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.
Berkonomics
MARCH 27, 2014
'With help from JJ Richa. There are so many ways to finance a small business. Most of them rely upon some form of debt, often personally guaranteed by the founder(s). So we investigate the most simple of these methods of debt financing first, since most are simple to execute and non-dilutive – that is help you to retain your ownership intact. Here is a list of common loan types: Line of credit – short term working capital.
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Tomasz Tunguz
MARCH 19, 2014
I’ve been getting a few questions about the tools I use to publish this blog, so I figured I’d write about it and reveal the machinery behind the curtain. I use four main tools Jekyll, Github Mou, and RStudio. Jekyll is the blogging engine; Github is the hosting provider; Mou is the app I use to write these posts; and RStudio is the place I analyze data and make charts.
Derek Sivers
MARCH 18, 2014
You know that feeling you have after a big meal? When you’re so full that you don’t want anything more? Ever wonder what that would feel like in other parts of your life? We do so many things for the attention, to feel important or praised. But what if you had so much attention and so much praise that you couldn’t possibly want any more? What would you do then?
This is going to be BIG.
MARCH 10, 2014
'Greg Galant of Sawhorse coined a term yesterday that captures perfectly what I thought of my 8th SXSW. We were having a discussion about big brands taking over the scene and he called it "conference gentrification". That''s exactly what has happened down in Austin. The small startups and individual creatives were early to SXSW and created a great, authentic experience over many years--a "neighborhood" if you will--with a certain attractive vibe.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 10, 2014
'My blog had been looking tired for a year or two. The problem is that with WordPress I just found it a bit too cumbersome to change the design on my own. I’m more of a verbal content guy. I like to get what is in my brain out into words and as you probably know I worry less about typos, grammar or – generally – visual design. I appreciate beautiful design – I just wasn’t blessed with the skill of producing it.
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