Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

I am wired to discount people who have total assuredness in their point-of-view, have dogmatic positions or use data as a crutch or substitute for logic. I appreciate people who have strong opinions or conviction but expect them to constantly be testing their opinions and refining their approaches as they encounter new people, facts or logic. I have long believed that humans (myself included) err on the side of over-confidence in their own abilities and thoughts.

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construction venture capital consulting support 182

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 30, 2017

By Neen James, motivational speaker and attention expert. As a keynote speaker and executive mentor, I am frequently asked for ways to deal with rules and bureaucracy in the workplace. Especially when dealing with some large corporations with employee manuals the size of War and Peace. Rules, regulations and bureaucracy are part of corporate culture, but, done right, they don’t have to squelch morale and productivity.

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David Teten VC

MAY 19, 2017

Historically VC has been an apprenticeship business. That said, I’ve identified quite a few microcredentials, conferences, and other learning opportunities which will help train you to be a better investor. If I’m missing any from the list below, please contact me. VC ASSOCIATIONS. Confluence. Let’s Talk Ops , Venture Capital Operations Association – fund operations professionals.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 23, 2017

In January 2010, Andrew Parker wrote a post called the Spawn of Craigslist. Andrew identified companies that had built businesses by unbundling Craigslist. The vacation rentals link gave rise to AirBnB and HomeAway. Etsy dominated the arts and crafts for sale. This same unbundling is occurring to Excel. Microsoft Office has more than 1 billion users globally.

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education collaboration opportunity enablement 74

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Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

strategy

abovethecrowd.com

MAY 9, 2017

The partners at Benchmark are excited to announce that Sarah Tavel has joined the firm as our newest General Partner. We define ourselves by a love for the craft of early stage investing, and Sarah’s career-long desire and commitment to be one of the world’s great venture capitalists make her an ideal addition to a Benchmark team. About a year ago, we asked our venture partner Scott Belsky who he thought had the greatest potential to become one of the best investors of the next decade.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 17, 2017

I’ve been involved with several startups where a giant incumbent attacks you and tries to sue you out of existence. When you first receive the threat it feels like the local pizza shop when they first get a call from the local mafia boss and you can feel the shake-down coming. The first instinct is fear, then dread, then panic. You begin to think about how hard it will be to fund raise, sign customers, hire employees, etc. with the cloud of a lawsuit hanging over you.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 17, 2017

Every company has a personalized business model, one that separates them from the herd. For EO Chicago’s Zak Dabbas and Ryan Unger , co-founders of Punchkick Interactive, a mobile app and web development agency, the secret to their sustainability comes from “going flat.” In this special interview, Zak and Ryan offer insights into their EO journey, the decision to adopt a new business model, and how a flat focus has led to a surge in productivity and innovation.

peer-to-peer 130

peer-to-peer advice accelerator construction 130

David Teten VC

MAY 16, 2017

Historically, the process of winning capital from limited partners has been opaque. However, in the last few years a few have started to use social media and become more transparent. I particularly like OpenLP.com , Origins , and the Raise blog , all of which include content from multiple LPs. . At Invesco’s conference on Emerging GPs, one of the highlights was a presentation by Laurie Weir summarizing CALPERS’ selection criteria under their Private Equity Emerging Manager Progr

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 18, 2017

As the number of SaaS applications has exploded, the SaaS ecosystem is responding to data fragmentation with middleware. This isn’t the middleware of the early 2000s, which was focused on helping developers build software. This is middleware that is focused on helping end-users unify data from the vast numbers of data repositories now existent.

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Gearing up for 2025 annual planning? Our latest eBook from the Operators Guild is your ultimate guide. Discover real-world solutions and best practices shared by top CFOs, drawn directly from discussions within OG’s vibrant online community. Learn from senior executives at high-growth tech startups as they outline financial planning strategies, align CEO and board goals, and coordinate budgets across departments.

startup

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 14, 2017

For the last couple of months, I've been recording interviews with founders and recruiting professionals for the Startup Recruiting Podcast. Despite my best efforts to make it tactical--full of hacks, tips, tricks, etc., the common themes that keep coming up are much more about meaning, mission and values. At first, I'll admit it felt a little fluffy, but more and more I realize that without answering questions about the "why" of what it's like to work for your company, you're never going to be

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Gust

MAY 16, 2017

Today we’re proud to release an updated Co-founder Equity Split tool. We released the first version back in November to help startup founders divide the ownership of their startup fairly and rationally among their team. Since then, we’ve been collecting feedback from founders about how it could better help them with their decision. With this release, the tool gives founders.

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Berkonomics

MAY 18, 2017

If you have been following the last several weeks of these postings, then now we’re getting organized. There are many ways to express the road map for your enterprise. One of the most popular was used by the U.S. Army late in World War II, and adopted by many high profile businesses such as Texas Instruments after the War. The structure combined the listing of the goal with a series of strategies and then tactics, each designed to support each other, each measurable and made public throughout

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 11, 2017

A typical entrepreneur’s origin story includes an impassioned desire to meet a challenge head-on and to build a business that solves a problem, eases a pain point or creates new opportunity for consumers. This drive becomes missional to the company – often providing the context for the formation of core values, the early recruiting of partners and certainly winning favor in the chambers of local and regional government.

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financing

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 15, 2017

By Brian Scudamore, founder and CEO of O2E Brands (the banner company to 1-800-GOT-JUNK?) and EO Vancouver member. My dad is a liver transplant surgeon and one of the most educated people I’ve ever known. So you can imagine his disappointment when I dropped out of high school (and then college) to haul junk for a living. But as a two-time dropout, I’m in good company: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Uber founder Travis Kalanick never finished school, either.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 29, 2017

By Glenn Cohen, founder and CEO of Beach House Center for Recovery. Nobody is immune to addiction—not even entrepreneurs. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 21.5 percent of Americans aged 12 and older battled some type of substance abuse issue in 2014 (the most recent year for which data is available). In addition, 70 percent of all Americans who use illicit drugs are in the workforce, according to data cited by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 26, 2017

By Renita Wolf , a Colorado-based financial executive and author. Though it seems unfathomable to the “Just Say No” generation, marijuana is legal, decriminalized or has medical status in 45 of our 50 United States. While the District of Columbia and states including Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have legalized the drug within their borders, it remains illegal under federal law.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 10, 2017

By Tom Rowinski, managing partner at JTR Solutions , custom software development . Outsourcing software development has been a trend for some time after the demand for these services led to an increase in providers around the world. Over the past 20 years, outsourcing has spanned from Latin America to India, Eastern Europe to China. While analyzing your company’s development costs, you may find that offshoring to one of these countries appears less expensive.

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Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.

technology

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 5, 2017

Dr. Karl Blanks is an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) London member and the co-founder of Conversion Rate Experts , a Google-authorized consultancy that scientifically converts websites’ visitors into customers. The former rocket scientist, a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, has grown clients in 80-plus verticals, in 22 countries and in nine languages.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 3, 2017

The following article originally appeared in EO’s award-winning Octane magazine. For more insightful articles from entrepreneurs, visit Octane magazine online. . By Susan Michel, founder and CEO of Glen Eagle and an EO New Jersey member. The influx of millennials into the workplace is providing today’s entrepreneur with a number of new challenges and opportunities.

culture 130

culture opportunity creativity leadership 130

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 31, 2017

By Marsha Ralls. As the owner of a commercial art gallery for more than 24 years, I never imagined that people would buy art online, or that I would be selling to them without any prior relationship or connection. I had seen the importance of developing mutual trust and respect with clients, and per tradition, I would nurture these working relationships over a period of years.

education 100

education technology opportunity consulting 100

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

How much revenue do you want to book for your SaaS startup next quarter? And in 12 months? It is one thing to put a number down on the financial plan. It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period.

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opportunity

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 21, 2017

In Bias Against Creativity , a team of researchers at Cornell discuss the bias against creativity they revealed in their study. Originally published in 2010, the article resurfaced yesterday on Hacker News. It raises the question of how to evaluate creative ideas and how to engender internal incentives to support creativity. From the Cornell paper: People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 10, 2017

When building a SaaS product for salespeople, a startup’s price will inevitably be compared to Salesforce CRM’s cost of about $150 per seat. How expensive is this new product compared to Salesforce? In diligence calls, I often hear buyers say: one-half of Salesforce’s price seems expensive; one-third might seem more reasonable. This is the price anchoring effect in the real world.

SaaS 45

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 29, 2017

We’ve entered an era when computers can understand speech, computers can synthesize speech, computers can develop music, author encryption algorithms, create novel art, respond to customer support questions, and even generate new summaries and reports from data. Increasingly, humans will struggle to distinguish between computer-generated and human generated.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 13, 2017

In January, I wrote The Hardest Round to Raise which argued Series B rounds would be the most challenging early stage round in 2017. Irrespective of the annual vicissitudes of the fundraising market, Series Bs are always the most challenging rounds to raise because they are in-between rounds. The Series B is the pimpled and gangly adolescent phase of startup evolution.

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