December, 2019

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Why You Don't Get Real Feedback from VCs--and a Solution

This is going to be BIG.

If there’s any one thing I’ve focused on in my VC career, it’s trying to give real, actionable feedback to founders. I’ve made a bet that if a founder pitches me, whether or not I fund them, if I make the process worthwhile by telling them exactly why I couldn’t get there, they’re likely to recommend that other founders do the same. The risk is that if I give a definitive “no”, then if they pivot, or figure out something else, or if they get more traction than I expect because I was flat out wro

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Innovation in Sustainability: From Trash to Textiles

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Monique Maissan is an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member in Shanghai, CEO of Vision Textiles, and founder of Waste2Weave. Monique has been a pioneer in sustainability in the notoriously environmentally unfriendly textile and fashion industry for more than 20 years. We asked Monique about her journey with sustainability and the challenges she’s experienced.

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Advice from an entrepreneurship expert, with Professor Michael Goldberg

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

The YLAI Network hosted Michael Goldberg , a professor of entrepreneurship and an expert in international business development, for a Facebook chat in November for Global Entrepreneurship Week. Michael answered questions from network members requesting advice for their entrepreneurial endeavors. Many themes came up, such as overcoming issues with funding, navigating unstable governments, expanding your business, and dealing with competition.

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Grinding

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

It is tempting to search for the one magic move that will make everything better. A new VP of Sales. A new database layer in your tech stack. A new brand for your company. Moving everything to the cloud. More capital in the business. But it is rarely one thing that a business needs to succeed. It is often a little bit of everything. Back in the early days of Twitter, we could not keep the website and API up.

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From Curiosity to Competitive Edge: How Mid-Market CEOs Are Using AI to Scale Smarter

Speaker: Lee Andrews, Founder at LJA New Media & Tony Karrer, Founder and CTO at Aggregage

This session will walk you through how one CEO used generative AI, workflow automation, and sales personalization to transform an entire security company—then built the Zero to Strategy framework that other mid-market leaders are now using to unlock 3.5x ROI. As a business executive, you’ll learn how to assess AI opportunities in your business, drive adoption across teams, and overcome internal resource constraints—without hiring a single data scientist.

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grant money and contracts: which is right for your venture?

Venture Well

Grant money and contracts can offer early-stage innovators with many benefits, but how do you determine which funding source is right for your venture? The post grant money and contracts: which is right for your venture? appeared first on VentureWell.

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Why Entrepreneurs Must Harness the Power of Sleep

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Giles Watkins, coach, mentor and author of Positive Sleep: A Holistic Approach To Resolve Sleep Issues and Transform Your Life. . The words “sleep” and “entrepreneur” may seem like strange bedfellows unless you are running a start-up in areas such as making mattresses or developing a new Sleep app. However sleep is a wonderful, natural and free resource that anyone starting or running a business must draw on optimally to be the best they can be for their cu

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2019: An Innovative Year in Review

UBI Global

Journey through the 2019 global innovation community activities with UBI Global Join us as we present the 2019 year in review and examine the impactful collaborations that took place through business incubator and accelerator programs and their startup clients. This article covers the biggest disruptions in the global innovation landscape, the UBI Global member programs […].

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VCs eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments

David Teten VC

(To see the video above, please click the image, and then click on the Play button.). Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . When I was single, I registered for (a lot of) dating websites. When I met my now-wife, I realized that any technology that can find me a spouse is a killer app.

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The Greg Main Distinguished Scholar Award

Innovation 2 Enterprise

Application. About Greg Main. As his children were growing up, Greg Main would often ask them around the dinner table, “What have you done you to distinguish yourself today?” An excellent role model, Greg distinguished himself throughout his life. He grew up in Lansing, Michigan, married Barbara in 1963, graduated summa cum laude from Michigan State University in 1970 with a degree in urban planning and received an honorary doctoral degree from St.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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Coworking Megatrend Predictions for 2020

GCUC

by Liz Elam, founder of GCUC, the Global Coworking Unconference Conference. As founder of GCUC, the world’s largest coworking conference series, I travel the world learning about coworking. At the end of each year, I look ahead to where the coworking world is going and share my predictions for the coming year. Looking Back On Our 2019 Predictions. As we stated in our Coworking Megatrend Predictions for 2019 , the sleeping giant is definitely awake.

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Product Launches Become the Operating Cadence of a Startup

Tomasz Tunguz

In November, two spectacles occurred. The first is Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual event and the largest software conference in the world. The second is Elon Musk announcing the Tesla Cybertruck. Benioff and Musk use these events strategically. They engender an operational cadence to Salesforce and Tesla. There's no feeling like launch day. It's the day you reveal to the world the sumtotal of your team's efforts for weeks or months.

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A Key to Entrepreneurial Success: Finding Your Third Place

Smart Hustle Magazine

How important could a barbershop be? John Merrick rose from slavery to found the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the largest black-owned businesses in the United States. In the process, he helped to create a culture in early twentieth-century Durham so entrepreneurial that it became known as the “Black Wall Street.”. Eight hundred miles away, New Orleans’ cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden was innovating something so new that his contemporaries didn’t have the words to describ

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2019: An Innovative Year in Review

UBI Global

Journey through the 2019 global innovation community activities with UBI Global Join us as we present the 2019 year in review and examine the impactful collaborations that took place through business incubator and accelerator programs and their startup clients. This article covers the biggest disruptions in the global innovation landscape, the UBI Global member programs […].

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

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?

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Venture capitalists eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments

David Teten VC

(To see the video above, please click the image, and then click on the Play button.). Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . When I was single, I registered for (a lot of) dating websites. When I met my now-wife, I realized that any technology that can find me a spouse is a killer app.

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ESHIP Communities Ecosystem Builder: Dr. Ebony Edwards

Forward Cities

This interview is part of the “Ecosystem Builders” series. More information about the ESHIP Communities program can be found here. Dr. Ebony Edwards is passionate about making a unique and positive impact in Kansas City. She is a member of our ESHIP Communities Council in Kansas City. The ESHIP Communities program is a community-driven approach for building entrepreneurial ecosystems that foster inclusion, relationships, collaboration, and social capital across networks of entreprene

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Founders’ Chat: Joe Chang – Turning a hobby into a career

NZ Entrepreneur

Founders’ Chat is a series where we share the entrepreneurial journey of founders from the GridAKL start-up hub. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”. Or so the, somewhat controversial, saying goes. Although many entrepreneurs would argue that even working on your life’s passion has its ups and downs, most would agree that working on something you love gives you a true sense of accomplishment.

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In the News: Intel acquires Habana Labs, OurCrowd in New Zealand, & more

OurCrowd

It’s been an active week for us as we begin the global expansion of our incubator business… with our first international win, in New Zealand – hotbed of agtech/foodtech together with our partners Sprout, Finistere, Fonterra, and Gallagher… In an exciting exit, Intel acquires Habana Labs for $2B. This news is obviously very positive for other companies in the AI accelerator chip business.

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How Top Tech CFOs Solve Annual Planning’s Biggest Challenges

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.

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Paulsen Award

Innovation 2 Enterprise

The Oklahoma Business Roundtable will award three scholarships in the amount of $5,000 each. All students competing in the current competition are eligible to apply. The Oklahoma Business Roundtable, formed in 1991, is a non-profit public/private partnership. Their primary mission is to assist the Governor and the Oklahoma Department of Commerce by supporting and encouraging business investment and jobs in the state.

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2019: An Innovative Year in Review

UBI Global

Journey through the 2019 global innovation community activities with UBI Global Join us as we present the 2019 year in review and examine the impactful collaborations that took place through business incubator and accelerator programs and their startup clients. This article covers the biggest disruptions in the global innovation landscape, the UBI Global member programs […].

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Free money for your impact tech startup

David Teten VC

Congratulations! You’ve decided to launch a technology-enabled startup with a positive social impact! Nearly every major Silicon Valley venture-capital firm has now invested in a B Corp ; maybe you will be one of them! Now the bad news: some venture capitallists have a bias against startups with an explicit positive social impact, on the grounds that they have a smaller addressable market, and that the founders are not sufficiently focused on creating shareholder wealth.

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ESHIP Communities Ecosystem Builder: Gerald Smith

Forward Cities

This interview is part of the “Ecosystem Builders” series. More information about the ESHIP Communities program can be found here. Meet Kansas City entrepreneur and ecosystem builder Gerald Smith. Gerald and his wife Dianna co-founded Plexpod, a coworking space where they champion entrepreneurs and the power of community to achieve success.

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Your Fractional Finance and Accounting Team

Mighty Financial specializes in supporting the financial aspirations of small businesses and entrepreneurs. With our comprehensive bookkeeping and precise accounting expertise with decades of experience across diverse financial roles, our team offers tailor-made services ranging from essential bookkeeping to strategic fractional CFO support, catered specifically to the unique challenges of technology companies, startups, and SMEs.

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What Happened In The 2010s

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

My friend Steve Kane suggested I take a longer view in my pair of year end posts this year: What, no decade end/decade ahead posts? — Steven Kane (@stevenkane) December 26, 2019. And so I will. Here are the big things that happened in tech, startups, business, and more in the decade that is ending today, in no particular order of importance. 1/ The emergence of the big four web/mobile monopolies; Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

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[OurCrowd in Business Wire] OurCrowd, Perrigo and BOL Win the Israeli Government Tender for Operation of a Medical Cannabis Incubator in Yeruham

OurCrowd

-OurCrowd, the leading global investment platform and the most active venture capital investor in Israel, Perrigo, the world’s largest non-prescription drug company, and BOL Pharma, the leading medical cannabis company in Israel and an OurCrowd portfolio company, today announced that the consortium they established won the tender issued by the Israel Innovation Authority to operate CanNegev, a medical cannabis incubator which will be located in Yeruham in the south of Israel.

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‘Visionary’ funding program boosts Oklahoma startups

Innovation 2 Enterprise

By Scott Meacham. This time of year, Christmas music is everywhere. Some people get a little tired of it, but for me it’s all part of the season, and I like it. Christmas music reminds me of family, friends, and memories of Christmas mornings and meals. The other day, I was on an errand, and “Do You Hear What I Hear” was playing. It’s one of those Christmas songs that can really stick in your head, and that day it stuck in mine.

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2019: An Innovative Year in Review

UBI Global

Journey through the 2019 global innovation community activities with UBI Global Join us as we present the 2019 year in review and examine the impactful collaborations that took place through business incubator and accelerator programs and their startup clients. This article covers the biggest disruptions in the global innovation landscape, the UBI Global member programs […].

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

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.