February, 2020

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7 Reasons You Don’t Want to Start a Business With Friends

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Frank Hamilton. Starting a business is an exciting adventure. It’s understandable why some people choose to do it with friends. After all, who could be a better partner than your best friend? You might be surprised by the obstacles you could face as friends in business together, though. Here are just seven reasons to think again before you launch a business with your buddy. 1.

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How much can you pay yourself as a founder?

This is going to be BIG.

The answer is easier than you thought: Anything you want. No, seriously—that’s the perk of running your own business. You select your salary. Now, if you want to have investors and potentially maximize growth for the company, that’s a different story. Investors are going to want their investment dollars to be going towards growth than going directly into your pocket—but what does that mean for how much you can actually pay yourself.

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Being In The Flow

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I have been investing in developer tools since the earliest days of my VC career. The first investment I led in the late 80s was a financing that provided the funds to acquire a programming editor called Brief. It was a text-based editor for PCs. That investment worked out but we didn’t make a lot of money on it. Brief was eclipsed by other better editors.

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TechCrunch: Where top VCs are investing in construction robotics

Dream It

Via TechCrunch by Arman Tabatabai: Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries. Last November, we surveyed 13 of the top robotics-focused VCs to find out which areas of robotics are exciting them most going into 2020. One of the most common areas of attention respondents highlighted were startups focused on construction and manufacturing.

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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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How to Build a Successful Partnership in Work and Life

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Katty Douraghy, president at Artisan Creative , a member of EO San Franciso and the MyEO Women of EO Champion. . In January of 2000 my husband, Jamie, asked me to come work with (for) him. His creative recruitment business was growing and he needed stronger personnel management skills, which was an area I had spent the previous 10 years developing in my own career.

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How To End Your Pitch with Your Vision

Dream It

Getting investors excited about your product is a critical part of raising capital. But founders are often so consumed with talking metrics, milestones achieved, or the capital they need that they sometimes forget to talk about their overarching vision for their startups. “VCs are looking for a grand slam,” according to Steve Barsh, Managing Partner at Dreamit Ventures.

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5 Rules of Thumb to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

Revolution

Besides businesses that operate with negative working capital like cable TV?—?where you pay before receiving the service?—?I don’t know any company that thinks their sales cycle is too short. This is especially true for thinly capitalized startups, where survival can hinge on landing a single marquee client and getting paid in a reasonable amount of time.

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Where’s your sense of urgency?

Berkonomics

It is human nature to start in a new position with enthusiasm, lofty goals, new ideas, and a heightened awareness of those around us and their ideas for the business. After time in our job positions. And it is an unfortunate truism that most of us become a bit stale in our jobs after some time, even if we are most successful at it and appreciated by all who work for or with us.

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How a female commercial engineer in Paraguay is overcoming barriers

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

2018 YLAI Fellow Bibiana Dipeo, the director of Alimentando Para el Futuro (Feed4Future) in Paraguay, is empowering her community after more than a decade in the financial sector, by innovating new ways to reduce malnutrition and poverty. The YLAI Network is celebrating Bibiana’s tenacity in overcoming various barriers she has faced on her way to commercial engineering success, her hard work in the financial sector, and her passion for giving back to her community.

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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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4 Secrets to Responsive Leadership

Entrepreneurs' Organization

What makes a great leader? Nationally recognized leader and executive coach Jackie Jenkins-Scott provides her perspective as she explores examples of responsive leadership in her new book, 7 Secrets of Responsive Leadership. While you may be a strong leader, she asserts, the ability to adapt your strengths to each new organization, or to changes within the organization—new board members, new staff members, new shareholders—is the quality that will help you remain successful. .

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Why Meg Whitman is Betting on Quibi as“The Da Vinci Code of Content”

Both Sides of the Table

Every year, a personal Upfront Summit highlight is getting to sit down with experts in a field I care about. Sometimes that’s venture capital generally (like last year’s conversation with Reid Hoffman ) and sometimes it’s in a space where I’ve invested (like mobility and city innovation with Bird’s Travis VanderZanden , one of our portfolio founders.

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Tech Jobs For All Who Want Them

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

The tech sector is the fastest growing sector of the economy in NYC and around the US and around the world. The tech sector offers high paying jobs and a growing number of them. But, as we all know, the tech sector lacks the gender and racial diversity that would allow everyone to benefit from this growing sector of the economy. Most of the studies that have looked at the lack of diversity point to a skills gap standing in the way.

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The Strategic Importance of Competition

Tomasz Tunguz

When I started in venture capital, one of the questions I learned to ask very early on was competition. Founders would often reply that competition validates the opportunity. At the time, I thought it was a canned response, a clever parry, to avoid answering the question directly. I’ve since realized I was wrong. Let’s say you’re creating a category.

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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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Free E-guide: The Bootstrapper’s Guide to Business Development

NZ Entrepreneur

Building a tech startup? Learn about business development with this free e-guide from tech business strategist Flavio Hangarter. The number of local (AUS & NZ) billion dollar companies, as well as the rapid growth of publicly listed tech firms, is growing (Crossroads, 2020). While capital to large tech companies is increasing, smaller rounds for early-stage companies is drying up.

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Tech CEO's Inspiration From Farming. Zoho Founder On the Lies of Cloud, Startups Funding and more.

Smart Hustle Magazine

Everytime I hear Sridhar Vembu , cofounder of Zoho speak, I get goose bumps and chills. I attend many tech focused events, hearing from tech executives and founders sharing their view of the world. Most of the talk is focused on products, politics, culture or other topics that aren't necessarily NEW or inspiring. Sridhar's presentations are part TED Talk, tech talk, history lesson and economics dissertation and are inspiring and new.

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Advancing Humankind Through Individual Consciousness

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Gordy Bal, social entrepreneur on a mission to regenerate the planet, shift the current dysfunctional education system and end human suffering. . At this very moment, we are facing an evolutionary shift that we’ve never experienced before. As gen Xers and millennials inherit mass wealth from baby boomers, we’re looking at a greater transfer of wealth than we’ve seen before: Over US$30 trillion will change hands in North America over the next 30 to 40 years.

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A race against time for building a company

Innovation 2 Enterprise

By Scott Meacham. It is hard to start a business — very, very hard. This is true on Main Street, for information technology businesses and in biotech. For all entrepreneurs, building a company is a race against time, a race in which every milestone of success increases the pressure on the business plan. The biggest challenge is capital—where to get it and how to stretch it until the enterprise is cashflow positive.

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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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ESHIP Communities Ecosystem Builder: Eze Redwood

Forward Cities

This interview is part of the “Ecosystem Builders” series. More information about the ESHIP Communities program can be found here. Q:What is your deeper “why” behind your commitment and work to support inclusive entrepreneurship in Kansas City? . A: Starting out in both the tech sector and restaurants, we made a lot of costly mistakes that made life very hard.

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In the News: Watch full-length content or join our highlights webinar | 2020 OurCrowd Summit

OurCrowd

“A great event. Very well organized. For venture capitalists like myself, this event is even better than CES.” – Dong-Su Kim, CEO, LG Technology Ventures. The 2020 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit was another record-breaking gathering; 23,000 registered from 186 countries. What was especially inspiring were the stories on stage – especially the 3 stories of 3 lives saved by our portfolio companies. .

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How to bounce back after a startup failure

NZ Entrepreneur

Failure is a part of business, but when your own startup stalls, it’s hard not to take it personally. In this article, Alan Manly talks to Mark Phillips about how entrepreneurs cope with the taste of defeat without it slowing them down. There are plenty of sobering statistics available to budding entrepreneurs that show the likelihood of a startup failing, but they are not much use to a new business owner once the probability of failure becomes reality.

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My 1985 Nike Air Jordan Investment

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

Earlier this week I purchased 1% of a collection of five 1985 Nike Air Jordan sneakers using our portfolio company Otis’ mobile app. I paid $330 for ten shares (out of a total of 1000 shares) implying a value of $33,000 for the five pairs, or roughly $6600 each. This page shows the highlights of this sale, including a video, a link to the investment deck, and a link to the offering circular.

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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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celebrating 10 women redefining the face of invention

Venture Well

In honor of National Inventors’ Day, we’re showcasing 10 women innovators we’ve supported to motivate and inspire tomorrow’s female inventors. The post celebrating 10 women redefining the face of invention appeared first on VentureWell.

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Effective tax policies can boost state investment

Innovation 2 Enterprise

By Scott Meacham. It’s a good thing when state leaders recognize the strategic importance of innovation in job and wealth creation. It’s also a good thing when a state considers legislation to help address capital gaps. Oklahoma’s Technology Business Finance Program (TBFP) Seed Fund is a nationally recognized best practices example of legislated early stage capital that has stood a 20-plus year test of time.

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Testing New Methods of Flexible Credit Delivery for Entrepreneurs in Indianapolis

Forward Cities

Editor’s note: This article is part of a larger series called Solution Stories, which aim to tell the story of the work Forward Cities is helping to guide in cities across the country. For additional background on the specific approach taken in communities like Indianapolis, please visit the first article in the series here. As part of a two year Community Entrepreneurship Accelerator aimed at strengthening the local Indianapolis equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem and facilitated by Forward Ci

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Mindful Leadership for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Rob Dubé, CEO at imageOne. Rob is a member of EO in Detroit, speaker, author and an avid proponent of mindful leadership. . If you’re like most business leaders and entrepreneurs, you know what it’s like to be stressed. Those years of nonstop work provide us with exciting dream careers and anxiety-ridden sleepless nights. Stress is simply part of the deal, right?

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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.