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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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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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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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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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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PE Mastery: CAPTARGET's Playbook for Quality Lead Flow

CAPTARGET presents a masterclass in M&A deal sourcing. Learn to cast a wide net, embracing seller self-identification. Consistency is the linchpin: keep the origination process steady for a reliable flow of opportunities. Diversify your tactics, employing various tools and vendors. Tech matters! Understand DNS settings, domain authority, and brand presence for optimal outreach.

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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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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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Should you be working on this startup?

This is going to be BIG.

We’ve all heard the anecdotes—the famous founder who pitched 1000 investors before any of them said yes. That kind of story drives founders to take a “VC’s don’t know anything” approach to their business and trudge on despite legitimate criticisms of the business, often costing themselves tens of thousands of dollars or more of personal savings. So how do you know whether or not something is worth working on?

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Hospitality Tech as a Service

500

As sector agnostic investors, we get a first-hand look at tech-enabled startups across a number of different verticals. One which you may not have heard much about is HTaaS — or Hospitality Tech as a Service. We’ve recently partnered with LA Fund, an innovative hospitality-focused venture fund, to launch a bootcamp for startups building products that have the potential to disrupt this space.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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Not My Cup of Tea - Some Business Types Are A Better Fit for Angels

The Seraf Compass

Why do web and software businesses seem to get investment traction while real, down-to-earth business and manufacturing-intensive companies flounder to raise capital? It has to do with the type of investor model involved. The investor model has to match the type of company.

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navigating the rules and risks of startup crowdfunding

Venture Well

We highlight what crowdfunding is and what startups need to know before jumping into high-stakes opportunities, which can spell trouble down the line. The post navigating the rules and risks of startup crowdfunding appeared first on VentureWell.

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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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A SEC Safe Harbor For Crypto

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce proposed a “safe harbor” for crypto projects that raise money before they are sufficiently decentralized. I am a big fan of “safe harbors”and wrote a bit a few years ago about why I like them so much and why a crypto safe harbor is such a needed and good idea. There is a chicken and egg problem in financing crypto projects.

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Statement of Cash Flows vs. Cash Flow Statement

Speaker: Wayne Spivak - President and Chief Financial Officer of SBA * Consulting LTD, Industry Writer, and Public Speaker

The old adages that "cash is king" and "you can’t spend profits" still hold true today. But however well-known these sayings might be, it requires a change in mindset to properly implement a cash flow management system that predicts your business's runaway as accurately as possible. Key to this new mindset is understanding the difference between the Statement of Cash Flows, a historical look at the source and uses of cash, and the Cash Flow Statement, which uses transaction history and forward-l

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Five Reasons You Should Attend ICBI34

INBIA

The post Five Reasons You Should Attend ICBI34 appeared first on InBIA.

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Meet the Startups of Batch 26

500

We are excited to announce our 26th batch of companies to join our flagship seed accelerator in San Francisco. From social media analytics to sensors and AI and more, this group of 29 companies was chosen from over 3,000 applicants, representing a less than 1% acceptance rate. As with every batch, we are continuing our commitment to discovering and backing the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, and recognizing that great founders come in all shades, genders and nationalities.

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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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preventing the spread of germs in public transportation: q&a with Wyatt Dike from E-Team, VertX Advertising

Venture Well

Wyatt Dike of E-Team, VertX Advertising, is developing antimicrobial coatings for use in public transportation that double as advertising space. The post preventing the spread of germs in public transportation: q&a with Wyatt Dike from E-Team, VertX Advertising appeared first on VentureWell.

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How to Avoid the Pain and Cost of PCI Compliance While Optimizing Payments

Speaker: P. Andrew Sjogren, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Very Good Security, Matt Doka, Co-Founder and CTO of Fivestars, and Steve Andrews, President & CEO of the Western Bankers Association 

PCI compliance can feel challenging and sometimes the result feels like you are optimizing more for security and compliance than you are for business outcomes. The key is to take the right strategy to PCI compliance that gets you both. In this webinar, we have a great set of panelists who will take you through how Zero Data strategies can be used as part of a well-rounded compliance and security approach, and get you to market much sooner by also allowing for payment optimization.

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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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Computer Science For All NYC

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

About ten years ago, I started asking why were weren’t teaching computer science to every student in the NYC public school system. That led to a journey that started with some computer science high schools and eventually got to a ten year program to get computer science teachers in every school building in NYC and computer science classes for every student.

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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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Principal Promotional Announcement

HPA

HPA believes world-class organizations are built by giving people the resources and opportunities to be successful. Whether it’s our members, our partners, or our portfolio companies, HPA is committed to helping build a stronger Midwest entrepreneurial ecosystem by supporting people. In that same vein, we’re excited to announce the promotion of our two Associates, Bess Goodfellow and Stephen Ross, to Principal.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in