Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

You had an amazing meeting with an investor. Your product demo crushed. The dialog was great. They told you how much they loved your space. The meeting was only supposed to last 45 minutes but you ran 90. The assistant tried to end the meeting twice but was shoooshed away. You race back to the office to tell everybody how well it went and you wait for the follow-up call to have a partners’ meeting or talk about term sheets or at least dip into due diligence.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 18, 2018

Vishal Chordia (pictured above, right, with Kimberley Hickok-Smith) was awarded the 2018 EO Global Citizen of the Year award in Toronto, Canada, in April 2018. We recently talked with him about making time for charity beyond his busy professional and family commitments. . Vishal heads up a US$100 million food business in India’s spice sector that exports to more than 22 countries throughout the world.

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Berkonomics

MAY 31, 2018

It is tough to lose your best employees wanting to advance their careers. Sometimes you can be the coach, helping them even if it means losing them. And, as in today’s story, sometimes it can mean the beginning of an amazing journey leading to a story for the ages… We’d all like to retain our best managers and employees forever or at least for as long as possible.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 28, 2018

Imagine you came across this ad. Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and the flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes.

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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 The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.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

Haystack

MAY 19, 2018

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for many months. Ironically, I’ve haven’t had the time for *this specific* post until now, today. I’m writing while all my three toddlers are napping and my wife went to work to get organized. I’ll likely finish this tonight after putting the kids to sleep. This is a post about time — and various attempts at time management.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There’s a quick litmus-test conversation any early-stage VC will have with the founder and it’s one that you should be as prepared for as your elevator pitch. It goes something like this … VC: “How much money are you raising?” Founder: “$8–10 million” VC: “What’s your current burn rate?” Founder: “$250k / month.” VC: “So at a constant rate of burn rate you’d be raising enough for 2.5–3 years.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 11, 2018

Written for EO by Justin M. Deonarine, an industrial-organizational psychologist with Psychometrics Canada,an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) -member company. Leadership. It’s a complex and challenging topic. While we would all agree leadership efforts can always improve, few companies are putting the time or money into developing effective leaders.

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Berkonomics

MAY 24, 2018

Here’s yet another story that you may identify with – or have yet to experience in your business life. It’s one of those that define your leadership for all to see, sometimes based upon decisions made in the moment – such as this one. A story of a CEO’s snap judgment call. Years ago, when I was CEO of my record manufacturing company in Hollywood, I happened to walk around the plant into the press room just as Bobby, one of the employees’ favorite coworkers, was offering stolen merchandise to his

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 19, 2018

Technology innovations swing to a pendulum’s cadence. Sometimes innovations begin with infrastructure changes and reverberate up the stack. Other times, front-end engineers innovate at the application layer, which demand downstream changes in the infrastructure to scale. The last major epoch of front end evolution has celebrated its ten year anniversary.

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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.

development

Haystack

MAY 5, 2018

The public’s interest in learning more about and participating in venture capital seems to grow more and more each week. I have written a few posts here lately sharing my own experience and point of view, but then realized we all may talk about “getting into VC” as if it is a monolithic endeavor — and that would not do us or the reader justice.

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Ben Franklin Technology Partners

MAY 22, 2018

State College, PA – Salimetrics, a company that is widely regarded as a global leader in salivary bioscience, got its start nearly 20 years ago with an investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and then received additional funding from the program for a buyout of early-stage investors in 2012. The founder of the company, Dr. Doug Granger, a nationally and internationally recognized scientist, pioneered the use of saliva collection methods and salivary ELISA kits which provided con

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

Why you should never have a data room?—?the most counter-intuitive fund-raising advice you’ll ever get I’m about to offer you some fund-raising advice that flies directly in the face of what most conventional wisdom will tell you. If you stick through to the end I’m guessing I can persuade most of you. Let me start out with my premise: “Data rooms are where fund-raising processes go to die.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 8, 2018

You know that employees benefit from constructive feedback. You understand that the opportunity to apply helpful criticism helps an employee perform better and even grow more loyal. Still, it’s hard to deliver effective feedback. Even the greatest leaders struggle with providing constructive and beneficial performance reviews. Follow this feedback primer to practice delivering effective criticism. 3 TYPES OF FEEDBACK: Positive: “You’re doing a great job in this area.” Neu

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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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Deskmag

MAY 22, 2018

For many big coworking spaces, integrating broker firms into the sales strategy for their space is the norm. Yet for others, it’s unknown territory. Whilst brokers may have previously been associated with traditional offices, many coworking operators are now utilizing their capabilities to minimise vacancy rates. However, creating an effective relationship with a broker firm isn’t something that happens at the touch of a button; there are ways and means of ensuring the working relationship fully

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 5, 2018

At Redpoint’s annual investor meeting earlier this year, I quipped, “The day-trading taxi drivers of the dotcom era have been replaced by crypto-trading Uber drivers.” But over the weekend, a grizzled Uber driver with a mane of grey hair and wind-and-sunburnt cheeks asked me about crypto. “Can you explain to me why public key/private key technology is important on the Blockchain?

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Berkonomics

MAY 17, 2018

Here comes another story. Of course. This one may be like one or more you have experienced in your company. It is a story about focus upon the customer, first. And about reinforcing the culture of the company in support of that important focus by senior management, and by all employees who see that leadership in action…. Some examples of celebration you can use.

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Ben Franklin Technology Partners

MAY 22, 2018

ERIE, PA – More than 15 years ago, a Penn State Erie faculty member, Tom Briselden and his team at Spin-Works LLC, developed an innovative, silicon-carbide radiant tube insert called a SpyroCor. The twisted “Y” design produced non-turbulent, high convection flow creating a high rate of uniform heat transfer. At the time, there were more than 20,000 natural gas furnaces in the United States and Canada, and the cost of fuel was rising.

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Advertiser: ZoomInfo

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

B2B marketing

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

This is part of a series of advice for founders who need to raise money from venture capitalists. The first in the series is “ Lemons Ripen Early ,” which also has a link to other posts. The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 1, 2018

Written for EO by Jackie Roberson, writer. In many companies corporate culture is never explicitly defined, but rather implied. It shows up in the way that employees interact with each other, the way they dress and maintain their work areas, the hours they work, and how they conduct business with the outside world. Culture is defined through the satisfaction of the employees and the clients, the way the office is set up, and the benefits offered to employees.

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Deskmag

MAY 24, 2018

We are very delighted that you have shown interest in reading artilces on deskmag.com. The use of this webesite is possible without any indication of personal data; however, if a data subject wants to use special enterprise services via our website, processing of personal data could become necessary. If the processing of personal data is necessary and there is no statutory basis for such processing, we generally obtain consent from the data subject.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 8, 2018

I remember the first time I wrote an OKR (objective and key result) at Google. “You should set your goals so that you attain 70%. That’s success,” my manager told me. “Even better if you have a moonshot goal in there, with a 5% likelihood of success.” I was uneasy with calling 70% goal achievement as success. The habits formed from 17 years of schooling and a 100 point scale run deep.

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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

financing

Berkonomics

MAY 10, 2018

Here is one that is so important to the continued health of a growing company that it cannot be overstated. It’s a bit complex for novices. But hang in there as I explain a bit about accounting classification of assets and liabilities. Differences between types of assets and liabilities. First, let’s be sure we know what is short in term and what is long in term.

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Derek Sivers

MAY 31, 2018

In my first book, Anything You Want , I told the story of how I started, grew, and sold my company. As part of selling the company, I signed a non-compete agreement that said I couldn’t do the one thing I’d been doing since I was twenty-seven years old. So I had to make a real change in my life. I thought a lot about what’s worth doing, fixing faulty thinking, and making things happen.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I Know Everybody Told You to Send Your Fund-Raising Decks as a Link. Here’s Why You Should Just Send the Deck I know you have your document sending tool to send your fund-raising deck to VCs and track who read your deck, which pages they read and how much time they spend on each page. I know that you can use an email system with this to track my open rate, whether I forwarded the email, the IP address where I read it, whether I was on a mobile device or a wired computer and you can tell who else

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 14, 2018

Written for EO by Jackie Roberson. When you’re managing a business and trying to grow it, being able to lead a team to greatness is key. You know you must hire the right people, learn how to delegate and communicate effectively to be a strong leader. But beyond these basics, what do truly great leaders need? Consider these four key traits. 1. A Growth Mindset.

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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.

strategy