November, 2016

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Proudly Investing in Businesses that *Get Better* as People Use Actually Them, Not Worse

This is going to be BIG.

Classpass is nothing short of phenomenon--and it's particularly noticeable to me because I passed on its seed round. In my defense, I passed when it was Classtivity, a completely different model focused searching for classes. Obviously, the pivot worked out for them. Still, it's a bit frustrating to see them end their "Unlimited" option to the chagrin of many of their users--just a few months after raising their prices.

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“You Can’t Be Serious”

Entrepreneurs' Organization

By Davide Frau, EO South Florida. It was midnight on a Saturday when my phone rang. It was one of my business partners, Barnabas Carrega. After the previous 72 hours—which were beyond grueling—I didn’t really feel like talking to anyone. That Thursday, we decided to pull the plug on our first promotional event set to take place during the Sony Open in Miami, Florida, USA.

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How do you focus your team for action?

Berkonomics

How do you get your team to focus and move forward effectively? A fellow CEO recently told me of her method of assuring positive movement within her team. She holds a weekly meeting of her direct reports, and asks them to find three important but actionable items for the group to work on if not complete during the following week. She claims that, by reducing the number of issues to three, her team is better able to devote mental and physical resources to a solution than if she allowed her meet

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How to Create Competitive Advantage for Your Startup with Proxy Metrics

Tomasz Tunguz

Imagine you’ve just been named the head of a bustling New York City restaurant challenged by one issue - customers complain about the customer service. A data-driven person, you search for a metric to evaluate the current customer service to validate the complaint and then track as you experiment with the restaurant’s operations. What metrics would you employ?

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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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business.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 Google is using Machine Learning and AI

Don Dodge

Machine Learning will impact everything we do at Google. You can already see the results in Google products you use today. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Big Data are buzzwords we hear every day. What do these words mean? How will Machine Learning make my life better? Let’s take a look. What is Machine Learning? Isn’t that Artificial Intelligence?

More Trending

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Did Facebook and Twitter Make Us Better or Worse in 2016?

This is going to be BIG.

Yesterday, I got caught up in letting my frustration over the election boil over onto Twitter, and it's definitely not the first time. It made me ask the following question: Were we better off in 2016 having Facebook and Twitter around? I talked about it with a few people. One brought up #blacklivesmatter and while I hope some important issues were highlighted, I really don't see these platforms bringing about positive change in the real world.

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How Internal Reflection Can Set You Up for External Success

Entrepreneurs' Organization

By Meghdad Abbaszadegan. My introduction to meditation was one of the most important moments in my life. I learned about a technique called “so-hum” by reading Deepak Chopra’s book “ The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire.” I was quickly hooked on the simple process of breathing and chanting. Before long, I had signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat.

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After 20 years: Updating the Berkus Method of valuation

Berkonomics

Well, it had to happen. Originally created in the mid 1990’s to help with the imprecise problem of how to value early stage companies, especially those in technology, I developed what soon became known as “The Berkus Method” when published in the popular book, “Winning Angels” by Harvard’s Amis and Stevenson with my permission in 2001. But a lot of time has passed since then.

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Trends in Early Stage SaaS Fundraising Market of 2016

Tomasz Tunguz

About $1B has been invested in early stage SaaS startups as of November 1. Over the last nine months, marketing startups have raised more dollars in aggregate than any other segment. The chart above shows the early-stage investment dollars by buyer within the organization. Operations teams following second, with human resources focused startups in third.

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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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Co-founder Equity Split: A New Framework to Objectively Divide Startup Ownership and Get Back to Building a Business

Gust

We’ve just released our free Co-founder Equity Split tool. It’ll give you a fair and objective recommendation about how to divide your startup’s ownership, so you and your co-founders will have a sensible, real starting point for this notoriously hard, crucially important conversation. Many startup founders find themselves lacking clarity and direction when it comes time to divide their.

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2016 SaaS Survey Infographic

For Entrepreneurs

The forEntrepreneurs 2016 SaaS Survey Infographic highlights key metrics from this year’s SaaS Survey and includes links to advice and insights on improving these metrics. You can find the full 2016 SaaS survey results here: Part 1 covers growth rates, go-to-market trends and cost structure.

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"About Last Night." The note I just sent to my portfolio.

This is going to be BIG.

In 2008, I tried to fundraise for my startup the week that Lehman Brothers went under. You can imagine how well that worked out. Basically, VCs told us that they were going to wait and see how the election turned out--and things didn't really thaw out until the following September. Extreme uncertainty slows the VC market to a crawl--that's what I learned.

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Four Ways to Disrupt your Industry

Entrepreneurs' Organization

By Jason Bangerter. Some oppose industry disruption – I embrace it. It’s true that sometimes disruption forces companies out of business, and thus forces people out of their jobs. But the innovative minds that cause change are what we, as entrepreneurs and consumers, should want. People that shake things up make their industries better, and give consumers what they want.

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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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Rinse and repeat: revitalizing your business

Berkonomics

Here’s a statement that you never thought would apply to your business planning. Sometimes we get stuck in the muck with our marketing, product, management focus, and in keeping up with trends. It is natural for executives and entrepreneurs with lots on their plate and little extra time – to just keep up the same activities that have made the company a success.

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What Percentage of Revenue Should SaaS Startups Spend on Payroll?

Tomasz Tunguz

What percentage of revenue should be spent on payroll? In 2001, Salesforce spent $35.6M on payroll and generated $5.4M in revenue. NetSuite spent $38M on payroll generated $17M in 2004. as both of these companies scaled and approached IPO, the operating expense ratio (OER) or operating expense divided by revenue, asymptotes to 0.8. For every dollar of revenue, both of these companies spent $0.80 in payroll at scale.

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We are losing – Stand Up and Fight!

Thomas Grota

Just a reminder: Saying people are stupid because they voted for Brexit or Trump is achieving only.

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2016 Pacific Crest SaaS Survey – Part 2

For Entrepreneurs

We recently released Part 1 results of our annual SaaS Survey, which shares data and insights on growth rates, go-to-market trends and cost structure. A new highlight in Part 1 of this year’s results includes data on balancing growth and profitability in SaaS companies, commonly known as The Rule of 40%. Part 2 of the survey results dives into: A comparison of application.

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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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The Bad Advice Diverse Founders are Given Around Fundraising

This is going to be BIG.

I can't think of a single time when a white man came to pitch me and I told him his fundraising plans weren't aggressive enough. Yet this is a message I'm giving to women and people of color all the time. It's not that this latter group isn't aggressive enough--after all, they're ditching everything else they could to to start companies. Something else is at play.

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Joi Ito’s Call to Become a “Now-ist”

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Joi Ito’s TED Talk from 2014 remains pertinent and valuable in 2016 – are you working too hard to predict the future of your industry, rather than working in the present and foregoing permission? According to Ito, this model (“deploy, or die”) holds much more possibility for your company. Highlighted points from this presentation: “What happened after the Internet was the cost of innovation went down so much because the cost of collaboration, the cost of distributio

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Who cares about customer loyalty?

Berkonomics

Repeat customers, raving fans, angry backlashers, commodity shoppers. Oh boy, what a range of loyalty these represent. And in your years, you may have experienced all of these. Here’s another way to look at the ladder to an ideal customer loyalty relationship. But first, let’s examine the three kinds of loyalty you don’t want to engender…. How about forced loyalty , if you happen to have a monopoly in your niche?

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The Customer Support Experience of the Future

Tomasz Tunguz

A few weeks ago, I had my first customer support experience of the future. I was in a meeting when my Android’s caller ID told me American Express was calling. I stepped of the conference room and answered the call. A machine-generated woman’s voice identified itself as the American Express fraud department. “Do you have a bluetooth headset or headphones you can use with your phone?

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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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And Then They Came for Me …

Both Sides of the Table

Yesterday was Halloween in the United States where children dress up and try to scare people as they “trick-or-treat” for candy. Yet the only horror I experienced was watching Peter Thiel stand in front of a national media audience and re-endorse Donald Trump for President. In his defense he made it clear that he didn’t agree with the all of the things Trump had said (or done?

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How to Strengthen Your Team by Getting Out of the Office

Entrepreneurs' Organization

This article was originally published on EO’s Inc.com column. More often than not, a stronger bond comes from taking the team to a new setting with different challenges–outside the office. We asked members of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s (EO) Boston and Nashville chapters to share what methods they’ve used to strengthen their teams outside of the office.

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Temple Grandin’s #LeadYoung Story

Entrepreneurs' Organization

This story was originally published on Ashoka’s #LeadYoung website – EO and Ashoka encourage readers to share their own stories on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #LeadYoung. Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, has revolutionized the livestock industry. By putting herself in the place of the cattle, she developed a series of equipment designs and a simple rating system to help the industry adopt new practices that reduce animals’ stress and injuries to both anima

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Business Advice From Female Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs' Organization

By Jill Krasny. During November, we celebrated “Women’s Entrepreneurship Day.” Here are several pieces of advice for growing businesses from successful women entrepreneurs. Starting a small business is not easy. And starting a small business as a woman can be even tougher. Thankfully, “women-owned firms have increased as a share of total businesses over the years,” according to the Small Business Administration.

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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