April, 2012

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Some Thoughts on Branding Startups and Communities

Both Sides of the Table

Brad Feld visited Los Angeles this past week. I always enjoy spending time with Brad as the antidote to the eco chamber. He is a unique human being with original thoughts & ideas and very limited concern for having to fit into other people’s narratives. And I’ve always remembered a quote from high school, “Non Conformity is the Highest Form of Social Attainment.” That always stuck with me.

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The Robert Moses Effect

This is going to be BIG.

History presents a lot of patterns we can learn from, if you examine them closely. Lately, I've been talking a lot about the "Robert Moses Effect". From the 1930's to the 1960's, Robert Moses was the most powerful influence over the development of New York City's urban landscape. Nearly every highway you've ever driven over in the Big Apple was put their at the order of one man.

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How much information do you give to investors?

Berkonomics

There is a natural fear of giving too much information to investors after the initial investment is received. CEO’s worry that investors will not keep the information confidential and that financial data will find its way into competitors’ hands. Others worry that investors will latch onto individual line items within financial data and engage in inquisitions regarding telephone bills, marketing costs and other tactical line items in detailed financial statements.

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Intuit to Acquire Demandforce for $424MM

abovethecrowd.com

This morning, Intuit announced its agreement to acquire one of Benchmark’s portfolio companies, Demandforce, for $424mm. As with Instagram, Benchmark Capital is the largest institutional investor in Demandforce. Unlike Instagram, which is a consumer application and is extremely well known, Demandforce focuses on local professional businesses and has chosen to keep an intentionally low profile [.].

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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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business.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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Advice on moving to Los Angeles

Derek Sivers

I was born in California, then lived in LA from age 32 to 39. It still feels more like home than anywhere else on earth, for me. But I’ve seen how it confuses or annoys people at first. So when someone says they’re moving there, I have to give this explanation and advice. It’s not a traditional city. Not long ago, it was just a bunch of small towns — Venice, Pasadena, Burbank, Encino, Beverly Hills — but then for tax reasons they drew a circle around about 30 small towns and decided to call it L

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More Trending

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The Scarcest Resource at Startups is Management Bandwidth

Both Sides of the Table

When you work inside a startup with lots of clever and motivated staff you’re never short of good ideas that you can implement. It’s tempting to take on new projects, new features, new geographies, new speaking opportunities, whatever. Each one incrementally sounds like a good idea, yet collectively they end up punishing undisciplined teams.

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Tattoos and YCombinator Demo Day

This is going to be BIG.

It was June of 2003. I sat in a little ink shop on Rivington Street called Porcupine Tattoo. Emma was tracing the design I had given her--some wrap around barbed wire--onto my arm with a pen. She had flower sleeves of spectacular color. Seven Nation Army was playing. I never really thought much of tattoos. My dad has two on his arms and, after 50 plus years, they've faded quite a bit, blurring at the edges.

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Think ahead, if you will need more money later.

Berkonomics

Some businesses just can’t fit within the angel capital or friends and family model for raising funds. Sooner or later these businesses will have to seek venture capital and accommodate the needs of the venture community in negotiating the terms of an investment. First, VC’s in general cannot invest in ‘S’ corporations or limited liability companies (LLC’s).

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My Life With Bing

abovethecrowd.com

For the past two months, I changed the default search engine on my browser (ironically Chrome) from Google to Bing. I have used Bing almost exclusively for this period, and have two quick conclusions. 1) With regards to core search, the Bing results were perfectly fine. I never struggled to find anything. I never forced [.].

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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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The Problem with Startup Advice

This is going to be BIG.

I'll show up generally anywhere I get invited to speak. I love public speaking, teaching and generally being helpful. I'm often the last one to leave an event, held back by the most persistant of entrepreneurs trying to squeeze as much advice as they can out of me. It's totally fine--except when I really really have to go (as opposed to when I just said I really had to go, ten minutes ago).

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Tough. Cold. Wet. Awesome. #toughmudder and #toughstartup

This is going to be BIG.

Yesterday, I did my first Tough Mudder. If you don't know what that is, check it out. It's nuts. Or, to think about it another way, a few weeks ago, I was proud to say that I did my first half marathon. Yesterday, I basically did a half marathon that included live electrical wires, an ice bath, crawling through mud and a host of other obstacles. It was enough to make me think that if someone doesn't knock me off my bike on my commute or if I don't fall in some water, it will have gone too easily

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Don’t Try to “Pull an Instagram.” Here’s Why …

Both Sides of the Table

Instagram. It’s understandably on everybody’s mind these days. Clichés abound about, “You know what would be cool? …” I’ll write soon on my views of why I believe Instagram took off as a social network and what I think comes next. Instagram happens to be one of the few social networks I regularly use along with Twitter.

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Why do panels suck and how can we make them better?

This is going to be BIG.

I've been working with the folks at the Northside Festival on their new tech and entrepreneurship track to create an amazing conference in Brooklyn this June. We've got some really awesome speakers lined up and I'm striving to try and make each of these panels good enough to headline other events. Yet, for some of the people that I wanted to be there, and others that still agreed to come, the answer was: "I don't really like panels.

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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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Reading what was written and the VC age question

This is going to be BIG.

For a solid six or seven minutes, I was pretty pissed at Fred Wilson for his last post on the age of venture capitalists. I even started writing a post defending the new crop of younger investors and why they can be value-add to investors. I was writing against his argument that it's better to take money from an investor over 40. Only. that's not what he wrote at all.

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Would you attend a conference featuring your network?

This is going to be BIG.

I've been using a thought experiment in the personal branding class I teach to entrepreneurial Fordham students that I think is worth sharing. I asked them to curate a conference--just as a mental exercise, not for real. The conference format forces them to do a couple of things that haven't been easy to get them to think about and has a lot of potential lessons for how they think about networking and personal brand.

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Be careful how you define your competition.

Berkonomics

Professional investors laugh when they hear an entrepreneur state, “We have no competition.” That statement has killed more investment deals than almost any other. It is a failed litmus test for the entrepreneur, even if the plan is for a totally new device or service that could take the world by storm. Well, come to think of it, this is especially true in such an instance.

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The last money has the first say.

Berkonomics

This important variation on “money talks” is an important consideration for entrepreneurs when seeking an investment from professionals such as VC’s. Something like a marriage (and often lasting just as long statistically), your investment partner can be a great cheerleader, coach and resource. But the moment things turn sour, including missed plans, some investors on company boards go into a predictable mode of dictating terms for emergency loans or additional investment.

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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 Thoughts About the Instagram Acquisition

This is going to be BIG.

Price : If you're looking at the billion, you're looking at the wrong number. It's the 1%--because of Facebook is valued at $100 billion, they just paid 1% of their market cap to acquire the only thing that looks remotely competitive to their core offering in the market. So, for all of you startups who have done a Series A at a post of $10 million, that's like offering up a whopping $100,000 to buy out a competitive threat.

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When should I raise my seed round?

This is going to be BIG.

Answer: After your business model makes boatloads of money. :). Ok, well, short of that, this is one of the questions I get most and here's what I've noticed about venture raise timing. There seems to be three windows, each with their own pros, cons and complications. Here are some general tips to keep in mind: Phin tells companies to solve all the problems you can solve without money first.

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End of the Android Road: Why I got an iPhone

This is going to be BIG.

I've always been one to veer away from what the masses are doing. I never saw Titanic, didn't watch Lost and I'm not into American Idol. When a whole bunch of people get out of their heads excited about something, it makes me a little bit less interested--because I want to discover the awesome thing that no one knows about yet. That's why I've always tried out a wide variety of phones.

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Doing your best doesn't always get you the best outcome

This is going to be BIG.

I played softball last night with a team I've been on for over 6 years. Most of the core of our team has been together for at least 3 seasons now and we're one of the top teams in Zogsports. One of our guys went the other way on a tough pitch and drove a line drive to right field and I commented to Jeremy that this was the best I've ever seen our team hit.

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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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The Scarcest Resource at a Startup is Management Bandwidth

Both Sides of the Table

When you work inside a startup with lots of clever and motivated staff you’re never short of good ideas that you can implement.

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NYC's Innovation Community: What Came Before and What Comes nextNY

This is going to be BIG.

These days, it's kind of hard to miss what's going on in the NYC startup community. Every night, hundreds of people pack all the various meetups, there are hackathons and startup weekends, and it seems there's a new venture funding announcement everyday. It wasn't always like that, though. The NY Tech Meetup, for example, used to meet in the back conference room of Meetup's NYC offices.