Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

I am wired to discount people who have total assuredness in their point-of-view, have dogmatic positions or use data as a crutch or substitute for logic. I appreciate people who have strong opinions or conviction but expect them to constantly be testing their opinions and refining their approaches as they encounter new people, facts or logic. I have long believed that humans (myself included) err on the side of over-confidence in their own abilities and thoughts.

construction 182

construction venture capital consulting support 182

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 30, 2017

By Neen James, motivational speaker and attention expert. As a keynote speaker and executive mentor, I am frequently asked for ways to deal with rules and bureaucracy in the workplace. Especially when dealing with some large corporations with employee manuals the size of War and Peace. Rules, regulations and bureaucracy are part of corporate culture, but, done right, they don’t have to squelch morale and productivity.

leadership 130

leadership collaboration culture construction 130

David Teten VC

MAY 19, 2017

Historically VC has been an apprenticeship business. That said, I’ve identified quite a few microcredentials, conferences, and other learning opportunities which will help train you to be a better investor. If I’m missing any from the list below, please contact me. VC ASSOCIATIONS. Confluence. Let’s Talk Ops , Venture Capital Operations Association – fund operations professionals.

VC 83

VC angel investing venture capital accelerator 83

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 23, 2017

In January 2010, Andrew Parker wrote a post called the Spawn of Craigslist. Andrew identified companies that had built businesses by unbundling Craigslist. The vacation rentals link gave rise to AirBnB and HomeAway. Etsy dominated the arts and crafts for sale. This same unbundling is occurring to Excel. Microsoft Office has more than 1 billion users globally.

education 79

education collaboration opportunity enablement 79

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technology

abovethecrowd.com

MAY 9, 2017

The partners at Benchmark are excited to announce that Sarah Tavel has joined the firm as our newest General Partner. We define ourselves by a love for the craft of early stage investing, and Sarah’s career-long desire and commitment to be one of the world’s great venture capitalists make her an ideal addition to a Benchmark team. About a year ago, we asked our venture partner Scott Belsky who he thought had the greatest potential to become one of the best investors of the next decade.

disruption 72

disruption venture capital board entrepreneurs 72

Thomas Grota

MAY 26, 2017

As promised I deliver an update to my post from last year on Fintech & Insurtech Ecosystem (post.

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technology innovation financing finance 40

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 11, 2017

A typical entrepreneur’s origin story includes an impassioned desire to meet a challenge head-on and to build a business that solves a problem, eases a pain point or creates new opportunity for consumers. This drive becomes missional to the company – often providing the context for the formation of core values, the early recruiting of partners and certainly winning favor in the chambers of local and regional government.

entrepreneurship 130

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David Teten VC

MAY 16, 2017

Historically, the process of winning capital from limited partners has been opaque. However, in the last few years a few have started to use social media and become more transparent. I particularly like OpenLP.com , Origins , and the Raise blog , all of which include content from multiple LPs. . At Invesco’s conference on Emerging GPs, one of the highlights was a presentation by Laurie Weir summarizing CALPERS’ selection criteria under their Private Equity Emerging Manager Progr

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ventures investing investment VC 74

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

How much revenue do you want to book for your SaaS startup next quarter? And in 12 months? It is one thing to put a number down on the financial plan. It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period.

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SaaS investing investment support 49

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development

Gust

MAY 16, 2017

Today we’re proud to release an updated Co-founder Equity Split tool. We released the first version back in November to help startup founders divide the ownership of their startup fairly and rationally among their team. Since then, we’ve been collecting feedback from founders about how it could better help them with their decision. With this release, the tool gives founders.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 17, 2017

I’ve been involved with several startups where a giant incumbent attacks you and tries to sue you out of existence. When you first receive the threat it feels like the local pizza shop when they first get a call from the local mafia boss and you can feel the shake-down coming. The first instinct is fear, then dread, then panic. You begin to think about how hard it will be to fund raise, sign customers, hire employees, etc. with the cloud of a lawsuit hanging over you.

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Berkonomics

MAY 18, 2017

If you have been following the last several weeks of these postings, then now we’re getting organized. There are many ways to express the road map for your enterprise. One of the most popular was used by the U.S. Army late in World War II, and adopted by many high profile businesses such as Texas Instruments after the War. The structure combined the listing of the goal with a series of strategies and then tactics, each designed to support each other, each measurable and made public throughout

strategy 110

strategy support development 110

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 15, 2017

By Brian Scudamore, founder and CEO of O2E Brands (the banner company to 1-800-GOT-JUNK?) and EO Vancouver member. My dad is a liver transplant surgeon and one of the most educated people I’ve ever known. So you can imagine his disappointment when I dropped out of high school (and then college) to haul junk for a living. But as a two-time dropout, I’m in good company: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Uber founder Travis Kalanick never finished school, either.

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peer-to-peer entrepreneurs education frameworks 130

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opportunity

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 10, 2017

I don't know whether or not Donald Trump colluded with the Russians around the election--or whether any of his associates did either. I certainly don't think much of him--and it certainly doesn't seem beyond him, but obviously I don't have all the materials and information I need. But what I do know is that anyone who is sure of their innocence wouldn't fire the very person investigating them IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INVESTIGATION.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 21, 2017

In Bias Against Creativity , a team of researchers at Cornell discuss the bias against creativity they revealed in their study. Originally published in 2010, the article resurfaced yesterday on Hacker News. It raises the question of how to evaluate creative ideas and how to engender internal incentives to support creativity. From the Cornell paper: People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal.

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creativity culture support strategy 45

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 29, 2017

By Glenn Cohen, founder and CEO of Beach House Center for Recovery. Nobody is immune to addiction—not even entrepreneurs. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 21.5 percent of Americans aged 12 and older battled some type of substance abuse issue in 2014 (the most recent year for which data is available). In addition, 70 percent of all Americans who use illicit drugs are in the workforce, according to data cited by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 26, 2017

By Renita Wolf , a Colorado-based financial executive and author. Though it seems unfathomable to the “Just Say No” generation, marijuana is legal, decriminalized or has medical status in 45 of our 50 United States. While the District of Columbia and states including Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have legalized the drug within their borders, it remains illegal under federal law.

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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

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 10, 2017

By Tom Rowinski, managing partner at JTR Solutions , custom software development . Outsourcing software development has been a trend for some time after the demand for these services led to an increase in providers around the world. Over the past 20 years, outsourcing has spanned from Latin America to India, Eastern Europe to China. While analyzing your company’s development costs, you may find that offshoring to one of these countries appears less expensive.

peer-to-peer 130

peer-to-peer development collaboration entrepreneurs 130

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 5, 2017

Dr. Karl Blanks is an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) London member and the co-founder of Conversion Rate Experts , a Google-authorized consultancy that scientifically converts websites’ visitors into customers. The former rocket scientist, a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, has grown clients in 80-plus verticals, in 22 countries and in nine languages.

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innovation consulting entrepreneurs founder 130

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 3, 2017

The following article originally appeared in EO’s award-winning Octane magazine. For more insightful articles from entrepreneurs, visit Octane magazine online. . By Susan Michel, founder and CEO of Glen Eagle and an EO New Jersey member. The influx of millennials into the workplace is providing today’s entrepreneur with a number of new challenges and opportunities.

culture 130

culture creativity opportunity leadership 130

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 31, 2017

By Marsha Ralls. As the owner of a commercial art gallery for more than 24 years, I never imagined that people would buy art online, or that I would be selling to them without any prior relationship or connection. I had seen the importance of developing mutual trust and respect with clients, and per tradition, I would nurture these working relationships over a period of years.

education 130

education technology opportunity consulting 130

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

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 10, 2017

When building a SaaS product for salespeople, a startup’s price will inevitably be compared to Salesforce CRM’s cost of about $150 per seat. How expensive is this new product compared to Salesforce? In diligence calls, I often hear buyers say: one-half of Salesforce’s price seems expensive; one-third might seem more reasonable. This is the price anchoring effect in the real world.

SaaS 45

SaaS accelerator startup 45

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 29, 2017

We’ve entered an era when computers can understand speech, computers can synthesize speech, computers can develop music, author encryption algorithms, create novel art, respond to customer support questions, and even generate new summaries and reports from data. Increasingly, humans will struggle to distinguish between computer-generated and human generated.

opportunity 40

opportunity startup creativity leadership 40

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 13, 2017

In January, I wrote The Hardest Round to Raise which argued Series B rounds would be the most challenging early stage round in 2017. Irrespective of the annual vicissitudes of the fundraising market, Series Bs are always the most challenging rounds to raise because they are in-between rounds. The Series B is the pimpled and gangly adolescent phase of startup evolution.

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pitching founder ventures investing 40

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 2, 2017

Earlier this week, a founder asked whether the fundraising market suffered from seasonality. Are there more prosperous months to raise than others? That’s a simple question to answer - or so I thought. Ultimately, a dinosaur proved to me the answer is more nuanced. I plotted the mean round size of Series As from 2010-2016 in the bar chart above.

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investing investment ventures startup 40

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