December, 2016

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How to Perform Inception on a VC

This is going to be BIG.

One of my favorite phrases is "performing inception". Inception is one of my favorite movies and I love the idea of meticulously planning out the placement of an idea in someone else's head. That's basically what founders have to do when they fundraise, because you'll never be more successful with an investor who thought it was their brilliant idea to invest in your company, not yours.

VC 390
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Welcoming the Newest Partner to Upfront Ventures

Both Sides of the Table

Today is amongst the proudest days I’ve had at Upfront Ventures — getting the chance to announce that Kevin Zhang has been promoted to Partner. Watching him develop over the past 4.5 years at Upfront has been both a pleasure and also has taught me a lot about venture capital. Kevin joined Upfront in 2012 as an Associate. We generally look for associates who are deeply quantitative, have great research & analytical skills and often have the tool kit for framing and making complex decisions.

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Member Spotlight: Susan Michel, EO New Jersey

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Susan Michel is the founder of Glen Eagle Advisors and has been a member of EO for eight years. Learn more about EO today! Most people would define our business as Financial Services and more specifically a dual model Registered Investment Advisor and Broker Dealer. In reality, we are in the business of helping financially empowered clients, whether business owners, families or individual clients, to reach their hopes and goals.

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How to think like a growth CEO

Berkonomics

Growth CEO’s differ from those who merely station–keep their way into the status quo, protecting the enterprise by reducing risk and cost – without creating a vision and action plan for growth. Here is a way to test yourself with a tool useful for any leader seeking to create positive change. Authors Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Oglivie have created a framework for creation of a new product or service – one worth spending at least a cycle of time for review.

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

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.

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How to do what you love and make good money

Derek Sivers

People with a well-paying job ask my advice because they want to quit to become full-time artists. But full-time artists ask my advice because they’re finding it impossible to make money. (Let’s define “art” as anything you do for expression, even just blogging or whatever.). For both of them, I prescribe the lifestyle of the happiest people I know: Have a well-paying job.

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50 Deals In

This is going to be BIG.

In January of 2010, just a few months after I joined First Round Capital, I got to back my friend Rob May and his company, Backupify. Five years later, he sold that company to Datto, and I got to back him again to build Talla. Backupify would be the first of what is now a 50 deal track record across my time at both First Round Capital and my own firm, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.

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Next phase of #Fintech and #Insurtech is coming in 2017

Thomas Grota

Beginning of the year I blogged about the Outlook on #Fintech and #Insurtech in Europe here. I.

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Don’t Miss Today’s Facebook Live Broadcast from Wall Street!

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Tune in at 10 a.m. EST for EO’s second official “Live with EO” Facebook Live broadcast! Karen will be interviewing entrepreneur and founder of Sweet Loren’s , Loren Brill, an EO Accelerator graduate and new EO New York member. Visit our Facebook page for more stories, announcements and future “Live with EO” broadcasts.

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How to network like a ninja

Berkonomics

Dave’s comment: This week we welcome our perennial favorite contributor, Kim Shepherd, CEO of Decision Toolbox, to offer us her sage advice on a subject where she is expert. Outgoing, full of creative ideas, and certainly the best person to teach us how, here is Kim on networking… By Kim Shepherd . Networking with others you want to meet is second nature to some, but it fills others with dread.

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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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The Coming Shift in Enterprise Software

Both Sides of the Table

Today it has been announced that I’m leading a $15 million funding round in Tact , a new generation of Enterprise Software company along with other investors including Microsoft Ventures and previous investors Accel and Redpoint Rather than just waxing lyrically about how great the company is I thought I’d provide some context about why I invested and also about a fundamental change I see in the coming years in the way enterprise software is used.

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When to Increase Your SaaS Startup's Burn

Tomasz Tunguz

SaaS startups often find themselves in one of three different states when contemplating their burn rate. The first is the David Farragut strategy. Damn the burn rate, full speed ahead. The second is the conservative approach - attaining profitability using only the cash on the balance sheet. Those two are easy. Circumstances dictate the respective aggression or conservatism.

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Being in the Minority

This is going to be BIG.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been to a couple of tech events that were sparsely populated by straight white men. Yeah, can you believe it? One was a careers panel aimed at women in tech held at Flatiron School and the other was Alterconf. The goal of Alterconf is to provide safe opportunities and spaces for marginalized people in tech and those who support them by highlighting positive initiatives of local community members.

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Tilting my mirror (motivation is delicate)

Derek Sivers

Motivation is delicate. When you notice your motivation fading, you have to seek out the subtle cause. A simple tweak can make all the difference between achieving something or not. An hour outside my city, there’s a little mountain range. The other side is gorgeous. But the road that crosses the mountains is very twisted, with sharp turns every few seconds.

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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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Why You Should Beware the Fake-Growth Trap

Entrepreneurs' Organization

This article was originally published on Inc.com. By Thomas Goetz, CEO and co-founder of Iodine. Last year, a venture capitalist who had expressed an interest in my startup, Iodine, passed on making an investment. Generously, and unlike too many VCs, he actually bothered to explain why we wouldn’t get his money. He was concerned, he said, that our growth at that time was a false positive–that we’d tapped into what looked like a great market but would see our growth max out rela

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How to make your recurring revenues oil and not glue

Berkonomics

Some types of businesses generate more and more recurring revenues over time, often growing to a size where recurring revenues pay all of the overhead of the company – an enviable position. There is a phenomenon I have observed time after time with mature companies receiving over 75% of their revenues from recurring sources. Management undertakes a simple exercise of calculating the increased profitability of shutting down all R&D, sales and subordinate operations, and universally notes wit

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Building in public forces true competitive advantage

A Smart Bear: Longform

"Building in public" is popular: How fun when strangers cheer you on! But isn't competitive advantage ruined when competitors know your growth rate and steal your source code?

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When is the Right Time for Your SaaS Startup to Train its Sales People?

Tomasz Tunguz

Sales leaders consistently underinvest in sales team training and development. As SaaS startups scale, sales execution becomes the most tangible metric of a business’ success, and the one by which the business’ health is benchmarked. Not to mention how the head of sales is evaluated. When is the right time to invest in sales training? And how much should a business invest?

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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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#bestofnine2016 a year in review - #2016 a lot we learned. Many.

Thomas Grota

#bestofnine2016 a year in review - #2016 a lot we learned. Many thoughts we had. #morethingstocome. #collage #year #lookingback #memories #gettingpersonal.

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Solitary socialite

Derek Sivers

For the past ten years, I’ve answered up to two hundred emails per day. I sit alone in my little office for hours, engaging with everyone’s stories and questions for a few minutes each. Then when friends want to hang out with me, I say I need some me-time first. They wonder why, since I’ve been alone all day, so I explain how I’ve actually been very social and connected with so many people.

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What’s Service Got to Do With It? Everything.

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Top Tips to Unlock the Secrets of Client Management, Satisfaction, and Retention as Key Elements of your Organization’s Growth. By Don Britton, Founder and CEO, Network Alliance. Customer service. Satisfaction. Enjoyment. These seem like fairly attainable goals for your company’s approach, right? But don’t be fooled into thinking “good, old-fashioned customer service” is a given.

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How to plan to make a successful acquisition

Berkonomics

One of my company CEO’s recently described his rule for acquisition success, and it resonated with me as a great goal for planning during acquisition exercises. This CEO states that he has made it work twice when acquiring companies, and that is enough for him to make it his rule for all future acquisitions. If the target company is able to show a ten percent EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), then the acquisition team should be able to create a way to

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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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Google machine Learning news December 2016

Don Dodge

“Google’s Hand-Fed AI Now Gives Answers, Not Just Search Results” (Wired, Nov 29): “These ‘sentence compression algorithms’ just went live on the desktop incarnation of the search engine. They handle a task that’s pretty simple for humans but has traditionally been quite difficult for machines. They show how deep learning is advancing the art of natural language understanding, the ability to understand and respond to natural human speech.

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Information Cascades - How Many Rational People Can Make Logical Decisions and Yet Still Create a Bubble

Tomasz Tunguz

When I say bubble, you likely conjure images of people speculating on real estate or stocks or tulips in your imagination. Like me, you might dismiss the folly of these bubbles as the collective action of a multitude of people who lose all rationality when bidding on these assets. But, as I learned from a recent interview with Brian Christian , bubbles can be created even when everyone acts rationally.

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Predictions #2017?—?Return of the Empire striking back

Thomas Grota

It’s the time of the year to make some predictions for the techworld in 2017.But first: look back on.

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Quitting something you love

Derek Sivers

Personal change needs some space to happen. To bring something new into your life, you need somewhere to put it. If your current habits are filling your day, where are these new habits supposed to go? The English word “quit” comes from old French, meaning “to free” or “to release”. We know about quitting something that’s bad for you, or something you hate.

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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.