April, 2021

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Entrepreneurship In Latin America

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

It is a little known part of my career, but for a brief period from 1997 to 2001, I was part of a small group of investors who helped to create a startup ecosystem in Latin America. It all started with a company called StarMedia which created a Yahoo-like “portal” for Latin America. My partner Jerry Colonna and I met StarMedia in early 1997 and we brought it to our partners at Chase Capital Partners because we wanted to lead a Series A investment in it.

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From ideation to accolades in 10 months: An EO Accelerator’s successful pivot

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Annie Cheng is active in the Seattle chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) ‘s Accelerator programme, which empowers entrepreneurs with the tools, community and accountability necessary to aggressively grow their businesses. We asked Cheng, founder of The Table Less Traveled , which organizes boutique, small-group international culinary tours, how she made a significant pivot to save her business.

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Women entrepreneurs find success despite lack of access to investment capital

Source Link

Throughout history there are numerous success stories of female entrepreneurs, yet women continue to face a number of challenges when starting and growing their businesses. From Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a former slave who ran a prosperous dressmaking business that eventually led to her designing and sewing dresses for Mary Todd Lincoln, to Anne Wojcicki, founder of genetic testing and analysis firm 23andMe, women have proved they have what it takes to reach the top of the entrepreneurial mountai

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Nigerian fintech Appzone raises $10M for expansion and proprietary technology

TechCrunch

Africa’s fintech space has gained proper attention over the past few years in investments but it is not news that startups still battle with offering high-quality products. However , they seem to be doing quite well compared with traditional banks that face challenges like legacy cost structures and a major lack of operational efficiency. Appzone is a fintech software provider.

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From Curiosity to Competitive Edge: How Mid-Market CEOs Are Using AI to Scale Smarter

Speaker: Lee Andrews, Founder at LJA New Media & Tony Karrer, Founder and CTO at Aggregage

This session will walk you through how one CEO used generative AI, workflow automation, and sales personalization to transform an entire security company—then built the Zero to Strategy framework that other mid-market leaders are now using to unlock 3.5x ROI. As a business executive, you’ll learn how to assess AI opportunities in your business, drive adoption across teams, and overcome internal resource constraints—without hiring a single data scientist.

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How to find a Technical Co-Founder for your Startup

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Advice for non-technical founders for finding a serious CTO for your startup Finding a co-founder is hard work. Finding a technical co-founder is even harder. Yet, the benefits of having a technical co-founder make it all worthwhile. A good co-founder will serve as a powerful force multiplier. Think how much faster you will be able to go, and therefore have more runway to iterate to product-market fit.

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15 Grant Programs for Minority and Women Business Owners

StartupNation

Grant programs offering free money are hard to come by, which is why many entrepreneurs frequently end up applying for small business loans or try crowdfunding to start or expand their companies. However, many organizations have recently created grants in an effort to assist companies that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Some of the grants are earmarked for businesses in certain industries, others for entrepreneurs in certain cities or states, and some are grants for minority wome

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4 Action steps to teach kids financial literacy

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed By Susan Michel, EO New Jersey member and founder and CEO of Glen Eagle Advisors , which provides investment management and financial planning advice. Raising kids in an entrepreneurial family comes with challenges. You want to be a responsible parent and raise financially literate children, but where do you start? April is National Financial Literacy Month, the perfect time to focus on the importance of teaching children about money.

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Rebecca Minkoff – Reinvent The Rules and Face Your Fears.

Smart Hustle Magazine

Rebecca Minkoff , fashion designer and entrepreneur, shared her story, tips for success and answered questions in the Likeable Business club , on Clubhouse. Hosted by Dave Kerpen and Randi Zuckerberg , Rebecca shared insights from her upcoming book, Fearless: The New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success. Here’s a quick summary of the discussion.

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8 investors, founders and execs predict cybersecurity, fintech will take Belfast by storm

TechCrunch

Things have been looking up for Belfast since the end of the Troubles. The city has undergone infrastructure improvements over the past two decades, tourism has boomed thanks to attractions such as the shipyard where the RMS Titanic was built and Game of Thrones shooting locations, and employment has risen steadily in the city since 2016, according to Northen Ireland’s Department for the Economy.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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Three Golden Lessons from My First Failed Startup

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Real winners use failure as a learning opportunity. Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels The year was 2014. I was a wandering college student who could move from idealistic optimism to sturdy cynicism in the blink of an eye. Most of the time the world around me appalled me, especially with regards to climate change, and yet, there would always be times when the optimistic would reign in and believe that these problems were an opportunity for my generation to solve.

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Never Raising, Always Raising

Tomasz Tunguz

Startups used to raise once every 18 months. Today, we joke in Startupland that a startup is never raising and always raising. The implication is the most sought after companies often receive offers, whether they are in market raising capital or not. Take a moment to think through that statement with me. Venture capitalists and boards used to value a company every 18 months.

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How to Use Video Marketing to Boost Your Rewards-Based Crowdfunding Campaign

StartupNation

Showing and telling are both essential elements in any rewards-based crowdfunding campaign. Nevertheless, without the show , you’ll never get to the tell — let alone the sell. Crowdfunding is an excellent way for entrepreneurs to test the concept of their product or service and determine market need (or lack thereof). Rewards-based crowdfunding is a great way to get the upfront capital you need while providing backers with a unique return on their investment in the form of rewards, like a physi

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Raising Awareness about Entrepreneurship as an Economic Development Strategy

Ecosystem Builder Hub

“Communities seeking to grow their economy need to understand the impact entrepreneurship and small business play in economic growth.” — Grow Your Own: Entrepreneurship-based Economic Development for Local Communities, Dell Gines, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Ecosystem builders know that entrepreneurship and startups are critical for a healthy economy.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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Ramon Ray Named as Oracle NetSuite’s Entrepreneur in Residence

Smart Hustle Magazine

NetSuite , a leading provider of business management software for growing businesses has named Ramon Ray, entrepreneur, best-selling author and founder of SmartHustle.com as its first Entrepreneur in Residence. . As NetSuite’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Ramon will support NetSuite’s continued success in supporting small and medium businesses as they look to scale and grow.

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5 emerging use cases for productivity infrastructure in 2021

TechCrunch

Gleb Polyakov. Contributor. Gleb Polyakov is co-founder and CEO of Nylas , which provides productivity infrastructure solutions for modern software. Gleb studied Physics at Georgia Tech and enjoys chess, motorcycles and space. Previously, he worked in finance and founded an IoT coffee company. When the world flipped upside down last year, nearly every company in every industry was forced to implement a remote workforce in just a matter of days — they had to scramble to ensure employees had the r

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Why being selfish is a good thing

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Mike Malatesta , an entrepreneur, author, investor and podcast host who was a recent guest on the EO 360 podcast with host Dave Will. Self is a misunderstood word. Not because it’s particularly challenging to define. It’s not. It’s just a way to designate one person as an individual, apart from anyone else. It’s what goes along with self that can get tricky.

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The Vision Thing

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

A well-known entrepreneur turned VC, who will go unnamed because I am not sure he would want me to share this conversation publicly, once told me “if you remove a founder, you must sell the company within a couple of years or it will start to decline in value.” I don’t entirely agree with that and my experience with it has been different, but it brings up an incredibly important topic about leadership.

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How Top Tech CFOs Solve Annual Planning’s Biggest Challenges

Gearing up for 2025 annual planning? Our latest eBook from the Operators Guild is your ultimate guide. Discover real-world solutions and best practices shared by top CFOs, drawn directly from discussions within OG’s vibrant online community. Learn from senior executives at high-growth tech startups as they outline financial planning strategies, align CEO and board goals, and coordinate budgets across departments.

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Free Business Funding: 5 Tips for Writing a Winning Small Business Grant Application

StartupNation

If you’ve researched grants for startup or existing businesses, you know how hard they are to find. Sure, you can find incubators, accelerators, loan programs, angel investors and venture capitalists, but the vast majority of those funding options require that you give up at least some equity in your business in exchange for some financial support. Grants don’t.

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A Founder’s Guide to Landing an Enterprise Contract

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Follow these strategies to cut through red tape and increase the odds of a successful corporate partnership Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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This Entrepreneur Is Helping Military Spouses Become Successful Business Owners

Smart Hustle Magazine

No entrepreneurial journey is ever easy. But for military spouses, starting a business and making it a success is an uphill battle. From moving around different parts of the world to finding tools and resources to succeed, military spouses have to overcome some additional challenges to establish their businesses. And most often, military spouse business owners are alone struggling to deal with these business obstacles.

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FintechOS nabs $60M for a low-code approach to modernizing legacy banking and insurance services

TechCrunch

“Challenger” startups in banking and insurance have upended their industries, and picked up significant business, by building more customer-friendly tools and services — more personalized, easier to access and usually competitively priced — than those typically provided by their bigger, incumbent rivals. Now, a startup out of Romania that is building tools to help the incumbents respond with better services of their own is announcing a significant round of funding as its

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Your Fractional Finance and Accounting Team

Mighty Financial specializes in supporting the financial aspirations of small businesses and entrepreneurs. With our comprehensive bookkeeping and precise accounting expertise with decades of experience across diverse financial roles, our team offers tailor-made services ranging from essential bookkeeping to strategic fractional CFO support, catered specifically to the unique challenges of technology companies, startups, and SMEs.

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Measure these 5 areas of your business for long-term success

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Jeff Meade, the founder and CEO of MEADE , a management consulting firm. Success. Every business owner wants it, especially after the economic roller coaster and reset of 2020. Yet most entrepreneurs have spent the past year in survival mode, not planning mode. Now, it’s time to look forward again. Chances are strong that you used the pandemic as an opportunity to reset your business and redefine success.

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Paternalism In The Office

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, posted a message to his team yesterday in which he outlined a bunch of changes they are making to the way they run the business. Some will be familiar as others have done similar things (no more politics on the company’s communication channels, no more committees, rethinking the review process). I think it is a good thing to revisit the ways a company does things and make changes when issues arise.

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Here’s Why a Solid Business Plan is Your Best Safety Net as an Entrepreneur

StartupNation

The pandemic’s effect on business has been staggering: In 2020, 163,000 businesses closed on Yelp during the first six months of the pandemic alone. On the flip side, many more businesses made it through, and a lot of those actually thrived. To be successful last year (and to continue that success into 2021 and beyond) meant knowing how to pivot, be creative and find ways to stay relevant.

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How to Launch Your Startup Without Eating Ramen

Entrepreneur's Handbook

5 myths to avoid on the 1st leg of your entrepreneurship journey What you don’t have to eat to pursue your passion (Image from WikiMedia Commons) There is a path to entrepreneurship promoted in Hollywood and there is a path for the rest of us. The former celebrates risk, the latter avoids it. My story is about the safe path. I am the CEO of WhereTo , an enterprise travel platform used by some of the world’s largest companies.

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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.