July, 2022

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Everything Startups Need to Know About Convertible Notes

Entrepreneur's Handbook

The traditional startup investment instrument remains popular with angel investors Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ยป.

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Upfront Ventures Raises > $650 Million for Startups and Returns > $600 Million to LPs

Both Sides of the Table

Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures (no, Evan is not standing on a box) Last year marked the 25th anniversary for Upfront Ventures and what a year it was. 2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth. The industry has obviously changed enormously in 2022 but in many ways it feels like a โ€œreturn to normalโ€ that we have seen many times in our industry.

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How to use creative videos to transform email marketing from basic to bustling

Entrepreneurs' Organization

As one of the best marketing channels to connect with audiences and build your brand , email continues to serve as a valuable tool to communicate with potential customers and move them further along your conversion funnel. That said, all marketers know that high conversion rates don’t appear out of thin air; it takes quality content that informs and inspires to persuade your leads to make those final clicks.

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Mr Eazi, Black Coffee and Ajebutter22: The African music artists backing startups

TechCrunch

This April, Black Coffee, the famed South African DJ and record producer whose real name is Nkosinathi Maphumulo, made history at the Grammys. With his seventh studio album โ€œSubconsciously,โ€ he became the first African act to win an award in the Best Dance/Electronic Album category. His win came when the global appetite for Amapiano, a style of house music that emerged in South Africa , and Afrobeats, a popular music genre that originated from Western Africa , had increased exponentially.

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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 โ€” and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, theyโ€™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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500 Founders: Rick Kiessig, Hannah Hunt, Matthew Jackson & Jenni Matheson

NZ Entrepreneur

Want to tap in to the best startup advice from entrepreneurs who are out there doing it? Welcome to โ€˜500 Foundersโ€™ where we ask innovators from around New Zealand for their top insights for first time startup founders. Rick Kiessig – Cofounder. Kimer Med. โ€œTalk to your potential customers as soon as you can.” “ Before you have a product, a company or product name, a domain name, business cards, a logo – even before you have a company.

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More Trending

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Excalibur

Entrepreneur's Handbook

( Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. ) ( Note to reader: this weekโ€™s essay is a continuation of my piece from last week, โ€œA Samurai, a Knight, and a Yankeeโ€. I recommend reading that entry first before diving into this one.

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Investing in Fly.ioย 

Andreessen Horowitz

Weโ€™re very excited to announce that weโ€™re leading the series B for Fly.io. Fly is one of the fastest-growing core infrastructure companies we have ever seen. And itโ€™s worth understanding why. . Web applications are becoming more and more real-time, and … The post Investing in Fly.io appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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What science says about Elon Muskโ€™s office mandate vs. โ€œExcellence from Anywhereโ€ policies

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Elon Musk recently declared an end to remote work at Tesla , announcing that all Tesla staff must return to the office full-time, according to an email sent to executive staff and leaked on social media. Musk said those who donโ€™t want to come to office should โ€œpretend to work somewhere else.โ€ This strict, top-down approach rooted in mistrust and false assumptions goes against best practices.

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Meet the newest crypto builders from web3 accelerator Alliance DAOโ€™s demo day

TechCrunch

It seems like every time a demo day ends , thereโ€™s a new one waiting around the corner โ€” and as you know, TechCrunch is no stranger to covering them. Oftentimes these events are filled with traditional seed-stage tech companies based in Silicon Valley. But today weโ€™re highlighting the demo day for a new wave of crypto projects and teams who participated in the latest cohort for Alliance DAO, a web3 accelerator and builder community.

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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 canโ€™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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Essential skills for an entrepreneur

NZ Entrepreneur

Are entrepreneurs born or made? We think both. While it helps to have that entrepreneurial flair inbuilt, thereโ€™s no reason you canโ€™t learn and develop the qualities of an entrepreneur. Here, we share three essential skills for taking ventures from ideas to reality. Essential skill #1: falling in love with the problem, not the solution. Successful products, services and businesses solve problems for people.

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A Masterclass in Sales Development from Lars Nilsson at Snowflake

Tomasz Tunguz

Yesterday, Office Hours welcomed Lars Nilsson, VP Sales Development from Snowflake to talk about his learnings across 5 companies he helped take public. Throughout the hour, Lars provided insightful perspectives on how to build sales organizations. These the five most memorable takeaways for me. In early-stage companies, founders sell for the first three to four quarters.

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Weekly #13: The Introvertโ€™s Guide to Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Welcome to another edition of our new newsletter! Youโ€™ll receive the best practical startup advice straight to your inbox every week. In this weekโ€™s edition, we discuss: Tactics to master entrepreneurship, marketing and sales Building huge social audiences The defining qualities of successful entrepreneurs Letโ€™s get into it. The introvertโ€™s guide to entrepreneurship Rachel Greenberg graduated from unsuccessful attempted sales calls to running multiple businesses that make 6+figures for just a fe

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a16z is Moving to the Cloud

Andreessen Horowitz

Since our inception in 2009, Andreessen Horowitz has been a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. This was highly intentional on our part. Historically, the largest number of great technology companies emerged from Silicon Valley for good reason โ€“ the network … The post a16z is Moving to the Cloud appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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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 Associationย 

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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How to determine the ideal type of influencer for your social media campaign

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Contributed by Chris Jacks , director of growth strategy for HireInfluence , where he analyzes and adapts to the ever-changing influencer marketing industry. In 2020, the Instagram influencer market size across the globe surpassed US$2 billion. Other platforms such as TikTok are also steadily increasing in popularity among marketers. In 2020, TikTokโ€™s initial influencer count was 35,500 but later leaped to over 106,000.

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Runa Sandvikโ€™s new startup Granitt secures at-risk people from hackers and nation states

TechCrunch

For much of her career, hacker Runa Sandvik has worked to protect journalists and newsrooms from powerful adversaries who want to keep wrongdoing and corruption out of the public eye. Journalists and activists are increasingly targeted by the wealthy and resourceful who seek to keep the truth hidden, from nation-state aligned hackers hacking into journalist’s inboxes to governments deploying mobile spyware to snoop on their most vocal critics.

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500 Founders: Matt Miller, Ani Tawhiao-Lomas, Rob Stirling & Samantha Gadd

NZ Entrepreneur

Want to tap in to the best startup advice from entrepreneurs who are out there doing it? Welcome to โ€˜500 Foundersโ€™ where we ask innovators from around New Zealand for their top insights for first time startup founders. Matt Miller – Founder. BrakeAce. โ€œMy best piece of advice for founders is to keep in mind that they can’t do it alone. “ “ In terms of the business, you’ll have more fun and build a greater product with a great team.

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How to Structure Your Sales Compensation Plan to Deliberately Undersell

Tomasz Tunguz

In Deliberately Underselling as Sales Strategy , I wrote about the importance of sizing contracts below customer needs to ensure customer success. “A key part of the formula: crafting the right account executive compensation structure to reward this strategy.” I received a pile of questions asking for more detail. Since then, I’ve spoken to many sales leaders & Lee Kirkpatrick who originally surfaced the concept during Office Hours on how to do this well.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreรฑa, 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 Noreรฑa 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

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9 Qualities of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs Iโ€™ve Worked With

Entrepreneur's Handbook

Some of those clients have startups that raised over $100 million, while others tuned out to be fraudulent individuals. Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ยป.

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The Company of the Future is Default Global

Andreessen Horowitz

As the successful businesses of tomorrow launch in multiple countries at a time, opportunities abound for ambitious startups looking to build the internal software systems these companies will need to grow. . For decades, startups largely followed a well-trodden playbook for … The post The Company of the Future is Default Global appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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Global Student Entrepreneur Awards alumni share their competition journeys and tips

Entrepreneurs' Organization

โ€œStart now. Don’t wait for anything. Start.โ€. — Alberto Soto, Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) Alumnus and EO Guatemala member. Explore your endless opportunities. As a student, you have so many extra opportunities availableโ€”grants, resources and an overall willingness from society to help students. Many GSEA alumni suggest taking advantage of the safety net you have, rather than waiting to start your company when you have more to lose.

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African Leadership Group acquires coding school Holberton

TechCrunch

Coding school Holberton today announced that it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by African Leadership Group (ALG). The seven-year-old company, with physical schools across the globe in addition to its core online platform, will split in two. Holberton’s technology platform will become part of ALG’s existing ALX online learning platform and the existing 34 physical locations will get spun out to become a stand-alone business under current Holberton COO Florian Bucher.

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The Startup Funding Gap

This resource discusses the gap between early funding from friends/family and the more substantial rounds from angel groups and VCs. Why does this gap exist and what can be done about it?

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Ask the right questions of the right people

NZ Entrepreneur

Yes and no. Two simple words that can have loaded connotations. Thereโ€™s certainly a place for single word answers, but when youโ€™re building a business or teasing out an idea, you want to expand your thinking, not shut the conversation down. Keep your options open. Hearing โ€˜noโ€™ can feel limiting when youโ€™re exploring why and how. As an entrepreneur, learning to ask the right questions to get deeper, insightful responses is an important skill to master.

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Deliberately Underselling as Sales Strategy

Tomasz Tunguz

Let me tell you a tale of two software sales processes. Take 1: An ambitious account executive engages a sales prospect and hustles to sell the customer a mega contract that consumes nearly the entirety of a budget. Big commission check, high fives, president’s club, feeling fine. Nine months into the contract, the customer realizes they have over-provisioned.

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A Samurai, a Knight, and a Yankee

Entrepreneur's Handbook

( Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. ) Betwixt a placid pond and the high road rests an inn. That is where you shall find me, a humble inn keeper. Many interesting travellers traverse the road from here to hyperinflation.

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The most important steps in building a business, company, or startup from a Techstars COO

Founder Bounty

Combining my experience in building a business as a Techstars COO from I have put together a few points that can help you become successful in building a business from scratch. Think about the area you want to build in What sector is hot at the moment, go with what's trending. You can use Google trends to help you make a decision on what sector you are aiming to work in. 2.

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ABM Evolution: How Top Marketers Are Using Account-Based Strategies

In times of economic uncertainty, account-based strategies are essential. According to several business analysts and practitioners, ABM is a necessity for creating more predictable revenue. Research shows that nearly three-quarters of marketers (74%) already have the resources needed to build successful ABM programs.