Sat.Oct 24, 2020 - Fri.Oct 30, 2020

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7 Key Risks in Early Stage Due Diligence

The Seraf Compass

Risk is impossible to avoid in business - it is an inherent part, and necessary ingredient, in all successful undertakings. You shouldn’t be afraid of risk and allow it to turn you away from great investment opportunities. Instead, you should focus on understanding what critical risks are involved with an early stage company and the degree to which they have been mitigated with resources, smart planning and preparation.

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How to Use TikTok for Business: 4 Key Steps as Told by a Brand

StartupNation

With over 800 million active users worldwide, TikTok has become a force to be reckoned with. It’s offered in 154 countries, has the highest social media engagement rates per post, and nine out of 10 TikTokers use the app multiple times a day. A major perk is that it’s still in its early stages, so building an audience on the platform is easier than most any other social media platform.

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How to spin your scientific research out of a university and into a startup

Y Combinator

This is advice for people who have done scientific research at a university and are considering starting a company to commercialize it. At YC, we’ve funded more than 75 companies in this situation. We also recently went on a Bio Tour where we went around to research universities and talked with hundreds of students and professors in the life sciences about commercializing their research.

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Kara Nortman Was Just Promoted to Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures. Here’s What it All Means

Both Sides of the Table

Today we’re announcing that my partner Kara Nortman is becoming Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to welcome her to her new role. As with all promotions, the reality is that Kara was already acting as a senior leader at our firm and also in the industry at large. She had all of the skills and traits we sought?

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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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business.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 David Prize

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

The David Prize is a philanthropic effort to find NYers who are doing amazing things and support them financially. They recently announced five winners, you can see them here. They have an open call for new applicants and you can apply here. The deadline is December 4th. They are eager to support entrepreneurs of all kinds who are working to make a better NYC.

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More Trending

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Startup School for Future Founders

Y Combinator

We launched Startup School as an online program in 2017 to support founders actively working on building their companies. On November 9th, we’re also opening Startup School to potential founders who are interested in starting a company in the future. You can register for the new course today. Startup School has been extremely successful at helping active founders grow their companies, serving over 140,000 founders to date!

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Nestlé acquires healthy meal startup Freshly for up to $1.5B

TechCrunch

Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth. Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, which can then be prepared in a few minutes in your microwave or oven.

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The NYC Fintech Innovation Lab

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

The NYC Fintech Innovation Lab is a program which accepts fintech entrepreneurs to develop their businesses with the assistance of senior execs at the leading NYC banks and insurance companies. The key priorities of the CTOs and CIOs of the Lab’s partner organizations include: cloud, cyber-tech, data, digital engagement, enterprise IT and sustainability.

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Don’t raise money. Don’t hire. Don’t build. Sell.

Entrepreneur's Handbook

How I spent €200.000 on a failed startup by raising money, hiring people, and building a product no one wanted. Courtesy of Trev Murphy We received the call we’d been waiting for. An angel investor was ready to make us an offer. After some back and forth, despite it being a “biggish” amount of money, we said no. The main reason for this is because we were still figuring out what we do and knew that it would be way too easy to completely waste the money.

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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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Inc. 5000 company founders share how being a member of EO has fueled their success

Entrepreneurs' Organization

A total of 233 EO-member companies were named to the 2020 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing, privately held companies. We asked these elite leaders how being a member of EO has impacted their success. We spotted a common theme in many answers: learning—whether it’s incidental learning among peers or formal education at events. Learning to improve your leadership, your business practices, your focus, your relationships is a hallmark of EO’s benefits and a significant driver in the

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Was Quibi the good kind of startup failure?

TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here. Startup failure is easy to hold up as a type of martyrdom for progress, especially if the founders are starting out scrappy in the first place and trying to save the world. But heroic narrative gets complicated when the startup failure involves the biggest names in entertainment, dubious product decisions, and well over $1 billion in losses in an a

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Removing The CEO

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

In almost thirty five years of working on boards, the hardest decisions I have had to make involve removing the CEO. It is an important decision and one that must be made from time to time. I am not a fan of removing the CEO until and unless it is abundantly clear that it must be done. But when the CEO has failed to manage numerous important challenges, when the senior leadership team has been a revolving door, when the CEO has messed up important relationships with customers, employees, and oth

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How Keap Encourages Success During COVID-19 [Bonus Tips Included]

Smart Hustle Magazine

The coronavirus outbreak wreaked havoc on most small businesses. Disrupted supply chain, reduced customer demand, and dried cashflow were just a few of the many implications of COVID-19. Though small businesses are now recovering, it was a bumpy ride for the first few months - during and post lockdowns. Keap Going Small Business Grant Contest encouraged many small businesses to stay afloat in such an unprecedented crisis.

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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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As Gaming Flourishes, Scopely Accelerates Growth with New Round of Funding

Revolution

Gaming is growing. Even before COVID-19, the pastime, once largely perceived as the domain of young males, was escalating in popularity with an expanding roster of titles to accommodate gamers of all kinds. As the pandemic forces us to find more entertainment options at home, video games played on consoles, PCs, and smartphones are an easy default. Mobile gaming in particular is accelerating rapidly as our time spent on smartphones increases alongside our desire to find activities that break up

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Video creation and editing platform InVideo raises $15 million

TechCrunch

InVideo, a Mumbai-based startup that has built a video creation and editing platform, has raised $15 million as it looks to court more users and customers worldwide. The startup offers a freemium web-based editing tool that allows users to create videos that are fit to be published on popular social media platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube).

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When are we going to know who won the election?

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

Our portfolio company Recount put out this two minute video primer on the question of “when will we know.” I like getting the information I want in a very short period of time. This does that so well. If you’re like us, you’ve had one question on your mind lately: “When are we going to know who won the election?” As usual, @Griffin ’s got your answer. pic.twitter.com/BdpiGj4TcV — The Recount (@therecount) October 27, 2020.

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Hint Founder Kara Goldin Says When it Comes to Entrepreneurship, Just Get Started

StartupNation

The following is excerpted from “Undaunted” by Kara Goldin Copyright© 2020 by Kara Goldin. Used by permission of HarperCollins Leadership. www.harpercollinsleadership.com. I wasn’t thinking about founding a company or building a business. Nor did I picture myself as a national advocate for health or dream of being recognized as a leading entrepreneur.

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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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Personal Branding Opens Doors

Smart Hustle Magazine

Ramon Ray shares with Rylee Meeks an inspired talk about the biggest challenge in selling, how to succeed in it, and how personal branding can open doors others don’t even see. Personal branding is near and dear to Ramon Ray’s heart. After all, he says it opens a lot of doors for his business. But Ramon tells Rylee Meek on The Sales Conversion Podcast that he doesn’t have a client that he coaches about personal branding.

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Should your SaaS startup embrace a bottom-up GTM strategy?

TechCrunch

Caryn Marooney. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Caryn Marooney is general partner at Coatue Management and sits on the boards of Zendesk and Elastic. In prior roles she oversaw communications for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus and co-founded The OutCast Agency, which served clients like Salesforce.com and Amazon. More posts by this contributor.

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Funding Fridays: Agi’s

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

This project has a bunch of things that interest/excite me: 1/ Entrepreneurs committing to building new things in NYC during the pandemic. 2/ Young chefs going out on their own. 3/ Brooklyn. 4/ Jelly donuts. I backed this project just now and took the jelly donuts reward because how could I resist? The video is great and the project has one more day and is about 10% away from its goal.

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The Gen Z Guide to Starting a Business

StartupNation

Each generation leaves a significant mark on entrepreneurship. Gen Z is currently entering the working world in a time of great uncertainty amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Gen Zers are also watching businesses make significant pivots with their business models and may be inspired to make similar moves. Why wait for a dream job when you can start your own dream business?

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Monetizing Analytics Features

Think your customers will pay more for data visualizations in your application? Five years ago, they may have. But today, dashboards and visualizations have become table stakes. Turning analytics into a source of revenue means integrating advanced features in unique, hard-to-steal ways. Download this white paper to discover which features will differentiate your application and maximize the ROI of your analytics.

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3 Ways Technology Companies Can Serve Small Businesses

Smart Hustle Magazine

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are the primary source of jobs and innovation in both the US and abroad today, yet they are consistently underserved by technology companies. This has long been the situation, with smaller businesses left to use watered down enterprise tools that don’t meet their needs. But SMBs represent an incredible market opportunity.

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5 startup theses that will transform the 2020s

TechCrunch

I wrote a call to action for the tech community to dive deeper into the future of innovation this coming decade. Where are some of the hot spots going to come from though? Below, I have assembled a very loose set of five clusters broadly categorized into “wellness,” “climate,” “data society,” “creativity,” and “fundamentals” that offer some scaffolding for understanding what’s about to come this decade and how and any entrepreneur — really, any citizen — can start to build progress.

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Why the Uber Rich are Often Uber Miserable

Entrepreneur's Handbook

You can outsource almost everything — except the things that matter Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook ».

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Why a Service-Based Business is a Great Model for Young Entrepreneurs

StartupNation

Millennials and Gen Z are the perfect small business owners. They like to be independent, expect more lifestyle freedom than their parents, and have the digital chops to manage a business online. Forty percent of millennials and 53 percent of Gen Zers freelance. If you’re a young person exploring the world of entrepreneurship, you might be wondering what kind of business you should start.

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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.