2016

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How come VCs are. jerks?

This is going to be BIG.

That was a question posed to me by a new analyst at a venture capital fund. Admittedly, I finished this person's sentence after their long pause. but the word "jerks" was agreed to as the direction they were taking the question. While there are lots and lots of really kind, generous people working in venture capital--the recently retired Howard Morgan, Hunter Walk, Brad Feld, and Karin Klein for example--it's really tough to argue that there isn't widespread jerkery.

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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Many startup businesses – tech or otherwise – fail. In our industry we applaud the efforts for entrepreneurs to have tried and we know that today’s failure can bring the experience for tomorrow’s success. We also know that even though many of us who are experienced in startup successes & failures look at businesses and say, “That will never work” (as many people said about Uber) or “You can’t make any money in that business” (as many said

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From Accelerators to Venture Capital: What is best for your startup?

Gust

With startup growth up 61% since 2014 and more investment programs emerging, it can be overwhelming for founders to know just where to jump in. As the most startup-friendly accelerator on the planet, MassChallenge has helped 835 startup companies around the world, who have raised over $1.1 billion in funding and created over 6,500 jobs. We have seen startups at.

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“You Can’t Be Serious”

Entrepreneurs' Organization

By Davide Frau, EO South Florida. It was midnight on a Saturday when my phone rang. It was one of my business partners, Barnabas Carrega. After the previous 72 hours—which were beyond grueling—I didn’t really feel like talking to anyone. That Thursday, we decided to pull the plug on our first promotional event set to take place during the Sony Open in Miami, Florida, USA.

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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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business.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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2016 Pacific Crest SaaS Survey – Part 1

For Entrepreneurs

For the fifth year in a row, we’re proud to work with Pacific Crest Securities, a SaaS-focused investment banking firm, to share results from a survey of 336 SaaS companies. The survey represents deep benchmarking data and insights on growth and operation of SaaS companies. Many thanks to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in the.

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More Trending

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Pixar President’s Wisdom

Venture Hacks

Some highlights from Ed Catmull’s Creativity Inc. Ed is the President of Pixar. “If there is more truth in the hallways than in meetings, you have a problem. “The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal. “The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. “Rules can simplify life for managers, but they can be demeaning to the 95 percent who behave well.

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Accelerator Investments Should Be Convertible Equity

Startup Lawyer

I previously wrote that accelerator documents should be easy. At the time, I thought accelerator documents should be easy primarily because of the potential adverse selection problem for the accelerator. In other words, the more difficult the terms or onboarding process (including the investment documents), the more likely the best startups would choose a different … Continue reading → The post Accelerator Investments Should Be Convertible Equity appeared first on Startup Lawyer.

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Benchmark’s New General Partner: Scott Belsky

abovethecrowd.com

The partners at Benchmark are delighted to announce that Scott Belsky has joined the firm as our newest general partner. It is rare for us to encounter a partner candidate who has so much experience as an operator, investor, and advisor at such a young age. We have confidence that Scott can be one of the best investors of his generation, and we are excited by the opportunity to have him as a member of our team.

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There are Only 3 Pricing Strategies for Your Startup

Tomasz Tunguz

Pricing. Is there any word that confers some whisper of dark arts than pricing? Or any question that instills less confidence than, “How did you derive your pricing strategy?” Many times, startups replicate and tune competitors’ pricing strategies. If everyone else prices per seat, then so should we… Is this the right thought process?

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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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Insightful Study of 386 SaaS Startup Pricing Pages

OnStartups

Late last year, I combed through the Montclare SaaS 250 — a directory of the biggest SaaS companies in the world — to find common trends in what I thought would be a significant dataset. As it turned out, 80% of the 250 biggest SaaS companies didn’t have a pricing page at all. Expecting to find a set of data more representative of what I’m used to seeing around (essentially startups), I turned to a bigger sample, scraping information from the first 400 startups in AngelList’s ‘Trending’ category

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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.

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Why I Backed a 24-Year-Old Trying to Assess Human Potential

Both Sides of the Table

Today Upfront Ventures is announcing that we’ve backed Rebecca Kantar ’s startup Imbellus , a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. The news blogs will cover the what, how and how much but I want to focus on the “why” and try to be instructive of what I think makes for a great A-round startup.

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Valuation Part I: Peeling the Onion, or How Top Investors Value the Startups They Invest In

Gust

Early-stage technology company valuations are generally a crap-shoot. Bill Payne did a great post about this in October 2011. This post builds on top of his work, and attempts to shed additional light on the valuation process. New founders may think that startup valuations work like this: I figure out what the value of my existing company is I figure.

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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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Project Octane: Hustle & Heart

Entrepreneurs' Organization

When it comes to running a business, there is no go-to manual for greatness or a secret recipe for success. There are, however, key ingredients that can contribute to entrepreneurial excellence. As EO Montréal’s Moranne Elarar and Marina Byezhanova can attest, it all starts with hustle and heart. In this special interview, the co-founders of Pronexia—a new generation recruitment firm—open up about their bootstrapping days, their unique hiring methodology, and the role authenticity plays when bui

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Bridge Group 2016 Sales Development Metrics and Compensation Benchmark Report

For Entrepreneurs

Intro Sales development teams are taking a much more data-driven approach in recent years by closely tracking their metrics and performance. Benchmarking your performance against other companies offers a valuable way to see how your company stacks up against the competition. We have collaborated again this year with The Bridge Group, an inside sales research.

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Eye of the needle? Why worry over your bottlenecks.

Berkonomics

Think for a minute whether there is any process or person that could be classed as the eye of the needle in your organization. Is there anything, process or person, that stalls the flow of work from start to finish? A CEO once told me that she was ‘the eye of the needle’ in her organization, purposely controlling quality of service and making sure all of her direct reports let her know of each . decision and action they undertook.

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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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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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Tech Wildcatters Pitch Day May 2016

Startup Lawyer

Tech Wildcatters, the original Dallas accelerator, is hosting their first pitch day of 2016 on May 26th at the House of Blues in Dallas. Here’s the streamlined agenda: 12:45pm — Accredited Investor Preview 1:30pm — Doors Open to General Public 2:15pm — Program/Pitches 3:30pm — Happy Hour It’s free to attend, but be sure to register … Continue reading → The post Tech Wildcatters Pitch Day May 2016 appeared first on Startup Lawyer.

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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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How to Create Competitive Advantage for Your Startup with Proxy Metrics

Tomasz Tunguz

Imagine you’ve just been named the head of a bustling New York City restaurant challenged by one issue - customers complain about the customer service. A data-driven person, you search for a metric to evaluate the current customer service to validate the complaint and then track as you experiment with the restaurant’s operations. What metrics would you employ?

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Welcome to The Unicorn Hedge

500 Hats

Yeah, There’s a Bubble… But it Ain’t in Tech Continue reading on 500 Hats »

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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.

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Excited to be an Investor in The Wing

This is going to be BIG.

It means a lot to me to find financial opportunities investing in companies that I can be really proud of--education companies like Tinybop and Tinkergarten , or companies at the forefront of fair labor practices like Homer Logistics. There are others that haven't launched that I'm equally as proud and excited about--and now one more has launched. I'm thrilled to be an investor in The Wing --a Home Base for Women on Their Way.

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Why Acceptance of Failure is Critical to Startup Success

Both Sides of the Table

I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer

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Angel Investors Spotlight: An Inside Look at Hudson Valley Startup Fund’s Investment Process & Advice for Founders

Gust

Hudson Valley Startup Fund brings together a network of the region’s successful business and community leaders to give back, supporting the launch of the next Hudson Valley visionaries. We sat down with fund managers Chad Gomes, Johnny LeHane and Paul Hakim as they shared insights into their investment process, what they look for in both group members and startups, and.

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June 2016 Project Octane: A Student of Opportunity

Entrepreneurs' Organization

In entrepreneurship, opportunities can present themselves in various ways. For participants of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA), EO’s flagship program for nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs, opportunities for leadership and business growth are boundless. Just ask Violeta Martinez, winner of the 2016 EO GSEA Global Finals and founder of VAIZA, an El Salvador-based, luxury brand crafted from the heart.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, 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 Noreña 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