Generating High Growth Innovation Hubs

Chile 1208 generating innovation hubs 2010

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Read full story Creating the Next Silicon Valley – The Chilean Experiment

Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs

The Big Bang of Crowdfunding: Startups as a Public Asset Class - Part 3

[ By Kevin Lawton from TrendCaller ]

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For your attention also Part 1 and Part Part 2

Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research

[ by Morgan Stanley Research ]


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Lessons we learn ...

Tony Hsieh built his online shoe retailer into an e-commerce powerhouse. But with credit tightening and investors eyeing the exits, Hsieh was forced to ask: Was selling Zappos really the only way to save it?

... At the time, we made almost all our money selling shoes, but our hope was that we'd eventually go into all sorts of other businesses. We saw Zappos as a global brand like Virgin -- except whereas Virgin was about being hip and cool, Zappos would be about offering the best service. The plan was to grow sales to $1 billion by 2010 and eventually go public.

These ideas about the power of our company culture had yet to be proved. As I talked to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who visited our headquarters in 2005, I realized that to Amazon, we were just a leading shoe company. If we sold, we'd probably be folded into their operations, and our brand and culture would be at risk of disappearing ...

[ By Tony Hseih – Why I Sold Zappos ]

From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned

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20th Century Business and APIs...

There is a perspective some people apply to evolution, social theory, and language change called punctuated equilibrium (credit goes to Jess Ruefli for pointing this out). It suggests that change is not gradual, but that change comes in sudden punctuated bursts between stretches of relative stasis or equilibrium.

The Web from 1995-2000 was certainly a surge like this as every business "went online" in order to continue to function in a newly competitive economy. I believe that we're going through such a surge right now as the early versions of the web - designed for people using browsers - gives way to the next version: using APIs to design the web for people using applications that communicate on their behalf in complex ways to the services that make up the world's businesses.

[ By Sam Ramji – Darwin's Finches, 20th Century Business, and APIs ]


Darwin's Finches, 20th Century Business, and APIs

Do not care about business plan, care about business model

[ By Steve Blank Woodstock for Entrepreneurs – the Startup Lessons Learned Conference ]

Why accountants don’t run startups

If you wanted to know what I’ve been thinking about after Customer Development, you can see and hear it in the talk I gave at the conference. Watch the expanded version of “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups below.
- The first story, Shifts in Entrepreneurship starts at 4:20
- Not All Startups Are Equal starts at 7:30
- What VC’s Don’t Tell You starts at 12:00
- Business Plans Versus Business Models at 14:08
- Startups Search Companies Execute at 17:05
- Leadership Versus Management at 24:50
- Durant Versus Sloan at 30:13
- E-School Versus B-School at 33:41

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The New Face Of Venture Capital

[ By Kevin Lawton from TrendCaller ]

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What is the right age to found venture ...?

[by Vivek Wadhwa - TechCrunch ]

Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. We also learned that these founders are likely to be married and have two or more kids. They typically have six to ten years of work experience and real-world ideas. They simply got tired of working for others and wanted to rise above their middle-class heritage...

Read here full story - When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule

... 10 Questions to Ask Before You Join a Startup

[ By Guy Kawasaki - Alltop.com ]

1. How much money do you have in the bank?
2. What is your net outflow per month?
3. What is the post-money valuation of your last round?
4. What can you do that your competitors cannot?
5. What can your competitors do that you cannot?
6. Who are your investors?
7. Who is on your board of directors?
8. Has anyone in the engineering team actually shipped a product?
9. Assume that you have $0 for marketing, how would you market the product?
10. What keeps you awake at night?

For answers read this article ...

Tips For Landing That Startup Dream Job

[By Dharmesh Shah - onstartups.com]

The single most important attribute that many startups look for in recruits is that they get stuff done. You can be the most brilliant engineer/marketer/whatever on the planet, but if you don’t have a tendency to get a lot of stuff done, you’re not an attractive recruit.

The reason is obvious and simple — but I’ll tell you anyways. Startups are a grand exercise in resource-deprivation. There’s always too much work and not enough people.

If the startup team hires you, they want to know that you’re going to put a dent in their workload — not just come up with great ideas for other people to work on ...

Excellent article, highly recommended... >>> Tips For Landing That Startup Dream Job

In continue to previous post...

[By holyexposures.com]

At the meeting we heard from one VC, Blumberg Capital, who specializes in seed round investments of internet companies.
The partner of the firm who spoke, Bruce Tarragin, said that they were closing a deal in Tel Aviv now, and had already closed another deal earlier this quarter.

The Capital Market Bulls Return
There had been several months, since last October, with virtually no dealflow that was actually leading to investment. Now, there seems to be a reawakening of the capital markets. The negative sentiment of the market has been replaced with a feeling that we have already reached bottom, and now there are good ideas out there that are worthy of investment.


Continue here Israel Economy for Start Ups – Signs of Improvement

10 steps to catch VC cash

[By CNN Money]

Looking for funding for your big idea? Follow our 10-point guide to landing the right investors.


"The entrepreneur is the Pied Piper of a company," says Chip Hazard, general partner at Boston-based Flybridge Capital Partners. "We want an articulate, passionate CEO who can excite others - employees, customers, business partners."
Flybridge joined the syndicate that backed Goby Technologies, a Boston-based search startup that provides comprehensive leisure and travel information in a single site - first with a seed round to build a prototype, then with a multimillion-dollar Series A round to fund longer-term operations. >>>

Venture Capital Under Attack

The journey to find these ideas has taken me from inventors’ basements, to obscure research labs, to, in one case, a smoky Milwaukee bowling alley renowned for its fried Twinkies. With a lot of hard work and a little luck that journey ends on the floor of a stock exchange, witnessing a company you helped build go public. It’s a helluva ride.

Great article by Adam Grosser with interesting statistics about the value of VCs to economic prosperity. The challenge is - what can be learned from the current financial crisis that will improve the VC industry.

CREATE is a key theme!

Job creation, innovation and new technologies will help lead global economy back to a growing and successful economy. Venture Capital plays an incredibly important role in the global economy, and thanks to VCs (in both time and money), entrepreneurs and start-ups management have indeed been able to grow seedling ideas employing many and driving worldwide competitiveness.

There is a lot to be said for a creative and transformative approach to take the best of what the VC’s do and creatively use it as one of the solutions to rebuild the economy through creation.

Today is my birthday

I have grown up…
:-)

Still enjoying my spring holiday till 18/04/2009.
Just a couple interesting talks I like to share with you:

By David Pogue:




and Brody Kenrick:



No comments, just see and enjoy - the sky is the limit ...
Have a great holidays!

Failure is just part of the path to success

But it is not the rule ...

Not all failures are equal, explains William H. Davidow, a founding partner in the venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures. A company might fail because its timing was bad or because the entrepreneur was a poor manager. Mr. Davidow, who says he would have expected “a higher follow-on success rate for the failed entrepreneurs,” says that an entrepreneur who has failed in a previous venture “would get in the door to talk to me” about a new idea. But, he adds, “I would want to know why that last deal failed, and what the person learned from it.”

More in excellent article Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not.

P.S. Try ... Fail ... (or not) ... and Start-up again ...
:-)

Top 10 Resolutions for a More Profitable 2009

Hello my dear friends, In the down economy, saving money ... What can we do? What can we do to protect ourselves and re-build our communities? Here are "Top 10 Resolutions..." I have found in article written by Dr. Susan L. Reid:

1. Focus on your primary greatness
2. Be transparent and honest in your dealings
3. Keep it simple
4. Care forward
5. Create a loyal fan base
6. Embrace eco-responsibility as an overall business strategy
7. Master social networking
8. Cultivate a culture of collaboration.
9. Find new opportunities for expansion
10. Strengthen relationships

Loss of jobs. Difficulty maintaining our standard of living. We’re in a worldwide global recession.

We’ve seen financial markets collapse, mortgage lenders go under, home loss through foreclosures, extreme bailout packages, and growing unemployment

More detailed here