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Libin: when, what and wa-how to be an...

Get the timing right, try to improve something that already exists and get an identity mug

by Steven Loeb - February 19, 2013
From entrepreneur

Featured Lessons learned

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Who dares wins - Business Plan vs Business Model

by Steve Blank, February 27, 2012 | Comments

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The 2nd Annual Business Model Competition

Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2nd Annual International Business Model Competition, hosted by Professor Nathan Furr and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The idea of a Business Model competition first emerged when I realized that Business Plan writing ought to be taught in English Departments – as ...
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Entrepreneur tips: Marketing is the means, not the ends

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 21, 2012 | Comments

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Angel investor Bill Lee shares lessons learned as an entrepreneur and investor

Here's the third part of my interview with Bill Lee, entrepreneur-turned-angel investor. Lee has invested 30 start-ups over the course of the last 10 years. He's also a limited partner in some venture firms in the Valley. A decade ago, when Lee was in his mid-20's, he raised $43 million for his start-up. In this interview, he shares his lessons as ...
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Authentic happiness, the maker movement, and the future

by Nick Such, February 15, 2012 | Comments

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A few thoughts on where we are heading

A few years ago (back when I used an AOL email account over a dial-up connection) I stumbled across a mailing list called "Authentic Happiness Coaching". I don't remember exactly how I got involved, but it turns out that it was the early emergence of Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. His work, which has provided a foundation for ...
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Kaggle's lessons in building a crowd-sourcing platform

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 13, 2012 | Comments

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Anthony Goldbloom and Jeremy Howard on engagement and funding lessons

The No. 1 and 2 questions I typically ask start-ups when they're getting started is: How do you plan to market your service and how do you plan on keep customers/users engaged? Kaggle has done an incredible job engaging its users to compete for prizes to solve complex problems. In this interview, I spoke with the founders Anthony Goldbloom, CEO, ...
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StubHub founder: Have a stomach for the roller coaster

by Krystal Peak, February 2, 2012 | Comments

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Jeff Fluhr, founder of StubHub, Spreecast explains what it takes to keep your business on track

At this year's Vator Splash in San Francisco, entrepreneurs and local companies got a chance to experience a different kind of keynote from CEO and founder of a social video broadcasting Spreecast, Jeff Fluhr.  After a brief introduction by Ellen Siminoff, President and CEO of the educational publishing company Shmoop University, Fluhr spoke to the crowd about how StubHub revolutionized the way ...
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Box CEO: Tackling unsexy problems is good business

by Krystal Peak, February 2, 2012 | Comments

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Aaron Levie, founder and CEO of Box explains how they made enterprise software sexy

At this year's Vator Splash in San Francisco, Box's Aaron Levie shared his experience improving the enterprise software world. Levie originally created Box as a college business project with the goal of helping people easily access their information from anywhere in the world at anytime. Launched in a dorm room in 2005 with the help of CFO Dylan Smith, Box has grown to become ...
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LIVE Spreecast - Jeff Fluhr Keynote Speech Vator Splash

by Ron Levi, February 2, 2012 | Comments

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Listen to the speech, ask questions, chat with entrepeneurs at Vator Splash SF on February 2, 2012

Watch Jeff Fluhr, Founder and CEO of recently launched social video platform Spreecast, deliver his keynote speech at Vator Splash 2012. Jeff is Co-founder and former CEO of StubHub, which was acquired by eBay in 2007.
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The death of Kodak: Ignore consumers at your own risk

by Larry Kramer, January 23, 2012 | Comments

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Kodak made the same mistake the newspaper industry made

(Larry Kramer is the author of C-Scape, a book on the changing landscape for media and related industries for Harper Collins (published Nov., 2010). He also founded MarketWatch, which was sold to Dow Jones in 2005. This story is on the launch of Appinions and its technology to track consumer behavior.)   The latest tombstone in the “old media” cemetery ...
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Top five reasons I love being a woman in tech

by Lis Hubert, January 23, 2012 | Comments

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From the tech field is interesting to few people expect a woman to hang with the big boys

These days, when we mention talk about the topic of women in tech we are usually talking about the inequalities and the struggles that we face and how to overcome them. It can be, at times, overwhelming and even depressing when we look at and discuss our fate. Sometimes it can even cause others to think “if being a women ...
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Why the movie industry can't innovate ...

by Steve Blank, January 9, 2012 | Comments

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.... and the result is SOPA

This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S.) from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from? From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business:Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads.  The Movie ...
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Top 10 Lessons Learned videos on VatorNews in 2011

by Kristin Karaoglu, December 31, 2011 | Comments

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Airbnb's marketing genius; Bootstrapping to VC-backed; ChaCha's network effect; Premature scaling

How Airbnb's marketing genius started the flywheel The press is having a field day on Airbnb's behalf these days, given the pillaging of one of its customer's homes. While the coverage is deserved (and Airbnb could offer up a better solution and response), it's getting to be a bit overblown, given that the unfortunate incident could have just as likely ...
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Eight cheap ways to market your small business

by susan solovic, December 26, 2011 | Comments

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From having an elevator pitch to getting customer referrals

Famed author Mark Twain said, “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”  But advertising can be expensive.  And in a tight economy, many small businesses cut their marketing budgets first because of cash-flow concerns.   However, when times are tough, it is even more important to keep your business brand front and center. During ...
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The government starts an incubator

by Steve Blank, December 26, 2011 | Comments

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The National Science Foundation Innovation Corps

Over the last two months, the U.S. government has been running one of the most audacious experiments in entrepreneurship since World War II. They launched an incubator for the top scientists and engineers in the U.S. This week, we saw the results. Some 63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in eight weeks, turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. Of the ...
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The National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Class

by Steve Blank, December 22, 2011 | Comments

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The Business Model Canvas

The Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps is a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This post is part two. Part one is here. Syllabus here.  The 21 NSF teams had been out of the classroom for just 15 hours as they filed back in with their business model canvas presentations.  Their assignment appeared (to them) to be deceptively ...
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