The Smarter Startup


Book Description

Why do some startups succeed while other do not? In a maturing online market, the cost of product development has fallen as quickly as competition has risen, and building a viable product is no longer enough. In this new reality, entrepreneurs must take a smarter, more strategic approach. In this book we'll discuss: Why some entrepreneurs are luckier than others How to anticipate success or failure before you begin Why timing is everything for a startup Strategic positioning to beat the competition Building a business that cannot be commoditized Methods for Improving user engagement and profits This book was written by Neal Cabage and Sonya Zhang, PhD after years of discussing and studying why some startups succeed. By combining known academic models with personal insights from building and selling two online startups - the authors answer the question of why some startups are more successful than others, in order to help entrepreneurs reduce the risk of starting an online business.




UX for Lean Startups


Book Description

p>Great user experiences (UX) are essential for products today, but designing one can be a lengthy and expensive process. With this practical, hands-on book, you’ll learn how to do it faster and smarter using Lean UX techniques. UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product to market. No prior experience in UX or design is necessary to get started. If you’re an entrepreneur or an innovator, this book puts you right to work with proven tips and tools for researching, identifying, and designing an intuitive, easy-to-use product. Determine whether people will buy your product before you build it Listen to your customers throughout the product’s lifecycle Understand why you should design a test before you design a product Get nine tools that are critical to designing your product Discern the difference between necessary features and nice-to-haves Learn how a Minimum Viable Product affects your UX decisions Use A/B testing in conjunction with good UX practices Speed up your product development process without sacrificing quality




Smart Start-Ups


Book Description

Praise for Smart Start-Ups "Silver's new book is a masterpiece of clarity concerning the next great entrepreneurial wave, and my only problem with it was the charley horse in my elbow I got turning the pages." -Robin Richards, founding President, MP3.com, and CEO, Notification Technologies Inc. "Silver is a modern-day Prometheus. For community entrepreneurs, Smart Start-Ups contains the secrets of fire from the heavens. If you work with communities of any kind, you ignore this book at your own peril." -John Szeder, former senior game developer, Digital Chocolate, Inc., and CEO, Mofactor, Inc. "Silver dives in and pulls the naked truth out of the world of online communities. There's nothing like it on the shelves. He speaks with the best and brightest in the mobile and online community markets." -Sean Malatesta, founder, Yack Media Services, and Vice President, Indiagames, Inc. "Smart Start-Ups is a must-read for any aspiring Internet entrepreneur. Silver cuts right to the heart of the important fact that communities are like entire nations, but without geographic borders, and they're creating the greatest transformation since the Industrial Revolution." -Clarence Briggs, founder and CEO, AIT.com "Silver's book is an excellent, captivating, ingenious, and essential read for anyone who wants to know how to create wealth by starting an online community. One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way; Silver certainly succeeds in that respect." -Kyle E. Gillman, founder and CEO, Forgefinder, Inc.




Start-Up Smarts


Book Description

"The section on testing your new business concept is unlike anything in any other book on start-ups. How much is it worth to know that your new business is something your customers will want--before you invest in it?" --Pat Cunningham, Wall Street Journal Advertising Advisor and former Vice Chairman, N. W. Ayer Global Advertising Agency "Start-Up Smarts is an explosive work of ten powerful, practical steps that lay out reality." --Dr. Jeffrey Magee, Publisher, Performance Magazine To make sure your start-up succeeds in the most profitable way, you need to plan and prepare your way to prosperity. This means learning the secrets of successful entrepreneurs--from knowing whom to trust to adapting in a changing marketplace. Start-up specialists and thriving business owners Barry H. Cohen and Michael Rybarski reveal the critical keys to getting your new business up and running a profit, in-cluding how to: Create a Flexible Business Plan Find Out What Your Customers Really Want Capitalize on the Right Trends Hire the Best People Choose the Most Lucrative Partners Complete with real-life success stories from first-time entrepreneurs and the best businesses to start right now, Start-Up Smarts guarantees your new business will prosper in any market!




Hire Smart from the Start


Book Description

This book distills lessons gained from the author’s 20 years of experience, building out and staffing two enormously successful Internet startups and helping firms land the talent they need to reach their greatest potential. Don't rely on instincts alone. Hiring is king and while the lesson seems so basic, so many good companies stumble and lose their stride just when they were poised for rapid growth. Why? Their leaders treated hiring as a tedious chore. They posted an ad hoc ad. Took the first person with the right skills. Hired for immediate needs, rather than future flourishing. Whether you're a high-tech entrepreneur taking a startup public, or a food truck vendor with a concept that's taking off, Hire Smart from the Start offers a proven formula to help you: Find candidates whose values and working style fit your business Spot the 5 types of applicants you should never, ever hire Motivate "reach" candidates to leave their jobs and take a chance on your vision Develop meaningful incentives that make people stay Accelerate success: hire smart from the start. This book shows you how.




Starting Up Smarter


Book Description

Starting Up Smarter: Why Founders Over 50 Build Better Companies delivers a counter-intuitive message about entrepreneurship and startup success. Contrary to the widespread belief that youth is a startup advantage, research shows that older entrepreneurs are far more likely to create socially valuable, profitable, and high-growth companies. Founders over 50 manage more than half of the new businesses launched in the US during the past 5 years. Their stories provide inspiration and insights for entrepreneurs of all ages, and for everyone seeking to change the world for the better. This book analyzes how and why older founders so consistently outperform their younger counterparts by embodying 21st century entrepreneurial imperatives such as positive social impact, shared stakeholder value, and regenerative sustainability. In Starting Up Smarter, entrepreneurs who have built profitable, socially valuable businesses share their experiences and reflections about launching companies with social purpose in healthcare consulting, sustainability and solar energy solutions, home care franchise ownership, restaurants, publishing, water filtration, and more.




The Smart Start Up


Book Description

“Start and build a high-profit business, choose exactly the right product for you, outsell your competition, and put yourself onto the road to riches” (Brian Tracy, New York Times–bestselling author). The Smart Start Up helps readers start strong and stay strong in the early phases of growing their businesses, providing fundamental strategies for beating the odds. With this information, entrepreneurs will be able to reach the success level of their dreams—whether that’s to create a legacy for generations or to follow the build-and-sell-it road to success. Within these pages, Tom Hopkins and Omar Periu delve deeply into the nuances of business ownership both on the practical and emotional side of things. They will help readers avoid some of the most common pitfalls entrepreneurs face. Readers will learn how to establish a compass they and the rest of their teams can rely on to guide business decisions going forward. Topics covered include: self-analysis as an entrepreneur; how to evaluate a business idea; how to choose the best structure for a business, including working with legal and accounting professionals; business communication skills; hiring and managing team members; prioritization; selling skills; marketing strategies; negotiation skills; and how to keep clients happy long term. “Own this book and you’ll have the opportunity to be guided to your own success by two of the best and proven teachers in the business.” —Bob Burg, bestselling coauthor of The Go-Giver and The Go-Giver Influencer “Inside the pages of this masterpiece, you’ll get the formula for success that gives you the winning edge in the hyper-competitive marketplace.” —Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy and author of Fanatical Prospecting




Your Brand, the Next Media Company


Book Description

"Content is now king - and if you're a brand marketer, you need to be a media company, too. Your Brand, The Next Media Company brings together the strategic insights, operational techniques, and insights and practical approaches for transforming your brand into a highly successful media company - and a winning social business! Social business pioneer Michael Brito covers every step of the process, including: Understanding your social customer and their new world Planning your social business and content strategies Building infrastructure and teams, and setting the stage for transformation Identifying and overcoming the specific content challenges you face Recognizing the central role content now plays Developing your content message Transitioning from brand messaging to high content relevancy Moving from content creation to curation to aggregation Successfully integrating paid, earned, and owned media content Distributing the right content at the right time through the right channels to the right customers Mastering the critical new roles of the community manager in your media company Evaluating the content technology vendors and software platforms vying for your businessAlong the way, Brito presents multiple case studies from brand leaders worldwide, including Coca Cola, RedBull, Oreo, Skittles, Old Spice, Dos Equis, Gatorade, Tide, and the NFL - delivering specific, powerfully relevant insights you can act on and profit from immediately." --Publisher description.




Smarter Together


Book Description

Driving value today requires information. Lots and lots of information. Most of us are becoming good at distilling the data within our own companies, but that’s not enough if we want a competitive advantage. In Smarter Together, Coupa Software CEO Rob Bernshteyn explains how we will soon be able to draw upon the intelligence of the community—collectively what we, and the organizations we work for, know—to benefit the community, our companies, and ourselves. For example, we’ll easily uncover: · Real-time best practices for virtually every element of our business. · The best way to offer our products and services. · Who delivers exactly what they say they will, on time, with the best price, quality and reliability. As Bernshteyn explains, the prescriptive insights gleaned from the massive amount of community data available worldwide will transform entire industries and break down long-standing barriers to value. All of us will grow smarter together. Commerce will never be the same again.




Venture Deals


Book Description

An engaging guide to excelling in today's venture capital arena Beginning in 2005, Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, managing directors at Foundry Group, wrote a long series of blog posts describing all the parts of a typical venture capital Term Sheet: a document which outlines key financial and other terms of a proposed investment. Since this time, they've seen the series used as the basis for a number of college courses, and have been thanked by thousands of people who have used the information to gain a better understanding of the venture capital field. Drawn from the past work Feld and Mendelson have written about in their blog and augmented with newer material, Venture Capital Financings puts this discipline in perspective and lays out the strategies that allow entrepreneurs to excel in their start-up companies. Page by page, this book discusses all facets of the venture capital fundraising process. Along the way, Feld and Mendelson touch on everything from how valuations are set to what externalities venture capitalists face that factor into entrepreneurs' businesses. Includes a breakdown analysis of the mechanics of a Term Sheet and the tactics needed to negotiate Details the different stages of the venture capital process, from starting a venture and seeing it through to the later stages Explores the entire venture capital ecosystem including those who invest in venture capitalist Contain standard documents that are used in these transactions Written by two highly regarded experts in the world of venture capital The venture capital arena is a complex and competitive place, but with this book as your guide, you'll discover what it takes to make your way through it.