Steve Woda's blog

links for 2009-11-27

• Great Leadership: How to Maximize Collaboration and Reach Consensus in Under an Hour
  In my last post, I described 5 decision making options leaders can choose, depending on the amount of time allowed and input and buy-in needed. This post will describe a process a leader can use to help a group reach an efficient consensus decision. First of all, it’s important to define what’s meant by “consensus”. Here’s a definition that’s worked for me: “Consensus is a decision that every member of the group has had input to, understands, and is willing to support.” Note that consensus does not mean that everyone agrees with the decision 100%. It mean’s they’ve had their say – and have been listened to – and at the end of the day, are committed to supporting the decision. The final decision is owned by the group.
  (tags: leadership)
• MBA Traditions: Creating Bonds that Last a Lifetime - BusinessWeek
  Skipping school to attend a Cubs game as part of an annual Ferris Bueller's Day Off-inspired day-long class cut. Participating in a mustache-growing competition or a cutthroat wheelbarrow-pull event. Donning suit jackets and boxers for a pub crawl or bidding on a dinner party with a favorite professor. Attempting to play ice hockey or learning to box when this skill set suddenly matters. Being served mimosas by faculty members.
  (tags: mba wharton)

links for 2009-11-26

• Seth's Blog: Embracing lifetime value
  If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth? Given the huge gross margins at AT&T and Verizon and the standard two-year contract, I think it's easy to figure on more than $2000 in lifetime value. If you ran a business where a customer represented an additional $2,000 in profit, how would you staff? How long would you make someone wait? If staff costs $25 an hour, how long would that extra person take to pay off?
  (tags: marketing)

The Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody

Who doesn't the love the Muppets?  If you are fan (or used to be as a kid), you will want to watch this fun video.  It is the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody, and I am sure Freddy Mercury would be proud!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  :)

links for 2009-11-25

• LinkedIn Aims to Show Up in More Places Online - NYTimes.com
  LinkedIn is hoping to let its users tap into their professional network across the Web. On Monday, LinkedIn will make its technology available to software developers who want to use it in their own sites and applications. By incorporating information about someone’s professional profile and connections, LinkedIn can make those sites more useful, said Adam Nash, LinkedIn’s vice president of search and platform products. Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive, has said he wants the site to be the hub of all conversations about business on the Web. LinkedIn’s recent partnership with Twitter was one step in that direction, and this is another. As more businesses use Web-based applications for professional communication, LinkedIn wants to be there, Mr. Nash said.
  (tags: linkedin)
• Five Ways Startups Are Tapping Into LinkedIn's API - washingtonpost.com
  This morning, professional social network LinkedIn announced that it is opening up its API for developers to build applications around the platform. While LinkedIn has partnered with Twitter, Microsoft, IBM, Research In Motion and others, this will be the first time startups can tap into the platform. While LinkedIn is releasing 11 different APIs, they fall into three distinct categories. First, developers will be able to let users easily access their information, profiles, connections and messages via oAuth login. The second functionality is to give users the ability to make actionable decisions about information, but letting them message their LinkedIn contacts, post updates, accept contacts and more. And the third piece of the puzzle is search. So developers will now be able to embed LinkedIn search in other applications.
  (tags: linkedin)

links for 2009-11-24

• New technology, tight budgets hinder sex-offender monitoring - washingtonpost.com
  The pursuit of Lee Shelton began the moment the convicted sex offender was released from prison. It ended months later with a U.S. Marshals Service helicopter hovering near a D.C. junior high school as Shelton kissed a 14-year-old boy. In between, authorities used two Global Positioning System devices to help track him, learned he was online at the library and seized a secret laptop with a power source in the trunk of his car. His parole was revoked, and he is back in jail. Shelton, who originally was convicted of molesting boys at the National Air and Space Museum and on the grounds of the Washington Monument, is one of thousands of sex offenders accused of similar crimes after their release from prison or while on probation. His parole violation illustrates the challenges of monitoring hundreds of thousands of offenders.
  (tags: mobile security kidsafe)
• Who Has The Gold To Make The Rule - VC Or Entrepreneur? - WSJ
  According to the golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rule. In the land of venture capital, however, the question is: Who actually has the gold? Advertised as a celebration of entrepreneurs, last week’s Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum mostly served as a networking junket for venture capital managers to meet the small businesses of their investing future. Between the glad-handing there were business proposal swaps and face-to-face meetings that could serve as the first step in a multi-year process. At this early stage, everyone seemed to be in agreement on just above everything - except, that is, the idea of control once the dotted line is signed on a term sheet.
  (tags: vc Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-11-22

• The Rise of the Teaching Organization - HarvardBusiness.org
  Ever since the publication, nearly two decades ago, of Peter Senge's monumental bestseller The Fifth Discipline, we've been in the age of the "learning organization." Executives have come to understand that for their companies to stay ahead of the competition, their people, at every level, have to learn more (and more quickly) than the competition: new skills, new takes on emerging technologies, new ways to do old things, from manufacturing to marketing to R&D. Gary Hamel, the influential business strategist, likes to say that one of the most urgent questions facing leaders (and thus their companies) is, "Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?"
  (tags: hr leadership)
• The Six Factors That Drive Confidence in Leaders
  For the past four years, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership has conducted an annual public opinion poll to determine the sector leaders in which Americans have the most and least confidence and the factors behind those confidence levels. The 2009 results have just been released and there are some pretty interesting conclusions. First, the sectors where the confidence level in leaders are up in a statistically significant way over last year are the military, the executive branch and business.
  (tags: leadership)

links for 2009-11-20

• How Google Voice Is Growing - BusinessWeek
  In response to questions by U.S. regulators, Google (GOOG) handed over information about the number of users for its Google Voice communication service and a list of the companies that route the calls sent via Google Voice. It also outlined plans that suggest it may expand the call-management service into foreign markets. Google Voice, which provides people with a single phone number that can be used to reach them on their work, home, or cell phones, has 1.419 million users, according to the letter. Of those, 570,000 use it seven days a week, Google says. Google Voice began in 2005 as GrandCentral, a startup acquired by Google in 2007. Ring Central, a company founded in 1998 that provides similar call-management services to small businesses, says it has "tens of thousands" of customers.
  (tags: google voice)
• Intel Capital invests $25M in 7 new startups - VentureBeat
  Intel said today that it has invested $25 million in seven new startups as part of its goal of increasing demand for its own products. The investments were led by Intel Capital, which is the investment arm of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker. The investments show that Intel hasn’t flinched from its goal of supporting startups during the recession, said Arvind Sodhani (right), president of Intel Capital, at a press conference at Intel’s 10th annual CEO Summit in Huntington Beach, Calif. As proof of that, he noted that Intel has made 10 follow-on investments on its previous investments.
  (tags: intel vc)

links for 2009-11-19

• Technology Review: Who's Talking About Me?
  Popular videos and articles get reposted or discussed on dozens or hundreds of sites. But Web experts are now thinking about how to keep track of online conversation in real time, even when it's scattered all over the Web. A new crop of protocols aim to do just that. The protocols provide notifications when new content is available, rather than passively waiting for search crawlers or feed readers to discover the content. For example, pubsubhubbub, an extension to the protocols used today to syndicate content, can push content out to feed readers as it's updated. Building on that Salmon, a protocol first proposed last month, could allow comments to "swim upstream" to connect to the original post, regardless of where they're made.
  (tags: social media)

links for 2009-11-18

• Google to Connect Friends and Advertisers
  Google's stepping up its social networking efforts with new features for Friend Connect today, and the features provide some clues as to how Google thinks social data can be used to make money. Friend Connect provides a way for website owners to give their site social features without having to build an entire social network from scratch. This type of add-on social network tool has been increasingly popular in the last year and a half--Friend Connect competes with offerings such as Facebook Connect, which was announced around the same time, in the first half of 2008. Google says that about 9 billion web sites use Friend Connect, and that the service receives about half a billion unique page views each month. The new Friend Connect features collect more data about a site's visitors and provide several ways to use it. A polling gadget gathers information about visitors' interests, which is then shared between sites.
  (tags: google friend connect social media advertising)
• FBI: SMBs Losing Millions To Cybercrooks
  Cybercrooks may have tried to nab as much as $100 million from small and midsized U.S. businesses in payroll scams over he last year. Now the FBI is talking about how to protect yourself from this automated threat. The automated clearinghouse (ACV) con as described by the FBI hits small and midsized businesses, as well as school, local governments and other organizations where they live -- in their bank accounts, and particularly their payroll accounts. Noting "a significant increase" in ACH fraud targeting small and midsized bsuinesses recently, the FBI says the ripoff typically begins with a spear phishing expedition that delivers malware via either e-mail or a link to the business's computers. Once the malware takes up residence, a keylogger harvests the company's financial information. Armed with legitimate banking credentials, the crooks establish new payroll accounts, the recipients being themselves of course, and authorize transfers of thousands of dollars.
  (tags: security smb fbi cybercrime)

links for 2009-11-17

• Android Market Badly Needs A Desktop Presence To Compete With The App Store - washingtonpost.com
  I've spent the last week throughly enjoying my new Droid, and while I've come across some problems, most of my issues have simply been with the fact that Android does things differently than the iPhone ? the transition just takes some getting used to. But there's one big issue that needs far more than a UI tweak: Android Market. If there was a theme common to nearly every Droid review, it was that Android's app selection just doesn't cut it compared to the iPhone. I think that consensus is only half the story. These reviewers are finding that Android has a weaker selection of applications than the iPhone not just because some of their favorite apps aren't there, but because actually browsing the Market just isn't as enjoyable as what Apple's iTunes offers. If Android's Market's perception as a poor man's App Store is going to change, this experience needs to improve.
  (tags: google android)
• 5 Entrepreneurship Basics B-Schools Don’t Teach
  The other day I posted 5 Entrepreneurship Basics B-Schools Can Teach. It’s natural to follow that list here with the exact opposite: 5 other entrepreneurship basics the business schools can’t teach. But I couldn’t quite do it. I had to change can’t to don’t. That, to me, is a significant difference. So here they are (things they don’t teach, not necessarily things they can’t teach):
  (tags: Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-11-16

• Flash flaw puts most sites, users at risk, say researchers
  Hackers can exploit a flaw in Adobe's Flash to compromise nearly every Web site that allows users to upload content, including Google's Gmail, then launch silent attacks on visitors to those sites, security researchers said today.

  Adobe did not dispute the researchers' claims, but said that Web designers and administrators have a responsibility to craft their applications and sites to prevent such attacks.

  "The magnitude of this is huge," said Mike Murray, the chief information security officer at Orlando, Fla.-based Foreground Security. "Any site that allows user-uploadable content is vulnerable, and most are not configured to prevent this."

  The problem lies in the Flash ActionScript same-origin policy, which is designed to limit a Flash object's access to other content only from the domain it originated from, added Mike Bailey, a senior security researcher at Foreground.

  
  
  (tags: adobe flash security)
  
  
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  The Leadership Playlist: Seven secrets of a Steve Jobs presentation
  
  
  Apple CEO Steve Jobs is considered one of the greatest corporate storytellers on the world stage. Jobs inspires intense loyalty and also scares the heck out of his people. But there is no question he has transformed the typical dull, plodding, technical presentation into a theatrical experience. Here are 7 techniques that Jobs has learned about inspiring his audience; tips that you can use to wow your employees, customers, investors, or anyone else you need to motivate.
  
  
  (tags: jobs apple presentations)
  
  
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  Lead Generation Tip - Take 3 Hour Lunches
  
  
  There were days in my lead gen life where I could have easily left for lunch and not come back for four hours. MIT data shows that that might have been a good idea!

  Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power just highlighted last year's MIT / InsideSales.com study of outbound prospecting lead conversion. The report details such information as the right time of day to call, the best day of the week, how the response time to a lead impacts conversion, etc.

  It got me thinking. For many reps, unless territory comes into play, lead gen exists in a three-time-zone map. For years we've been able to sort our lists by time zone, but what if we could tune it even further and optimize the effectiveness our day using the MIT stats?

  
  
  (tags: sales lead generation)
  
  
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  Parallels Upgrades Mac Virtualization Software - InformationWeek
  
  
  Parallels on Wednesday released an upgrade of its virtualization software for running Windows and Linux alongside Mac OS X in Intel (NSDQ: INTC)-based Macs, claiming the new version is three times faster than its predecessor.

  Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac has more than 70 new features, including the choice of running Windows in full-screen mode, over the Mac user interface, or in the new Crystal view that provides access to Windows and Mac apps from the Mac dock.

  Along with the increased flexibility in using Desktop, Parallels is marketing the overall performance boost in the upgrade. The vendor claims Desktop 5 is up to 300% faster overall than Desktop 4 and offers seven times better graphic performance for games and 3-D applications.

  
  
  (tags: apple mac virtualization parallels)
  
  
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  7 Ways To Make Your Site More Dynamic
  
  
  Yesterday I mentioned the importance of using dynamic content to give users something to engage with and make your site more social media-friendly. That sounds good, but how does a small business owner go about that? How do you make your site more dynamic? What types of content should SMB owners be producing or aggregating to attract users, increase time spent on site and to help create a community?

  Below are seven examples of dynamic content that can help you do just that.

  Video: Video content is a great form of “sticky” content because it attracts people to your site and then keeps them there. As we’ve mentioned previously, it’s also perfectly suited for small businesses. Creating How To videos can help people learn how to use your product. It personalizes your company by breaking down that third wall. It entertains and educates. And it lets your customers get to you know, see your face and hear your voice.

  
  
  (tags: website design)
  
  
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  Smartphones Sales Continue Rise - InformationWeek
  
  
  Despite a global economic slowdown that is hurting the mobile market, smartphone shipments continued to rise in the third quarter, according to a report from research firm IDC.

  Thanks to popular devices like Apple's iPhone 3GS, handset makers shipped 43.3 million smartphones during the third quarter of 2009, a 4.2% year-over-year increase. IDC expects this trend to continue, and the market for smartphones will grow at a faster rate than the overall cell phone market.

  Nokia remains the global leader with about 37.9% of the smartphone market. The company just released its first Linux-based smartphone, the N900, and it's ramping up its service offerings, including music, maps, navigation, and application delivery. While its global leadership is secure, Nokia continues to struggle in North America, IDC said.

  
  
  (tags: mobile android apple iphone google nokia symbian rim blackberry)
  
  
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  Secrets Of Nonverbal Communication - Forbes.com
  
  
  In 1961, when Joe Navarro was 8, the Bay of Pigs invasion happened six miles from his home in Cienfuegos, Cuba, and his family fled to Miami. The boy knew no English, so he relied on careful observation of his peers, neighbors and teachers to figure out how things were done in his new country.

  That close reading of nonverbal clues turned into a lifelong pursuit. Navarro, 56, worked for 25 years as a counterintelligence special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and since 2003 he has been a consultant to the Energy and State Departments and the Institute for Defense Analysis, in Washington. His latest book, Louder Than Words: Take Your Career from Average to Exceptional with the Hidden Power of Nonverbal Intelligence, applies all his knowledge to the business world.

  
  
  (tags: leadership communications nonverbal)
  
  
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  Fixing E-Mail
  
  
  Wading through e-mail is one of the primary woes of office workers everywhere. Despite many theories on how workers should process their incoming messages, most people still seem to feel buried in the flood. This week at Defrag 2009, a technology conference in Denver focused on tools and technologies for handling online data, experts suggested that the best strategies for fixing e-mail might rely on information and strategies drawn from social Web technologies.

  "E-mail is kind of this giant, endless task list, and you're really the slave to a lot of stuff that comes to you," said Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft's future social experiences labs. She believes that incoming messages need to be organized and sorted in a more automated fashion.

  
  
  (tags: email)
  
  

links for 2009-11-15

• Avoiding the Agony of a 'Bogey': Loss Aversion in Golf -- and Business - Knowledge@Wharton
  Tiger Woods and other golf superstars who stand to win millions on inch-long putts apparently are subject to the same fear and aversion to risk that can afflict investors and managers. Taking the safe route, however, has its own costs, according to new Wharton research. In a working paper titled, "Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes," Wharton operations and information management professors Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer examine putts during pro golf tournaments and determine that even the best golfers systematically miss the opportunity to score a "birdie" -- when a player sinks a ball in one stroke less than the number of expected strokes for a given hole -- out of fear of having a "bogey" -- or taking one stroke more than what is expected. According to the researchers, for many, the agony of a bogey seems to outweigh the thrill of a birdie.
  (tags: leadership)
• Joe Biden: 'But for the grace of God there go I...' - washingtonpost.com. Really Joe? If so, you shouldn't be the VP.
  Vice president serves meal to surprised group of homeless men in D.C. In a foray to a side of the nation's capital that tourists and television cameras rarely see, Vice President Biden helped serve lunch Friday to dozens of homeless men at a shelter on the outskirts of downtown Washington. Biden's surprise visit to the Father McKenna Center of St. Aloysius Church on North Capitol and I streets NW startled some of the 80 men who stood stiffly as the vice president's entourage rushed past the dining area. Biden, casually dressed in a black baseball cap, black V-neck sweater, khaki trousers, rubber gloves and a worn brown apron, took his place behind a folding table and a tray of fish sticks. The vice president said he served the men because "you've got to remind yourself that but for the grace of God there go I."
  (tags: biden politics)

links for 2009-11-14

• Tips for getting publicity, and credibility - USATODAY.com
  One of the surprising things about PR is that the value to your business, in my opinion, is not that you are in the news one day. Sure it's great to be able to say to your friends and family, "We're going to be on the six o'clock news!" or "Look for us in tomorrow's business section." But for my money, that one story pales in comparison to the continuing benefits:

  • It is independent, third-party validation that your business is worth noticing. An advertisement that you purchase is you saying your business is great, but a feature story is someone else, someone with credibility, saying it. That is why it is so valuable.

  
  
  (tags: pr marketing)
  
  
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  D.O.E. Hires V.C. to Run Loan Programs - NYTimes.com
  
  
  The Department of Energy has tapped a venture capitalist to run its ts loan guarantee and green auto loan programs.

  The D.O.E. said Wednesday that it had named Jonathan Silver, a former managing general partner at Washington D.C.-based Core Capital Partners, to head the loan programs. Those programs, notes the Earth2Tech Web site, have doled out millions in loans and guarantees to venture-backed companies like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive.

  Core Capital focuses on alternative energy, advanced manufacturing, telecommunications and software.

  The loan guarantee program has $4 billion in appropriations to support up to $32 billion in loan guarantees, while the green auto loan program has $7.5 billion in appropriations to support up to $25 billion in loans.

  
  
  (tags: DOE silver finance vc core)
  
  
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  TC50: Clicker Wants To Be TV Guide For The Web
  
  
  More and more television content is making its way online. But because of different deals by various networks, it’s all over the place. Even the huge sites like Hulu, only skim the surface in showing what is out there. Clicker, a service launching today at TechCrunch50, wants to be the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.

  While there are no shortage of video search engines out there, Clicker believes its offering is superior because it creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee.

  
  
  (tags: search tv video)
  
  
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  Government Funding for Startups Really Does Exist, Uncle Sam Ponies Up $2.5B in Q3 - Fast Company
  
  
  Amid the spam, books, and late night TV infomercials promising inside information about little known government programs and free money, there actually is cash out there for your business. In fact, in Q3 2009, ChubbyBrain, which tracks venture capital, angel investment and several other types of investment in private companies, tracked $2.3B going to 65 young companies from various governmental or government-affiliated entities. These programs and government sponsored public-private partnerships offer funding via loans, grants and equity investments to promising young companies and technologies.

  getting funded badgeThe average deal was $36.2M, but this aggregate number is misleading; several large fundings by the Department of Energy distort it. The more interesting highlight for early stage entrepreneurs is seen in the chart below. The great majority of investments are under $5 million, with the median across the 65 deals standing at $1.1 million.

  
  
  (tags: government finance vc Entrepreneurship)
  
  
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  Want to Move Up? Learn to Manage Like a CEO
  
  
  If you really want to learn how to move up in the business world, you’ve got relatively few sources of expert information. And when you’re done with all the MBA BS, the business self-help books, and God help us - the life coaches - ask somebody who’s done it, and he’ll tell you.

  Come to think of it, if you think you can learn what works in the real world from anyone but someone who actually succeeded in the real world, well, let’s just say you might want to rethink your management potential.

  In the past we’ve talked about all kinds of management tools and leadership qualities, but this time, we’re going to cut right to the chase. You won’t find these five tips anywhere else, since you’re the first ones to read them. Moreover, these are indeed CEO best practices that I’ve observed in few middle managers - those with CEO potential.

  
  
  (tags: leadership career)
  
  
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  Why It's So Difficult to Find Angel Capital
  
  
  Suppose you’ve started a business that needs $100,000 of external financing to get off the ground. Because none of your friends or family has the money to make the investment, you’re looking for an accredited angel investor.

  That investor is going to be very, very hard to find. Statistically, very few people are in a position to make these kinds of investments.

  Let me give you some numbers to show you how rare this source of financing is. Because only a small number of new companies are successful enough to generate a reasonable return on an investor’s capital, most accredited angel investors realize that they need a diversified portfolio. Therefore, most investors will only invest a small portion – sophisticated angels say no more than 10 percent – of their net worth in start-ups. So a person who can invest $100,000 in start-ups needs a net worth of at least $1 million.

  
  
  (tags: angel vc Entrepreneurship)
  
  
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  Google Chrome OS To Launch Within A Week - washingtonpost.com
  
  
  Google's Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week, we've heard from a reliable source. Google previously said to expect an early version of the OS in the fall.

  What can we expect? Driver support will likely be a weak point. We've heard at various times that Google has a legion of engineers working on the not so glamorous task of building hardware drivers. And we've also heard conflicting rumors that Google is mostly relying on hardware manufacturers to create those drivers. Whatever the truth, and it's likely in between, having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS's success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work.

  
  
  (tags: google chrome os)
  
  

links for 2009-11-13

• Already Profitable Redfin Raises Another $10 Million - washingtonpost.com
  Seattle based Redfin, an online real estate startup, has raised another $10 million in a venture capital round led by Greylock Partners. Existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Vulcan Capital and The HIllman Company all participated in the round, and Greylock's James Slavet joins the Redfin board of directors. This was a safety round, as Redfin announced profitability over the summer and have now exceeded a $20 million in revenue run rate (it was just $15 million last summer). They've roughly quadrupled in size since 2008, even in a down real estate market.
  (tags: redfin realestate)

links for 2009-11-12

• Jonathan Silver, Venture Capitalist, to Steer DOE's Energy Loan Program
  The Department of Energy has billions in loan guarantees to hand out to alternative energy firms and automakers. But the highly competitive process has been criticized as slow, unmoving even. What is a government agency to do? Hire a venture capitalist, of course. The DOE announced Wednesday the appointment of Jonathan Silver, a former managing general partner at Washington D.C.-based venture capitalist firm Core Capital Partners, to head its loan guarantee and green auto programs. Core Capital invests in alternative energy, software, telecommunications and advanced manufacturing technology. Silver will report directly to DOE Secretary Steven Chu and has been hired to accelerate the application review process for both programs, according to the agency.
  (tags: vc silver doe energy core)
• DOE Hires Venture Capitalist to Oversee Key Cleantech Funding Program
  Back in March, as the first draft of the Obama administration’s massive green energy investment program began to emerge, we asked if the Department of the Treasury was poised to become cleantech’s new venture capital fund (The Treasury: clean energy’s new VC). It turns out that we were wrong. Treasury only administers the Obama administration’s green energy funds. The Department of Energy is where the power is, since it actually decides who gets the money. For confirmation of DOE’s growing power, look no further than this press release announcing the appointment of Jonathan Silver, a Washington-based venture capitalist, as the executive director of the DOE’s loan program office. DOE (not Treasury) is clean energy’s new VC. The appointment is yet another indication of the agency’s transformation as one of Washington’s leading funding sources.
  (tags: silver doe energy core vc)

links for 2009-11-11

• The Best Startup Funding is Initial Sales
  We all forget too easily: the best startup funding is sales. Sure, angel investment, friends and family, SBA loans, all of those options are necessary for most startups. But sales is better. If you can, find the early customers. Give them a deal, make them important, work with them to optimize their needs; but make a sale. Even if you need to go out and find investment — and I speak now as an actual angel investor — there’s almost nothing as convincing as actual sales. People are spending money. It makes a new business proposal far more credible.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship vc)

links for 2009-11-10

• Integrated Innovation at Pitney Bowes
  Pitney Bowes Inc. is a 90-year-old legacy company that has grown tremendously in the last decade, both organically and through more than 80 acquisitions, with the goal of building out all aspects of its mail and document management business on a global basis. It has six divisions, including the core mail and postage meter business, document management software products, and outsourced mail services. I joined the company with the express goal of helping solve a critical problem: how to innovate across the broad portfolio of Pitney Bowes’s businesses and assets by generating ideas that combine the best from every business. The primary role of my team is to create processes to formalize innovation, so that we don’t let our research labs and development shops operate in isolation. Innovation is broader for us than “product innovation” or “services in­novation.” It’s really as broad as our business model.
  (tags: innovation PitneyBowes)
• Why Twitter Lists Matter
  Last week Twitter debuted a new feature that lets you group your followers, Twitter calls it Lists. To learn Twitter List basics, Josh Catone’s Mashable post HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists is a good place to start. Why do lists of Twitter accounts matter? Twitter Lists are an efficient way to find Twitter-people that you don’t know, but should. Consider this list of 500 entrepreneurs, founders, startups, CEOs, and influential business people put together by Peter Urbanski. When you subscribe to a list like this, the updates of everyone in the list appear in your Twitter feed—You don’t have to subscribe to each individual account. You may not want to subscribe to a list with 500 active Twitterers, but take a quick look and you may turn up a handful of interesting, thoughtful people you do think are worth following.
  (tags: twitter)

links for 2009-11-09

• VC Funding Season Ends Next Week
  I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital. It’s worth you knowing this so you don’t waste your time. It’s also very important to understand so that you can properly plan when you raise money. Let me first tell you the black-out periods and then I’ll explain why. It is very difficult to raising venture capital between November 15 – January 7th. It is also very hard to raise VC from July 15 – September 7th. (you need to have had your first meeting even earlier.) If you’re thinking about raising VC and have not yet started the process, you’ve probably already missed the boat for 2009.
  (tags: vc Entrepreneurship funding)
• Potpourri: Introductions, Auctions, Tranches, and Co-Investors - Venture Hacks
  Summary: Angels make more introductions than VCs because angels need co-investors. You can’t clear the market in series–you can only clear it in parallel. Tranches are dumb–they have zero upside and catastrophic downside. Two investors aren’t always better than one. Finally, a ‘very special’ message to graduating Y Combinator founders: don’t do deals on D-Day and feel free ping us if you want additional help.
  (tags: vc entrepreneurship Auction)
• What I Learned About Entrepreneurship From Watching the World Series of Poker
  I can’t play poker, but I do enjoy watching it on TV. We’re in the middle of the 2009 World Series of Poker, an event that draws thousands of professional and amateur players to Las Vegas every year. The grand finale is the Main Event, a massive Texas Hold ’Em tournament with thousands of players and millions of dollars for the winner. Tournament poker used to be the province of professionals. But starting a few years ago, a huge wave of amateurs has invaded the game. As a result, of the thousands of entrants into the Main Event, only a few hundred are real pros.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-11-06

• 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground
  Let’s face it: as an entrepreneur, the odds are stacked against you. Most businesses fail after the first few years, and even if you do manage to survive, that doesn’t mean your business will redefine an industry, become profitable, or change the world. Getting off on the right foot is essential to navigating a startup from its infancy to profitability. Luckily, there have been countless entrepreneurs that have gone through the same toils building their own businesses, and most of them are happy to share their experiences to better prepare you for the journey ahead. In addition, there is now an array of social media and web apps that no entrepreneur has ever had access to before. Together, these resources can give you the edge in a fast-changing business worl
  (tags: Entrepreneurship tools)
• 19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now
  There are more than 130 million blogs on the World Wide Web today, and 1.5 million more are created each week, according to the blog tracking service Technorati. It is unknown how many of these are tainted by shameless self-promotion, mindless ranting, and other nonsense -- but you can bet the figure is extremely high. So Inc. scoured the Internet, tabbed through Twitter, and asked the smartest people we know to help us come up with a list of bloggers who, if you pay attention, can help reshape your perspective. Here's what we found.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship blogs)

links for 2009-11-04

• A Single Sign-In for All Your Websites? Google Hopes So - PC World
  It's one of the basic tenets of online security: Never use the same password/username combo for every website that requires one. The logic is sound, of course. A single security breach could expose your most private information — such as banking and credit card numbers — to the bad guys. Problem is, who can remember multiple passwords and usernames? Many times I've signed up for a service, returned to the site a few weeks later, and quickly realized that I couldn't remember my login details.
  (tags: google security)
• Trick or Tweet? Malware Abundant in Twitter URLs - Wired.com
  As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets. The spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a link, preventing them from self-filtering links that appear to be dodgy. Kaspersky, an anti-virus and computer-security firm based in Moscow, created a tool called Krab Krawler, which extracts URLs from millions of tweets a day. The tools expands shortened URLs to examine words in the web address for those matching known malware sites. For unknown sites, Kaspersky visits the web page to determine if it’s hosting malicious code that could infect visitors. About 26 percent of Twitter messages contain a URL, according to Costin Raiu, chief security expert at Kaspersky.
  (tags: security twitter)

links for 2009-11-03

• Driven to Distraction - Britain Sets Tough New Laws for Texting While Driving - NYTimes.com
  Inside the imposing British Crown Court here, Phillipa Curtis, 22, and her parents cried as she was remanded for 21 months to a high-security women’s prison, for killing someone much like herself. The victim was Victoria McBryde, an up-and-coming university-trained fashion designer. Ms. Curtis had plowed her Peugeot into the rear end of Ms. McBryde’s neon yellow Fiat, which had broken down on the A40 Motorway, killing Ms. McBryde, 24, instantly. The crash might once have been written off as a tragic accident. Ms. Curtis’s alcohol level was zero. But her phone, which had flown onto the road and was handed to the police by a witness, told a story that — under new British sentencing guidelines — would send its owner to jail.
  (tags: texting safety kidsafe)
• Racy MySpace pics spark school lawsuit - msnbc.com
  Two sophomore girls have sued their school district after they were punished for posting sexually suggestive photos on MySpace during their summer vacation. The American Civil Liberties Union, in a federal lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the girls, argues that Churubusco High School violated the girls' free speech rights when it banned them from extracurricular activities for a joke that didn't involve the school. They say the district humiliated the girls by requiring them to apologize to an all-male coaches' board and undergo counseling.
  (tags: myspace children social networking security safety kidsafe)

links for 2009-11-02

• Federal Grants for Small Business: Chasing Clean-Tech Stimulus Dollars
  Entrepreneur Kevin Ross is hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning market for clean tech, buoyed by the hopes of winning some funding from the $70 billion earmarked for alternative energy projects in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Ultimately, he says, farmers might be his biggest customer. The idea is to lease part of a farmer's land and make a "solar farm" of ground-mounted panels. The farmer would then receive leasing fees or else partner with SunBanks Solar for revenue sharing, with revenues coming from selling the power to local power companies. But to build his business accordingly, Ross, who is one of three employees including his wife, needs more resources. He was able to self-fund the company’s launch using about $50,000 of his own money, saved and invested over the years from his civil engineering firm, Land Design Services Inc. “We don’t have to have the money [to survive] but we could hire sales staff and buy trucks and hire a crew,” he says.
  (tags: government grants finance Entrepreneurship)
• New Social Networking Site Now in Business ... for Business
  Social networking isn't limited to the time-wasting antics of kids on Facebook and Friendster. A new Web site aims to turn business networking on its ear. A prime tenet of all social networking sites is simple, a play on the six-degrees-of-separation meme: If everyone is only a few friends distant from everyone else, that girl you like — or your future boss — is just an e-mail away. Tracked.com wraps that concept in data analysis, creating a weird hybrid the company hopes will transform how business gets done. Want to see which companies other widget manufacturers are investing in, or stay on top of trades of your company's performance? Curious about which stock the executive board just traded? The site lets you track activity in a certain industry or for a particular company, even for a specific person, and create custom feeds of data along the same lines.
  (tags: social media analytics business)

links for 2009-11-01

• Start-up CEOs Bank On Fatter Paychecks, Bonuses In 2010 - WSJ
  Chief executives of venture-backed companies expect their compensation to stagnate this year. But they see more cash flowing into their wallets in 2010 – especially from bonuses, after about half went without them last year, according to a new poll. The CEOs surveyed by ExpertCEO, a Web site that helps connect more than 1,300 senior executives, made an average salary of $229,000 in 2008. Those executives expect to make the same amount in 2009, but they expect their salaries will rise to $243,000 in 2010. Additionally, 51% of VC-funded executives in the survey received bonuses in 2008 that averaged $101,000. Fifty-three percent expect bonuses in 2009 that average $93,000. But 85% plan to receive bonuses in 2010, with those bonuses averaging $102,000.
  (tags: vc Entrepreneurship career HR)
• Is It Safe to Post Children’s Images on Online Photo Sites? - NYTimes.com
  FOR Jessica Gwozdz, a professional photographer and mother of two, Flickr was a blessing. It allowed her to share photos of her children, Grace and Henry, with distant, tech-averse relatives for whom a username and password would have been too great an obstacle. It even allowed potential clients to freely browse her gallery. Then a friend sent her an e-mail message with the kind of subject line no parent cares to read: “Oh no — it’s Gracie.” The message contained a link to Orkut, a social networking site popular in Brazil. Someone had created a fake profile, using headshots of Mrs. Gwozdz’s 4-year-old daughter. “They gave her a fake name, Melodie Cuthbert, and a relationship status that said she was interested in making friends and dating men,” Mrs. Gwozdz recalled in a recent telephone interview. Other Orkut members had given the profile a “sexy” rating of two and a half hearts.
  (tags: child safety security kidsafe)