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WHEN STARTUPS PAIR UP WITH BIG CORPORATIONS, EVERYONE WINS–IF YOU MAKE THE RIGHT MATCH

Original post by MICHAEL GOLDSTEIN via FastCompany

“Corporation” is a dirty word to many startup founders. Entrepreneurs run away from big business on purpose, and those whose companies eventually develop into larger corporations risk earning the label of “sellout.”

Startups want to stay true to their vision; they don’t want to be influenced by the corporate world and run the risk of diluting their own cultures. They flee from any connection. Big mistake.

It’s understandable: Startups and corporations speak different languages, run at different speeds, and serve different purposes in our economy. Startups constantly disrupt, invent new technology, and develop new business models. Established corporations are more likely to move slowly with innovation to protect their financial security.

Like different generations, the two sides misunderstand each other. Corporations are seen as old, bureaucratic, and risk-averse. Startups are disruptive, irresponsible, and inexperienced. Neither usually sees the good in the other.

Corporate Benefits to Startup Culture

Still, despite the generational difference, there are plenty of reasons for startups to partner with corporations.

Credibility: With all the startups popping up around the country–and many of them failing–a corporate partnership is a huge boost to credibility. When one established corporation jumps aboard, it can help customers and other potential partners take the startup more seriously.

Distribution: Startups usually have limited distribution outlets. By using corporate distribution channels, they can increase their reach and get to market faster. This will test their product or service on a large scale to prove its worthiness. Having that proof of scalability is pure gold. It also doesn’t hurt that distribution should equal revenue, which is always good.

Join us in London on June 6th at Big Business meets Startups #BBmS

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May 6, 2013 | Techmeetups

Social Impact Investing Will Be the New Venture Capital

Original post by Sir Ronald Cohen and William A. Sahlman via HBR

During the past century, governments and charitable organizations have mounted massive efforts to address social problems such as poverty, lack of education, and disease. Governments around the world are straining to fund their commitments to solve these problems and are limited by old ways of doing things. Social entrepreneurs are stultified by traditional forms of financing. Donations and grants don’t allow them to innovate and grow. They have virtually no access to capital markets and little flexibility to experiment at various stages of growth. The biggest obstacle to scale for the social sector is this lack of effective funding models.

But the problem is not money, per se. Take a look at the social sector in the U.S. There are $700 billion of foundation assets, and 10 million people working for non-profits. These are huge numbers. Yet there are massive inefficiencies in capital allocation. Too often donors starve organizations and entrepreneurs by refusing to cover overhead. This makes it impossible for social organizations to scale. Interviews conducted in 2000 by the Social Investment Task Force in the United Kingdom, revealed what most nonprofit leaders already know: Almost all social sector organizations are small and perennially underfunded, with barely three months’ worth of working capital at their disposal. And that hasn’t changed in the last 12 years.

Compare that to the world of venture capital. If a business entrepreneur came to us with a plan for growing a new business without spending a penny on overhead, we would show him or her the door. Why should it be any different for a social entrepreneur?

We believe we are on the threshold of a major change not unlike the early days of the modern venture capital industry. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, a new type of investment vehicle was created: the professionally managed venture capital partnership. This organizational innovation drew investment capital from institutional players like pension funds and endowments and allowed for appropriate time horizons. Soon venture capital became a core part of many economies and those bold moves changed everything. Entrepreneurship has never been the same

Big Business meets Startup London 2013

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January 25, 2013 | Techmeetups

12 Generous Startups: $10,000 Worth Of Web Tools (From Box, Twilio, HotGloo And More) Offered Free To 1,000 Young Startups

Original post by NATASHA LOMAS via TC

Q: What do you do when you’ve shut down one startup before getting work on the next one? The answer, in Matthieu Vaxelaire’s case, is help out some other would-be entrepreneurs by launching a not-for-profit to give away 1,000 bundles of free web tools, each worth more than $10,000. These Startup Packs are available to startups that have launched in the last two years and raised no more than £250,000 in funding — largely on a first come, first served basis.

So what’s in the packs? Everything you might need to launch a startup, says Vaxelaire — specifically:

1. Zendesk: to manage customer support — 12 months for free
2. Box: to share files online — 12 months for free for 3 users
3. Mailjet: to send transactional emails — 12 months for free
4. TextMaster: to translate all your documents — 10,000 credits for free
5. Twilio: to bring voice and messaging to your web — $134 for free
6. Engine Yard: to host your website — $500 for free

October 31, 2012 | Techmeetups

The 14 Most Interesting Startups To Emerge From DEMO

Original post by RIP EMPSON via TC

DEMO Fall 2012 wrapped up in Santa Clara today, where 77 startups took the stage to show off their apps, services and products. The young companies were given six minutes to pitch their ideas and impress the audience, collectively competing for the $1 million advertising prize that went to the idea with the most promise.

From a bird identification app and an “Internet of Things” to apartment finders and augmented reality, here are the 14 startups that stood out from the pack during the three-day launch event.

THE WINNERS

RentLingo, which was picked as the best of the “Alpha Pitches” given by student entrepreneurs, began as a simple class project at Stanford. Co-founders Dan Laufer and Byron Singh interviewed hundreds of tenants, apartment owners and property managers, during which a pattern emerged. Although there are scores of sites that allow you to browse apartment listings, there is no easy way to find information on prospective tenants, roommates or sublets.

So RentLingo decided to use social networking to make the rental process less of a pain in the ass and help landlords find great tenants and renters find the best apartments. To do that, the startup aggregates info from the major listings players and uses Facebook’s Open Graph to give users social context as they search for apartments. It presents this all via a dynamic map UI, giving listings more of a localized feel and allowing you to see what friends have lived in a particular area and reach out to them (within the app) to ask questions.

Your friends can then drag and drop a comment about the apartment, all of which is visible to people within your network and social graph. The site aggregates and lets you view all of this social sentiment around each listing, aiming to provide a more effective and relevant “review” system. Listings with reviews from your network show up as blue pins, while national listings show up as red pins, all of which can be easily filtered by price, size, location and recency.

The idea is to turn the platform into a place where owners go to see what renters are saying about them (a la Yelp) and to help students and renters find great spots with the help of their social graph and location targeting. With Padmapper, Craigslist, Zumper and seemingly hundreds more, it’s a crowded space, but RentLingo has taken a unique angle that could be powerful at scale.

Austin-based Ube (pronounced yoo-bee) took home the “People’s Choice Award” at DEMO because it plays into our sci-fi-fueled visions of what technology will do to our homes over the next few decades. The startup is trying to take the unintuitive and costly world of home technology and make it simple and cheap, while removing the need for extra hardware or programming.

Ube’s app allows users to easily control IP-enabled smart devices using their Android or iPhone. This includes smart TVs, set top boxes, AV receivers, DVD players, thermostats, garage doors openers and more. You can even use the app to control your devices while you’re away from home using the Ube Cloud — all you need is a smartphone and a WiFi router. The company said that its app will work with over 200 IP-controlled devices when it launches next month. Peter covered Ube’s launch yesterday, which you can check out here for an in-depth review.

It was also a big day for Rock Health (and healthtech at large), as two of DEMO’s five winners were part of the health accelerator’s most recent batch. We covered Rock Health’s third batch here, and descriptions are included below.

Neumitra develops data-driven technologies to address the effects of stress on health, productivity, and happiness. More specifically, the company is developing both wearable and mobile tech that uses biosensors to monitor your autonomic nervous system and the contextual and personal cues that set off stress. The company collects that data, offering analytics and a dashboard that highlight key metrics — both for individuals and large organizations.

At DEMO, Neumitra presented its newest product, Bandu, a smart watch that helps users reduce stress and “slow down.” Using smart sensors to identify biometric signals, Bandu monitors your body temperature, motion and skin conductance. When it finds significant changes in the norm (i.e. red flags that indicate an increase in stress), the device prompts you to take a number of mood-altering actions, of the non-narcotic or barbiturate variety, of course. Sending notifications to your phone, Bandu might suggest that you play a game, or call a kindly grandmother, or play some music.

Techmeetups launches the Guru Program to help Startups & early stage companies with mentoring on all aspects of your Business.

Limited spaces are available – book your place on the Guru Program now to attend in London or remotely from anywhere in the world.

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October 25, 2012 | Techmeetups

Startup Guide: Top 5 Factors In Finding Your Niche

Original post by Lars Rudstam via RE

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You will need to make a few choices as a green company such as: whether to focus on Solar PV or Solar Thermal, whether to focus on Residential or Commercial, or whether to focus on new projects or maintenance contracts. In new markets, the best move might be to do all of the above. After all, you will be the established solar contractor, and who wants to turn away business. But, there are a few factors to consider:

1. Your Capabilities

Any successful contractor or solar installer will tell you that fly-by-night operations are bound to fail, and in the end, you are only as good as your relationships and reputation for quality work. So you need to back up your solar marketing with real substance, and an ability to flawlessly deliver on your projects. Consider if you are already established in commercial or residential, or if you have some of the licensing requirements or expertise needed for Solar PV (Electrical) or Solar Thermal (Plumbing & Mechanical). Delivering a quality product to your customers is the most important aspect of a business, and is something we will cover in depth in the next section.

2. Your Competition

If you are in a highly competitive market, going head-to-head with the likes of Solar City might not be the best strategy for a new residential contractor. But, there are other ways to go. Many of these established and rapidly growing PV markets are completely untapped for the great “sleeping giant” of the solar industry: solar thermal. Also, if you build your skills and reputation for quality work, there can be a great amount of business in being the “go-to” installation or maintenance subcontractor for utilities, other solar integrators or contractors, or EPC, engineering, and architecture firms.

READ MORE

April 17, 2012 | Techmeetups

The Week in Startup Land: Edition #1

Original post by Mark Evans Tech

With so much happening within the startup landscape, I’ve decided to do a weekly recap featuring Canadian startup news, as well as interesting startup-related blog posts. If you have any suggestions or items you’d like to add, let me know.

1. Ian Sigalow had an interesting post – “A New Approach to Series A” – looking at Greycroft’s investment approach.

2. Polar Mobile raises $6-million from a group led by Georgian Partners ”to expand globally and launch MediaEverywhere, a new product line that will transform the media industry”.

3. IGLOO Software raises $5-million from RBC Venture Partners and the Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund to expand its enterprise social software business.

4. From Mark Evans Tech, which is mostly focused on startups these days, I had a couple of posts you may want to check out:

- Startups: What’s Your Wow Factor? What captivates new users or, at least, gives them reason to come back for another look?

- Getting Acquired and Then Getting Shut Down: A look at startups that get acquired for the people, while the product gets shut down.

READ 5 TO 9 HERE

February 2, 2012 | Techmeetups

Infographic: A Programmer’s Guide to Getting Hired by a Startup

Original post by Rob Yoegel via monetate

Larger version of “A Programmer’s Guide to Getting Hired by a Startup

February 1, 2012 | Techmeetups

Comparing Steve Jobs with Lean Startup & Customer Development

Original post by lain’s Chips & Tech

I’m still fascinated with the Steve Jobs book. Here’s some thoughts on new product development and comparisons with today’s popular models: Customer Development and Lean Startup.

I can’t let go of Steve Jobs ability to “stop the presses” when he felt that a product (or feature ) was not ready to ship. This is so different than the more common plan — “let’s stick with our plan, ship it, and fix it later.”

This “stopping & resetting” skill is essential in today’s popular new product introduction models, like Steve Blank‘s Customer Developmentor Eric Ries‘ Lean Startup. It’s the key point that I have trouble getting across in my classes ’cause it seems so obvious in hindsight, but it’s not in real-time. Each of these models have a “stop, review, and go back to the beginning” section, but most people seem to think that this doesn’t apply to their idea :-( That this “reset” is not a commonly used part of the model. But in reality this “reset” is the new thing about these models. It’s their killer feature.

In the past two years I have taken to showing that the customer development model really means re-starting at least 2 times. ( This is consistent with the findings at Startup Genome. ) As one can see in the Jobs book he did a lot of resetting. On Page 418 there is a discussion of his love for a recording of the Beatles revising “Strawberry Fields” over and over .. ’til they get it.

Today’s new product introduction models are very Jobs-like, they are not espousing “lets ship it and fix it later”. These models are — let’s test our ideas out in the market to see if they work. Let’s collect information before and after the experiment. Let the data make the decision. Thus if the product doesn’t exactly match the idea, then you’ve blown the experiment. If you really watch, and are aware, then you can “stop” with conviction. You know what to change. Each new model then advances the art with features that stick and features that don’t.

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January 28, 2012 | Techmeetups

Meet the latest graduates of 500 Startups – Part 1

Original post by Krystal Peak via vator

It was a very active and vibrant Demo Day in Mountain View Wednesday, where 34 companies in the third batch of 500 Startups’ made their pitches to gain funding to bring their services to the masses.

Founders of 500 Startups, Dave McClure and Christine Tsai, introduced their dozens of companies to various venture capitalists in the Bay Area and it was quite a diverse group.

500 Startups is an early-stage seed fund and incubator program founded in 2010, which seeds between $25,000 and $250,000 in each of its startups that meet its “Three-Ds” criteria: design, data, and distribution.

The fall batch, which joined the incubator in October, are mostly in beta and have already received hundreds of thousands of dollars each from various angel investors.

I got a chance to speak with Dave McClure during the Demo Day on Wednesday and find out what attracted his incubator to this varied bunch of tech companies.

“We were in search of capital efficient and revenue driven companies from around the world,” said McClure. “This helped us discover companies that other Silicon Valley seed funds would have ruled out and helped us build a bridge to the Valley from countries like Estonia, Brazil and Portugal.”

In fact, nearly half of the startups have founders from outside the U.S., including the U.K., Croatia, Australia, Bulgaria and Japan — and eight of the startup have at least one female founder.

Several of the major trends seen in the companies exiting the 500 Startups incubator include work solutions and productivity tools, payment services, education and gamification for children and young adults, and e-commerce reinvention.

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January 26, 2012 | Techmeetups