TechCrunch LA
MAY 15, 2022
Uber Eats is launching two autonomous delivery pilots in Los Angeles on Monday with Serve Robotics, a robotic sidewalk delivery startup, and Motional, an autonomous vehicle technology company. The new programs are a part of a range of new products Uber is launching across its ride-hail and delivery platforms, which are being announced on Monday at the company’s Global Product Event.
Berkonomics
MAY 26, 2022
We seem to be back to 2019 in the trade show world. Shows that shuttered during COVID have reopened, even if traffic and attendance seems smaller so far, but rising. So, let’s spend a cycle on trade shows for the first time in years. Wouldn’t it be magic if we could find one (unique to us) question to ask people passing the booth or table as they pass in the aisle of the trade show?
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Tech.Co
MAY 12, 2022
As of Thursday, the entire cryptocurrency sector has plummeted, losing $200 billion across the entire market within a day. Bitcoin plunged under $25,000 to temporarily reach its lowest value since December 2020, and stablecoins aren't stable, with the cryptocurrency Luna nearly worthless after having dropped 99% in value in 24 hours. Cryptocurrencies' values may well continue whipsawing , and, as always, it's tough to predict where they'll ultimately end up.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 30, 2022
Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin.
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Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.
TechCrunch LA
MAY 3, 2022
One of Britney Winters’ goals is to “live a less tangled life.” She grew up in Houston and went on to attend Stanford and major in engineering. She worked on Wall Street as an investment banker for a few years in New York before returning to Houston with a job in energy. The company Winters was working for sponsored her MBA to Harvard Business School, and it was there that she came up with the idea for Upgrade.
TechCrunch LA
MAY 24, 2022
Since the launch of Pokémon Go in 2016, players have been coordinating meetups, in-game raids and battles on platforms like Reddit and Discord. This summer, parent company Niantic is unveiling Campfire, a social app designed to help mobile augmented reality (AR) gamers connect. Niantic’s games incentivize people to use their technology to go outside and meet others — that’s why it calls its AR development the “real-world metaverse.” Campfire wants to make that even
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Berkonomics
MAY 12, 2022
There’s a famous intersection in Tokyo, Shibuya Crossing, where thousands of people cross each day, seemingly in random directions. Here’s the test: try to follow one person in his or her journey. That would be like picking a piece of information form a maze. But it would be impossible to know much about that person from just a photo. So, let’s dig further.
Berkonomics
MAY 5, 2022
Using old email lists for the first time is like eating really stale doughnuts. The taste is pretty bad, and the side effects could be disastrous. Strict rules about spam accounts. Email companies like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and many others all have strict rules. they follow to avoid being caught in spam hell, with their servers blacklisted and worse.
TechCrunch LA
MAY 31, 2022
Bonfire Ventures , a Los Angeles venture capital firm, invests in seed-stage business-to-business software companies and aims to change the odds so that more than the average 33% of companies in this sector make it to Series A. The firm seems to have some good traction so far. It says over 85% of its portfolio companies raise follow-on funding — a collective $1.15 billion — and its first fund is “ranked as one of the top 5% of VC funds globally,” while the second fund is in “the top 10% of their
TechCrunch LA
MAY 5, 2022
NetEase, the second-largest gaming company in China and the sixth-largest in the world, has opened its first US-based studio in Austin as China’s gaming industry slows. The company’s archrival Tencent was a step ahead in expanding to North America. TiMi, Tencent’s cash cow studio known for the mobile blockbuster Honor of Kings, began hiring in Los Angeles back in 2020.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 18, 2022
As you know, growing a business is hard, especially the first time. Unfortunately, every new initiative is different, so don’t get too smug if you have had some success, and can’t wait to repeat it again. In my years as a business advisor, I have seen many of you crash and burn the second time around, despite the confidence. I advise working the next one as thoroughly as the first one.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 16, 2022
With all the upheaval and uncertainty these days, I find many entrepreneurs and business owners are reluctant to pursue new dreams , waiting for the world to stabilize and risks to go away. As a long-time business advisor, I see things just the opposite. Now is a time of great opportunity, with people knowing they have to adapt, and proven successes such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 15, 2022
Successful startups seem to follow similar paths to greatness, and unfortunately all too often that path leads them back down the hill much faster than they went up. Big company powerhouses, like IBM and Xerox, took fifty years to make the cycle, but new companies today, in the age of the Internet, often make the cycle in five to ten years, or even less.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 1, 2022
Marketing is everything these days. You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. Yet I see many technology entrepreneurs that focus on the basics of marketing too little and too late. They skimp on the design of their website, procrastinate on the rollout to make sure the product is perfect, and get so excited about technology features that they forget about creating value f
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 7, 2022
Trying to be a business leader by instilling fear in your employees and partners is never a good approach, but it is particularly devastating in a startup. Yet I see this autocratic approach used all too often by new entrepreneurs, most of whom are not natural tyrants, but who are fighting to mask their own internal fears and insecurities about starting a business.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 4, 2022
Most business mentors tell me that the single biggest problem they have to deal with in small companies is the lack of open, honest, and effective communication, both from the top down and from the bottom up. Some entrepreneurs forget that talking is not communicating. Fortunately these skills can be learned, and the barriers to communication can be overcome one by one.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 27, 2022
In my experience as a business advisor, most organizations, large and small, struggle to keep up with the pace of change and competitive forces today. You may have a brilliant product strategy, but your operational teams seem to fight change, as well as each other, resulting in turf battles and confusion, leading to the internal drama and problems that occupy too much of your time.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 8, 2022
Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders quandaries in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. People may jump into the lifestyle to be their own boss, achieve great wealth, start a new trend, or all the above. The dilemma is that these goals are usually mutually exclusive.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 28, 2022
Once your business is running and sustainable , everyone these days expects it to grow, as an indication of long-term health and competitiveness. Thus continued growth becomes the biggest challenge for many of you business owners I meet in my consulting practice. Everyone is looking for that magic strategy that will keep them growing, even during market and company changes.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 21, 2022
The power and influence of paid media advertising, including print ads, TV commercials, radio, and even online digital campaigns is waning, in favor of unpaid earned and owned messaging from your website, social media, key market influencers, and existing customer word-of-mouth. But startups need to remember that even zero paid media doesn’t mean that marketing is free.
Tech.Co
MAY 6, 2022
Ecommerce company Shopify supports small businesses with technology like ecommerce website builders and retail Point of Sale systems. Now, it's dramatically expanding capacity in another area, fulfillment, with the acquisition of Deliverr. Shopify is paying $2.1 billion in stock and cash to buy the ecommerce shipping company. Deliverr ships over one million orders monthly and gaining its network will more than double the size of Shopify’s fulfillment team.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 25, 2022
Business partners can be co-founders in a startup, multiple owners of an existing business, or a joint venture. In every case, a partner can be an asset, bringing new skills and perspectives to the business; or a burden, making every decision more difficult, and taxing your lifestyle satisfaction. You need to do the due diligence to make that decision before you sign away your equity.
Tech.Co
MAY 31, 2022
The buy now, pay later service Affirm has just landed a new partnership with popular payments company Stripe. The deal opens up a large avenue for many more companies to use the service, given Stripe's ubiquity, and this in turn gives even the smallest companies a way to integrate buy now, pay later functionality with their in-store POS systems. It's also the latest in a spree of deals for Affirm.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 9, 2022
Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. The result, according to an often-quoted Gallup survey , is 70 percent of workers not fully engaged, and poor customer experiences.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 14, 2022
For a few, delegating comes easily, maybe too easy. For others who are perfectionists, letting go of even the most trivial task is almost impossible. If you are in this second category, you probably don’t like the references behind your back that you are a “control freak” or a “micro-manager.” London business school professor John Hunt notes that only 30 percent of managers think they can delegate well, and of those, only one in three is considered a good delegator by his or her subordinates.
Tech.Co
MAY 11, 2022
For over a year, Amazon has quietly been paying local businesses in rural America to deliver its packages. Since its rollout, the trial – officially known as the ‘ Amazon Hub Delivery Partner Program' – has largely evaded the public eye. But according to business owners involved, the program has recently been approved for greater funding and is set to exit its pilot phase over the coming months.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 23, 2022
New entrepreneurs tend to focus only on getting the product right, and assume that the right culture and ethics will come later simply by hiring good people. In fact, they need an early focus on developing their moral compass, as well as setting the right ethical tone. Building an ethical business is more than just compliance and meeting legal requirements, and it has big paybacks.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 20, 2022
In my experience, the most successful business leaders and entrepreneurs are the best persuaders , not necessarily the ones with the best solutions. They know how to communicate what they have to the best advantage, and generate more results and satisfaction for all parties. This is a different skill from problem solving , but one that can be learned and honed over time.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 11, 2022
In building successful businesses, I find that creating a new and innovative product or service is usually the easy part. The hard part is providing the leadership required to align and motivate all the constituents and players – from engineers, to investors, vendors, and ultimately customers. Great entrepreneurs are not just idea people and then managers, they are extraordinary leaders.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 13, 2022
As the economy rebuilds after some tough economic times, more and more people seem to be turning to entrepreneurship and their dream lifestyle as an alternative to traditional employment. I applaud this trend, but caution all of you thinking this direction to approach entrepreneurship with your eyes wide open. It is not for everyone, as the entrepreneur’s path is fraught with challenges.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 29, 2022
In the old days, every entrepreneur planned on taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is finally up from the dead zone of the last two decades, and is now double the rate back in 1999. Smart entrepreneurs are now starting to look at this option again, as well as the challenges of running a public company.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 6, 2022
Even though ‘big data’ has now been around for several years, the opportunities for startups seem to keep growing, just as the amount of data keeps growing. According to Forbes , over the last two years alone 90 percent of the data in the world was generated. This data comes from sensors, social media posts, digital pictures and videos, purchase transactions, everywhere.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 2, 2022
Most of the entrepreneurs and business owners I work with recognize that they must occupy and practice a primary leadership position , but many will admit that they are not thriving in this role. They are not having the impact they expected, and they are not feeling the personal satisfaction they need for next level motivation. This is a tough challenge for every coach and mentor.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 22, 2022
In the beginning all businesses are just people playing out an idea. It’s never the other way around – there is no idea so big that it doesn’t need people to make it succeed. Investors know this, hence the saying “Bet on the jockey (founder), not the horse (idea).” A great jockey is a great role model. Like it or not, everyone looks to the entrepreneur as the jockey role model in a new business.
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