May, 2022

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Uber Eats pilots autonomous delivery with Serve Robotics, Motional

TechCrunch LA

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.

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How to “reel them in” to a trade show booth

Berkonomics

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?

Tips 156
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Why Massive Cryptocurrency Selloffs Highlight a Tech Industry Downturn

Tech.Co

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.

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10 Steps To Second Stage Success For Your New Venture

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Sales 147
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Can You Ask for Office Rent Relief? How to Manage Your Lease During COVID-19

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.

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Upgrade gives hair stylists tools to market, sell custom wigs from one marketplace

TechCrunch LA

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.

Tool 179
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Niantic transcends Discord to build Campfire, an AR social app, and unveils Lightship VPS

TechCrunch LA

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

Snapchat 177

More Trending

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Let’s not confuse big data with knowledge!

Berkonomics

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.

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Bonfire Ventures secures $230M for two new funds targeting B2B software startups

TechCrunch LA

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

Software 163
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China’s gaming giant NetEase opens first US studio in Austin

TechCrunch LA

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.

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6 Success Mistakes Often Made By Serial Entrepreneurs

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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5 Ways To Expand Your Thinking For Your Next Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

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 142
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Insights For Business Leaders Who Manage By Autocracy

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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6 Marketing Specifics That Apply To Every New Venture

Startup Professionals Musings

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

Marketing 141
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Shopify Just Bought the Deliverr Shipping Network for $2.1 Billion

Tech.Co

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.

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Buy Now, Pay Later Service Affirm Is Teaming Up With Stripe

Tech.Co

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.

Services 122
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7 Keys To Business Transformation To Meet Competition

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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10 Startup Founder Decisions That Have No Good Answer

Startup Professionals Musings

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 130
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7 Key Ingredients to Address the Challenge of Growth

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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Balance Your Marketing Spending Between Free and Fee

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Marketing 127
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6 Due Diligence Goals When Vetting Business Partners

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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8 Ways To Increase Worker Buy-In And Customer Service

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Customer 123
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8 Keys To Effective Delegation For All Perfectionists

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Startup 121
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Amazon Wants Your Business to Deliver Its Parcels

Tech.Co

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.

Commerce 104
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7 Ethical Fictions Lead Many New Entrepreneurs Astray

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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5 Keys To Enhancing Your Business Negotiation Ability

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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7 Metaphors That Every Aspiring Leader Should Emulate

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Coach 114
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10 Ways To Be An Entrepreneur Who Endures And Thrives

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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10 Real World Hazards With Taking Your Startup Public

Startup Professionals Musings

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 98
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7 Key Practices for Entrepreneurs Tackling Leadership

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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7 New Venture Leader Attributes That Excite Investors

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

Ideas 89
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5 Phases Of Every Startup That Regulate Your Success

Startup Professionals Musings

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 142
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Mailing lists, email marketing, errors, oh my!

Berkonomics

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.

Email 156
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7 Barriers To Communication In Business Relationships

Startup Professionals Musings

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.

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10 Key Business Domains Where ‘Big Data’ Looms Large

Startup Professionals Musings

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.