5 Tips for Growing Your Tech Startup
Look beyond improving what other companies are already doing and instead set yourself up to solve a problem that’s so hard others won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
By tackling a problem viewed by the industry to be unsolvable, chances are you’ll find customers looking for a solution so desperately that they’ll be willing to pay for and trust your product, even in the early stages.
Focus fanatically on customer development and scale, and the funding will follow.
Surround yourself with people who share the same entrepreneurial spirit, or even have entrepreneurial experience themselves.
Ideally, every member of your team should be extremely hands on with the ability to think big and grow operations quickly.
Bring in domain expertise: You and your team need to be masters of your domain, both in the market itself, and also in your specific profession.
You don’t need just a email marketing expert – you need a marketing pro who is a master of everything from paid social advertising to media relations.
Invest in marketing from the get go: The biggest mistake I see startups making is approaching marketing as a nice-to-have versus a must-have.
The right marketing should make your company top of mind for influencers while elevating your status as thought leaders of your own domain.
Ultimately, the growth of every startup will follow a unique pattern, but by keeping these five learnings top of mind, you can set yourself up for success above and beyond the rate of your competitors no matter what the industry it.
Can Snapchat’s Culture of Secrecy Survive an IPO?
You may have seen reports about a product that we may or may not be working on, it said.
Hours later, Snapchat publicly announced that the glasses were indeed real and part of a new strategy to define itself as a “camera company.” The company’s new name was Snap Inc.
Many employees read about this for the first time in the news.
Those values will be tested in a planned March initial public offering, when Spiegel will take to the ultimate public stage to convince potential investors that the company has a long-term vision for growth, with a real plan to make more money and outmaneuver the competition.
Fees contingent on strict confidentiality is an unusual requirement, even in the hush-hush process of going public.
At the company’s recent New Year’s party, employees were instructed not to use their phones, according to people familiar with the matter.
Of course, there’s a difference between secrecy around product and secrecy around a business model.
Product discretion has been successful for Apple Inc., among others.
“I wonder if there are more people at Facebook working on Snapchat than at Snapchat,” venture capitalist Josh Elman tweeted.
“What’s the story for how this can be a multibillion-dollar revenue company five years down the road?” Spiegel and his executives will need to prove that the excitement over Snap can last long after listing day.
EBay Rival Letgo Raises $175 Million to Grow Secondhand Market
EBay Rival Letgo Raises $175 Million to Grow Secondhand Market.
Letgo, an online marketplace for buying and selling used goods, said it raised $175 million to invest in growth plans and grab market share from EBay Inc. and Craigslist.
Existing investor Naspers Ltd., Africa’s biggest company by market value, led the company’s Series C round, which also included previous venture capital backers Accel Partners, Insight Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates and 14W.
Users can browse through their phones to find listings in their local area that range from electronics and clothing to cars and furniture.
OfferUp Inc. raised $130 million in November, valuing the company at more than $1 billion.
That startup said it expected to top $14 billion in transactions in 2016. “There is a lot of innovation among these startups — whether it’s pricing or the ease to buy and sell a product.
EBay has responded by investing more in mobile and artificial intelligence technology.
In coming years, Letgo will start trying to make money from its service, Oxenford said.
The startup may do this through advertising, such as charging sellers to improve the visibility of their listings.
Claire’s Inc. withdraws initial public offering
Claire’s Inc. withdraws initial public offering.
Claire’s Inc., a teen retailer of accessories and cosmetics, withdrew its initial public offering Tuesday.
The company, owned by equity firm Apollo Global Management, did not give a reason other than it “decided not to proceed with the offering at this time.”
The company had filed to go public in May 2013.
Neiman Marcus, another retailer, withdrew its IPO in early January.
8 healthcare startup and investor trends at JPM17 from inverting business models to second order companies
8 healthcare startup and investor trends at JPM17 from inverting business models to second order companies.
Here are eight early stage related trends I spotted at the conference: The big data trend is very strong and growing; Diagnostic companies are conducting earlier validation studies; Disruptive innovation is relying on model inversion; Second order companies are emerging; Corporate interest in startups is expanding; Strategic investors are trying several approaches to be more innovative; Seed funds want to invest in at least the same country; and Corporate venture capital investors are investing strategically and globally.
Robust early validation studies for early stage diagnostic companies It’s now harder for a diagnostic startup to get funded as so many Theranos investors were burned and other investors are now more cautious when evaluating these businesses.
Inverting business models Examples include making telemedicine healthcare consults free for patients and generating revenue through other non-obvious mechanisms or new go-to-market strategies that zero capital costs and all revenue is made via a disposable or in some cases only off of the data generated or new software-based capabilities delivered via a SaaS model.
The emergence of second order startups The entrepreneurs behind these companies are attacking problems created by the increasing proliferation of digital health and connected medical devices.
For example, how does a hospital system keep networks secure with connections of so many highly specialized medical and Internet of Things devices?
Larger corporates need to better understand how to triage opportunities, find better curation mechanisms for strategically interesting startups, and be able to explain clearly to startups how to fit within a global healthcare world.
A key theme across angel, seed, Series A, and corporate venture capital investors was that many startups they are seeing are not focused on truly large problems with high-impact solutions.
If you work in the healthcare industry, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is a must-attend event as it gathers people from across the industry and around the world making for one of the most productive weeks in terms of meeting with startups, large multinational healthcare companies, and early stage healthcare investors.
INVEST unites over 300 active investors, corporate business development execs and the industry’s most promising startups for deal flow, the latest trends in investing and more.
Saudi Aramco CEO Says Oil-Tax Rate Would Be Reduced for IPO
Saudi Aramco CEO Says Oil-Tax Rate Would Be Reduced for IPO.
Saudi Arabia intends to reduce the overall tax rate paid by its national oil company to make the 2018 initial public offering — potentially one of the largest in history — more appealing to investors.
“Definitely the fiscal regime will be changed,” Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser said in a Bloomberg television interview on Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland.
“When you look at the fiscal regime and the taxes, it has to be aligned with other listed companies.” Aramco, as the company is commonly known, currently pays a 20 percent royalty on its revenue plus an 85 percent tax on income, Nasser said.
He declined to say what tax rate the kingdom is considering.
Saudi Arabia is looking at markets including Hong Kong, London, New York and possibly even Canada as international venues for the sale.
The kingdom will offer 5 percent of the world’s biggest oil producer as part of a plan by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to set up the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund and help reduce the economy’s reliance on hydrocarbons.
In 2016, under the existing tax and royalty regime and with crude dropping to 12-year lows, Aramco was able to pay a dividend and fund its biggest-ever capital investment program, Nasser said. “Based on the advice of the different banks that we use during the process of the IPO, we are setting a certain fiscal regime that will meet investors’ requirements,” Nasser said.
Saudi Arabia currently has “ample” spare production capacity and would retain the concession to develop the kingdom’s reserves after the IPO, he said.
Analytics startup AppsFlyer raises $56 million from Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Telekom
Analytics startup AppsFlyer raises $56 million from Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Telekom.
AppsFlyer (screenshot) CEO Oren Kaniel tells Geektime online marketing still needs a better way to measure return on investment, and claims his company can give it to them In the biggest analytics round so far this year, San Fran-based AppsFlyer announced Tuesday it had tripled its investments with a $56 million Series C funding round led by Qumra Capital, Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing (PCI), Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) and Pitango Growth.
Kaniel said at the time that the industry was a “Wild West,” alluding to competitors who were taking advantage of app-producing customers by pushing ads outside of desired target markets which resulted in many clicks but few installs.
“Imagine you’re an advertiser and you’re discussing how much it will cost to basically annoy people?
But actually measuring that value is something different.” He adds that strategy meetings shouldn’t involve an ad network telling a client how much it will need to spend to achieve a certain result, but saying, “Okay, let’s see what we can do for you in terms of real purchases.” Goldman Sachs’ Christian Resch remarked the industry was moving in the direction of “ROI-based campaigns,” somewhat of an odd statement if you are coming from outside the SEO, CPC, and online advertising worlds.
“Many companies still aren’t measuring the right things.
On average I believe [with] 90 percent of the marketing budget you’re throwing money out the window without knowing.
The problem is you don’t know which 10 percent will be the right 10 percent.” The company employs 240 people across 12 offices around the planet, a six-fold workforce increase versus two years ago.
They claim A-lister clients like Pinterest, Adobe, IBM, Waze, Twitter, Alibaba, Yahoo!
(at least until Yahoo!
Indonesia: HR tech startup Ekrut gets seed funding from East Ventures
Indonesia: HR tech startup Ekrut gets seed funding from East Ventures.
Human resource technology company, Ekrut on Tuesday said it has raised an undisclosed seed investment from East Ventures, Indonesia-based early stage VC that invests in companies across Asia and US.
“Ekrut has managed strong revenue growth at 100 percent month-on-month and is aimed to disrupt the headhunting industry in the region,” according to a company announcement.
Ekrut allows employers to get high caliber talent during their hiring process.
With the help of technology, Ekrut’s platform is expected to speed up the whole process of headhunting.
“Traditionally, in headhunting, the whole process until an offer is sent takes about eight weeks.
Ekrut now makes up to over 150 companies that East Ventures provides early stage seed capital mainly to startups that are involved in e-commerce, social games, Software as a service (SaaS) and mobile services.
This leads to the high competition on the skilled engineers.
This is why we curate our talent pool in Ekrut, to ease the pain of our client in finding skilled candidates,” said Ardo Gozal, COO and co-founder of Ekrut.
Also Read: Indonesia based HR startup Talenta gets funding from Fenox, East Ventures Indonesia: HR SaaS company Rekruta raises seed round from East Ventures Indonesia: Gadjian gets funding from Golden Gate, Maloekoe Ventures
BSE sets initial public offering at Rs 805-806 band, may raise Rs 1243 cr
Indian stock exchange BSE’s initial public offering (IPO) of shares next week may raise as much as Rs 1,243 crore ($182 million) for its investors, based on the indicative price range for the sale announced on Monday.
Investors, led by Singapore Exchange, Atticus Mauritius and billionaire George Soros’ Quantum, will be selling up to 15.4 million shares in Asia’s oldest stock exchange in a price range Rs 805-806 a share, according to a public announcement.
BSE’s offering will be the first in Indian markets in 2017, after companies raised about $4 billion in 2016 from initial share sales making it the best year in six.
Indian investment banks Edelweiss and Axis Capital along with Jefferies and Nomura are the global coordinators for the BSE offering.
Motilal Oswal, SBI Capital Markets, SMC Capitals and Spark Capital are the other bookrunners.
Shares of BSE will list on rival National Stock Exchange (NSE) as domestic rules don’t allow self-listing.
Shares, however, could be available for trading on its own platform, under the permitted-to-trade category.
Shares of BSE are expected to list on February 3.
NSE, the country’s largest stock exchange, too, is expected to list soon.
Both NSE and CDSL are currently awaiting Sebi’s nod for their IPOs.
Employee Motivation Has to Be More Than ‘a Pat on the Back’
“What I discovered is that the biggest contributor to demotivation was lack of recognition for extra effort or work exceptionally performed,” Vosk said.
“Once employees realize that all their extra effort and hard work gets them nowhere with the company, they cease to exert any extra effort.
This trend, however, can be reversed with some attention and effort from leaders.
Even a simple, face-to-face thank you shows employees that their effort is not only noticed, but valued.
If possible, sit down with them one on one to find out if they’re still feeling challenged.
The platform uses pulse surveys to keep leaders informed of overall employee motivation levels.
However, when they see how they’re part of a bigger picture, they realize that their day-to-day tasks are meaningful and valuable.
Focusing on accountability “Morale was low [at one of my companies] due to a lack of accountability and ownership.
The team helped redesign the office to their taste, giving them greater ownership and pride in their workplace.” The takeaway: Accountability leads to ownership, which improves the connection between employees and their work.
Employee motivation is something that many companies struggle with.
Instagram Stories Is Likely to Become a Powerful Marketing Tool
Instagram is looking for more ways to monetize the platform and the astounding consumer reach it has.
announced that it is experimenting with video ads within Stories with some of the biggest global advertisers.
People familiar with Facebook and Instagram advertising should find it pretty straightforward when it comes to setting up and paying for video ads inside Stories.
Squires underlined that Facebook’s powerful demographic and interest-based targeting capabilities are definitely a competitive advantage for Instagram.
Initially, the network will only optimize said ads for reach objective.
As of now, given the Stories’ reach, this objective seems like a good start to dip your toes into novel advertising placement.
The company also announced that analytics on Stories will now be included in Business Tools dashboard and will share basic insights, such as reach and impressions.
There is a good chance for a more robust analytics down the road, as it’s estimated that close to 71 percent of U.S. businesses will market on Instagram this year.
These efforts will not go unnoticed since 75 percent of platform users take action after seeing a post.
Plus, although sponsored Stories can include images, video becomes a format of choice not only for advertisers, but consumers as well.
How Flight School was Perfect Training for Entrepreneurship
How Flight School was Perfect Training for Entrepreneurship.
But, today, when I look back, my one year of flight school was better preparation for life as an entrepreneur and small business owner than any MBA class From all my flight school lessons I’ve distilled three major ideas: 1) Preparation prevents problems; 2) Resilience works the problem; and 3) Focus creates calmness.
The checklist Running a business, especially a tech business, is complicated.
Creating a list of all the things that change in one week in any small business is tough because it’s endless.
In flight school, students are taught to expect change.
Student pilots learn to expect such changes and work to stay ahead of any that might come.
Over time and through training, a good pilot becomes comfortable dealing with any change that may occur.
This focus comes in the form of running through sequential steps: Don’t panic, fly the plane, assess the situation and take action.
Resilience creates comfort.
Once these things become natural, you can take on most anything, even a plane without an engine.
‘Nobody Ever Lost a Dollar by Underestimating the Taste of the American Public’
‘Nobody Ever Lost a Dollar by Underestimating the Taste of the American Public’.
After 146 years in business, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will officially take down its giant tent this spring.
What was left unsaid was the fact that the circus has been the subject of protests — about the treatment of those elephants and other performing creatures — from animal rights activists and nonprofits such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) for decades.
Barnum was a 19th century entrepreneur who is remembered as the “Great American Showman.” He is also falsely attributed with coining the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” He held a variety of jobs over the course of his life.
He came from a family of farmers, and early on was the publisher of a newspaper and the producer of a traveling variety act.
He opened Barnum’s American Museum in New York City in 1842.
While Barnum was known for peddling hoaxes, and the museum’s top attractions remain as controversial as ever, he was instrumental in shifting societal mores about the value of pop culture and public entertainment in America.
Related: The CEO of This Toy Company That Made $400 Million So Far This Year Wants You to Do Something You Love It was after the museum burned down in the 1860s that he became a politician.
The Connecticut native served in the state’s legislature for four terms and ran on an anti-slavery, pro-temperance (meaning he was a fan of Prohibition) platform.
When he was 61, he joined forces with James Bailey to create what he called “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Read on for 10 quotes from Barnum about the art of business.
One Great, Free Way to Stay Connected While Traveling the World
One Great, Free Way to Stay Connected While Traveling the World.
Let’s face it.
The company’s drastically price-reduced product line includes LTE hotspots, nationwide hotspots and LTE phones.
From now through January 30th, FreedomPop is offering mobile phone service with its Global 3-in-1 SIM Kit for just $0.99.
This is a collection of their most popular services like data rollover and voicemail.
In other words, this offer allows you to use your phone almost anywhere around the world.
That’s a big bonus for frequent fliers.
The kit is compatible with most unlocked GSM phones from AT&T and T-Mobile.
More deal details include: · Free Basic Plan includes 200 minutes, 500 texts and 200MB · Free unlimited calling & texting between FreedomPop phones · High Speed HSPA+ and Nationwide 3G · Wi-Fi calling and texting from anywhere · You can get a new phone number or keep your own · Free international calling from more than 60 countries · Earn additional free data every month by adding friends · Earn unlimited free data by completing partner offers Right now, FreedomPop service supports Android and Apple devices running Android 4.0+ and iOS 7.0+.
Click here for more information and to take advantage of this deal while it lasts.
Funding Ask & Valuation 101 for founders
Funding Ask & Valuation 101 for founders.
Angel fundraising ecosystem = ask in the range of INR 1 Cr to 9 Cr (US$146,700 to US$ 1.32 million).
A. Valuation and Ask range for 3 hot sectors The last quarter saw funding across 20 sectors out of which Healthcare, Fintech and Enterprise Software emerged as the hottest ones.
Fintech founders that looked to raise funds dilute their startups about 10 to 25 per cent while the successfully funded ones diluted 4 to 15 per cent of their respective companies.
If you’re a fintech founder reading this, you might want to review your fundraise numbers once.
Healthcare We saw a large growth in the number of fundraising startups and successfully funded startups in the market.
The market funded companies in the range of INR 0.7 to 2.8 Cr (US$102,700 to US$411,000) while the investors in healthcare were comfy with valuations ranging from INR 9.8 to 24.5 Cr (US$1.44 million to US$3.59 million).
Enterprise Software Looking at the inbound number of fundraising startups, investor interest and ventures getting funded, it can be concluded that Enterprise Software is definitely an #Emerging sector.
Enterprise Software founders looked to raise between INR 0.25 to 5.36 Cr (US$36,700 to US$786,000) and valued themselves at INR 1 to 25.5 Cr (US$146,700 to US$2.27 million).
Moving on, let’s look at the fundraising ask and valuation numbers for ALL the funded sectors: B. Valuation and ask of fundraising and funded startups
7 Parts of the Job Every Entrepreneur Hates (and How to Never Do Them Again)
Even though most entrepreneurs want to believe that running a business means being “free,” the truth is that company ownership has as many downsides as does working a regular day job.
As an entrepreneur?
You’ll have the benefit of accessing a huge number of resources to help you delegate, outsource or automate the tasks you don’t like, so you can spend more of your time on the ones you do.
Handling minor tasks Plenty of entrepreneurs make the leap to business ownership because they’re good at a particular skill.
Time spent on these activities is time taken away from growing your business, so it’s wise to automate wherever you can.
Some of these services may be helpful: Bench — Outsourced bookkeeping Wagepoint — Automated payroll processing Zapier — Process automation between third-party apps and services Buffer — Social media marketing on autopilot According to Matthew Toren, co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com, “Business automation is especially valuable to entrepreneurs, because your greatest constraint is often on your time.
That said, before you pull the trigger on hiring an assistant, make sure you understand how this person will fit into your team.
Managing a schedule As too many entrepreneurs know, the amount of time you spend managing your schedule can feel equal to the amount of time spent in the meetings you’re trying to book.
Reclaim that time with a scheduling app like Pick.co for scheduling meetings and coordinating travel and work, especially if you’re working with outsourced teams in other time zones.
Content marketing agencies and individual freelance writers can help you, but if you want to preserve your unique tone and style, I’d recommend hiring them to polish articles or outlines you create yourself — not have them start from scratch.
YouTuber Hannah Hart on Starting Something New
YouTuber Hannah Hart on Starting Something New.
In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Bryan Elliott meets with author and YouTube personality Hannah Hart to discuss entrepreneurship and timing.
There are a number of channels to utilize today — YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram — and figuring out which place you would like to distribute your content and reach your ideal audience is important to your success.
As long as you’re authentic, true to yourself and doing things for the right reason, success will come eventually.
Remember — the key is authenticity.
Click play to learn more.
See more episodes on Behind the Brand’s YouTube channel.
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6 Reasons Why Attracting the Right Online Traffic Is Your Top Priority
People simply don’t buy something online because they saw a banner ad over and over.
For this reason, online marketers have started to put less emphasis on getting more traffic and more attention on making a better pitch to the traffic you already have.
Related: If You’ve Got 100 Visitors Per Day to Your Website and You’re Not Making Six Figures, Something Is Horribly Wrong Website testing and optimization operates on the basic assumption that you have the right traffic — that people who visit your site are actually interested in your product.
After auditing more than 2,000 Google AdWords accounts, we’ve discovered that for the average account, 100 percent of conversions and sales can be tracked back to a mere 6 percent of keywords.
If you eliminate the campaigns that are driving the wrong traffic to your site, you can save yourself a lot of money.
If two companies start improving their sites with A/B testing at the same time, but one has already optimized its traffic, then — even if both sites produce the same number of sales — the one with better traffic will always have a higher profit margin.
One day into the test the new page gets a 10 percent conversion rate, while the original page gets only five percent.
Time to stop the test, send all your traffic to the new page and start making money, right?
In general, if your business needs a lot of traffic and conversions to survive, or if your marketing contribution margin is low, then you have a lot to gain from ensuring that your online marketing is producing the highest quality clicks possible.
So, if you really want to optimize your conversion rate, why not start by making sure you have the right traffic on your site?