How One Seed-Level Investor Makes His Bets
How One Seed-Level Investor Makes His Bets.
One thing that is integral to Canada building a tech supercluster akin to Silicon Valley is seed-stage funding.
It takes a lot of guts and foresight to bet on a startup that, in some cases, just has an idea on the drawing board.
But that one angel investment could become the next unicorn company.
According to the National Angel Capital Organization, early-stage investment in Canada topped $130 million in 2015, up nearly 50% from the previous year.
Bloomberg TV’s Anthony Lacavera speaks to Ameet Shah, Partner at Golden Venture Partners, which invests at the seed stage to get companies to the next level.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Trump Purposely Ignored 4 Golden Rules of Sales and Marketing
Trump Purposely Ignored 4 Golden Rules of Sales and Marketing.
The president-elect regularly employs these tactics in his non-political pursuits, but when it came to his presidential run, he deliberately put them aside.
Today’s sales and marketing pros are concerned that if they employ FUD, they might appear manipulative, untrustworthy and unprofessional — which can be costly to the long-term health of their employer’s brand.
In the general election, however, Hillary Clinton was the target of an ongoing FUD barrage from Trump’s camp about her health, ethics, demeanor, honesty and competence.
Once prospective buyers express interest in the solution(s) that you provide, you must offer detailed information that expands upon and clarifies the initial pitch to stimulate potential purchases.
In his interviews with the media and on his website, however, Trump didn’t offer many details about his positions on campaign topics.
Such detail wasn’t necessary to win voters over as committed customers.
He also showed that his customers (prospective voters) would embrace it.
While the Republican establishment, the media and the candidates themselves cried foul, Trump didn’t let up.
Trump realized that to gain voters’ trust and support — and their votes — a powerful pitch that directly addressed their needs and challenges would close the deal.
What Kinds of Companies Will Go Public in 2017?
What Kinds of Companies Will Go Public in 2017?.
Deciding to bring your company public is a big step that can take months of planning.
CB Insights, a firm that analyzes tech trends, predicts that 369 companies could have IPOs this year.
Individually, the businesses in this IPO pipeline have raised an average of $262 million to this point.
Seventy-three percent of the businesses in the IPO pipeline are internet companies.
Mobile and telecommunications is second, but that category has 39 companies on the list compared to the top spot’s 269.
The tech companies most likely to seek IPOs this year, according to CB Insights, are Utah-based software company Qualtrics, Zuora, a company that makes software for business subscriptions, meal kit delivery service Blue Apron, security software maker Okta, and Pluralsight, a company based in New Mexico that makes online video tutorials for tech skills.
Rounding out the top five are Utah, with 11 companies, and Texas with 10.
The report found that that the venture capital firm that most had its finger on the pulse was Andreessen Horowitz.
The firm, which has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Buzzfeed and Facebook, had the highest number of IPO pipeline companies in its portfolio that were valued at $1 billion or higher in 2016.
5 Big Challenges Digital Marketers Faced in 2016
As marketers close out the year and consider strategies for 2017, here’s a look back at five of the biggest obstacles they faced over the last year.
Today, more than 92 percent of marketers collect information on customers or prospects.
During this past year, 2016, technology’s ease of use has become a much bigger focus for the marketing industry.
This is because of the complexity in the customer journey.
This has been the focus of many software providers this year.
Advertisers, agencies and marketers want more platform simplicity from vendors.
This past year, 2016, was also the year of Pokémon Go.
If [marketers] have this information, they can deliver more relevant, direct ad experiences.” From traditional channels like email to more cutting-edge platforms like AR, VR and 360-degree video, location data powers insights on how to best engage customers in a more personalized way through mobile.
More than 50 percent of marketers are using five to 10 technology platforms.
It’s up to advertisers to determine the best strategies for handling these hurdles in 2017.
8 Steps to Get Your Product Successfully Reviewed by an Influencer
8 Steps to Get Your Product Successfully Reviewed by an Influencer.
Influencer marketing is a hot area – and rightfully so.
These people – be it bloggers, experts or super fans — are considered credible and provide a more authentic experience.
Consumers feel like they are getting an inside look, and they are part of an elite, special group.
But how to get on these influencer’s radar is tricky.
In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Mark Fidelman discusses how to get influencers to review your product.
From finding the right influencer to giving guidelines, there are a number of steps entrepreneurs should take to ensure the influencer experience is a success.
To learn more about influencer marketing, click play.
We provide expertise and opportunities to accelerate brand growth and effectively monetize video and audio content distributed across all digital platforms for the business genre.
EN is partnered with hundreds of top YouTube channels in the business vertical and provides partners with distribution on Entrepreneur.com as well as our apps on Amazon Fire, Roku and Apple TV.
The Startup That Helps Green Startups Clinch Deals
The Startup That Helps Green Startups Clinch Deals.
SunEdison founder Jigar Shah believes the key to unlocking the $1 trillion a year he estimates is needed over the next decade to wean the world from fossil fuels will be millions of projects worth $1 million, rather than thousands of $1 billion ones.
San Francisco-based Generate has built a portfolio of projects worth about $500 million over two years.
“Our job is to deliver these new technologies to people who can use them.” Generate lined up funding for a water treatment system at a plant Lagunitas Brewing is expanding in Azusa, Calif. Like all beer brewers, Lagunitas produces a lot of what’s called “high-strength waste,” which municipal water treatment plants often can’t handle.
“We spent two years vetting treatment plants of every type, and nothing was scalable,” says CFO Leon Sharyon.
The whole process takes place in a tricked-out shipping container.
Sharyon figures the brewer will save about $1 million a year in utility bills.
Equipment leases on everything from solar rooftops to automobiles to software rose 1.3 percent in the U.S. in 2016, to more than $1 trillion, according to estimates from the Equipment Leasing & Finance Association.
Says Friedman: “Jigar finds the projects, Scott gets the funds, and I’m in the middle trying to figure out which ones work.” CEO Jacobs says the biggest attraction for potential customers is that his firm removes some of the worry that comes with buying into new technology.
“With Cambrian, we’re down to 2.5 gallons.
Schneider National Inc. files registration statement for initial public offering
(The Trucker file photo) GREEN BAY, Wis. — True to their word, Schneider National Inc. and the Schneider Family said today that the Company has filed a registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relating to a proposed initial public offering of shares of the Company’s Class B common stock.
The company is applying to list its Class B common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “SNDR.” The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined, Schneider representatives stated.
“Objectives of the planned transaction are to facilitate continuity of controlling ownership of long-standing, independent, and professional, corporate governance structure,” a Schneider news release had stated.
Rather than selling most of the family-owned company on the open market, a move that typically raises a large amount of capital but can sometimes lead to the loss of controlling interest by the family, Schneider will sell a lesser amount of the company’s shares, said Noël Perry, trucking and transportation expert at FTR, a Bloomington, Indiana analyst firm, in October.
“It’s only a partial IPO,” Perry said.
The Schneider family and the board of directors believe the planned transaction is in the best interests of Schneider, its associates, customers, and shareholders.” The truckload carrier is in a good position to raise capital yet retain family control and keep their management team in place, Perry said.
This is a good time to sell stock and to get some money.
Morgan Stanley, UBS Investment Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are acting as active joint book-running managers of the proposed offering, and Citigroup, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo Securities are acting as passive joint book-running managers, Schneider management stated.
The Trucker staff can be reached to comment on this article at editor@thetrucker.com.
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Check Out the Amazing Gifts Bill Gates Sent to This Reddit User
5 Keys to Entrepreneurial Success in 2017
If you are ready to experience entrepreneurial success in 2017, be prepared to work.
The other day I overheard a business owner say, “Hopefully, luck will be on my side next year and business will take a turn for the better.” Sadly, that way of thinking isn’t going to help him one bit — if I were to make a bet, I would let it ride on him failing again.
Don’t dwell on them or waste time looking back.
My plate is beyond full — it’s overflowing, and if I don’t show up every day ready to give 100 percent it’s going to be a disaster.
Learning to delegate responsibilities was one of the reasons my marketing agency succeeded, while past ventures failed.
I would rather work 18-hour days and try to do it all rather than delegate to someone capable of handling the tasks.
Hire freelancers and virtual assistants to handle simple, yet time-sucking tasks.
Learn and improve daily.
There is no better time to start a business than right now.
Promise yourself that you will not quit, no matter how difficult the journey becomes and the odds that you succeed improve drastically.
Achieve Great Results With ‘Self Leadership – 12 Powerful Mindsets & Methods to Win in Life & Business’
Achieve Great Results With ‘Self Leadership – 12 Powerful Mindsets & Methods to Win in Life & Business’.
Entrepreneur has an affiliate partnership with TradePub so we may get a share of the revenue from your purchase.
Do you ever feel that life is a test for which you didn’t study or prepare?
Does work sometimes feel like a jigsaw puzzle and you are not sure if you have all the pieces?
Whether in life, love, health or career, wouldn’t it be great to have an instruction manual that ensures success?
Grab your free copy of ‘Self Leadership’ to get all the strategies you need to win in life and business.
Self-leadership is about being in the driver’s seat and living authentically.
Once you read this book your life and career will not be magically transformed.
You have to apply it.
(Offer expires 2/1/17) Disclosure: This is brought to you by the Entrepreneur Partner Studio.
Facebook Says Government Requests for Account Data Have Risen 27 Percent
Facebook Says Government Requests for Account Data Have Risen 27 Percent.
Facebook Inc. said on Wednesday that government requests for user account data rose 27 percent in the first half of 2016 compared to the second half of last year, with U.S. law enforcement agencies topping the list.
Government requests for account data globally rose to 59,229 from 46,710 and more than half contained a non-disclosure order that prohibited the social networking website from notifying users.
Requests for content restriction, the number of items restricted for violating local laws, decreased by 83 percent from the second half of 2015, Facebook said in a blog post.
The Paris attacks in November last year elevated the number of content restriction requests.
Facebook for the first time provided information about government requests to preserve relevant user account information.
The company received 38,675 preservation requests for 67,129 accounts.
(Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta) Latest News and Headlines from Reuters
Why Yahoo’s Secret Scanning of Emails May Be a Terrifying Sign of What’s to Come
Nokia Sues Apple for Allegedly Violating 32 Technology Patents
Nokia Corp. said on Wednesday it had filed a number of lawsuits against Apple Inc. for violating 32 technology patents, striking back at the iPhone maker’s legal action targeting the one-time cellphone industry leader a day earlier.
Nokia’s lawsuits, filed in courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim, and Munich, Germany, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, cover patents for displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets and video coding. “Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies portfolio in 2011, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple’s products,” Nokia said in a statement.
Apple on Tuesday had taken legal action against Acacia Research Corp. and Conversant Intellectual Property Management Inc., accusing them of colluding with Nokia to extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly from Apple.
Acacia and Conversant did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Nokia was not immediately available to comment on the Apple lawsuit.
He had worked as Apple’s director of patent licensing and strategy from 2009 to 2013, the latter half of his tenure overlapping with the lawsuits against Samsung.
Similarly, Conversant, which claims to own thousands of patents, announced last week that a Silicon Valley jury had awarded one of its units a $7.3 million settlement in an infringement case against Apple involving two smartphone patents.
But this year, Microsoft sold its Nokia-feature phone business to a new company called HMD Global.
Nokia agreed to a 10-year licensing deal with HMD, which continues to market low-cost Nokia phones and plans to introduce new Nokia smartphone models next year.
(By Eric Auchard and Jussi Rosendahl; Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker) Latest News and Headlines from Reuters
Local Startup Communities Are Helping Build the National Tech Landscape
Local Startup Communities Are Helping Build the National Tech Landscape.
Enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and the steep cost of living in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area generally is stengthening startup communities in unexpected places.
The tech meetup in Santa Cruz, Calif., has members focused on building next-generation transportation technologies.
A meetup for Hudson Valley developers, entrepreneurs, designers, startups, and “anyone interested in technology” boasts big-time sponsors like AT&T, and O’Reilly Media.
Tech Talent South, a New Orleans meetup, offers “Kids Code Mondays,” where children ages 9-13 congregate for an afternoon of different coding topics each week.
Hawaii Governor David Ige was the guest at the HNL Newtech meetup in Honolu recently hosted the state’s governor, Go Ige.
Orange County, Calif., is often overshadowed by neighboring tech hubs Santa Monica and Silicon Valley but it is building an innovation footprint, as well.
Director on Elon Musk’s Amazing ‘I Can’t Come to Work Today’ Excuse What’s most exciting about Orange County is that startup incubators and workspaces like Eureka Building and UCI Applied Innovation are serving as home for large entrepreneurial communities.
“The group wouldn’t exist without local support from businesses that are making a serious impact in the community,” said Decker.
And it’s true for each of these emerging, regional tech communities.
Bootstrapping the Smartest Way
It took three years for our product to generate enough revenue to sustain the company on its own.
The approach I took to sustain my bootstrapped company not only paved the way to success, but it also helped me understand the market in unique ways.
That led me down the path of developing custom solutions for small business clients as a consultant.
When I began developing my online form builder product the deep insights I had into the needs of small business owners shaped the product and the directions I took the company.
At that point, I was getting paid to develop the product even further while gaining deeper knowledge about the customers and the market.
While working with your target market for small jobs, you are also networking at the same time for your startup.
You are building relationships with your clients.
Can you guess how he bootstrapped the business?
Spend meaningful time studying your market and finding ways to get paid by your target customers.
At the same time continue to build and refine your products and company.
Construction safety start-up raises $590,000 seed funding round led by Sydney Angels
Construction safety start-up raises $590,000 seed funding round led by Sydney Angels.
Mitch Harmer Construction site management platform, SignOnSite, has announced a seed funding raise of $590,000 as it looks to take on Australia’s $207 billion construction market.
Launched in mid-2016, SignOnSite has already reached impressive milestones, with $1.6 billion worth of active projects across Australia and New Zealand currently under management on its platform – which is taking manual compliance requirements online to overhaul site safety, attendance and evacuation processes.
The recent round led by Sydney Angels raised over half a million dollars in total, with $260,000 contributed by members of the angel investor group and Sydney Angels Sidecar fund.
Sydney Angels investor and Senior Consultant with engineering firm WSP|Parsons Brinckerhoff, James Smithers, said that mobile technology is fast enabling the construction industry to innovate its manual processes.
What exactly does SignOnSite do?
SignOnSite is a site management platform created to aid in safety on construction sites.
When a worker shows up on site, they can bypass the line at the sign-in register and get straight to work, relieving the management team from traditional paper systems that clog up time and office space.
It was born out of necessity.
We look forward to adding more innovative features to our platform that will help the construction industry cut costs by streamlining traditional processes, with the purpose of creating safe and efficient environments.” Harmer added.
Why You Should be Telling Your Team to Get a Good Night’s Sleep Every Night
Why You Should be Telling Your Team to Get a Good Night’s Sleep Every Night.
In June 2010, Adam Mansbach sent out a simple post meant more as catharsis than promotion: “Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, Go the — to Sleep.”
Bedtime, your business and your body.
Why, exactly, does bedtime matter so much for entrepreneurs?
For example, if you sleep for four hours, three nights in a row, your sleep debt is at least nine hours.
Make it a matter of business.
The only way to right our sleeping wrongs is to start taking sleep seriously as a matter of business.
First, you can start by spreading the good news of sleep within your organization.
Adam Mansbach was right but his imperative needs to be more than just the occasional cry of desperate parents.
Because the productivity hack you need most has nothing to do with what you do at work and everything to do with what you did the night before.
How My Parents Groomed Me to Be a Successful Entrepreneur
Most American kids go to school for nine months out of the year.
My dad showed me that it wasn’t about the money; it was about the value of learning.
Because my parents showed me how to improve, my high school GPA was 28 percent higher than that of my high school peers.
But there was one thing my parents were happy to spend money on: learning!
So, the obvious lesson is that not many kids will grow up to become professional athletes.
My parents taught me critical thinking.
We learned critical thinking by solving our own problems.
My sister, Amee Shah, is now a parent, and she’s doing the same thing with her kids that our parents did with us.
The kid was learning problem-solving skills all right.
She would carry a folder stuffed with coupons when we went grocery shopping, and she started a daycare business out of our home.