Author Archives: Contributor
Can An Entrepreneur-in-Residence Give A VC That Extra Edge?
Octopus Ventures, which has been inside a number of early stage tech deals in the UK in recent times, has created a new position of entrepreneur-in-residence and appointed Peter Bance. Bance was formerly Group CEO at fuel cell technology provider, Ceres Power. In this guest post he argues more VCs should have EiRs.
Venture capitalists are great financial engineers. What they don’t know about preference shares probably isn’t worth knowing – and so it should be. Yet it strikes me that this trend for VC houses to be dominated by finance guys is a peculiarly UK and European phenomenon.
Facebook to Marketers, It’s Time for a Click to Action
You Like me...you really Like me. Wait. Maybe you don't really Like me after all. According to our Facebook engagement metrics, only 1% of you actually react when we post. So, to keep the numbers up, our team posts more often, asks questions, runs polls, curates content, introduces more and more contests, and asks for your help to submit your pics and videos as part of our "user-generated" content campaigns. We measure success by the Likes, comments, shares, the number of conversations, and reach. While the Likes are rising, we’re starting to recognize the pattern...I guess we never really defined why you should "Like" us beyond the initial click. We just took for granted that a Like equated to an opt-in.
This general scenario is more common than you may think. That's all about to change however.
Strategic Healthcare Investors’ Investment Thesis
This is the second part in a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare.
Healthcare IT departments have focused much of their attention on the $19 billion portion of the stimulus bill that is providing billions of subsidies for the adoption of electronic health records. While this is logical given the available money, it is paying for health IT systems optimized for the "do more, bill more" model of reimbursement that is rapidly being replaced by a value and outcomes based - a 180 shift in focus.
It’s hard to argue with modernizing the record-keeping in healthcare that isn’t far beyond how medicine was recorded in the time of Hippocrates. Thousands of lives are saved as a result of this modernization (e.g., avoiding frequent, deadly prescription errors). On the other hand, most companies benefiting from the stimulus have two massive gaps that will need to be addressed for health systems to thrive in the new environment they are facing.
The MB&F HM3 Goes To The Moon
No self-respecting gadget lover can deny that MB&F's very high-end artistic wrist machines are overall cool. Most of us can't afford them, but items like this certain stir our ambitious sides. Recently MB&F released a new limited version of their Horological Machine Number 3 (HM3) watch that was designed and produced in collaboration with a boutique Finnish watch maker named Stepan Sarpaneva. This isn't the first time that MB&F (Max Busser & Friends) has collaborated with artists and watch makers on even more limited editions of their already limited watches.
Think You Deserve To Be Called a CEO?
Congratulations. You’re the CEO of a startup. You’re doing the hardest job in business. You’ve raised money from venture capitalists and turned down better-paying jobs elsewhere. You’ve mastered complicated things such as capitalization tables and common things, such as payroll. You’ve fought with competitors, coworkers, friends and even yourself without losing your way or your wits. You’ve inspired others to work beside you each day to make your dream a reality. I salute you.
Now, everybody else calling himself or herself a CEO—listen up, this is for you: stop it. Just stop calling yourself a CEO.
7 New Educational Startups Founded By Minorities in Tech
One of today's most challenging yet promising markets is the educational system. If you want to see startups hungry to disrupt an industry, look no further. Founders are trying to solve the problems plaguing our education system: including reconciling student debt, providing students with the skills required to land a job both before and after graduation, and offering the best course material online regardless of age, location and educational level.
Millions of people are headed to the Internet to learn. And now everyone, from professors to entrepreneurs, are looking to launch a platform to solve the problem of a broken traditional educational system -- And many believe that Silicon Valley will have the answers.
Startups Live & Die by These 5 Street-Smart Laws of Advertising
“Money alone isn't enough to bring happiness . . . happiness [is] when you're actually truly ok with losing everything you have.” - Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Disclaimer: This article’s sole purpose is to address the core principles of advertising in a new and edgy way. This is not for the faint of heart or those highly sensitive to socially charged public issues. So suck it up and buckle up. You’re about to be taken to school (of hard knocks). Class is now in session.
Putting Plans to Work: Best Practices for Hackathon Demo Days
For anyone who enjoys (or has a knack for) planning, organizing a hackathon is not terribly difficult: it’s a matter of understanding your goals, assessing needs, and figuring out how to bridge the two. Naturally, this is much easier said than done.
The most important part of a hackathon, by far, are the demos. Why else -- it’s what makes the event worth attending in the first place. Sponsoring companies wouldn’t offer money to anything that didn’t provide exposure. Developers wouldn’t forsake sleep if they couldn’t show an eager audience the hacks they built overnight.
Pulling off demos at Photo Hack Day and Photo Hack Day 2, for example, has proven to be a continuous learning process, with a much more public (and much less forgiving) learning curve. There’s no need to be a n00b, I’ve done a lot of the screwing up for you.
If Facebook Could Enter China, Here Are Some Of The Hurdles
Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to China back in December 2011 created a storm of speculation on whether Facebook was preparing for a full scale entry into the most populous country in the world. Photos of Zuckerberg visiting Sina’s headquarters in Beijing, leaked by a Sina employee and reports of him meeting with other major Chinese Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba have further fueled rumors that Facebook is looking for a local partner to facilitate its China entry.
Putting aside the rumors and speculation, there is little doubt that Facebook is looking for a way to enter the China market and the real questions lie not in the “if,” but rather the “how,” “when” and whether Facebook will be able to make a success of their China market entry when countless other western Internet juggernauts have bruised and battered themselves against the Great firewall of China.
If Facebook Could Enter China, Here Are Some Of The Hurdles
Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to China back in December 2011 created a storm of speculation on whether Facebook was preparing for a full scale entry into the most populous country in the world. Photos of Zuckerberg visiting Sina’s headquarters in Beijing, leaked by a Sina employee and reports of him meeting with other major Chinese Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba have further fueled rumors that Facebook is looking for a local partner to facilitate its China entry.
Putting aside the rumors and speculation, there is little doubt that Facebook is looking for a way to enter the China market and the real questions lie not in the “if,” but rather the “how,” “when” and whether Facebook will be able to make a success of their China market entry when countless other western Internet juggernauts have bruised and battered themselves against the Great firewall of China.
