Startup Thinking for the Long Term

Wade Foster from Zapier asks the question: “Are You Really Sure You’re Ready to Start a Startup?”

Look back at any 7 year period in your life. You can probably count several major life events in any 7 year period. So when you begin a startup, make sure to think long term. Will you still want to do this if a family member gets sick? Will you want to do this if you have kids? Will you want to do this when _____ happens? If the answer is “no”, then you’ve saved yourself a lot of unnecessary heartache. You should seriously think twice before starting your own startup.

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Fit Radio Gets Funded to Power Your Workout

FIT Radio launched its Android and iPhone applications in July of 2011. Now, with a successful Fundable campaign, this Startup is reportedly all set to develop a set of improvements.

It takes a lot of time and energy to search for and download music for your workout. What you typically listen to throughout the day may not be what keeps you moving at the gym. Other streaming music apps give you one song at a time and have no control over BPMs (beats per minute) – Pandora, for example, will give you a fast, upbeat song but it will be followed by a slow, drawn out song that in no way matches the rhythm of the song you just previously heard. Spotify is just like iTunes, it lets you decide what you want to hear. However, flipping through songs can be very distracting when you’re trying to reach your goal of a seven-minute mile.

Video: the Crowdfunding Success Pattern – MaRS Best Practices

In this video, Brian Meece from RocketHub explains why crowdfunding is the foundation of the new economy. He also uses case studies to examine how startups can leverage and maximize this funding model.

Tours of Duty for the Everyman Entrepreneur

Are today’s workers entrepreneurs by nature? Over at Inc. Magazine, Jana Kasperkevic writes that Millennials have disrupted the labor market, making it acceptable to job hop and complete “tours of duty” until a better offer comes along.

With loyalty no longer a part of the equation, being an employee in the modern workplace isn’t all that different from being an entrepreneur. Uncertainty and volatility is part of the game. There’s no guarantee of a promotion or pay raise.

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Engineering a High Performance Startup with Lifestyle Tweaks

In this podcast, Robb Wolf, author of the NY-Times Bestselling “The Paleo Solution” chats with Tech Cocktail on how simple dietary and lifestyle tweaks can create a more productive work environment.

Guy Kawasaki on What it Takes to Make Your Startup Succeed

In this video from the Google Science Fair 2013 Hangout On Air, Guy Kawasaki discusses what it takes to make a Startup successful.

Video: Leveraging Lean Analytics With Advanced Social Media Monitoring

In this video, CRM Software analyst Ashley Verrill discusses “Lean Analytics” with author and veteran entrepreneur Alistair Croll.

Lean Analytics is the dashboard for every stage of your business, from validating whether a problem is real, to identifying your customers, to deciding what to build, to positioning yourself favorably with a potential acquirer. It can’t force you to act on data–but it can put that data front and center, making it harder for you to ignore, and preventing you from driving off the road entirely.

Creating an Authentic Startup Brand

Over at the Piston Cloud Computing Blog, Gretchen Curtis discusses how important the relationship between brand and company culture is at Startup time.

When you’re at a startup, your brand will largely be communicated through your founders and outward-facing employees. So, before you dive into logo creation, take a bit of time to make sure that the brand you are creating can be reasonably carried out with your existing team. Got a CEO that only wears hoodies and flip flops? Maybe that very corporate-looking enterprise website isn’t a great idea. Got an humorously edgy and sarcastic founding team? Maybe the light, peppy and cheerful website copy isn’t exactly right for you. Sure, the visual design might initially attract the customers you want, but they will just as quickly turn away when they detect a dissonance between your visual design and behavior. The lack of trust this dissonance will create will be so subtle that it will happen without you or them even noticing.

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Site Ai Provides Automated Insights from Your Web Analytics

Over at TechCrunch, Anthony Ha writes that Automated Insights’ new product called Site Ai pulls data from existing systems such as Google Analytics and then summarizes that data into normal sentences.

With a Site Ai summary, you shouldn’t have to do too much thinking. As the company name implies, all of the summaries are automatically generated by Automated Insights’ technology, not people. Allen told me that’s a big challenge: “Turning data into text is difficult because it requires marrying two skills that traditionally don’t play well with each other: programming and writing.” The reason Allen said he can do it is because he has a background in both technology (he worked at Cisco and has degrees from MIT in computer science), but also in writing (he’s the author of a number of books published by O’Reilly).

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Lively System Helps you Keep Tabs on the Elderly

WFLA-TV Newschannel 8

In this video, beta customers try out the Lively System, a new Startup that offers the ability to monitor the well-being of elderly relatives through the use of sensors placed in the home.

Instead of always telling your family that you’re fine, Lively lets you show them. It’s an activity sharing experience. Not ‘big brother’ monitoring. You’re in control of how you want to stay independent and connected. And sharing your activity lets your family notice the first signs of any change in your normal routine that makes you and them feel safer.