As you start reading, I’d like you to consider forwarding this email to others in your network, promise? If you’re
a VC, forward it all your portfolio companies. YES, all;- why be selective? If you’re a startup, send it to your customers, partners and internally. Let it go viral. I don’t mind. There is nothing like this email and
Startup Management (SUM) throughout the
Tech Startup world, so let’s get the word out. I know I’ve got your mindshare, so now let’s get SUM market share.SUM =
Great articles users submit + Original stuff we write, + Posts from the Top 100
Tech Bloggers. And it’s complemented by a Library of content (50 categories), a Wiki of terms, and links to curated Videos and Books. It’s the single best destination for Tech startups and grownups to keep learning on the job and on the blogs.
Startup Management is only one-week old, so I’m trying this new
Email, a Week-end Roundup from the past week. It’s the crème de la crème from my personal curation of hundreds of weekly articles. This is a subset of what’s on the website, and it’s organized by topic. If I curate the best, write the rest, then you’ll need to read this fest.
CultureWhy it’s important to
Create a Culture that Drives Success, Not One That Makes You Feel Good, so here’s the
Ultimate Guide to a Startup Culture’s Evolution to get you there. And if
Google is Retaining Top Talent Through ‘Employee Entrepreneurial Culture, so can you.
Marketing
Do you know
The 7 Heavenly Habits of Inspired Inbound Marketers or the
Seven marketing mistakes most startups make? If you want more dynamite Marketing presentations, check out the
ones from this week’s MozCon.
Sales
Startup Sales is Hard, But Hiring a Successful First Sales Rep is Harder, so you need to know When to Sell vs. When to Market to Customers.
Customer Discovery
How do You Discover What Customers Really Want? Wait, don’t fall in the A/B Test Trap, so Ask Yourself the 6 Essential Questions before Running that A/B Test.
Product
Here’s why it is foolish to Push for the “Perfect” Product.
Women in Tech
It’s incredible that Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year, and here’s the story of a woman tech entrepreneur from Mumbai.
Scaling the Organization
Growth solves a lot of issues, but it also creates problems. There is nothing wrong inDeveloping Middle Managers at Startups, because your company will face 5 growing pains when transitioning from chaotic startup to accelerating midsize.
User Experience
Do you Experience Rot? And Is Your Website Guiding Customers To Lowest Effort Resolutions Paths?
Customer Communications
It’s a fact that Entrepreneurs Face Serious Communications Barriers. Be careful how you put your message out: 8 (Easily Avoidable) Ways to Lose Your Prospect’s Trust. Take a refresher on how to Grow Your Business Smarter with Conversion Rate Optimization, and give your users a Seductive Hook, If you can Find it Every Time. Here’s how to create a Create a Useful Value and Good Proposition.
B2B Marketing
The Convergence of marketing and technology is an ongoing trend, along with the consumerization of the enterprise; so now you can Build a B2B Loyalty Program With B2C Tactics. And find out How Marketing Can Deliver Qualified Leads, because Email Open Rates Continue to Rise. Are you new to Email Marketing? Find out How to Plan Your Lifecycle Email Marketing Plan.
Competition
Understanding your real competitors is important. Here are Lessons From Successful Entrepreneurs on How to Beat the Competition.
Failing
Yes, it’s the other F word. Is there a “right” way to fail? Don’t let it get to your head. Head Games: Ego and Entrepreneurial Failure and How One Startup Had Millions In Funding And 100,000 Users — And Still FAILED.
Founder to CEO
You aren’t born knowing how to be a CEO, but you need to Stop being a founder, and start being a CEO. But remember, There are No Shortcuts to Intelligent Founder-CEO Transition. Why Organization is the key Character Trait and Skill of the Successful CEO, and how Drew Houston’s morphed from hacker to hyper-growth CEO. Sometimes, as you experience growth challenges, you have to Divide and Conquer.
Branding
You need to Build Brand Awareness First – Distribution Second, and don’t forget about branding when you’re doing online demand generation, because Growth Hacking is a Bridge to Marketing, so Make Marketing the Third Leg to Success, After Product and Engineering.
Quotes of the week
“I’m more worried about the billion or so people on Facebook every day, versus the 2 million people watching Fox News.” – Jon Klein, President of CNN
“Hi, I’m Chris Schultz. You don’t have to be in Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley has to be in you.”
About Startup Management
Startup Management is a single destination for the best content on management, strategy, organizational and marketing topics, including business models, revenue models and go-to-market approaches for startups and grownups. We mix curated, aggregated and original content, a tagged library of knowledge, a wiki, and links to videos and books, allowing you to quickly find what you need to know on-demand, on-the-job, and on the blogs.
What are we working on, next?
A single RSS feed for the whole site, an improved homepage, more articles in the Library, and a better mobile experience.
We migrated to a dedicated virtual server this week-end, so no more php memory errors, yeah! Thanks to AVC’er Dale Allyn who volunteered to help me figure things out.
That SUMs it up! Don’t forget to FORWARD —-> VIRAL is the way to Grow. If this email touched you, let it touch others.
William Mougayar
Founder & Chief Curator
Startup Management
Fred Wilson wrote about an AVC regular William Mougayar is building an education oriented community for entrepreneurs called Startup Management (SUM). I wanted to bring attention to this aspect of a Startup, I have written about this before Startups are not a small form of a big company. The management of things in a startup require different sequencing than in a traditional company. This sequencing is not rocket science but harder because you need to figure out what you are doing makes sense i.e creates value to someone and make sure you have enough time to make sure that it pays for itself. There is very visual depiction of this, I say that doing a startup is like jumping off a tall building and making your parachute while you are falling and hope and pray that the building was tall enough or your parachute making skills are so great that you can make the parachute fast enough before you hit the ground. This analogy is visual and clearly shows what every entrepreneur feels when they are building a company, it is not all glamor, glory and pride, it is a lot of hours of blood, sweat and tears. Given that everyone acknowledges that this is difficult would it not be great if we could tap into a resource that gives us the roadmap? like what Fred has been doing with his MBA Monday Series, or Brad Feld has been doing with his Term Sheets series or Mark Suster on Sales and Marketing or building a B2B startup. I am sure there are many resources like this and Startup Management is going to SUM all of this together (did you get the pun?). So this blog post, I am requesting everyone to sign up for the Startup Management and get a curated list of topics from around the web about Startup Management. Fred, Brad and Mark are the first ones to acknowledge that what they share is only a tip of the wisdom that is out there on the internet and I am really happy to see that all this is aggregated by SUM. To give you a glimpse of what the content is going to be I am reposting the first digest that I got in my inbox:
Thank you Bala. Nice coverage. I appreciate it.
I missed seeing this earlier. We should connect and speak on the phone next week?
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