The Tech Ranch Austin community revolves around your freedom to leverage the expertise and wisdom of the entrepreneurs that work here. These entrepreneurs have the expertise that they deliver conversations weekly in a Pioneer Program or Venture Forth Jam Session.
Failure to move fast early enough in the startup cycle is a challenge that has kept many promising technologies from ever making it to the market. Venture capital and angel investment will create a cushion, but these days financial capital cannot invest in high-risk ventures at the earliest stages. This means that the fate of the technology entrepreneur is finding places that provide the methodology to move with great speed.
Tech Ranch Austin makes increasing amounts of social capital available – significantly reducing financial costs faced by the early stage technology entrepreneurs.
Senator Dodd's Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010" passed the Senate Banking Committee on March 22nd and the bill will now move to the Senate floor. If this bill gets passed there will be some serious repercussions for the start up ecosystem - entrepreneurs, angels and VC investors. Its time to take action NOW.
I recently wrote an Entrepreneur Evangelist post on WorkingPoint called Canines, Trains and Really Great Parties. The post was a response to an article by Daniel Kehrer of Business.com about the new trends of hobbyists-turned-entrepreneurs, and their increasingly noteworthy impact on the small business space.
In reading the original article, the notion specifically reminded me of three friends who have been on this same hobby-turned-entrepreneur journey, in some cases for several years before they even realized it.
There is nothing harder for a non-salesperson than building a sales pipeline. In Bagging the Elephant I highlight a post about a recent event in NYC, in which entrepreneurs discussed how to build strong enough relationships with larger businesses in order to be taken seriously enough to close deals with them.
This is part of a much broader issue, though, and it's one that is a constant struggle for most small businesses: how do we keep new sales coming in the door, when that's not our background?
In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the November round of layoffs at several big companies, including RealNetworks, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Time Warner / AOL, Sprint Nextel, Electronic Arts and Pfizer. Of course, part of what brought these to my attention is that a dear friend of mine got caught in the pre-holidays cut-backs that also took place at Adobe.
Even worse, however, was the fact that my friend loved working at Adobe. It was the first time she'd worked for a large company, so some of the perks that big company people take for granted -- training, resources, perks, etc. -- were all relatively new to her, and she was taking advantage of as many of them as possible.
I have recently started writing a blog series as part of my work with online small business management client, WorkingPoint.
Aside from the fact that I think WorkingPoint has the best solution for small businesses, the reason I really like this series is because WorkingPoint is really making a strong statement about being a true advocate for small businesses.
Jonas talks with Brian Massey - the Conversion Scientist. They discuss the art and science of turning browsers into buyers.
Let's be honest, a great business plan alone is not sufficient for you to land a deal but it sure helps! For a start-up that is going through the fund raising process the first impression of the company is often conveyed by the business plan. So how do you as an entrepreneur make sure that your business plan makes it past the first screen?
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