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AJ Nelson: It doesn’t take money to find your users, make them happy
(Guest post by AJ Nelson) Running a startup is pretty insane when you don’t have money. You really are forced to focus on what matters. It’s not spending money on Facebook ads, Google AdWords, mobile app install ads, outsourced firms, email marketing—it’s none of that. There’s no silver bullet here that is going to build…
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Meissner: RaceNote needs credibility, face time for success in race world
Founder Friday is a weekly guest post written by a founder who is based in or hails from the Silicon Prairie. Each month, a topic relevant to startups is presented and founders share lessons learned or best practices utilized on that topic. September’s topic is how to market your startup without a full-time marketing department.…
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Kyle Rogers shares what’s worked, what hasn’t to market Knoda
(Guest post by Kyle Rogers) My co-founder James Flexman and I both hail from marketing backgrounds. We worked together at Sporting Kansas City under some brilliant marketers, but promoting a previously unheard of consumer internet company requires very different tactics from those required to promote a sports team. Today we’re happy to share some of…
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Chris Cooley shares how SpiderOak’s distributed team works
SpiderOak started with the intention of being a distributed team. Our core product is built around encryption and the pool of talent that understands it. Cryptonerds, as they refer to themselves, tend to be deeply involved in their trade but the pool is very small. As a developer-heavy organization, it just made sense to start…
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Raymonn Adams: Don’t let managing too many tools steal your valuable time
At some point in time, the amount of tools we used seriously reached more than 20. The very reason we used tools was to gain back time we needed to push out great work. But there are so many amazing options—and so many damn good ones I might add—we wanted to try them all. However,…
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Amanda Morrow shares the tools she uses to design at Change
(Guest post by Amanda Morrow) Now, I’m not really one to obsess over tools. I try to take a pragmatic approach and focus more on what needs to be accomplished, then find the best tool for the task at hand. When others ask me what to use for designing apps or websites, I often suggest…
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These are the 12 tools software dev shop Volano uses to get stuff done
(Guest post by Rod Smith) At Volano Solutions, we help our clients work smarter through our custom workflow software and consulting. These software systems become our clients’ competitive advantage. At any one time, we have 24-plus projects active in the shop and rely on a set of tools to manage the workload. We like to…
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David Arnold: Forget silver bullets, find the tools that work for you
(Guest post by David Arnold) Besides entertainment, the majority of apps – mobile or desktop – at their core are created to make us more efficient and productive. Attaining this goal, however, is largely dependent on having tools that have direct applicability to one’s needs. Fortunately, we live in a world where there’s an app…
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Four years of scaling MindMixer: What’s worked, and what hasn’t
(Guest post by Nick Bowden, MindMixer co-founder and CEO) It feels strange to be considered by some in the “prairie” as the old guard of startups, but we’ll take it. I suppose it means we have done at least one thing right: stay in business. As we approached the birthday and my anniversary, I did…
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Ben Milne shares hard lessons learned building Dwolla in 2013
(Guest post by Ben Milne) 2013 was one of the hardest years of my life. It wasn’t the hardest but it was challenging. The hardest, was one year as a kid when my dad got Parkinson’s, my mom got sick, my mom’s best friend died and the grandparent who helped raise me withered away like…