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Branding for startups: Get strategic and get remembered
How many social media sites do you use today to get more followers, friends, likes and comments for your company? The ever-expanding volume of technology and communication channels makes it all too easy to lose sight of the one thing that will truly move the needle: your brand, and how your target audience perceives it.…
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How to grow your startup without killing your creativity
Creativity is the foundation of startup life. Without it you won’t build something valuable enough to overcome the momentum of the status quo. Creativity is required to build something awesome, that people will line up for to spend their hard earned money. However, to sustain creativity you have to build financial freedom into your startup. Financial…
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7 ways to hire (and retain) a rock star startup team
“What do you want to learn?” I was training a large group of managers in Kansas City during the 2015 World Series, and I started the day with that simple question. A guy wearing his Royals jersey and baseball cap had a quick, unequivocal answer: “I want you to teach me how to be like…
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Raising money for startups: Racehorses vs. Golden Geese
It is easy for investors to get blinded by startup successes. They forget about the failures. Investors see failed startups as the “other” and act as if failure will not happen to them. They see failure as the result of stupidity and incompetence. They forget that people that fail go on to success, and people who succeed…
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UNL’s E-Clinic on the Wild West of securities-based crowdfunding
Federal regulations governing securities-based crowdfunding will become effective later this month. Two graduating law students at UNL’s Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic are advising startups to proceed with caution. “Any brand new regulation, when it doesn’t have a lot of guidance like this does, is sort of like the Wild West,” said James Burton from Omaha, one…
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Theresa Payton, Fortalice: “Security is a team sport”
Theresa Payton, President and CEO of Fortalice, a security, risk and fraud consulting company, thinks that startups need to incorporate security from the very beginning. “Design for the human psyche,” said Payton. “Think about the data [the customers] are going to generate it. Using cloud platforms can sometimes be a better option than you managing your…
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5 factors to consider when setting your startup’s content marketing strategy
For startups, the question is not whether content marketing should be included in your core marketing strategy, but how much of your limited time, money and resources you should put into it. Through my consulting practice, I see many startups “chasing their tail” by writing blog posts, creating graphics for social media and enlisting expensive…
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Thomas Sanchez, Social Driver: “People think of marketing like Zeus throwing lightning bolts”
Thomas Sanchez, CEO of Social Driver, a social media strategy agency based in Washington, DC, thinks that marketing is still learning the lessons that technologists already understand. “The way that marketing worked for the last 50 or 100 years is actually the opposite of how people have lived their lives for thousands of years,” said Sanchez. “People…
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Chance Irvine, Proxibid: “The biggest hurdle to the cloud is belief”
Chance Irvine, Director of IT Operations and Infrastructure at Proxibid and Business Development Executive at Midwest Cloud Computing, doesn’t think that the cloud is the perfect solution to every business IT problem. “I think the cloud is for everyone, but I don’t think the cloud is for everything you have,” said Irvine. Nevertheless, many companies…
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Dustin Tauer, Easel Solutions: “The browser will become an application container”
Dustin Tauer, VP of Training and Development with Easel Solutions, expects rapid innovation for web-based applications in coming years, due to two factors: improved web standards and the rise of open source. “That’s the model that works. Be open about what you’re working on,” said Tauer. “That’s what leads to this rapid snowball effect of growth.” With…