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Help Us Raise Funds To Make The Founder Labs Documentary

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By Resmi Arjunanpillai (VP Marketing, Founder Labs) Sponsor an educational video series from Founder Labs and get one hour of 1:1 time with startup luminaries and VCs like Steve Blank, Eric Ries and Ann Miura-Ko: Details here. Founder Labs is a pre-incubator focused on the first phase of launching a mobile startup. In five weeks, Founder Labs participants build a founding team, validate an idea and create a working prototype of their product, creating successful companies like Spoondate and Cake Health.

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Networking Is Not Just For Computers

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By Sophia Perl (Producer, PicPredict) People underestimate the power of networking within your workplace and out and about. At the workplace, people like to work for/with others who they respect and like (note: I used both respect and like, like alone is not enough). This is the same outside the workplace. You don’t lose anything by networking (well maybe time), you only gain by expanding your networking.

I’ll give you an example of when I unknowingly networked with someone and this incident sparked a 10+ year mentoring relationship with me as the mentee. When I first

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Building a Team for Social Gaming Startup Red Seraphim

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By Natasha Wallace (Co-Founder & Art Director, Red Seraphim) In my role as an art director in a small social gaming startup called Red Seraphim, I am faced with two large tasks: driving the artistic feel for our first title, and forming the team that realizes that vision. As we approach our game’s launch date, the latter has become more pressing, if not a bit urgent.

I imagine that many entrepreneurs are facing the same issue as they meet their production milestones, and that they ultimately wonder if they will compromise quality of product for a more diluted workforce. While my artistic acumen was gained mainly

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11 Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Your Customer Research

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By Sheba Najmi (Participant, Founder Labs) In Part 1, I had touched on various challenges that beset qualitative user research... which brings me to some how-to's and good practices to help with most customer research.

11 tips for getting the most out of your customer research:

  1. Define your goal thoughtfully. First off, it’s important to be clear on what your goal is for any user research at hand. If you’re a typical aspiring entrepreneur, you likely have a hypothesis in mind about you hitting upon a potentially game-changing solution to some problem.... Read More...
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Join Tech Cocktail in NYC on September 21

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By Jen Consalvo (Co-Editor & COO, Tech Cocktail) While kids everywhere are returning to school and the weather turns that perfect degree of comfortable (assuming no more hurricanes), we’ll be hosting another Tech Cocktail mixer event to showcase local, early stage startups to a fantastic crowd of tech enthusiasts. We’re super excited to be working with General Assembly, where we’ll be hosting this event on September 21st.

Women 2.0 members save 10% on tickets to TechCocktail NYC when you register here.

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Save Pier 38, A Collaborative Workspace for Startups and VC

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By Patricia de Llano Colado (Director of Business Meeting, Opinno) Pier 38 is home to over 150 employees and 40 small businesses. The space is vitally important -- not just because current businesses, but Pier 38 generates over 20 *new* businesses a year in San Francisco. It is the home of multiple business incubators, a collaborative workspace to share ideas and experience, and generator of many new jobs. Instagram, 99 designs, True Ventures, Polaris Ventures are but a few of the companies at Pier 38.

On September 6th, the Port Authority issued notices to evict all tenants from Pier 38, due to safety issues.

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Obama’s New Patent Law: What Does It Mean For Your Startup?

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By Heather N. Shafer (Intellectual Property Attorney, Independent) With a swift stroke of his pen, President Obama signed the America Invents Act last week that will overhaul the U.S. patent system. What should be of interest to startups and entrepreneurs everywhere is the transition of U.S. patent law to a “first-to-file” system.

Currently, the U.S. is the only developed country on this planet to grant patents to the “first-to-invent.” Under the first-to-invent system, there are several procedures within both the Patent Office and the Federal Courts that allow an inventor to assert prior rights due to prior invention over patents that have an earlier filing date

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Fearless Entrepreneur Brings WomenRock to the Silicon Valley

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By Starla Sireno (Co-Founder & CEO, Fearless Women Entrepreneur Network) We at Fearless are thrilled to partner with The Prudential Insurance Company of America to bring WomenRock -- an interactive evening event -- to the women of the Silicon Valley this Wednesday, September 21, 2011 from 5pm to 9pm. The event will bring together innovators, influencers and icons in a TED-like format to discuss innovations in health, wealth, and technology amid a changing digital world.

Keynotes will be presented from inspirational tech entrepreneurs Megan Casey, who co-founded Squidoo

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How to Build Collaborative Relationships with a Startup

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By Mika Herrera (Founder, Apparel Dream) Two months ago, I came to the Silicon Valley without knowing anyone and eager to start my 99designs project for fashion called Apparel Dream. Right from the start, I believed that one of the most important things was to start building relationships with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Shortly after moving to Silicon Valley, I received an invitation to collaborate with Welcu's team for a few months in return for experience and feedback. Through Welcu, I met many other interesting entrepreneurs.

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Mobilizing Farmers: M-Farm Turns Obstacles into Opportunities

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By Jamila Abass (Co-Founder & CEO, M-Farm) After reading non-stop complaints aired by farmers through newspapers, I realized I could design a software application that would assist Kenyan farmers with some of their major problems, especially related to the sale of produce.

I enlisted the help of an IT friend, Susan that I had met at the iHub (Nairobi, Kenya). Susan’s background in mobile application development perfectly complimented my background in website development (and it didn’t hurt that our personalities meshed well too!). We brainstormed to create

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Case Study: SayAhh’s Financial Statements for August (Part 3)

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By Brad Feld (Managing Director, Foundry Group) Editor's note: This is a continuation from last week's overview of balance sheet and statement of cash flows.

Now that Dick and Jane have added a CTO to SayAhh’s founding team, they’ve turned their full attention to working on their product. Today, we’ll look at the impact of the expenses to date on the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement.

Since SayAhh is in the pre-launch development stage, the company doesn’t have any revenue yet. They also haven’t launched a product, so there is no corresponding “cost of goods sold”

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Case Study: Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows (Part 2)

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By Brad Feld (Managing Director, Foundry Group) Editor's note: This is a continuation from last week's introduction to cap tables.

When we were last with our SayAhh cofounders, they had implemented an accounting system and Jane had contributed $50,000 for a 55/45% equity split. This week we introduce two of SayAhh’s key accounting documents: the Balance Sheet (BS) and Statement of Cash Flows (SCF) showing how this investment is accounted for.

The investments by the founders created two transactions. Since SayAhh is a C corporation that is incorporated

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LUMOback Founder Monisha Perkash Wins DEMOgod Award (Video)

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By Monisha Perkash (Co-Founder & CEO, LUMOback) My startup went into the DEMO Fall 2011 Conference honored just to share our vision with such a large audience, and came out of it completely blown away when we received a DEMOgod award for our product LUMOback.

While it's very cool being immersed in emerging technologies, meeting luminaries across many fields, and interacting with other entrepreneurs, the clear highlight of DEMO is the high-pressured 6 minute demonstration in front of over 1,000 attendees. This is not because of the brief moment of fame (although that part is fun too), but because those 6 minutes are the exhilarating

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Useful Tools for Prototyping, Building My Web Startup

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By Kristee Rosendahl (Founder, Smart Gardener) In 2004, I moved from San Francisco to Sonoma County with the goal of balancing my techno life/business with a more "hands on" lifestyle. I wanted to food garden, get outside more, and even keep some bees. Because I was running my consulting business. I wanted to both enjoy my time outdoors, while being efficient and successful with the results.

Frustrated every weekend about what to do in the garden, I resorted to reading hundreds of gardening books, designing spreadsheets, and spending hours online. I’d ended up spending most of my time trying to figure out what to do, instead of being outside doing it!

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