startup

"You never know when you've raised your last dollar."

-- Craig Walker, CEO, Firespotter Labs

Stop right there. Before you start commenting on how this is one of those painfully obvious Secrets--I know you want to, because this one really is--I will point out that there's been nothing new or revolutionary in this series so far. The tips people like the best are the ones they already know. But that's why I do this. It cannot hurt to be reminded of the things that well tell ourselves and each other when we are looking for … Read more

Rapportive announced that it was tying the knot with LinkedIn today.

"In business, partnership is dating--and we went on a lot of dates with LinkedIn. Slowly, but surely, we fell in love," Rapportive CEO Rahul Vohra wrote in a blog post. "Today, we are simply thrilled to announce that Rapportive is now part of LinkedIn!"

Earlier this month, AllThingsD broke the news that LinkedIn acquired the browser plugin Rapportive and then TechCrunch reported that the deal was sealed for $15 million.

The two companies had already partnered, so an acquisition wasn't too farfetched. The way … Read more

"Success gives you the credibility to talk about your failures."

--Osman Kent, CEO, Numecent

We celebrate success in entrepreneurship. Obviously. But Osman Kent, who's started several companies, says we really should keep it at arm's length. "Success is a bad teacher," he says. We're better off learning from successful people who have failed.

Osman says that, statistically, even the most successful people regress toward the norm. The chances are that if you are a big success at one job, you'll be less so at the next. The success comes from realizing why. … Read more

"Take the money."

--Ruslan R. Fazlyev, CEO, Ecwid

Many of today's entrepreneurial heroes have a curious item in common: They turned down the big payout. Zuckerberg turned down Yahoo ($1 billion) and then Microsoft ($15 billion). Andrew Mason (Groupon) rebuffed Google's $6 billion. And Twitter's still a private company, to the consternation of everyone, including Zuckerberg. (See No Sellout, from Fast Company.)

Don't let that be a lesson to you. Not all big ideas are quite that big. The vast majority are not, in fact.

Ruslan is a very young Russian entrepreneur. His … Read more

"It always works out at the very last minute."

--Megan Cummins, CEO, You Smell Soap

You win some, you lose some. But, ultimately, if you're a startup person, the balance comes up positive.

Part of that is attitude. Every failure, when you're starting a company, is just a bump on the road. A road you keep going down. Megan experienced this when she "won" the promise of a $105,000 investment in her startup, You Smell Soap, on the reality TV show, 'Shark Tank.' The show was taped in July, 2011. As of December, … Read more

Much of the investment world is about relationships, says Ryan Spoon, a venture capitalist with Polaris Ventures and co-founder of Dogpatch Labs.

Dogpatch Labs was founded in 2008 as a place where early-stage startups could innovate. Entrepreneurs share work space, but more importantly it's a place where they can interact with each other and share knowledge, says Spoon.

There are no contracts or commitments for the startups participating in Dogpatch. The upside from an investment perspective is that Polaris gets a first look at startups early on. SmartPlanet visited Dogpatch Labs in Palo Alto, Calif., its newest office, to … Read more

Take your kids to work.

--me

At Stanford's StartX pitch event last week, I met Trent Hazy, CEO of MindSumo. It's clever; see my writeup. But I was honestly more interested in asking Trent if he was related to the Hazy whose name is on the awesome Steven Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum (an annex to the Smithsonian Air and Space) in Virginia. "He's my father," Trent said.

Which brings me to today's tip.

I have interviewed thousands of tech company founders. After the first few hundred, I started to ask my interviewees how … Read more

"Play a game you can win."

--Rick Marini, CEO, BranchOut

There are very few green field opportunities. Most of the time, when you start a business venture, your success will have to come at the expense of another company. Obviously, no company gives up its incumbent position willingly.

Rick, whose company is a job-finder's network and thus aiming to be a direct competitor to LinkedIn, talked to me about taking on the big, public business networking site.

"If I just thought I could beat the competition," he says, "and that was it, I would … Read more

If there is one thing that startups can learn from the rise of Facebook it's that making sense of data you collect is where the money is.

Lots of companies collect data and do nothing meaningful with it. But thanks to new tools and the realization that knowing more about what your users are doing is the way to monetize, there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage the information collected.

In case you've been living in a cave, Facebook has filed to go public at an enormous valuation, based largely on the fact that the company has … Read more