Category: Startups (page 1 of 2)

3 Ways to Be Super Productive in an Open Office Environment

There’s a lot of discussion about the open office and whether it really helps you be more productive in a work environment. In a collaborative situation, it’s easy to see that having easier access to your colleagues could lead to better project collaboration and communication with the team. At the same time, if you need a lot of quiet concentration to get the job done, the open office plan may not be your first choice for an office environment. Continue reading

Learn How to Close a Round of Funding for Your Tech Startup in Orange County. This is a Video Interview between Digsy CEO, Andrew Bermudez and Robin Pimentel, Venture Partner @ K5 Ventures

Key Takeaways:

  • Robin is a platform engineer who has worked at Google and Facebook
  • Prior to becoming a VC, Robin built GaiKai’s On-Demand Video Game Streaming Platform
  • What key traits Robin looks for in an Entrepreneur when deciding to fund them or not
  • Tips on how to successfully raise money in Southern California and get funded

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Jon Ferrara, Founder of Nimble and Goldmine CRM

Digsy CEO, Andrew Bermudez, sits down with Nimble Founder & CEO, Jon Ferrara, who shares how he has grown both Nimble and former startup, Goldmine CRM without employing salespeople. This interview is packed with insight and great ideas. Watch the full video interview below.

Key Takeaways:

  • Jon is a trained engineer, turned sales genius
  • How he successfully bootstrapped his first startup, Goldmine CRM
  • How Goldmine CRM was acquired by Frontrange Solutions
  • How Nimble leverages social data and social signals to grow sales

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How This Startup Bootstrapped & Got to Revenue in 30 Days

DealTree.com and Cowboom.com and BestBuy

[Video] How Garry Heath of OC Startup DealTree.com (acquired by BestBuy.com)  Built a Tech Startup that Got to Revenue in 30 Days

Join Co-Founder & CEO of Digsy Andrew Bermudez in an interview with Orange County tech startup entrepreneur Garry Heath about how he created a tech startup that got to revenue in its first month in business and how he built an electronics price data automation algorithm to scale quickly.

Key Takeaways:

  • How to Bootstrap and get to revenue is all about the channel: Garry hooked up with www.Buy.com to get supply to sell
  • How he created the 1st comps system to dynamically price electronics resales and optimize sales times
  • How to attract great talent at 30% below market and retain them
  • Why BestBuy acquired DealTree.com

If you like this interview, please leave us a note in the comments section 🙂

 

Fun Ways To Kill Your Startup

It was a beautiful feeling.

We had just raised our first after-seed round of investment, bumping my salary as cofounder and CTO from a voluntary $24k a year to a healthy six figures, while simultaneously driving up the value of my stock equity. The rest of the team, my comrades in arms, were similarly bumped and positively impacted.

Flash back to around 2011 at my previous company.

We had a great team, a solid product, and even some paying users. We’d all been slaving away at sub-market wages for quite some time, putting in sweat equity to build something real. To reward ourselves for our wisdom and hard work, we went on a well-deserved shopping spree at the Apple store and bought ourselves the latest Macbook Pros, with bells and whistles.

I would have thought you insane if you suggested to me, back in that day, that we were at the top of a rollercoaster. And yet approximately two years later, we were at the bottom, broke, with no real shot at getting back up. What the hell happened?

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7 Blog Posts that Changed Our Startup in 2014

Stand on the shoulders of giants. That’s a motto that we live by at Digsy. Whenever we run into a problem, we first look to the pros to see how they’ve handled similar issues. Chances are, another company had the same issue, tested dozens of solutions, and chose the best one. Why should we spend our valuable time and resources going through that pain, when we can ride on someone else’s coattails, so to speak?

With that in mind, we read. A lot. There’s the usual suspects: books, articles, and blog posts. But Quora and podcasts (such as Justin Jackson’s excellent Product People) have also made it into our regular rotation. To celebrate the new year, I dove into our Slack archives, email threads and bookmarks to find the stories that we talked about the most.

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Why Small Customers are Huge

You’re sitting at your computer, working on your daily tasks when all of a sudden you get excited. A new customer just converted on your website. Not just any customer, I’m talking about a whale. Someone who will generate tons of revenue for your company, be it a one-time deal or on a recurring basis. You immediately stop what you are doing and turn to your co-worker: “Holy crap, did you see the customer that just converted? This could make us a lot of money.” You decide to give this customer 5-star service. They ask a question that could take 30 minutes of your time to answer? Who cares, we could get paid a ton it’s worth the time. You do whatever it takes to keep them happy and close the deal. You need this whale to give you cash, at any cost.

Does this sound familiar? What about your small customers that come in? Do you give the same urgency, care and attention to the small fish in the pond?

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Video: How to Build a KILLER SaaS PRODUCT with Jon Ferrara, Nimble

Want to build a Killer Product? Want to delight people and make millions of dollars in the process? Then, you must nail down the key fundamentals of building AWESOME products that people love.

How do you build a great product?

Our video guest, Jon Ferrara, creator of CRM solutions will share his secrets on how to build products people love and grow through word-of-mouth.

Highlights:

  • The invention of CRM was a pivot from accounting software
  • Goldmine’s & Nimble’s growth hack: turn hundreds of Network VARS into customers and then into resellers
  • Goldmine’s growth acceleration: Build Relationships with Trusted Advisors and Influencers of their target audience
  • How to recruit rockstar employees without having to compete with other companies

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Increase Your Productivity and Creativity With Beer

Typically, when I think about grabbing beers with others, it’s usually to get inebriated,  act like idiots and have fun. However, since working at a startup with some beer aficionados (drunks?), I’ve come to realize that grabbing a beer or two can boost productivity and be beneficial to our business . I’ve noticed when I’m about one beer in (I’m a light-weight), the creative juices start to flow. Just the act of leaving the office and taking a break allows my brain to disengage and relax — letting it see problems from a different angle. And the beer greases the wheels, opening doors to new — and sometimes crazy — solutions.

I am in no way advocating going to work drunk, but I believe strongly that stopping work an hour or two earlier a couple times a month to grab a beer or two with your colleagues can increase productivity.

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7 Things Corporate Won’t Tell You About Startup Jobs

It seems that working for a startup is now a “hip” and “cool” trend when it comes to considering a new job.  I might just be noticing it since I am working at a startup and people get very interested when I mention it, but interest in startup jobs is definitely growing. Just check out the chart below if you don’t believe me.

A graph showing the increasing trend in Google searches for the term "startup jobs"

Number of searches for “startup jobs” – Jan. 2006 – Nov. 2014 (partial) (Source: Google Trends)

Sure, working at a startup sounds cool. You’ve heard about the perks: kegs every Friday; foosball tables in the office; unlimited vacation days — benefits you likely wouldn’t get at a normal 9-to-5 corporate job. Even though working at a startup is fun and exciting, it’s not always a party. You bust your ass every day (even weekends), and if you blow it, you could bring the whole company down with you.

That said, I firmly believe that working at a startup has changed my life and I’m loving the fast pace of everything. Every day there is something new to tackle. I started full-time here as Digsy’s first employee about 14 months ago and thought it would be beneficial to share my experience. Additionally, I asked seven other people who are also currently employed at startups to share their experiences working at a startup. So, let’s dig in:

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