Category Archives: Startup

The Startup Story You Didn’t Hear About Billion Dollar Company Eloqua: It Was Four Days From Going Bankrupt

Hear stories from the gritty frontline of entrepreneurship with Eloqua Co-founder and the CEO of InfluitiveMark Organ.

A self-described serial entrepreneur, Influitive is Mark’s 7th business. Mark dove into entrepreneurship head first after realizing he couldn’t hold down a regular job. His first ventures gave him exposure to everything from bootstrapping a business to generating leads and managing a board of directors. Mark survived the struggles of getting Eloqua off the ground, later seeing it sell for nearly a billion dollars.

Read more : http://sumo.ly/Ejt

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    In 2009 Twitter was a 50-person company punching way above its weight in cultural impact, its micro-blogging platform blasting its way into the public imagination. But its ambitions were even higher. According to leaked internal documents, the company had privately set goals over the next few years of a billion…
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  • 70
    First, let’s figure out why we are talking about funding as something you need to do. This is not a given. The opposite of funding is “bootstrapping,” the process of funding a startup through your own savings. There are a few companies that bootstrapped for a while until taking investment,…
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  • 69
    Uber was founded just six years ago, but it’s already one of the fastest growing companies in the world. As an illustration of just how massive the company’s growth has been, Uber has reportedlycreated over 160,000 jobs in the United States alone and plans to create over a million more…
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V.C. Firm Names Robot To Board of Directors

In case you needed more proof that all our jobs will one day be occupied by robots, a Hong Kong V.C. firm has just named an artificial intelligence tool to its board of directors. The company’s also insisting the tool will be treated as an “equal” to the other board members.

Sure, it’s all probably a bid for press — but it’s still pretty funny.

A press release from Aging Analytics UK, a company that conducts research on biotechnology and regenerative medicine, made two announcements this morning: first, that they’ve launched an new A.I. tool called VITAL (Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences); and second, that they’ve licensed VITAL to Hong Kong V.C. firm Deep Knowledge Ventures, where the tool will become an “equal member of its Board of Directors.”

Yes, that means it’ll have exactly the same power as a living, breathing, presumably college-educated human being.

Read more at http://betabeat.com/

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    Square’s recent troubles are not exactly a secret. The Wall Street Journal published a detailed analysis on April 21, detailing Square’s financial troubles and its rapidly shrinking cash position. Square took on a $100 million debt financing option earlier this year, but even with that option, WSJ and The Verge reported that the…
    Tags: startup, economy
  • 70
    Venture capitalists are spending their money on more established companies rather thanyoung startups, according to data from the first quarter of this year. According to the latest MoneyTree report--which was put together by the National Venture Capital Association and consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers--there were only nine seed-stage investments in the Bay Area during…
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  • 68
    When Aaron and Adora Cheung launched house cleaning service Homejoy two years ago, they took their research seriously — they worked as traditional house cleaners for a month, and they discovered two things right away: 1) Cleaning people’s homes is really really hard; and 2) the current system was so broken and inefficient that there was opportunity to change everything.…
    Tags: launched, read, second, startup, economy
  • 65
    The world of labor is changing. Through laptops and mobile devices, a new world of services is becoming more accessible. The platforms enabling such services are also providing new homes for a rising entrepreneurial class of worker who is no longer being defined by the cubical. It’s becoming clear, that…
    Tags: will, life, economy, startup
  • 62
    Arnaud Montebourg has a huge responsibility now. He’s France’s minister of the economy, industrial renewal, and the digital economy. He just signed a decree that allows the government to prevent acquisitions of French companies by foreign firms in multiple industries, including “electronic communications”. As a reminder, he’s the one who killedDailymotion’s acquisition by Yahoo.…
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Dear Montebourg, Please Don’t Kill French Startup Acquisitions

Arnaud Montebourg has a huge responsibility now. He’s France’s minister of the economy, industrial renewal, and the digital economy. He just signed a decree that allows the government to prevent acquisitions of French companies by foreign firms in multiple industries, including “electronic communications”. As a reminder, he’s the one who killedDailymotion’s acquisition by Yahoo. Does this portend that he’s going to kill more startup acquisitions in the future?

Originally, this decree had nothing to do with startups. General Electric wants to acquire Alstom, and Montebourg wants to avoid handing out this French company to American shareholders. To be fair, other countries, including the U.S., have similar tactics and block acquisitions from time to time.

Yet, the decree also talks about potential acquisitions in the “electronic communications” industry — whatever it means. As Montebourg has set a bad precedent with Dailymotion, one could fear that he won’t let French entrepreneurs sign with American tech companies.

Yahoo wanted to pay $270 million (€200 million) to acquire YouTube competitor Dailymotion. It would have been a great exit for the startup. “Dailymotion is considered a marquee company in France’s technology industry. Hence, Montebourg didn’t want to let it go to the Americans,” a source told TechCrunch at the time.

Read more here http://techcrunch.com/

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    Square’s recent troubles are not exactly a secret. The Wall Street Journal published a detailed analysis on April 21, detailing Square’s financial troubles and its rapidly shrinking cash position. Square took on a $100 million debt financing option earlier this year, but even with that option, WSJ and The Verge reported that the…
    Tags: startup, economy
  • 63
    Venture capitalists are spending their money on more established companies rather thanyoung startups, according to data from the first quarter of this year. According to the latest MoneyTree report--which was put together by the National Venture Capital Association and consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers--there were only nine seed-stage investments in the Bay Area during…
    Tags: companies, told, company, startups, startup, economy
  • 62
    In case you needed more proof that all our jobs will one day be occupied by robots, a Hong Kong V.C. firm has just named an artificial intelligence tool to its board of directors. The company’s also insisting the tool will be treated as an “equal” to the other board members.…
    Tags: company, read, startup, economy

Why Square Wallet failed, and why Coin card is next…

Square’s recent troubles are not exactly a secret. The Wall Street Journal published a detailed analysis on April 21, detailing Square’s financial troubles and its rapidly shrinking cash position. Square took on a $100 million debt financing option earlier this year, but even with that option, WSJ and The Verge reported that the company only had about nine months of operating cash before it hit “predetermined ‘cushion’ of funds set aside as a last resort.” To add to its woes, Square was called out on removing Square Wallet from the iTunes and Google Play stores today. While Square Wallet is not Square’s core business (I would argue Square Register with its dongle still is), the app was intended to be the next big thing in payments. While Square is repositioning its platform around its “Square Order” app, it is clear that the wallet app didn’t take off.

http://www.bankinnovation.net/

 

Related Posts

  • 79
    In case you needed more proof that all our jobs will one day be occupied by robots, a Hong Kong V.C. firm has just named an artificial intelligence tool to its board of directors. The company’s also insisting the tool will be treated as an “equal” to the other board members.…
    Tags: startup, economy
  • 79
    When Aaron and Adora Cheung launched house cleaning service Homejoy two years ago, they took their research seriously — they worked as traditional house cleaners for a month, and they discovered two things right away: 1) Cleaning people’s homes is really really hard; and 2) the current system was so broken and inefficient that there was opportunity to change everything.…
    Tags: startup, economy
  • 78
    Venture capitalists are spending their money on more established companies rather thanyoung startups, according to data from the first quarter of this year. According to the latest MoneyTree report--which was put together by the National Venture Capital Association and consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers--there were only nine seed-stage investments in the Bay Area during…
    Tags: startup, economy
  • 74
    The world of labor is changing. Through laptops and mobile devices, a new world of services is becoming more accessible. The platforms enabling such services are also providing new homes for a rising entrepreneurial class of worker who is no longer being defined by the cubical. It’s becoming clear, that…
    Tags: economy, startup
  • 71
    Arnaud Montebourg has a huge responsibility now. He’s France’s minister of the economy, industrial renewal, and the digital economy. He just signed a decree that allows the government to prevent acquisitions of French companies by foreign firms in multiple industries, including “electronic communications”. As a reminder, he’s the one who killedDailymotion’s acquisition by Yahoo.…
    Tags: startup, economy