Monday, March 31, 2014

Startup City: The Urban Shift in Venture Capital and High Technology

This report seems to align with what I'm seeing here in DC.

Startup City: The Urban Shift in Venture Capital and High Technology - Martin Prosperity Institute

The key findings are as follows. 
Bay Area still on top: As a whole the San Francisco Bay Area — which includes greater San Francisco and Silicon Valley — accounted for more than 4 in 10 of all venture capital dollars invested across the entire United States. 
The city of San Francisco leads the way: San Francisco proper now attracts a larger volume of venture capital investment than Silicon Valley. East Coast Acela Corridor ranks 2nd: The Boston-New York-Washington corridor on the East Coast has emerged as the second major center for venture capital investment. 
New York City is a rising startup hub: Metro New York is now the nation’s third largest center for venture capital. Nearly 80 percent of the metro’s venture investment was invested in the city itself. 
College towns attracting venture capital too: College town tech hubs like Austin and Raleigh-Cary in the North Carolina Research Triangle have long been magnets for venture capital, but Boulder, Ann Arbor, and Lawrence, Kansas attract considerable venture capital on a per capita basis as well.  
Talent matters: Venture investment tracks the geography of talent, especially the percentage of adults who are college grads and the creative class. Eds and meds don’t matter for tech: While many states and cities have pinned their hopes on education and medical centers, our research finds little to no significant statistical associations between eds and meds employment and venture capital. 
Tolerance does matter: We find venture capital investment to be associated with several markers of the diversity of metros, including their shares of immigrants and gays.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

2014 Mobile Marketing Trends

Nine Mobile Marketing Trends for 2014: The Year of Turning Ideas into Marketing Magic - inMobi Blog

This was posted back in December, but I think all of the trends are important this year.

1. Programmatic Buying

2. Wearable Technology

3. Improved Location Targeting

4. Mobile Ad formats

5. Mobile Big Data

6. Mobile Video

7. Rising Mobile Currency

8. Mobile Messaging

9. App Marketing

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Becoming Twitter: A Beginner’s Guide To User Acquisition

Check out this article. It is an excellent overview of how to generate users.

Becoming Twitter: A Beginner’s Guide To User Acquisition- Nate Desmond

Before you can seriously pursue user acquisition, you need an amazing product. Specifically, you need to reach product-market fit. Oversimplified, more than 40% of surveyed customers should say they would be “very disappointed” without your product. Until you have achieved product-market fit, you only want to attract enough customers to test your product improvements. Extra customers just means more frustrated people.


Thursday, March 13, 2014

10 Reasons You'll Never Raise A Dime For Your Startup

LOL. Pretty spot on overview of what not to do when fundraising.

10 Reasons You'll Never Raise A Dime For Your Startup- Forbes


1.) Your Leadership Skills Are Lacking
2.) Your Team Falls Short
3.) No Traction With Customers
4.) No Proven Business Model
5.) Your Approach With Investors Is Wrong
6.) Pitching The Wrong Investors
7.) You’re Not Coachable
8.) Lack Deep Domain Expertise
9.) Failure To Understand ‘Lean’
10.) Blindness To See You Need To Fix All Of This