1.)  “When you cease to dream you cease to live” – Malcolm Forbes

2.) “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” – Peter Drucker

3.) “The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” –Nolan Bushnell

4.) “If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.” – Ray Kroc

5.) “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”- Peter Drucker

6.) “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

BY JOHN RAMPTON IN ENTREPRENEUR.COM

5 Lessons for First-Time Entrepreneurs I Learned the Hard Way

Now that I’m well past my first-time entrepreneur experience, I can reflect on what I learned during that period in my life. In doing so, my tips might be able to help some of you first-time entrepreneurs out there get past barriers a little more quickly, get launched faster, and avoid some pitfalls along the way.

I’ve failed many time. I can remember several times where I didn’t even have enough money in my bank account to pay off the minimum payment on my credit card.

Years later and a healthy bank account later I can share with you a few things I should have known but didn’t. Here are five tips that I wish I knew before I started that would have potentially saved me from failing several times:
1. Ask a lot of questions.

There were many places where I thought I knew what I was doing that would have been better served if I had asked questions instead of assuming. I thought if I asked questions that maybe someone might think I was stupid or might not take me seriously in the business and investment worlds. In actual fact, I should have spoken up and asked more questions because this would have saved me time and money as well as potentially got me funding faster.

BY Tony Xu in TechCrunch

I come from a small-business family. My mom has owned three small businesses; most recently, a medical clinic in the South Bay. But it was in her first business, a Chinese restaurant outside Chicago, where I saw firsthand the challenges facing small-business owners.

When politicians say that “small businesses are the backbone of America,” it’s no exaggeration. The latest U.S. Census data shows that 90 percent of all businesses in the U.S. have fewer than 20 employees, and 99.9 percent have fewer than 500. Small businesses provide 55 percent of the jobs in the U.S., and that number hasn’t changed significantly in the past century. It’s safe to say the U.S. economy wouldn’t run without small businesses.

Unfortunately, for most of its life, Silicon Valley has failed to address this critical segment of the economy. Sure, there are the few exceptions: Square helps them take money without relying on cash; Expensify lets smaller companies act a bit bigger; Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll) helps them with benefits and payroll; Weebly helps them build a site. All these services add value to a small business’ bottom line.

But these are all supporting ongoing business operations and finding ways to cut costs, rather than adding a real way to make money. And many startups aren’t even focused on small, local businesses at all. So why is Silicon Valley ignoring the biggest segment of businesses in the country?

BY DANIEL FOSTER IN TECHSMITH

What’s the difference between being asked to “make something” versus being asked to “make a dish from these 5 ingredients?” Constraints. It’s hard to start a project with a blank, white page, no deadlines, and no boundaries.

The fact is: constraints drive creativity.

You can see it in the work of creative geniuses from Ernest Hemingway to Dr Seuss. From Frank Gehry to your neighbor kid playing with Lincoln Logs.

Constraints also play a huge role in App Preview videos (brief demos that will be included next to the screenshots in iTunes App Store listings this fall). Apple introduced a set of guidelines during their hour-long session at WWDC that define a limited set of production elements. Screen recorded video – yes. Camera video – no. Background music – yes. Animated fingers – no.

We believe these constraints will drive new levels of creativity and we’re building a tool called TechSmith AppShow to help developers, designers, trainers, and marketers create amazing App Preview videos within the constraints.

We also put together the infographic below as a handy reference for anyone creating App Previews for Apple App Store. It covers the most essential dos, don’ts, and best practices.

Galvenize Study Hall – Fundraising with Amos Schwartzfarb
4/13/16

I want to make the disclaimer, these are my personal notes and how I interpreted what was being discussed in the conversation between Amos Schwartzfarb, the Managing Director of Techstars in Austin, and 8 other entrepreneurs who were in the seed fundraising stage of their latest startup.  Amos is also the founder of Joust and has more than 15 years of sales leadership and strategy experience in software, digital, advertising and entertainment.

BASICS OF FUNDRAISING

Anytime you ask someone for money you are fund raising, even if you asking your family for money.

Having a good story and building relationships is important because fundraising starts long before you ask for money.

Seed series will not know what their product market fit is yet, that doesn’t come A series.

Turn your business into a math equation. This is way better than a business plan.

Find out where your revenue comes from, how many businesses, your target, etc. Break these down so that you can adjust a section of the formula to scale, or cutback.

If you are in the mobile app market, or are working on marketing plan for a mobile app. Seema Nayak, head of Digital Marketing at MobStac, wrote a great article for KissMetrix on 11 Pre and Post Launch Mobile App Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid. Feel free to check out the article in its entirety at kissmetrics.com

BY Seema Nayak in kissmetrics.com

Consider having to compete with only 500 apps in the entire App Store. Sounds like every app marketer’s dream!

When the App Store was launched in 2009, that is what the landscape looked like. Four years later, in October 2013, Apple announced that the number of apps in the App Store crossed a line to a whopping 1 million, generating a record-breaking $10 billion in revenue. Not one to be left behind, Google Play caught up soon enough and crossed the 1 million apps mark within a few months.

As the number of apps in the market skyrocket, the challenges for app marketers continue to grow. While some miraculous overnight successes will pop up every now and then, having an app marketing plan in place now is crucial to the success of every app. Here’s a list of 11 pitfalls to avoid during your app’s pre- and post-launch phases that will help improve your chances of success.