StartUp Resources Post!

Just got so much of useful info on startups and investing so sharing with you!

Entrepreneur's Library: Books to develop key skills

ANDREI KOLODOVSKI

Entrepreneurs must master many trades. Below is the list of good books for developing key entrepreneurial skills and traits: 

Core Entrepreneurial Skills

Start-up building

• The Art of Start: Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything: Guy Kawasaki
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company: Steve Blank
• The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup: Noam Wasserman
• Start Your Own Business: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need

Discovering & Validating opportunities

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Peter Drucker

• Where Good Ideas Come From: Steven Johnson
• The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen: Andy Boynton
• Will It Fly? How to Know if Your New Business Idea Has Wings Before You Take the Leap: Thomas McKnight
• The New Business Road Test: What entrepreneurs and executives should do before writing a business plan: John Mullins
• If You Build It Will They Come: Three Steps to Test and Validate Any Market Opportunity: Rob Adams

Business Planning

• The Plan-as-You-Go Business Plan: Tim Berry
• Anatomy of a Business Plan: Linda Pinson
• Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries: Osterwalder

• Successful Business Research: Straight to the Numbers You Need

• Find It Fast: How to Uncover Expert Information on Any Subject: Berkman

Funds Raising

• Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur: Dermot Berkery
• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist: Feld
• Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations: Alex Wilmerding

Selling & Marketing

• SPIN Selling: Neil Rackham

• Secrets of Question Based Selling: Thomas Freese
• Value-Added Selling : How to Sell More Profitably, Confidently, and Professionally by Competing on Value, Not Price: Tom Reilly
• Crossing  the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream  Customers: Geoffrey Moore

  
Innovation & Product development

• Innovation on Demand: New Product Development Using TRIZ: Victor Fey
• The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO: Tom Kelley
• Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide: Todd Zaki

Team building

• The Entrepreneur's Guide to Hiring and Building the Team: Ken Tanner
• Teamwork: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong: Carl Larson
• Boost Your Hiring I.Q.: Carole Martin
• Smart and Gets Things Done: Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent: Joel Spolsky

Finance 

• Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers: Karen Berman
• Pro Excel Financial Modeling: Building Models for Technology Startups: Tom Sawyer

Entrepreneurial Personality

Entrepreneurial Attitude

• Think and Grow Rich: Napoleon Hill
• The Reluctant Entrepreneur: Michael Masterson

Self-Awareness & Personal Development

• Instant Analysis: David Lieberman

• Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: Richard Carlson

• The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World: Marti Olsen

Discipline & Will Power

• The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works: Kelly McGonigal
• Self-Discipline in 10 days: How To Go From Thinking to Doing: Bryant

Inspiration & Motivation

• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days: Jessica Livingston
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way: Richard Branson
• Against the Odds: James Dyson

Interpersonal Skills

Emotional Intelligence 

• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ: Daniel Goleman
• The Other Kind of Smart: Harvey Deutschendorf

Leadership skills

• The Leader in You: Dale Carnegie
• Real  Leaders Don't Boss: Ritch Eich

Persuasion, Influence, Negotiation skills

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: Robert Cialdini
• Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In: Roger Fisher
• Negotiating Rationally: Max Bazerman

Networking skills

• Make Your Contacts Count: Anne Baber

• How to Click with People: Rick Kirschner

• Networking for People Who Hate Networking: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed, and the Underconnected: Devora Zack

Communication skills, Presenting and Public speaking

• The Art of Public Speaking: Dale Carnegie

• Say It with Presentations: Gene Zelazny
• The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations: Garr Reynolds

Execution

Decision-Making

• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done: Peter Drucker
• The Truth About Making Smart Decisions: Robert Gunther

Time & Project management

• Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating: Brian Tracy
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Stephen Covey
• The Procrastinator's Guide to Getting Things Done: Monica Ramirez

Energy & Mood management

• The Power of Full Engagement: Jim Loehr
• Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout: Berglas

SOURCE

And video:

StartUp Grind Hosts Richard Barnwell and Gives Insight in Gaming Industry

On Wednesday 16th of December I had a great opportunity to join a great start-up talks session with StartUp Grind who hosted Richard Barnwell Board Member of Games Ireland, a not-for-profit organisation working to support, promote and drive sustainable growth for the games industry in Ireland.

Let's start from the beginning. That was my first meetup with StartUp Grind and I must admit a very impressive and interesting one in terms of organization as well as quality time! 

Startup Grind is a global startup community educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in more than 150 cities and 65 countries featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. Our monthly fireside chat interviews, startup mixers and annual conferences provide ample opportunities to connect with amazing startups and the people behind them, tap into a strong support network, form meaningful connections and gain inspiration for the startup journey ahead. For more information visit StartupGrind.com or follow us on twitter@StartupGrind.

Thanks to this event I had an opportunity to visit Google office where the event was hosted. In a pleasant and comfortable atmosphere. You can see on the pictures below great night Dublin views from the top floor of the Google's building in the city center.

I have met a number of great people with fantastic start-up ideas and this proves again and again how much entrepreneurship is boosting. This is really great! I do believe the that the future is in the hands of entrepreneurs because great ideas and people behind them will change the world.

The event started with two great people from Startup Grind! One of them, David Scanlon (in the picture below on the right), has invited me to the event. Big thanks for giving me this great opportunity!

After a short StartUp Grind introduction there was a great session with Richard Barnwell.

Richard Barnwell is the founder and CEO of DIGIT Game Studio. Founded in 2012, DIGIT is the largest game development studio in Ireland: it has already developed Kings of the Realm, which was the biggest game launch in the history of the Irish gaming industry. DIGIT are now scaling up their studio to produce an iconic new title, and we'll be using the opportunity to chat with Richard and get an insight into the fascinating world of video game development.
Prior to founding DIGIT, Richard was CEO at Jolt Online Gaming (part of the GameStop network), and previous to that was a member of the senior management team at Jagex (a leading developer of MMO titles, including RuneScape). Richard is currently a Board Member of Games Ireland, a not-for-profit organisation working to support, promote and drive sustainable growth for the games industry in Ireland.

Richard shared with the audience his story about how he get involved in the gaming industry straight from college and all the way through of exciting times being part of a rapidly growing company, describing challenges and how to deal with them as well as giving great advice to those interested in creating game like working with brands and creating games using popular characters. After the chat between Richard (on the left in the picture above) and David (on the right in the picture above) everyone had an opportunity to ask questions and get more information and industry/company insight.

As it was my first event from StartUp Grind, I must say it was well organized and really informative. I would love to visit more of their events in the future!

The Event for Female Entrepreneurs That Can Help To Make An Impact In Your Business

One of the biggest challenges for female entrepreneurs at early-stage business is access to funding. Normally men can easier access funding for their business (in up to 70% of the cases).  The event "Demystifying the Dark Art of Funding" that took place on Thursday 26^th November and organised by the DCU Ryan Academy in partnership with Global Invest Her, aimed to clarify the funding process and help Irish women entrepreneurs become investor ready and get funded faster.

Just before the event started I had a great opportunity to have a talk with Anne Ravanona, who is CEO and Founder of Global Invest her. Global Invest Her is an international company on a mission to get more female founders funded through demystifying the funding process via their online portal and events. Anne is also an advisor to several startups and non profits who support high growth women entrepreneurs and she founded the Women Entrepreneurs Network in Paris. Anne is a fantastic woman entrepreneur with great portfolio of projects and she believes that women are capable to do more if they can expose themselves and give it a go. Sometimes we take a step back instead of being persistent and this exactly what the true stories of two women entrepreneurs proved to us! If they can do, we can do that too!

The whole event had a great spirit of entrepreneurship and "I can do it!" attitude. Events like this inspire and motivate, then help to believe in your inner power and capabilities and I find it really brilliant!

I would like to thank also Niamh Collins for organizing such a a great event! Niamh is the COO of DCU Ryan Academy. It's so important to have inspirational and informative events like this one. I have gained high value, practical insights and tips about how to look for funding whilst been given an opportunity to network. DCU Ryan Academy is a non-profit, joint venture between Dublin City University and the Ryan Family (Ryanair), that aims to be the leading supporter of entrepreneurs and innovation in Ireland. It promotes an entrepreneurial mind-set and real innovation focus among Irish SME’s corporates, start-ups and researchers through a range of training leadership and funding initiatives.

To read this article in Russian, click HERE.

Networking at Dublin Chamber of Commerce

Following the fantastic and full of information and events with great speakers at Eximsummit I was invited to network with small and medium businesses representatives. This was really nice event in a great location with all Dublin charm in the morning and great start with coffee and talks with business owners and professionals.

I met a lot of professionals in different areas of business: accounting, media, personal development space, coaches, web specialists, owners of software platforms and solutions.

This was definitely a great networking buzz in the morning followed by a very informative informational session with exercises to master listening and speaking skills.

And I do want to confirm that building business relationships is an art and you need to have essential skills in listening and observing as well as communicating the information because it is important to see how and if your information is perceived.

Let's keep it up with mastering our skills and building great relationships online and offline!

Nice weekend to everyone!

#Crowdfunding Last Things before Launch

So I have had a look at all the tips and I have even investigated the platform and tried to find contacts of other guys who used the platform for similar type of idea funding. Who knows, maybe they will want to give an advice?

Out of 3 projects I found there and contacted there was only one guy who replied :( Why would that be? people do not want to share experience? I found it sadly strange and keep the hope they are on holidays and can't access their e-mails.
The good advice that only guy gave me was that I need to be persistent in posting and never beg and try to push a bit people and make them think they are doing good things by supporting my project. feeling a bit weird but still want to do it.
And yes, my project has moved to the stage called "Ready to preview?" which means if I push the button I can't make any changes. Feeling great for the work done so far! Let's push the button ;)

#Crowdfunding Before Journey Starts

Great to go almost. I have just received some useful tips from Fundit on how to promote my CF campaign. I want to share them apart from other I plan to use.

(I do not modify them so it's a quoting basically)

Very good tips are given on the following ways to promote your campaign:

• go for personal mailing lists to make sure you cover your first circle of funding
• go for company mailing asking colleagues to support
• consider different ways of promoting on different stages of the campaign (start, middle, prior to end and post campaign)
• avoid begging!
• go for value promotion
• communicate story, team, project etc.
• your audience is super important (engage with it!)
• use targeted media
• go for marketing promo mix (online. offline and combination of both).

#Crowdfunding Part 4

After pulling all together I have submitted the following information about the project to the CF platform:

I have submitted the following looooong description:

**********

Clever Books are the books with personalised stories for kids. We cover day to day life routines  helping parents to teach kids through stories to brush teeth, keep room in order, help parents and much more. This idea is coming from me and my husband as we use stories for our kid and decided to share our experience with other parents through creating great quality books.

Being an Irish start-up company we are looking for local support and the funds we are aiming to raise will be use for the following following purposes:

1) to  create the rest 5 books of the blue book series with new stories (we need to pay designer work, publishing and arts/illustrations)

2) to create marketing awareness campaign so more people in Ireland become aware of our products

We are gladly presenting what we have already achieved so far with our own funds: this is the Blue Book of personalised stories and we believe we can achieve even more with your support!

The Blue Book Set includes

1 book of 32 pages of 204 X 145 mm size

5 unique tales about YOUR KID

great illustrations

7 photos of YOUR KID printed in the book!

softcover

extra-white paper with a thickness of 0.3 mm (300 g/m2)

semi-matte paper with a very soft surface

pages that turn easily and never crease or tear

high quality printing

eco-friendly

5 customised tales, where your kid is the main character covering the following educative topics:

The Story of the Sad Teeth (importance of brushing teeth)

The Joy of Giving a Gift (sharing with others and making presents)

Tale of a Helpful Kid (importance of helping parents)

Why we go to creche/school (going to creche/school depending on the child's age)

Tale about The Land of Chocolate (if kids need to be careful with eating sweets).

********

And I have submitted the awards as well the following way (I wanted to keep it simple and really value for money if you go for project funding)

I have submitted the project and it has been returned :( In general it looked good good but for

1. picture needs to be changed. I will work on it and resubmit.

2. as a recommendation I was asked to add more information about team members. good point!

Work keeps on!