Part 2 of our interview with Jon Bradford where he talks about major shifts in the startup accelerator world and how to gain traction.
Jon is Managing Director of TechStars London and has previously founded and worked on startup accelerators around the globe. He’s co-founder of F6S.com which has grown into one of the most important startup program platforms in the world, and has recently cofounded tech.eu to feature startup and tech news across Europe.
Jon is Managing Director of TechStars London and has previously founded and worked on startup accelerators around the globe. He’s co-founder of F6S.com which has grown into one of the most important startup program platforms in the world, and has recently cofounded tech.eu to feature startup and tech news across Europe.
Our interview had so much great content we decided it was worth 2 episodes rather than cut out such valuable knowledge. In part 1, Jon explains:
Jon shares with us how he went from being a “bored accountant” at a major firm to launching his first startup (made a ton of money) becoming a VC, joining Techstars and being part of the growth of the tech startup world.
We then dive into his opinion on the changes in how startups can get off the ground, how to get into accelerators, and what people like him (the decision maker) are looking for when making those decisions.
Don’t miss Part 2! You can contact Jon at jon at techstars dot com
Mark Schaefer is a globally-recognized blogger, speaker, educator, business consultant, and author who blogs at {grow} – one of the top marketing blogs in the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University and has written three best-selling books including The Tao of Twitter (the best-selling book on Twitter in the world) and Return On Influence,which was named one of the top business titles of the year by the American Library Association.
Part 2 of our interview with Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble, and successful entrepreneur best known for being of GoldMine Software Corp, one of the early pioneers in the Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software categories for Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMBs).
In this episode, we really dive into growing your company, disruption, growth hacking and leveraging social networking to determine influencers and connect with them. Towards the end we also talk about building startup teams and how to leverage relationship building to find the right investors for your startup.
Jon tells great stories about how he has grown multiple companies, gain investors and clients that are truly inspiring. Beyond just anacedotes, he shares how to build systems which enable entrepreneurs to organize and deal with the pressure of owning a business.
“Follow up and follow through. Not following up is the biggest cause of failure in business”. Jon Ferrara
Twitter: @Jon_Ferrara
Jon Ferrara is an American entrepreneur and the founder of Nimble LLC, his most recent venture. Ferrara is best known as the co-founder of GoldMine Software Corp, one of the early pioneers in the Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software categories for Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMBs).
Our conversation with Jon covered so much great insight into success we turned decided to create two episodes. In part one, he talks about:
Jon had lots of great quotes but one that epitomized importance of social selling and relationship building came from Mae West: “Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is out of money honey!”
Just like so many entrepreneurs Jon got frustrated with sales options in his early days, decided to jump ship and get started on his own with Goldmine which revolutionized the CRM concept. Built, grew, sold and is now on to doing the same with Nimble.
John and Ledge hear this story in every interview. The urge to start is so overwhelming that we just can’t help chasing down that idea and starting a company! Leave us a comment if you’ve ever felt that way and followed it. If you haven’t followed the feeling, why not?
Jon explains the growth of the internet and its use in sales and business development over the past 20 years, with amazing insight into how social selling has become the new way to grow companies, build relationships and achieve success as an entrepreneur. We also discuss how social media is becoming common place and will likely begin to fade into a standard business practice from today’s “hype”.
Make sure you follow Jon on Twitter and check out Nimble, a fantastic platform that enables you to manage all your social platforms in one place from a business perspective.
Eric Dobson is the CEO of Angel Capital Group. Since growing two companies to more than $4M in investment as an entrepreneur, he now manages the portfolio of 25 companies in which ACG has already invested. Eric plans to increase ACG’s investments to one per month in 2014 as ACG activates its crowd funding initiatives.
David Meerman Scott is an internationally acclaimed strategist whose books and blog are must-reads for professionals seeking to generate attention in ways that grow their business. David speaks on Real-Time Marketing & PR Strategy, Agile Selling, Spreading Ideas, Generating Attention, Growing Business, New Communications Strategies, Entrepreneurism, and Social Media. He’s spoken to business audiences on every continent, including recently in Antarctica. He is an advisor to several marketing and sales SaaS companies including Hubspot.
99% of investors have been in your shoes. Never forget that. They put in incredible time, effort and focus to become successful and now have the ability to help startups. If they don’t see themselves in you, the chances of them backing your company go down immensely.
Software as a Service is a very alluring business strategy for a mobile web startup. In this model customers are dependent on the system, and tracking usage statistics is easy. It’s cheaper to add features than in the client-side model, and all important code remains securely on private servers.Continue Reading …
Let’s face it. Everyone dreams their startup will be the next Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. How amazing would it be to turn your dream into a multi-billion dollar company that impacts the planet and makes you famous!
Continue Reading …