Category: Entrepreneurship
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Jeans made by robots
Daily I’m working with startups and on technologies that have the potential to automate repetitive tasks of highly skilled and highly educated workers in the western world. While these workers face a significant change in the skills required to perform their jobs and in some cases unemployment, automation potentially has a more severe impact in…
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Branding IP basics for your startup or corporate venture [free checklist]
![Branding IP basics for your startup or corporate venture [free checklist]](https://www.broosbakens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/branding_header_web.jpg)
Too often I’ve seen founders lost for words when asked by potential investors on ‘whether that trademark is still available?’. Whether you’re a startup or a corporate venture, you will need to have your brand related intellectual property sorted out. For many teams their intellectual property is their most important asset and branding properties are no…
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Steve Blank on Lean Startup inside big companies
Great conversation with Steve Blank on applying lean startup principles inside corporates. Short but insightful if you’re working in the domain of corporate entrepreneurship or innovation. Key insights: Allocation of resources between horizon 1 (60-70%), horizon 2 (10-20), horizon 3 (5-10%) Need company wide training program to support the ‘entrenched middle’: horizon 1 executors who don’t…
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Entrepreneurship = inspiration
I can’t sleep. The problem is, I’m inspired. Today is the highlight of the Dutch celebration of entrepreneurship, the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award ceremony. It’s not the company that gets the award it’s the entrepreneur behind the company that is celebrated. And this year’s celebration was different. The highlight of the evening are the…
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6 Reasons why you need a stellar elevator pitch
It’s a key activity for any startup founder and most accelerator programs pay a lot of attention to it… Pitching! Before the program starts I’m often asked why pitching is such an important aspect. Here are the 6 reasons why you need a stellar elevator pitch: 1. Forces you to explain your value proposition with great…
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How to define Startup and Scaleup
Startups and scaleups have become an important force in our economy and more and more people are involved in building, mentoring, servicing and growing them. As more people get involved they often ask me how I define a startup and a scaleup. This post is meant to help you understand what a startup and what a…
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Series A funding advice
When two of the VCs I’m following refer to a blogpost at the same time it must be a good read. It’s a post about raising a series A for a fintech startup eShares and it contains some valuable advice generally applicable to the fundraising process as well as a copy of the pitch deck. …
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The business model of the cloud age
Yesterday TNW posted a video of their TNW Conference of 2012 of Phil Libin. Nice talk with an interesting insight on the three business models of the various ages: Industrial age > perceived value decreases over time > transactional revenue model Information age > perceived value remains constant over time > subscription / advertising revenue model…
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Final selection day debrief
We did it again! After months of screening and selecting the best of the best and an intense couple of days, together with our 150+ mentor pool, we selected the 11 best high tech startups of the world for the second program of Startupbootcamp HighTechXL. The feedback from the selected startups today ranged from “absolutely…
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Go home… energized and inspired
Today we organized the third pitch day for the season for the second Startupbootcamp HighTechXL selection period. 6 Amazing teams joined us and the atmosphere was positive, full of energy and a few nerves…. pitching takes a bit of courage. I had table sessions with 4 teams. A few observations: Focus brings a clear story. Find…