The Startup Velocity Question: Is it Technology?

At the heart of most tech companies is, of course, technology. Today, the market is particularly frothy around Artificial Intelligence. AI is a technology that is notorious for not working as envisioned.

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547th Roundtable Recording with Steven Mitzenmacher, Rackspace Technology

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:

Roundtable Recap: September 23 – Spotlight on Exit Strategy

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Steven Mitzenmacher, SVP of Corporate Development at Rackspace Technology, to discuss the Buy-side thought process on Exit Strategy.

i3systems

For the entrepreneur pitch, we had Piyusa Ranjan Prusti from Mumbai, India, pitch i3systems. The company has 15 paying customers, but needs a strategy to increase velocity.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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10 Udemy Courses on How To Build an Artificial Intelligence Startup

Udemy has over six million students who are learning Machine Learning on the platform. Many of these students are aspiring entrepreneurs.

Here is a list of Udemy entrepreneurship courses based on the 1Mby1M methodology that would help them put one foot before the other to get a startup strategy figured out.

Cloud Stocks: Why Salesforce Buying Vlocity Proves the Growing Importance of PaaS

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) is dominating the news this week. Along with an outstanding quarterly result announcement, the company delivered two significant news items. First, Salesforce is acquiring Vlocity for $1.3 Billion. Salesforce also announced that its co-CEO Keith Block was stepping down from his position. Marc Benioff is back to being the sole CEO of the company.

Spring 2019 Oracle – 1Mby1M Intrapreneurship Challenge Launches

The Spring 2019 Oracle – 1Mby1M Intrapreneurship Challenge has launched. Open to Oracle employees only who are interested to learn what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Become an Oracle Intrapreneur to take control of your future and accelerate your career. Submit your application found here by April 16, 2019. For a preview of the One Million by One Million program, please register to attend a FREE mentoring roundtable session here. If you are getting excited about applying, please have a look at Sramana’s interview with Paolo Juvara of Oracle Application Labs. Good luck!

Photo credit: Joey Rozier/Flickr.com.

One Form of Regenerative Energy: The Kaizen Feedback

By Guest Author Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

We all know about the natural tendency of systems toward their degradation. It’s called entropy. In her new book, Everybody Wants to Love Their Job: Rebuilding Trust and Culture, Marylene Delbourg-Delphis discusses the various ways organizations can fight that entropy, and instead, generate the negative entropy that Nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger ended up naming “negentropy.” Thwarting entropy ultimately means breeding creative energy within the company non-stop by nurturing an environment that doesn’t inhibit imagination from the get-go and paying attention to all the sources of regenerative energy. What Delbourg-Delphis calls “kaizen feedback” is one of them. >>>

Innovation and disruption: Forces Turned on and off by human beings

By Guest Author Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

In her new book, Everybody Wants to Love Their Job: Rebuilding Trust and Culture, Marylene Delbourg-Delphis reflects on the demise and death of once-giants.

Companies either fail or succeed. It’s just a simple truth. There were certainly plenty of causes for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but the primary one, according to the famous 18^th century historian Edward Gibbon, was the gradual disappearance of its citizens’ civic virtues. Similarly, the main causes of companies’ annihilation could very well be human. Employees have stopped being citizens of their company and fighting for it. They behave. They aren’t causing problems or generating liabilities. They’ve just given up on the idea that their voice matters. >>>

Arka Venture Labs Partners with 1Mby1M to Accelerate Indian B-to-B Cloud Startups

Arka Venture Labs and the One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) global virtual accelerator announce a partnership to benefit Indian B-to-B cloud startups by together offering access to deeper connections into Silicon Valley and comprehensive startup mentoring.

Arka Venture Labs brings together three venture firms who provide the initial capital and open their networks to the benefit of their portfolio companies: Blume Ventures, BGV (Benhamou Global Ventures), and Emergent Ventures.

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Hiring for Innovation? Where do people “who have done it before” best fit in?

By Guest Author Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

In her new book, Everybody Wants to Love Their Job: Rebuilding Trust and Culture, Marylene Delbourg-Delphis draws from her extensive experience as a serial CEO, executive consultant, and board member to assesses the cons and pros of hiring people who “have done it before.”

Clichés have an advantage: they are self-explanatory. But the main drawback of these ready-made phrases is that nobody questions their meaning any longer. >>>