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Founder Profile
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Building a Business on Helping Companies Hire Smarter
ClearFit founder Ben Baldwin always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur, although he wasn’t always sure that this attitude was a good thing.
“I've never really fit into the way other people think/act and I have a real problem with authority,” Baldwin said in interview. “I kinda thought that I was screwed professionally, until I started my own thing.“ ClearFit, a software product that helps businesses hire new employees based on cultural fit and experience, was created out of a passion to help entrepreneurs tackle their biggest challenge.
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Hot Startups of the Week
Infogr.am
Infogr.am lets you create colourful, interactive infographics quickly & easily. Choose a design from their pre-built templates, add your data via several import options, and share your infographic through social media, or embed it into your site.
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Zimride
Zimride helps you find rideshare and carpool opportunities within your community. Focusing on college, university, and corporate communities, Zimride is building a network of users to help you find friends, classmates, and coworkers going the same way you are.
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Circle
Circle helps you find who’s around you. Using the location of your mobile device, Circle alerts you when friends are nearby, and helps you discover new networks based on where you are. Available for iPhone and Android devices, Circle also features privacy controls to limit who can contact you.
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Hachi
Hachi helps you connect with people via the smartest route possible. Making use of your social network and email connections, Hachi finds the best path to connect with someone outside of your network using the people and connections you already know and trust.
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Upcoming Events
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SWITCH Conference Portugal
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Lisbon, Portugal
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June 15th–16th
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SWITCH Conference is the #1 Entrepreneurial event in Portugal and one of the leading conferences for entrepreneurship and technology in Europe. This year's event theme is “Connecting the Dots” and the focus is on stories, companies and people that are contributing to connect knowledge, bring people together, and solve world problems by wiring the world and its elements.
RSVP now →
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Silicon Milkroundabout
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London, UK
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May 26th–27th
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Silicon Milkroundabout is a job fair to match the UK’s startups with developers, product managers, and designers. Sunday is open to job seekers in the product management, design, user research and prototyping field, while Sunday is open to technical job seekers in software engineering, web development, QA/Testing and operations.
RSVP now →
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Technori Pitch
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Chicago, IL
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May 29th
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This month’s Technori Pitch event hosts Nick Kokonas. Kokonas is an innovator of fine dining, implementing unorthodox point of sale strategy and other mechanisms, to elevate the dining experience. Kokonas will discuss his entrepreneurial story in the food industry, his vision for the future of dining out, and the role of technology. This month’s event also features a great lineup of startups.
RSVP now →
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The Art of Leadership Conference
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Metro Toronto Convention Center
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June 5th
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From practical tips, to innovative strategies, The Art of Leadership is designed to teach and provide leaders with directly related, easily applied, and important tools. 6 internationally renowned, bestselling authors and visionarieswill be taking the stage. Sprouter Weekly readers can save $50 on their ticket with the code TOSOCIAL.
RSVP now →
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What We’re Reading
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Freemium Pricing for SaaS: Optimizing Paid Conversion Upgrades
Digioh co-founder and 500Startups mentor Rishi Shah shares this post with OnStartups on how to evaluate the best way to build a freemium model for your business. Using real examples from freemium SaaS businesses like MailChimp, Wufoo, and Intuit, Rishi gives a great overview of different models, and how to choose one that fits your business.
Read it →
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A Framework to Think About Pricing Seed, Angel, and VC Rounds
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O'Donnell shares his insight on how startups should be pricing their funding rounds. Generally, investment rounds can cost between 15-30% of your company, so properly finding out how much you want to raise – and how much you are willing to give up – is important.
Read it →
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The Mid-Market Briar Patch
Smart Bear Software founder Jason Cohen shares his take on the dangers of going after the “mid-sized” corporate market. While mid-sized companies are often seen as small enough to be nimble, but large enough to have budgets, Jason shows why this is often the exact opposite, and why you should think twice before going after this market.
Read it →
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Bootstrapping
Union Square Ventures principal Fred Wilson gives some insight on some of the startups he has invested in that have bootstrapped at the start. He shares this, along with some insight from Behance founder Scott Belsky on how they made money bootstrapping before USV invested in their startup.
Read it →
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Facebook’s Business Model
After going public last Friday, Facebook’s business model is under more scrutiny than ever. Hunch CEO & Founder Collective co-founder Chris Dixon writes about their current advertising-based business model, and shares some insight on to what may come next for the social networking giant.
Read it →
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Some Suggestions for Family Business
Classic advice states that one should never go into business with family, but sometimes your close family are also your best business partners. Having worked with several members of his family on business ventures, BPlans founder & Sprouter Expert Tim Berry shares his suggestions on working with your kin.
Read it →
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Featured Members
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Investor and entrepreneur. Co-founder of Foundry Group and TechStars. Answering questions about funding.
Connect with
Brad Feld
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Entrepreneur, author & founder of the Lean Startup methodology. Answering questions about Lean Startups, investments.
Connect with
Eric Ries
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Founder’s Note
Many early stage tech startups face a quandary that most corporate types would scoff at:
Free or Paid?
Focus on driving as many new users as possible or charge to cover costs?
The reality is that some startups would be limiting their growth by focusing on revenue.
In some instances, it’s better to build a community of passionate users.
It can be a strategy to remove any potential barriers (like cost) in order to accelerate growth and build brand.
It’s a founders dilemma to know when to charge and when not to.
No matter what your starting point, have a vision for monetization and path to profit.
Always stay close to the money.
Until next week,
Sarah Prevette
Founder & CEO
Sprouter.com
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