Not every company is destine for a Venture Capital investment, or maybe your company isn’t quite at the point where it needs a large amount of funds to prove the idea. Luckily, there are Angel Investment Groups out there that focus on early stage investing to help companies get off the ground.

You might be saying, “Isn’t the economy still bad? Didn’t the Angel dollars dry-up just like the VC deals?” The 2011 HALO Report published by the Angel Resource Institute (ARI) earlier this year shows that in fact almost $875 million dollars were invested by Angel groups in 2011. One of the most promising factors is that the median Angel round size was $700K, a 40% increase over 2010.

What could be better than a $700K round? How about $1.5 million, which is the median size of a funding round when Angels co-invest with other types of investors. Just like your grandmother said, “The More The Merrier”, or “Sharing Is Caring”, or “Teamwork Makes The Dream Work.” Whatever metaphor you want to use, when more people get a piece of the action, there is a bigger pie.

Not surprising, the Angel groups out of California make up almost 30% of the dollars invested. Nationwide, Healthcare and Internet based startups continue to be hot investment sectors with over half of the overall dollars going to these two industries.

You can see the full Halo Report here, which includes a powerpoint and full infographic. To learn more about the Angel Investing process, check out the ARI Resources for Entrepreneurs. You can also see an extensive list by region of the hundreds of Angel groups that are doing deals. Who knows, their next deal could be yours.

This is the opposite of death by a thousand papercuts. Often times, as we work towards goals, the end result we desire seems too far away to reach. This is especially true for startups. You have a great idea and vision. No matter how much time and effort you put into the initial version of your idea, it will never live up to your grand vision, and that’s ok.

Once you launch your idea, focus on improving your startup business with lots of smaller incremental changes each day to ultimately achieve your vision. These changes don’t have to be giant, daunting, sweeping changes that ultimately get procrastinated because they are too large of an undertaking. Making a small change and then building on that change with another the next day, and the next, and the day after that quickly snowball into momentum towards your vision.

You don’t have time to stop everything and completely revise your website design until it is perfect, but what about updating your logo today, and your hero banner tomorrow. You don’t have time to create an 8 week classroom-style training course for employee #2, but you could make a checklist of the basic concepts the new hire needs to be familiar with by the end of month three. Then, after three months, the new hire can provide feedback on what else to add to the training for the next person, fleshing out the training a little more.

Keep moving. As soon as you stop making Incremental Improvements, you stop making progress on your vision.

I spend at least a hour per day in my car commuting to work. If you’re like me and most other people that commute each day, you see this period spent in traffic as wasted time. I always feel like I should be doing something else more important. That’s why I started listening to Podcasts. iTunes has a growing number of professional quality podcasts on Business, Entrepreneurship, and even some Entertainment for when you need to decompress. I now just plug my iPhone into the aux jack in my car and turn the bumper to bumper time into a learning experience to continue furthering my knowledge.

Here are some of the podcasts on Business and Entrepreneurship that I recommend:

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
Class sessions recorded at Stanford where some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley deliver lectures on their experiences.

HBR IdeaCast
A shorter 15 minute podcast where the Harvard Business Review features a guest to discuss a recent article written for HBR.org

Foundation
A video podcast where Digg founder, Kevin Rose, interviews other startup founders in Silicon Valley. They share their path to success and the pitfalls to avoid for future entrepreneurs.

The Random Show
Another video podcast that features Kevin Rose as well as Tim Ferriss, fellow entrepreneur and the author of The 4-Hour Work Week. This video podcast is a little more sporadic on the release schedule, one video every month or two, as well an crossing over to the entertainment genre. They talk about random stuff including their experiences and recommendations.

Epic Meal Time
This phenomenon of a video podcast is one that you probably don’t want to passively listen to if you are driving because it really requires the visuals to appreciate it. This video podcast is completely on the entertainment spectrum. A bunch of guys get together each week, drink Jack Daniels, and cook ridiculously huge meals (+100,000 calories) with crazy combinations (think giant burger made out of 75 fast food burgers). Enjoy.

This list should get you started. If you are looking for more, just start searching iTunes podcasts for keywords like entrepreneurship, business, or xbox and download a few podcasts to see if they fit your personality and listening style. Any suggestions for ones I should have included on the list? Throw them in the comments.

As we move into February and most 2012 New Year’s Resolutions bite the dust (if they haven’t already) I thought I would share a different way to set goals for the year.

Everyone on my team at Fetchback did this exercise last year as well as this year and really liked it. Instead of selecting specific resolutions for the year, choose 3 guiding words or phrases. I was introduced to this concept by reading a post from business blogger, Chris Brogan. My 3 words even made it into his blog post this year! Read Chris Brogan’s 3 words for 2012.

Here are my 3 words for 2012 and reasons why I chose them:

+200%
I learned a lot in 2011 about retargeting, being a manager, business, and lots of other things. To hit my long-term goals and be fulfilled, I can’t get complacent. I want to learn twice as much in 2012 as I did in 2011.

Iterate
I’m going to continue to embrace change and double-down on what’s working while removing what’s not at Fetchback and in my personal life, as fast as makes sense.

Reflect
If iteration is the action, reflection is what will help ensure I make the right changes in a timely manner, both personally and professionally. Annually and Quarterly are not often enough. In a startup environment like Fetchback, every day is a marathon and we cover a lot of ground. For many goals, weekly or daily reflection is needed. Taking the time to stop for a moment and think about what you recently learned also helps solidify it for you.

If you would like to participate, throw your 3 words in the comments. I also recommend writing your 3 words on a note-card and display it in a spot where you will see it every day!

Every year, people around the world make the terrible decision to set New Years resolutions for themselves. They often times revolve around giving something up. Stop smoking, lose weight, get out of debt. Here it is the end of February and my guess is that the majority of people out there already broke their resolutions because they set an unobtainable goal for themselves. Besides that, if you wanted to become the best person you could possibly be and you knew you needed to do a specific thing to achieve it, why would you wait until the beginning of the year to start? Why not June 30th?

Instead of setting yourself up for failure in 2011, steal a concept from blogger Chris Brogan and come up with 3 focus areas for the year. These don’t have to be specific actions or smart goals, just words to guide you throughout the year.

I chose Lead, Brand, Execute. Read More

As the new year is well underway, so is the activity at StartupRoundup. I started this blog with the intention of discovering and showcasing early stage tech startups. I didn’t want to be redundant and cover the same sites that the TechCrunches of the world talk about. That left me looking for the pre-funded startup teams consisting of about one to three people.

Since my goal is to help these startups, the StartupRoundup blog is going to begin sharing the details of business plan and other startup compititions where seed money is available. On top of that, I would like to follow up with the winners and/or the most interesting startups as these events and share their story.

In my continuing quest to help other entrepreneurs, look for a startup competition calendar coming soon that will list as many events as possible. Also, check back on the home page often for details on the most interesting competitions. If you have any suggestions for events to cover, please send them my way on twitter @StartupRoundup or shoot me an email at startup@startuproundup.com

Make 2011 the year of your startup!

Do you have an idea for a mobile app? Want to turn it into some sweet cash? Why not develop it for Nokia’s new N8 phone and have a chance to win some  serious money. They are giving away a total of $10 million! If you are one of the two grand prize winners, you will get $250k in cash and almost $2 million in marketing for your app. Even if you are not one of the grand prize winners, you can still walk away with one of the 17 category prizes ranging from $150k – $50k for first through third place.

Visit the Calling All Innovators site to get more details, such as the different run-time options you can develop it in as well as the official entry form. The deadline is Friday, January 28, 2011 at 5pm Eastern Time.

To get you started, here is some great app development advise from my interview with the founder of Appiction, Spencer Forrest. He gives a peek into the different ways to separate your app from the rest, Appiction’s unique development process, and the lessons they learned along way.

Looking for some more inspiration? Find out how one college student took his idea for an app called KartMe and made it happen without spending his days programming.

It’s much easier to work hard and give 100% effort when someone else is holding you accountable for your actions. In a traditional job, most people don’t want to let their boss or their team down, so they go the extra mile. Ambitious entrepreneurs often strive to impress and rise to the top. This means productivity is great in a 9-5 job, but what about when you are employee #1 at a one person startup? What about that side project you are working on that you aspire to turn into your next business?

To borrow from the book Rework by the founders of 37signals, “Inspiration is Perishable.” After the initial excitement of a new project wears off, will you have what it takes to keep going and take an idea to the next stage while no one is paying attention to you? Can you complete that prototype so you have something to show to others, begin to get feedback, and recharge your excitement for the project?

Here are 5 ways to battle the single person startup fatigue and get you over that hill to your future adoring fans:

Read More

Twitter has released a preview of the next evolution of the online service. In attempt to make the site easier to use and much more useful, they have commandeered more screen real-estate to present additional tweets and multimedia on the same page. Now that you have “Everything in one place“, as Twitter says, the width of the site went from roughly 764 pixels to 1040 pixels. This takes away much of the coveted background area where many people and companies like to do additional branding. Taking what little space is left and effectively using it will be a challenge for many.

To get you started on this challenge of redesigning your Twitter background, I thought I would write a quick tutorial as well as include a Photoshop template.
(Template also works with GIMP – a free Photoshop alternative)

Read More

Groupon has been under fire the last week for both fraudulent offers as well as the Groupon Nation nearly bankrupting mom and  pop shops that take on the massive number of sales coming from the discounted deals. The Fraudulent Groupon Photography Deal was covered by Tech Crunch when it was brought to light that no professional photographer could ever schedule 1000’s of on-site sessions in a timely fashion. This is especially true with an 87% discount, bringing the photographer’s cut of the Groupon to roughly $30. I’m confident that, moving forward, Groupon will put a more rigorous review process in place to keep from making Tech Crunch news in this fashion.

The second issue this week is the real problem. Posies Cafe let the whole world know how taking on the responsibility of a Groupon deal nearly bankrupted this mom and pop store. The deal was pay $6 for a coupon valued at $13. After Groupon took 50%, the cafe owner was left with just $3 to cover the fixed cost of the $13 value. There were nearly 1,000 coupons sold. After 3 months, the business had lost $8,000 from their marketing efforts and could not make payroll. The owner had to take $8,000 from her and her husband’s savings to cover the costs.

If the business offering the deal does not cap the number of Groupons that could be purchased, there is no ceiling to the risk that business is taking on by signing-up to offer a Groupon deal. Also, there is no easy way for the business to measure the ROI of a Groupon deal. There is a simple solution and a large piece missing from Groupon’s business model.

Read More