The White House's Startup America initiative

Winning the Future with America’s Entrepreneurs
Both the federal government and the private sector have important roles to dramatically increase the prevalence and success of entrepreneurs across the country.
First, the Obama Administration is rolling out a set of entrepreneur-focused policy initiatives in four areas:  (1) increasing access to capital for high-growth startups; (2) increasing access to high-quality mentors for entrepreneurs; (3) accelerating the commercialization of federally funded R&D; and (4) improving the regulatory environment for high-growth firms.  (Read more about the Obama Administration’s commitments to entrepreneurship.) 
At the same time, answering the President’s call to action to promote high-growth entrepreneurship, leaders in the private sector have launched the Startup America Partnership, an independent alliance of the country’s most innovative entrepreneurs, corporations, universities, foundations, and other leaders.  (Read more about the private sector’s commitments to entrepreneurship.)

Rachid Sefrioui on New Business Model Generation

I discovered this fantastic book about how to be wholistic when trying to develop a New Business Model for your startup, your app or just to reinvent your business in light of a rapidly changing competitive environment.

Use the Canvas by clicking on & printing the picture in this post to make sure you have covered all the bases when subjecting your idea to the "Business Model" test.

It did remind me of when I discovered Michael Porter's Five Forces Framework. It has that feeling of Eureka! but again everything these days seems to be a nanosecond eureka :)

You can find out more about the authors and their works at Business Model Generation. 

Customer Acquisition Cost vs. Long Term Value (Monetization)

This presentation highlights a constant debate we have with entrepreneurs when they pitch us: Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) - always underestimated, vs. Long Term Value of that Customer (LTV) - as in the revenues derived from acquired customers.

And indeed entrepreneurs always underestimate CAC and overestimate LTV, both in time and absolute value .

Building a sales & marketing machine

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Rachid Sefrioui: The New Face Of Venture Capital, Part 1

This is a neat review of Venture Capital but I don't agree with it all. The author takes a few shortcuts whereby he ignores the imperatives of LPs

The New Face Of Venture Capital, Part 1

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