With $3.5 Million In New Funding, Expensify Targets Concur Customers

With $3.5 Million In New Funding, Expensify Targets Concur Customers http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/expensify-concur-customers/

With $3.5 Million In New Funding, Expensify Targets Concur Customers | TechCrunch

Expense management startup Expensify is hoping to win over some new customers thanks to SAP’s acquisition of competitor Concur. To do that, it’s making it free for Concur customers to switch to its platform, and also offering a way for its competition’s users to leverage its products when submitting expenses into Concur.

The aggressive push comes after Expensify has quietly raised a small strategic round of funding to ramp up its sales and marketing. The company brought in $3.5 million from strategic investor Barracuda Networks which will help cement a reseller relationship between the two.

All of which is good news for the industry, and for me personally. You see, a few years ago I worked for a smaller blog that wasn’t owned by a giant monster of an organization… and there I had the joy of using Expensify to create and submit my expense reports.

Having come from a world where I previously submitted paper receipts along with a printed-out spreadsheet of charges, being able to submit photos of my receipts through a mobile app was a revelation. But then I joined TechCrunch, that meant joining AOL, and THAT meant dealing with a whole different — and much less good — expense management platform called Concur.

Oh sure, you can still create and submit reports online. And there’s even a mobile app you can (theoretically) use to submit photos of your receipts. But none of it works particularly well. And the website itself looks like something that was built in the days of Geocities.

Anyway… Today is a glorious day, because I can now go back to submitting my expense reports through Expensify. The six-year old startup, which has sought to bring expense reporting into the 21st century, has just launched a way for Concur users to use the Expensify website and mobile apps to create and manage expense reports and export them to Concur.

From a user’s settings page, one can create a connection directly by just adding login credentials for a Concur account, and then submit expenses as they would normally. But they’ll have the added advantage of being able to use the Expensify apps and SmartScan tech, which scans receipts entered into the app and automatically recognizes and inputs vendor names, amounts, and such directly into an expense.

For Expensify, the strategy is more than just about getting individual Concur users to use its product instead — it’s about getting organizations to take notice and make a switch to its expense management platform. On that front, it hopes to benefit from the recent sale of Concur to SAP.

While it’s widely acknowledged that Concur mostly sucks, Expensify is making the argument that things are likely to get worse, just as things usually do when one big organization swallows up another.

Even if that’s the case, the problem for most Concur customers is that they are under contract for some amount of time. To convince those organizations to switch over, Expensify is basically offering them its service for free for the length of their remaining Concur contracts.

The initiative is part of a broader push for Expensify to win over customers in a competitive space. And that’s what the funding from Barracuda was all about.

That $3.5 million doesn’t sound like a lot, and it brings the total raised to just over $10 million in funding for the company. And Expensify is already profitable, so it didn’t need the cash. But according to CEO David Barrett, the deal helped it acquire a global sales force of 7,000 Barracuda employees, while only giving up $3.5 million in equity.

“Given we weren’t looking to raise (and actively wanted to minimize dilution to employees and existing investors), we set out to complete the smallest round we possibly could,” Barrett wrote in an email.

Contrary to the usual fundraising “game” played by most companies, in which the highest amount raised wins, Barrett says Expensify views the fundraising game more like golf: “We’re aiming to raise the minimum necessary to retain the most equity, ensuring the largest real-world outcome for everyone involved.”

Some might view that as a welcome strategy, especially in light of recent investor calls to lower burn rates across the industry. But is it a strategy that will work? I guess we’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m just happy I’ll be able to use Expensify again.

Advertisement Advertisement CrunchBase

Concur Technologies

Founded 1993

Overview Concur Technologies, Inc. (Concur) is a global provider of on-demand Employee Spend Management solutions. The Company’s software solutions enable organizations to control costs by automating the processes used to manage employee spending. Its solutions unite online travel procurement with automated expense reporting and optimize the process of collecting, submitting, tracking and paying supplier … Location Redmond, Washington Categories Software Founders Michael Hilton Website http://www.concur.com Full profile for Concur Technologies Expensify

Founded 2008

Overview Founded by CEO David Barrett in May 2008 from a dream of ridding the world of expense report frustration, Expensify does “expense reports that don’t suck!” Users can import expenses and receipts from their smartphones, 98% of US banks and credit cards, plus a wide array of international banks. Their SmartScan technology will read receipts and automatically create expenses for them, or … Location San Francisco, California Founders David Barrett, Witold Stankiewicz Website http://use.expensify.com Full profile for Expensify TechCrunch Daily

Latest headlines delivered to you daily

TechCrunch

International

China Europe Japan Follow TechCrunch

TechCrunch Apps

Subscribe to TechCrunch Daily

Latest headlines delivered to you daily

© 2013-2014 AOL Inc. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress.com VIP Fonts by (via Instapaper)

Thomas “Tigre” Wenrich to Startups: Your Business Plan is of Limited Value

Thomas “Tigre” Wenrich to Startups: Your Business Plan is of Limited Value http://tech.co/miami-investor-series-thomas-tigre-wenrich-2014-09

Thomas “Tigre” Wenrich is a multicultural executive with experience in finance, marketing, and operations. After a successful 16-year career with The Boston Consulting Group in the U.S., Spain, and Mexico, he retired to the warmer climate here in Miami. Subsequently, he participated in a roll-up in the retail money service business (remittances, check cashing, and payday advance). After selling his stores in early 2009, Tigre–yes you can all him Tigre– became first a CFO and later a board member in Open English. He is also an investor and an Endeavor mentor.

Tech Cocktail picked his brain a bit about investment and the local startup scene.

What do you look for when making the decision to invest? What is your process like?

I start with the idea – is it a sector that I understand? Can the business build competitive advantage? Can it be big? The first point is important, because I only want to invest in businesses where I can participate and add value – and it’s hard to add value in a space in which I have no experience.

Next, the team is absolutely critical. In early stage investments, the business plan is of limited value – the only thing for certain is that the final business won’t look like what’s in the plan. So the entrepreneur has to inspire confidence that he will know how to respond as things inevitably change and evolve with the business. For this reason it usually takes multiple meetings – the pitch has to be good, but the team also has to hold up under scrutiny during due diligence.

What is typically your bite size? Does this change depending on where the company is based?

I am not playing with a lot of available capital, so my investments tend to be small – usually $10K to $25K. It doesn’t vary based on location, but I will rarely look at deals that are not local. If it’s not nearby, than the opportunities for me to get involved and add value are limited.

When was the last time you made an investment?

Actually, I am closing on one this week!

In your opinion, what is the advantage of starting up a business in Miami?

Over the past several years there has been a lot of activity in the local tech community, and a lot more support. It’s not huge, and it’s not Silicon Valley, but it’s a much better environment than even 2009 when we brought Open English here. Particularly for service businesses and businesses in the creative industries, not to mention businesses with a focus on Latin America or the US Hispanic market, Miami has a lot to offer. Florida is also generally a pretty business-friendly state; much better than California in terms of taxes, regulation, and labor costs. Those can’t be the only things we differentiate ourselves on, but they help.

What do you think Miami‘s tech community needs to continue to develop to become sustainable?

I think we are seeing the beginnings of a virtuous cycle, but we need much more – more good entrepreneurial stories and more investors looking at the sector. A couple of big exits wouldn’t hurt!

What is the best advice you were given?

If you get a bad vibe – don’t walk away, run! So much about angel investing is about trust in the team and in the entrepreneur; it’s hard to be completely analytical – you have to trust your gut. So if you get a bad feeling or something doesn’t add up, it’s much better to cut things short early on.

(via Instapaper)

General Catalyst Commits $10M To Startups In Stripe’s Payments Ecosystem

General Catalyst Commits $10M To Startups In Stripe’s Payments Ecosystem http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/general-catalyst-commits-10m-for-startups-to-stripes-payments-ecosystem/

General Catalyst Commits $10M To Startups In Stripe’s Payments Ecosystem | TechCrunch

Posted 1 hour ago by Ingrid Lunden (@ingridlunden) Next Story With $3.5 Million In New Funding, Expensify Targets Concur Customers

Another bout of news is coming from the world of online payments: General Catalyst has announced a new, $10 million initiative — called the GC Stripe Platform Fund — to help its portfolio company, payments startup Stripe, continue to scale up: GC will invest in interesting startups that are powered by Stripe’s network, and startups that are building ways of extending the Stripe network.

The first of these investments is getting announced today: $500,000 in Baremetrics, a company that provides analytics around Stripe-based payments. It had been bootstrapped prior to this investment.

Stripe has raised $120 million with investors including Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund and Sequoia, among others. The company says that there are over 1,000 apps today that use Stripe’s payment APIs.

The news completes a hat trick of payments news today that also included eBay announcing its intention to spin off PayPal, and Dwolla raising money from CME Group. It’s timed well in that Stripe has scored some notable wins over PayPal by tying up with Twitter and Facebook and Apple Pay for payment integrations, and shows that the company is working hard to push more scale in its business in the face of a newly-independent PayPal getting more aggressive in the future as well.

GC says that those interested in applying for funding should email a one-page pitch to GC_StripeEcosystem@generalcatalyst.com. It’s considering applicants from all over the world.

Hemant Taneja, MD of General Catalyst Partners, says that Baremetrics is instructive of the kinds of investments GC will be making. “The GC Stripe Platform Initiative is geared primarily toward rapidly accelerating, seed-stage startups who need a capital infusion to sustain their momentum,” he said in an interview. “Most investments will range from $250,000-$500,000.”

This is not the first time that smaller tech startups, or their backers, have run funding initiatives to promote their platforms. Twilio did something similar in Europe in partnership with 500 Startups. And larger companies like Salesforce, Microsoft and Google also make strategic investments.

This is different in that it is a GC managed initiative, with GC investing in the companies. “That said, Stripe may offer unique technical access or mentoring to recipients of investments,” he added. “We think that some of the most innovative companies of the future will be built on Stripe. Their open platform strategy will lead to an entirely new ecosystem of software companies that are focused on helping customers scale online.” It will consider investing more in the startups over time, he says.

Image: Flickr

Advertisement Advertisement TechCrunch Daily

Latest headlines delivered to you daily

Popular Posts TechCrunch

International

China Europe Japan Follow TechCrunch

TechCrunch Apps

Subscribe to TechCrunch Daily

Latest headlines delivered to you daily

© 2013-2014 AOL Inc. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress.com VIP Fonts by (via Instapaper)

EventBoard, pushing iPads to manage conference rooms, gets $1.5M

EventBoard, pushing iPads to manage conference rooms, gets $1.5M http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/30/eventboard-funding/

A Salt Lake City startup called EventBoard is launching today a web-based application that brings smart data analytics to the normally boring task of tracking meetings in companies’ conference rooms.

EventBoard is also announcing a seed round to the tune of $1.5 million.

That figure sounds disproportionately small when you consider that the startup has racked up more than 500 customers, including Airbnb, Box, Disney, New York University, Pinterest, and Yale University. But EventBoard is still young, having started just a year and a half ago.

“It’s just taken off like crazy,” EventBoard co-founder and chief executive Shaun Ritchie said in an interview with VentureBeat. “I’m just getting call after call. It’s this interesting word of mouth.”

By that he means that people visiting offices see iPads displaying sleek cards of current and upcoming meeting information through EventBoard and then want to bring the technology into their own companies.

It’s notable when a startup’s product takes off virally like that, especially when a popular technology company like Google has competing technology, as is the case here. Earlier this year Google came out with the ChromeBox for Meetings. In addition to Google, Crestron sells technology for managing meeting rooms as well. And on top of that, some companies have devised their own hardware or software for that purpose.

It helps that Ritchie has a good story to tell about the startup. As an executive and co-founder of 60-person Internet marketing company Neutron Interactive, he realized it wasn’t easy to share a single 10-person conference room.

“We needed a way to figure out how to move around people throughout the office better, and without this awkward collision of people saying, ‘Oh, I booked it on the calendar and you didn’t,’ and, ‘Oh, I have this room reserved,’” Ritchie said. “And so there’s this awkward dance that kind of goes on. Turns out this happens in millions of rooms every day around the world.”

Above: Shaun Ritchie of EventBoard.

Image Credit: Jordan Novet/VentureBeat The iPad app he his co-founders built became popular when they put in Apple’s App Store. Users at different companies started asking for analytics on how many people were participating in meetings and which rooms were most popular. The current version of the app contains such capabilities.

And in addition to supplying the app, EventBoard can also help companies obtain iPads and mounting equipment.

But now EventBoard is going further when it comes to analyzing data.

“What I think we can move into is helping companies understand how people are using their spaces, how their employees and how people are utilizing the buildings and expensive real estate that oftentimes companies have,” Ritchie said. “I see a big opportunity to start helping companies track productivity and effectiveness of actual meetings.”

That could mean integrating with companies’ existing cloud-based data sources, like Workday, he said.

Google Ventures, Zetta Venture Partners, Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff, Dave Elkington, and Domo chief executive Josh James participated in the seed round in EventBoard, which employs 14 people.

(via Instapaper)

Silicon Valley Heavy Hitters Mock Over-Hyped Startups To Promote Ron Conway's Latest Project, 'One City'

Silicon Valley Heavy Hitters Mock Over-Hyped Startups To Promote Ron Conway's Latest Project, 'One City' http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-conway-launches-one-city-with-mybook-video-2014-9

Flickr/Steve RhodesSV Angel’s Ron Conway at a SOPA protest at City Hall.

SV Angel founder and San Francisco city advocate Ron Conway got together with a bunch of tech heavy hitters to launch One City, a new initiative supported by Mayor Ed Lee, that aims to make positive changes in the Bay area. It’s part of a larger organization Conway founded in 2012, sf.citi.

One City launched Tuesday with a video Conway hopes will go viral, “MyBook.” The video pokes fun at over-hyped startups. In the video, which stars Biz Stone, Joe Montana, MC Hammer, Warriors player Harrison Barnes and San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr, the tech rumor mill starts churning over a mystery startup called “MyBook.”

“MyBook is beyond trending — I think it broke the hashtag,” a line in the video states.

MyBook ends up being an education movement, not a tablet, smart phone app, or something that can be publicly-traded.

“What if schools were the next big thing in tech?” the video concludes, promoting a One City initiative, “Circle the Schools.” Circle the Schools connects more than 20 technology companies with public schools in San Francisco, which they can provide either supplies or mentorship to.

“One City will harness this same passion to find solutions to the biggest problems facing San Francisco,” Conway states in a press release. “One City is the new home for [Circle the City] and so many other projects like it.”

Improving San Francisco is a project Conway feels strongly about. At a recent Bloomberg conference, he got into a heated argument with early Facebook executive and venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya over the city’s housing crisis.

Here’s the MyBook video that’s promoting One City’s launch, below:

(via Instapaper)

With $40 Million In New Cash, Parent-Teacher App Remind Targets A Billion Users Worldwide

With $40 Million In New Cash, Parent-Teacher App Remind Targets A Billion Users Worldwide http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2014/09/30/with-40-million-in-new-cash-teacher-student-app-remind-targets-a-billion-users-worldwide/

Remind’s cofounders and brothers: David (l) and Brett, the CEO. (Credit: Remind) Lost permission slips and forms sent by a teacher to their student’s parents have long been a right of passage, but perhaps not for much longer. With nearly every student, parent and teacher all carrying a mobile phone, the question isn’t so much whether there’s an easier way to communicate from the classroom to the home, but how to do it in a way that doesn’t feel invasive or forced.

A startup called Remind thinks it’s figured out the balance, and its user growth would suggest that cofounder Brett Kopf is on to something. And two top Silicon Valley venture capital investors agree, betting another $40 million on Kopf in a Series C round announced Tuesday.

Ed tech’s a tough market. Many startups have run into trouble when it comes time to try to grow, as they have to sell individually from school to school, or at best to one district at a time. That’s been the model even for higher-profile rivals like Panorama Education, a startup focused on classroom polling that Mark Zuckerberg backed in one of his first investments.

But Remind says it’s already used by half the teachers in Georgia, 40% of the teachers in Texas and getting close to that everywhere else. It can spread so fast because it’s entirely free right now. A teacher downloads the app, asks his or her students and their parents to do the same, and then can share quick reminder messages, notices about snow days, or other key information. Dialog is still the trickiest piece–there’s no full two-way communication yet, but teachers can now pose yes-or-no questions that students and parents can reply back to with a check mark to mark an answer.

Teachers are downloading Remind at a fast clip. In February, when the company raised $15 million in cash in a Series B round led by investor John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Remind could boast that 600,000 teachers were using the app to communicate with more than 9 million parents and students. Since then, Remind has almost doubled that user base, with one million teachers now communicating with 17 million parents and students.

During the back-to-school rush of August, Kopf says, the app was being downloaded by 200,000-300,000 students per day–reaching #3 in the Apple store, ahead of WhatsApp and Twitter. ”Before the semester, we have to make sure that the servers don’t go down when we are adding thousands a day, then we have time during the semester to build,” Kopf says.

The next step isn’t to start cashing in. Investors continue to tell Forbes that Remind will always be free for its basic use. Kopf says eventually Remind will charge for premium features such as administrator solutions, school-wide notices and homework reminders that a school might pay for.

Right now, Remind’s team thinks it’s in a land grab. The fresh cash of the fundraise is supposed to bring Remind to the international market, starting with Western Europe and the United Kingdom. To keep up, the company streamlined its name from Remind101 to the more multilingual Remind, and will continue to hire in product and support areas. Still run by Kopf and his brother and fellow Forbes 30 Under 30 member David Kopf, Remind has already snagged several engineers and an international growth director from Facebook and Skype and a ecruiter from Google as part of 18 hires the company’s made this year.

No new investors joined the funding round. According to Chamath Palihapitiya of The Social + Capital Partnership, that was because Palihapitiya, a former early Facebook employee, and Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who invested in Google and Twitter, see this as the next huge app. An ‘inside round’ where existing investors pump more cash into their portfolio company can sometimes be a sign a startup is struggling. In response to that, Palihapitiya says this new investment is a fund-making or breaking opportunity on par with Peter Thiel ruing that he didn’t continue to invest in Facebook, or Sequoia’s partners winning big when they injected more money into WhatsApp before it sold for $19 billion.

Remind’s magic, Palihapitiya says, is the built-in community that it accesses with each teacher who signs up. Because they need to communicate with parents consistently, they won’t stop using the app, meaning the dropout rate is minimal. Then after widespread adoption, Remind could start introducing paid partnership opportunities with coding classes or ways to handle some the of the part-time accounting a teacher has to do.

Investors will back up their dollars with high praise–that’s par for the course–but Palihapitiya says he sees something in Remind’s opportunity that takes him straight back to his early days managing Facebook’s growth alongside Zuck.

“I’ve been very skeptical about consumer businesses since Facebook, not investing” Palihapitiya says. “This has the most credible chance to get to one billion users of any product I’ve seen since I left.”

Follow Alex on Forbes, Twitter and Facebook for more coverage of startups, enterprise software and venture capital.

(via Instapaper)

Magma Venture Partners Closes $150M 4th Fund For Early Stage Israeli Startups

Magma Venture Partners Closes $150M 4th Fund For Early Stage Israeli Startups http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/magma-vp-iv/

Magma Venture Partners Closes $150M 4th Fund For Early Stage Israeli Startups | TechCrunch

Magma Venture Partners, an Israeli early stage high-tech startup VC fund, has announced the closure of its fourth fund — with $150 million in committed capital. The new raise was supported by existing limited partners and new investors.

The firm closed a $100 million+ fundraising for its third fund early last year. The closing of its fourth fund brings the total capital under management by Magma to more than $500 million.

Magma’s extant investments have covered a broad swathe of digital areas including mobile, cloud, new media, SaaS, ecommerce, UGC and cyber security. Startups in its portfolio have included crowdsourced navigation app Waze (acquired by Google), mobile analytics company Onavo (acquired by Facebook), and Provigent (acquired by Broadcom).

It said it intends to continue the same investment strategy with the fourth fund, and will exclusively focus on investing in Israeli entrepreneurs — and primarily in Israel-based tech teams.

Magma expects to begin investing the fourth fund in early 2015 after Magma III reaches investment capacity. For Magma IV it said it expects to invest in seed and series A rounds, envisaging around 25 to 30 investment opportunities with typical investment sized between $500,000 and $6 million.

Commenting on the fourth fund in a statement, Yahal Zilka co-managing partner said: “We are very pleased with the interest, trust and support of leading Limited Partners (LP’s) in Magma and its activities with Israeli entrepreneurs. We are fortunate to partner with the most sophisticated global technology investors from the US, Europe, Asia and Israel. The strong LP interest provided for an expedited and swift fund raising process during the mid to late summer time frame.”

Advertisement Advertisement CrunchBase

Magma Venture Partners

Overview Magma is Israel’s leading venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investments in communication, semiconductors, internet and media. They seek bright ideas, infuse them with experience and foresight, and facilitate their rise as industry leaders that redefine the global communications sector. They use their experience and sector specialization in cooperating with entrepreneurs, industry … Location Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Categories Finance, Venture Capital Website http://www.magmavc.com Full profile for Magma Venture Partners TechCrunch Daily

Latest headlines delivered to you daily

TechCrunch

International

China Europe Japan Follow TechCrunch

TechCrunch Apps

Subscribe to TechCrunch Daily

Latest headlines delivered to you daily

© 2013-2014 AOL Inc. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress.com VIP Fonts by (via Instapaper)

Applied knowledge without applied wisdom is a recipe for applied negative consequences.

Max Daves CEO (idea)ology group

The 25 Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About

The 25 Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237608

Most entrepreneurs have a lot of responsibilities on their plate from day one of operation. Everything from hiring employees, managing teams, marketing the brand and dealing with finances can fall under a founder's responsibilities. Juggling so many tasks can be daunting and lead to a lot of stress. If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to become more efficient, productive and successful, take a look at the list of tools below.

Buffer is a great platform and app to find and schedule content on all social media platforms. You can also view analytics, shorten links, create schedules and reshare messages that have already been shared before. This makes building up your brand and company on social media extremely easy.

Asana is a free project-management tool that allows teams to communicate without email, in one central location. Because many entrepreneurs work with virtual teams, this is a great tool to stay in touch.

Most people already know about this tool, but Chromebooks and ability to convert and edit Microsoft Office documents make Google Drive (and accompanying Docs and Sheets) a great way to collaborate and share documents with your clients, freelancers or employees.

Translate online content -- like news and blog posts -- into an audio file. This allows you to “read” any content that can help you with your business -- including articles on productivity, sales and branding -- on the go.

If you are seeking funding for you business, AngelList is a great social network that can help you seek funding and make connections with those in your community.

If you need a logo, social-media cover photo, podcast intro, website content and more, be sure to check out Fiverr. Sure, the gigs start at $5 but that doesn’t mean they are sub par. Look at reviews and actual Fiverr gig samples before deciding on a contractor.

If you need a freelancer for a long-term project or something more extensive, try Elance, a platform that allows you to post projects and find freelancers that have what you are looking for.

Original websites are always a good thing, but if that is lacking in your budgets, Wix is a pretty and simple website builder that has modern templates that almost anyone can edit.

If you need an office or just a place to work for the day, try ShareDesk or DeskTime to find a co-working office or open desk that allows you to have office space without paying for an entire office.

If you are an Android user, connect your Google account to your phone and take advantage of Google Now, which can tell you when to leave for appointments that are on your calendar, whether or not your flight is delayed or even new articles from websites you frequent often. This “virtual personal assistant of sorts” can help you stay organized and on track, even if you have a lot of balls in the air, as most entrepreneurs do.

If you fly or travel to a lot for conferences, meeting with investors or clients, or other events, TripIt Pro (there’s also a free, less robust, version) can help you stay on top of flight changes, frequent flyer numbers and more.

Startup NerdWallet offers an array of airline credit cards, which can help you accrue points to fly where ever you need to build your business. Put all your business expenses on a single card -- from Dropbox subscriptions to office supplies -- and watch the points stack up.

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited plan and Audible (also part of Amazon) allow you to listen and read several books from its service each month. Just like SoundGecko, it’s another way to stay up-to-date with business, self improvement and more.

One great way to build a good business is to meet other entrepreneurs and industry colleagues through conferences. There are several conference search engines available, but some work better in certain industries (and areas) than others. Make sure you check out a variety to see which one fits your needs.

If you are looking to drum up business within your local community, try Meetup to find networking groups, industry meetings and speakers. EventBrite is also a great place to find tickets to smaller, local events as well.

Surprisingly, Pinterest can be a great place to find inspiration for new products and upcoming trends (so you can use them in your own projects), as well as a place to share your products and inspirations as a company. Power personal blender Nutribullet is a good example of a growing company that capitalizes on its audience’s interest in healthy living on Pinterest.

Once LinkedIn accepts your request to join its long-form content publishing platform, you have free reign to contribute content as much as you want. While the jury is still out among marketers whether or not Google will flag republished posts as duplicate content, it’s probably best to only post original content on LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn is already such a large platform, its content will get indexed faster and could potentially give you more visibility than your company’s blog.

LinkedIn content is just one way to build your brand through content. You should also set up profiles for your employees on Contently, which automatically creates a writing portfolio for them based on the websites they say they write for.

Think of Talkwalker as Google Alerts, but better. It offers more comprehensive results and more options that allow you to check for mentions of your company online. This helps with public relations and the chance to interact with people who are discussing your brand online.

Help a Reporter Out is an email that goes out multiple times per day, with requests from reporters for sources for their stories. This can turn into free publicity for your company. Be sure to respond ASAP, as some requests can get competitive.

These are legally binding digital document signing services that allow you to get contracts, agreements, W2s and more signed quickly and over email. Be sure to check your state’s regulation on these documents, but they usually stand as legal in the majority of states.

Going back to working with a distributed workforce, Join.Me allows you to share your screen with another user quickly, for free. All you need is the free software, and the other user can see your screen from their browser. If both of you have the software, however, you can also cede control of your mouse to the other user, allow tutorials, customer service and how-to demonstrations easier than ever.

Jing is a free screencast (screen recording) and screenshot software that makes it easy to record product demos, illustrative how-tos for virtual assistants or screenshots for blog posts and product description pages.

If you are looking to reach out to journalists to cover your company, product launch or other news, these directories allow you to search for journalists by beat, industry or region.

Like PressPass and JustReachOut but for bloggers, BlogDash allows you to connect with bloggers in your specific niche to review products, sponsor blog giveaways or build relationships. Bloggers have a significant audience base and impact on trends, product sales and more, so it’s important to have a great relationship with them.

What other tools do you recommend? Leave a comment below and add your suggestions to this list.

Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Media is an investor and partner with AlleyNYC, a co-working space in New York City.

(via Instapaper)

Sent from my iPhone

What Entrepreneurs Call 'Sweat Equity' the IRS Calls 'Taxable'

The Choking of New Business Startups By Big Government

What Entrepreneurs Call 'Sweat Equity' the IRS Calls 'Taxable' http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237712

Sweat equity is trading labor for equity or an interest in the company. What happens when you are paid your sweat equity? The answer is simple. Sweat equity is always taxable. We can blunt the tax burden a variety of ways but equity given in exchange for something with a dollar value is not sweat equity.

Entrepreneurs are usually confused when they hear that sweat equity is taxable. The IRS will see sweat equity as two separate transactions or events. The labor provided to the company is a single taxable transaction between the founder and the business. The entrepreneur will be taxed on the dollar value of the labor provided. The founder receiving equity is another transaction, where the founder pays the “dollar value of the labor” to receive equity in the company. The founder will pay taxes on the amount of income earned from the “labor provided” and receive equity instead of cash.

For example, Bob receives $100 dollars in sweat equity from ABC Corp. Bob is required to pay taxes on the value of sweat equity received ($100 dollars) as earned income. Bob pays taxes on the $100 dollars of income and gains the equity in the company worth $100 dollars. Bob’s tax basis in the company is then $100 dollars.

Avoiding the tax burden from sweat equity depends primarily on the timing when equity is given and the form of incorporation. The major milestone is whether the equity is received before or after incorporating. Generally, it is easier to distribute equity in a company and avoid a tax liability before it is incorporated. Founders cannot avoid a tax liability when receiving sweat equity after incorporating.

Before the company is incorporated. Entrepreneurs are allowed to distribute equity to the founders in any way without incurring a tax liability when initially incorporating. This is true for corporations and partnerships. Limited liability companies with multiple owners are usually taxed as partnerships. Tax law allows this because the company is worth nothing, so receiving an interesting in zero is not a taxable transaction or event. Thus, founders receiving sweat equity are can avoid a tax liability by providing no cash or a nominal amount of investment.

After the company is incorporated. After incorporating, a founder receiving sweat equity must pay taxes on the amount of equity they receive based on the explanation above. A few ways to lessen the tax burden for sweat equity founders that incorporated as a corporation, limited liability company or partnership is to use a vesting schedule or a loan.

A vesting schedule is a timeline where the founder receives equity over a period of time. This helps the sweat equity founder by spreading the equity and its associated tax liability over a period of years to avoid a giant tax bill in a single tax year.

A loan is another option available to founders. David Reischer, an attorney from LegalAdvice.com explains that the company could give the founder a loan equal to the amount of equity. This means that the founder receives equity in the company and can pay the company back at their own leisure. Alternatively, I’ve seen companies give perpetual loans or loans that automatically renew every year (this includes interest on the loan) for sweat equity. This effectively defers the tax liability for years without requiring the sweat equity partner to immediately pay out cash.

83(b) election for corporations. A corporation may lessen the tax burden on a sweat equity founder with an 83(b) election. Alan J. Straus, CPA, J.D. explains, that the 83(b) election allows the sweat equity founder to be taxed at the current valuation of the stock or equity. Because the company’s value is expected to be greater in the future, so the tax liability should be lower.

Profit sharing for partnerships. Partnerships are allowed to provide sweat equity to founders without a tax burden. But, it can only be in the form of a “profit sharing interest.” This means that the founder would receive a percentage of the future profits in the company, but they would not receive an interest in the assets of the company. The “interest in future profits” does not have a monetary value in the present, so the sweat equity founder would avoid a tax liability by receiving an “interest worth nothing.”

The sweat equity founder benefits by avoiding a tax liability, while still receiving an interest in the company. The drawback is that the sweat equity founder would not receive any of the assets in the company, if it were to close down. If the company were to be sold, they would still receive their share in the exit based on the partnership agreements.

Sweat equity is something that many entrepreneurs have to deal with because we often start as solo founders or with an informal agreement between partners. It’s something we all need to consider early because it’s often too late, when a business becomes stable or reaches the point where everyone involved is able to participate fulltime. Don’t let the tax implications from sweat equity blindside you at the end of the year.

(via Instapaper)

Sent from my iPhone