This revised and updated edition of Nesheim's underground Silicon Valley bestseller incorporates twenty-three case studies of successful start-ups, including tables of wealth showing how much money founders and investors realized from each venture. The phenomenal success of the initial public offerings (IPOs) of many new internet companies obscures the fact that fewer than six out of 1 million business plans submitted to venture capital firms will ever reach the IPO stage. Many fail, according to start-up expert John Nesheim, because the entrepreneurs did not have access to the invaluable lessons that come from studying the real-world venture experiences of successful companies. Now they do. Acclaimed by entrepreneurs the world over, this practical handbook is filled with hard-to-find information and guidance covering every key phase of a start-up, from idea to IPO: how to create a winning business plan, how to value the firm, how venture capitalists work, how they make their money, where to find alternative sources of funding, how to select a good lawyer, and how to protect intellectual property. Nesheim aims to improve the odds of success for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and offers an insider's perspective from firsthand experience on one of the toughest challenges they face -- convincing venture capitalists or investment banks to provide financing. This complete, classic reference tool is essential reading for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs already involved in a start-up who want to increase their chances of success to rise to the top.

Today's customers are a hard bunch to crack. Time-strapped, screen-addicted, value-savvy, and socially engaged, their expectations are tougher than ever for a business to keep up with. They are empowered like never before and expect businesses to respect that sense of empowermentùlashing out at those that don't. Take heart: Old-fashioned customer service, fully retooled for today's blistering pace and digitally connected reality, is what you need to build the kind loyal customer base that allows you to surviveùand thrive. And High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service spells out surefire strategies for success in a clear, entertaining, and practical way. Discover: ò Six major customer trends and what they mean for your business ò Eight unbreakable rules for social media customer service ò How to effectively address online complainers and saboteurs on Yelp, Twitter, TripAdvisor, and other forums for user generated content ò The rising power of self-serviceùand how to design it properly ò How to build a company culture that breeds stellar customer service High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service reveals inside secrets of wildly successful customer service initiatives, from Internet startups to venerable brands, and shows how companies of every stripe can turn casual customers into fervent supporters who will spread the word far and wideùonline and off.

The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it's anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients. High Tech Trash is a wake-up call to the importance of the e-waste issue and the health hazards involved. Americans alone own more than two billion pieces of high tech electronics and discard five to seven million tons each year. As a result, electronic waste already makes up more than two-thirds of the heavy metals and 40 percent of the lead found in our landfills. But the problem goes far beyond American shores, most tragically to the cities in China and India where shiploads of discarded electronics arrive daily. There, they are "recycled"-picked apart by hand, exposing thousands of workers and community residents to toxics. As Grossman notes, "This is a story in which we all play a part, whether we know it or not. If you sit at a desk in an office, talk to friends on your cell phone, watch television, listen to music on headphones, are a child in Guangdong, or a native of the Arctic, you are part of this story." The answers lie in changing how we design, manufacture, and dispose of high tech electronics. Europe has led the way in regulating materials used in electronic devices and in e-waste recycling. But in the United States many have yet to recognize the persistent human health and environmental effects of the toxics in high tech devices. If Silent Spring brought national attention to the dangers of DDT and other pesticides, High Tech Trash could do the same for a new generation of technology's products.

This book is written primarily for people who are creating the future high-tech world by designing, building, and marketing innovative products. More specifically, it is for all engineers, engineering managers, entrepreneurs and intapreneurs. The book provides insight into the problems entrepreneurs face and gives a model for successful startup companies in a formal checklist.

A free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’ Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. High-Tech Trash analyzes creative strategies in glitch, noise, and error to chart the development of an aesthetic paradigm rooted in failure. Carolyn L. Kane explores how technologically influenced creative practices, primarily from the second half of the twentieth and first quarter of the twenty-first centuries, critically offset a broader culture of pervasive risk and discontent. In so doing, she questions how we continue onward, striving to do better and acquire more, despite inevitable disappointment. High-Tech Trash speaks to a paradox in contemporary society in which failure is disavowed yet necessary for technological innovation.

Considers the moral and social costs of today's sophisticated technology, arguing that the benefits of a cyberculture can be better appreciated by refocusing on the traditional Judeo-Christian values of discernment, moderation, wisdom, humility, authenticity, and diversity.

What man creates versus what we see in nature.

Leading Minds and Landmark Ideas In An Easily Accessible Format From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series delivers the fundamental information today's professionals need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. High-tech industries face a unique set of challenges in bringing their ideas to market. Harvard Business Review on Managing High-Tech Industries;B collects key ideas featured in the Harvard Business Review that will help high-tech executives stay competitive throughout the entire process of taking a cutting-edge concept from the drawing board to the marketplace. A Harvard Business Review Paperback.

Route 128 is a story of idealism and entrepreneurship, of ivory-tower intellectualism and practical Yankee ingenuity, of individual dreams and cooperative efforts--the search for new knowledge and the drive to put it to work. The book tells how a stretch of highway circling Boston became one of the nation's best-known centers of high-tech industrial innovation. No other region can match Boston's record of productivity and leadership in technology over the past two centuries. The fruitful interplay of industry, the federal government, and higher education in Massachusetts has produced new fields of research, novel inventions, spin-off companies, entire new industries, new academic disciplines, and innovative federal agencies like the National Science Foundation. What are the critical ingredients that produce such high creativity? What lessons are there for other states and nations interested in the fabled promise of high technology? The first book to address the importance of this area, Route 128 examines the forces that shaped the region and the role people and events there played in determining the course of the overall relationship among industry, academia, and government in our society. The book is as well a brilliant, incisive analysis of the conditions required to encourage innovation in other areas of the world. The authors highlight the roles of such "ultimate entrepreneurs" as Digital Equipment's Ken Olsen and of such academic impresarios as Vannevar Bush of MIT. The book also explains why the "Massachusetts Miracle" appeared to have crashed to earth by the end of the 1980s as the national and regional economies slid into recession and high-tech companies laid off thousands.