**We’ve extended the deadline to submit a team until March 9th at 8 PM EST.  Read why here. Submit your team now!**

With March Madness just around the corner, we thought it’d be fun to get in on the action and host a March Madness contest of our own.  Assemble your ideal startup “team” from our list of CEOs, cities, funding strategies and more and be entered for a chance to win a trip for you and a friend to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four & National Championship games in New Orleans. Now remember, this won’t be your average team, your team will be made up of a CEO, a location and business strategies – so choose wisely!

Think you’ve got what it takes to take your startup dream team all the way to the Final Four? Then let’s see it!

Simply submit your dream team and you could be at the Final Four! At the close of this week, we’ll pick the top 16 teams based on team selections and pitch to move on to week two, where its up to the public to decide who moves on.

If your team is selected as one of the top 16 teams, you’ll need to get out there and get voters to move you into the next round. The 8 teams with the most votes at the end of week 2 will move on to the 3rd week.  At the end of the 3rd week, the 4 teams with the most votes will move onto the Final Four round. The team with the most votes in week four will win the grand prize!

There’s also something in it for teams that didn’t make it to the Sweet 16 and for our voters. At the end of the contest we’ll be giving away four $50 Amazon gift cards as assist prizes.

To be entered to win the grand prize, you MUST submit a dream team this week, February 27 from 9 AM EST to March 2 at 5 PM EST. Submit your team now!

Remember, this contest is based on public votes, so be sure to tap your network for votes! See the rest of the blog post for more details.

With March Madness just around the corner, we thought it’d be fun to get in on the action and host a March Madness contest of our own, startup style.

On Monday we’ll be launching our Startup Dream Team contest.  To be entered to win, you’ll have to submit your ideal startup team and face off against other teams, bracket style.

Grasshopper is taking over the United States! With our trip to LessConf this week and BarCamp Tour right around the corner, we have some exciting events coming up across the country.

In the next two weeks you can find us in San Jose for SMX West and Austin for SXSW. Check it out:

Here at Grasshopper, we’ve done a LOT of marketing. We’ve run TV ads, radio commercials, pay-per-click ads, email campaigns, banner ads and so on and so forth. It’s a lot to keep track of! How do we know which ones are working and which ones aren’t?

The good news is many of these campaigns can be tracked with analytics. We can set up tracking URLs for things like email and pay-per-click, and when the person clicks through a link and purchases, we know.

But what happens when that person doesn’t click on a link and instead picks up the phone? How do we know what channel it came from? The answer is phone tracking and here’s how to do it:

About a month and a half ago, we launched a video contest and asked you all to create a video to inspire women entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses.  We were looking for a timeless video to inspire female entrepreneurs like the Jim Beam ad or our Entrepreneurs Can Change the World video. We launched the Entrepreneurs Can Change the World video back in 2009 and still see it being talked about and shared today.

To all those who took the time to create a video and enter our contest, thank you!  We were very impressed with what you came up with. We especially loved the personal stories.  The videos were truly inspiring.