Occam's Razor
JULY 31, 2006
It is only fair to follow up a post titled " Stop obsessing about conversion rate " with this post. (Just in case you have not read the Stop Obsessing post that please read that first for more context). Conversion rate is a very important metric, used properly. Here is my point of view on the basics and best practices for measuring conversion rate.
BeyondVC
JULY 6, 2006
As I mention in an earlier post , companies evolve and need different types of management with different profiles as they grow. A clear kiss of death that I have seen more often than not is hiring a VP of Sales too early. Here is the typical scenario – you just signed 3 or 4 customers in a couple of different verticals and you feel that all you need is some bodies on the street to grow your business.
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Tim Keane
JULY 6, 2006
'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « Managing Investor Relationships | Main. | Reduce Your Startup Risk » July 06, 2006. Whos Who of Angels. This is an interesting article from todays VC Experts website (vcexperts.com) that they forwarded to me.
OnlyOnce
JULY 28, 2006
Techdirt: India Says No Thanks To The $100 Laptop. It's kind of a "Let Them Eat Cake!" response -- which kind of makes sense, given our recent trip to India.
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
abovethecrowd.com
JULY 12, 2006
Link: Techdirt: The Fake Broadband Price War. Techdirt has a great article on the reality with respect to broadband pricing in America. The monopololistic carriers want congress to believe prices are low and falling. Nothing is further from the truth. Turns out that they routinely overstate coverage and availability of DSL also.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
BeyondVC
JULY 22, 2006
Sipphone (full disclosure-my fund is an investor and I am on the board), developers of Gizmo Project , made a bold move yesterday offering users free calls to mobile and landlines in over 60 countries. It is akin to the old MCI Friends and Family plan where customers could call other MCI customers for free. This is viral marketing at its best. Similarly, in order to take advantage of our offer, any Gizmo Project user can call any other registered Gizmo Project friend on any phone line in the 60
BeyondVC
JULY 23, 2006
Fred Wilson has a great post on remembering the old wounds from the last bubble in 2000. In particular, he highlights the question that many of us have asked at board meetings – are we being too conservative or is it time to step on the gas a little. This is a vibrant area for discusssion – we never know the real answer as hindsight is 20/20 but it reminds me of a post I wrote back in March 2004 called Thoughts from PC Forum – going into attack mode.
BeyondVC
JULY 19, 2006
Congrats to the Sipphone team (full disclosure-portfolio company and I am on board) for getting the Gizmo Project client out for the Nokia Internet 770 Tablet (see Andy Abramson’s blog for more on this). This is quite exciting as the company is executing on its vision and roadmap to extend its SIP and IM service to many devices and networks, particularly wireless ones.
BeyondVC
JULY 11, 2006
As you know, it is no secret to look to Europe and Asia to understand the future of new wireless services. As I mentioned in the past, having a hit wireless app can be a big play, but the chances of making it happen are far and few between, especially since business success hinges on relationships with the carriers. Look at what happened in China recently for what a change in mobile carrier policies can do to its partners.
BeyondVC
JULY 11, 2006
I am always looking for new tools and services to help me better understand who my readers are, what they like to read, and where they like to go. Besides the more active participants that like to comment and trackback to some of my posts, many of my readers have been anonymous to me and to each other. Scott Rafer, who founded Feedster , recently contacted me about a new project that he is working on with Eric Marcouillier called MyBlogLog Communities.
BeyondVC
JULY 6, 2006
As I mention in an earlier post , companies evolve and need different types of management with different profiles as they grow. A clear kiss of death that I have seen more often than not is hiring a VP of Sales too early. Here is the typical scenario – you just signed 3 or 4 customers in a couple of different verticals and you feel that all you need is some bodies on the street to grow your business.
BeyondVC
JULY 26, 2006
We all know about the groundbreaking work from Chris Anderson from Wired about the Long Tail. In theory it makes a ton of sense – on the web, companies have no inventory costs and can stock as many titles or products as possible and that over time the one-offs or misses can generate as much or more sales than the hits. As you can imagine, this Long Tail meme gets mentioned by many an entrepreneur that I meet and saying "we are going after the long tail of X" is almost as popular as
BeyondVC
JULY 25, 2006
Having invested in a couple of security companies, I am pretty adamant about security when it comes to my personal computers. Until now, I have been using Norton Antivirus, ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm Security Suite, and Webroot’s SpySweeper. Things were going great until a few days ago when I upgraded my Webroot Spysweeper from v4.5.9 to v5 and then all hell broke loose.
BeyondVC
JULY 25, 2006
Having invested in a couple of security companies, I am pretty adamant about security when it comes to my personal computers. Until now, I have been using Norton Antivirus, ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm Security Suite, and Webroot’s SpySweeper. Things were going great until a few days ago when I upgraded my Webroot Spysweeper from v4.5.9 to v5 and then all hell broke loose.
BeyondVC
JULY 22, 2006
Sipphone (full disclosure-my fund is an investor and I am on the board), developers of Gizmo Project , made a bold move yesterday offering users free calls to mobile and landlines in over 60 countries. It is akin to the old MCI Friends and Family plan where customers could call other MCI customers for free. This is viral marketing at its best. Similarly, in order to take advantage of our offer, any Gizmo Project user can call any other registered Gizmo Project friend on any phone line in the 60
BeyondVC
JULY 23, 2006
Fred Wilson has a great post on remembering the old wounds from the last bubble in 2000. In particular, he highlights the question that many of us have asked at board meetings – are we being too conservative or is it time to step on the gas a little. This is a vibrant area for discusssion – we never know the real answer as hindsight is 20/20 but it reminds me of a post I wrote back in March 2004 called Thoughts from PC Forum – going into attack mode.
BeyondVC
JULY 20, 2006
It is always helpful to get benchmark data on your competitors and on other companies that have a similar business model. To that end, I encourage you to sign up for the SIIA Financial Survey to see how you stack up against your competitors. We encourage you to invite your software industry portfolio companies to participate in the SIIA Software Industry Financial Survey , conducted with assistance from Deloitte & Touche LLP and its affiliates.
BeyondVC
JULY 20, 2006
It is always helpful to get benchmark data on your competitors and on other companies that have a similar business model. To that end, I encourage you to sign up for the SIIA Financial Survey to see how you stack up against your competitors. We encourage you to invite your software industry portfolio companies to participate in the SIIA Software Industry Financial Survey , conducted with assistance from Deloitte & Touche LLP and its affiliates.
BeyondVC
JULY 19, 2006
Congrats to the Sipphone team (full disclosure-portfolio company and I am on board) for getting the Gizmo Project client out for the Nokia Internet 770 Tablet (see Andy Abramson’s blog for more on this). This is quite exciting as the company is executing on its vision and roadmap to extend its SIP and IM service to many devices and networks, particularly wireless ones.
BeyondVC
JULY 11, 2006
As you know, it is no secret to look to Europe and Asia to understand the future of new wireless services. As I mentioned in the past, having a hit wireless app can be a big play, but the chances of making it happen are far and few between, especially since business success hinges on relationships with the carriers. Look at what happened in China recently for what a change in mobile carrier policies can do to its partners.
BeyondVC
JULY 11, 2006
I am always looking for new tools and services to help me better understand who my readers are, what they like to read, and where they like to go. Besides the more active participants that like to comment and trackback to some of my posts, many of my readers have been anonymous to me and to each other. Scott Rafer, who founded Feedster , recently contacted me about a new project that he is working on with Eric Marcouillier called MyBlogLog Communities.
OnlyOnce
JULY 27, 2006
The dangers of relying on collective intelligence revealed! Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored (From The Onion -- hilarious).
OnlyOnce
JULY 25, 2006
A VC: Scars From The Last Bubble. Fred has a good posting on some of the downsides of having managed through the bubble bursting. I wrote about this (a little bit) last year in Ratcheting Up is Hard to Do ([link] but Fred's posti.
OnlyOnce
JULY 2, 2006
Seth's Blog: Nine things marketers ought to know about salespeople (and two bonuses). Great blog posting from Seth Godin on things the rest of us need to remember about how challenging it is to sell.and a couple pointers for the sales team about how to handle the rest of us!
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