Both Sides of the Table
MAY 13, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a great leader and seem to be having this conversation a lot lately about Facebook, Yahoo!, Zynga and others. I wrote several of the characteristics when I did the Top 10 (11) Attributes of an Entrepreneur. One thing that I’ve realized over the years is that to be an effective leader you can’t aspire to be loved by everybody.
Steve Blank
MAY 27, 2010
Startups need to have a great lawyer, accountant, patent attorney, etc. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. I was having coffee with a friend who teaches at the U.C. Berkeley Boalt Law School and runs their entrepreneurship program. Our conversation led us to Scott Walkers post Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers and why we both recommend that entrepreneurs print it out and tape it to their wall.
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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 17, 2010
You probably think of "tech support" as the bottom of the food chain. "Shit flows downhill" and all that. After all: Tech support deals with insane customers. Tech support answers the phone; a job even salesmen don't want. Tech support keeps angry customers at bay while having no power to effect change. Yep, that sounds lowly. Dismal too — how would you like to deal with an irate voice screaming at you when you know how to fix the problem but lack the authority to do it?
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 24, 2010
A week ago I talked about how and where to find a co-founder in “ How to Select an Ideal Startup Co-Founder ”. The feedback was good, but some readers asked me to be a bit more specific on attributes that might indicate an ideal business partner. Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. In this article, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.
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
SoCal CTO
MAY 19, 2010
I’m seeing and hearing that it’s becoming tough finding good developers again, at least here in Los Angeles. On Friday, at the LA CTO Forum , I heard from a couple of CTOs having trouble finding good developers. My company, TechEmpower , recently added a few top notch developers, but it wasn’t easy to find just the right people. And it’s not just me, Ben Kuo just posted - Good news for developers (and jobs) We’ve been talking with a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people who are looking for developers
Feld Thoughts
MAY 6, 2010
As long time readers of this blog know, I’m strongly against software patents. Succinctly, I think they are (a) invalid constructs, (b) totally unnecessary, and (c) a massive tax on and retardant of innovation. More and more of my VC brethren are beginning to come out publicly against them as are many extremely well respected long time software innovators.
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Steve Blank
MAY 17, 2010
Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might want to read my post on why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups. They called back laughing and the invitation disappeared. At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time. But until now I haven’t been able to articulate a framework of why or had a concrete suggestion of what to replace them with.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 31, 2010
Every founder frets about competition from a big company, me included. We scoff at their inability to innovate and for prioritizing shareholders over customers, but still we quiver in fear. Dozens of people on Answers.OnStartups ask about it so I know I'm not alone. It always goes like this: I'm just a two-person operation with no budget. What if a huge company with a hundred software developers and a million dollars in marketing budget decides to copy my idea?
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 22, 2010
Every investor expects to see some traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have been working 20 hours a day, and spent your last dollar, but have no results to show, investors will be sympathetic, but will probably tell you that your dream vehicle doesn’t have wheels. Traction means forward progress. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start.
Startup Lessons Learned
MAY 31, 2010
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, May 31, 2010 Thank you The past month has been an incredible roller coaster: #sllconf was a trending topic (briefly topping Justin Bieber before the wifi in the hotel gave out), the Web 2.0 Expo Intensive rocked, the mainstream media has started writing about the Lean Startup, and - most of all - the movement continues to grow and evolve.
Feld Thoughts
MAY 18, 2010
Wow – I needed that vacation. Sometimes it just catches up with me and I don’t realize how tired I am. Amy and I were going to go to Paris but both of us just needed to chill out so we went to our house in Keystone and just hid out for a week. I only had a few things that I had to pay attention to and the goddess of my schedule Kelly made sure I was available when needed.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 15, 2010
We just had our sixth episode of #TWiVC and I felt this one was the best. This week was had Jason Calacanis as our guest. It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding.
mashable.com
MAY 28, 2010
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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 3, 2010
It's time to retire the following phrases. They should no longer be used, ever, in any context except derisive mocking: Fast and easy. Putting customers first. The Holy Grail of. The leading provider of. Legendary customer support. Also eschew these words, as devoid of meaning as a yogi's mantra and as useless as a simile that doesn't contribute new information: Authentic.
Occam's Razor
MAY 4, 2010
The hardest kind of "analysis" to provide is in response to open ended questions. That is why I love asking open ended questions! They expose a person's critical thinking ability (something I highly recommend you test when you hire web analysts: Interviewing Tip: Stress Test Critical Thinking. Please ). They also help you understand if someone really grasps key concepts.
This is going to be BIG.
MAY 19, 2010
Imagine if the biggest companies in the world had to increase their workforce by 25% month over month. It would be a monumental task that could spell the death of them if extreme care wasn't taken to maintain the highest level of quality in their talent pool. Even if that was done, it would still be no small feat to onboard that much new blood without completely rocking the boat.
Cracking the Code
MAY 25, 2010
Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Tuesday, May 25, 2010. "10 Things Every CEO Needs to Know About Product Design" unveiled at the Bessemer Annual Cloud CEO Conference. For the third year in a row, Bessemer hosted its Cloud CEO Conference, assembling roughly 100 CEOs/CxOs of our cloud and rich internet applications portfolio companies (Yelp, LinkedIn, Playdom, Zoosk, Smule, Wix, Eloqua, Teamviewer,
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 19, 2010
Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. It’s always fun debating companies with Dana because she’s always so knowledgeable on deals – particularly those in the digital media, ad-tech and eCommerce spaces. When the show has been processed it will be available here (estimated 8pm PDT).
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 18, 2010
In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 24, 2010
This is a guest post by Steve Hanov , who blogs about programming and startups. For a micro-ISV, selling to big businesses can be more lucrative than selling to consumers. Instead of making a few dollars per sale and hoping for thousands of sales, you sell to only a few customers, and charge much higher rates. But the rates are high for a reason. It takes more time and money to sell to businesses, especially the big ones.
Growthink Blog
MAY 13, 2010
A fantastic article in Fortune Magazine this month - " The Temptation of Facebook ," talks about the early days of the social media giant. Of most interest is the story of Mr. Peter Thiel investing $500,000 into the company in 2004, at an effective valuation of $4.9 million. Given that the estimated market value of Facebook is now north of $20 billion - for those doing the math at home, that represents a 1,000x return - a short 6 years later, Thiel's investment surely falls into the category of
Ben's Blog
MAY 14, 2010
“Teachers teach and do the world good. kings just rule and most are never understood”. - KRS 1, My Philosophy. “Most managers seem to feel that training employees is a job that should be left to others. I, on the other hand, strongly believe that the manager should do it himself.”. - Andy Grove, High Output Management. When I first became a manager, I had mixed feelings about training.
Start Up Blog
MAY 4, 2010
I was asked to give a list to Tim Reid on a few micro marketing / startup tips for his terrific podcast. I thought they were worth sharing in point form here. Project management is the key skil l (Outsource weaknesses, be blissfully unaware how to do technical things, manage the value chain.). Think micro (Start small, no tiny. think hyper-local, and expand out from there).
Software By Rob
MAY 21, 2010
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← How to Find Your 4-Second Startup Pitch iMemories VHS to DVD Conversions → How to Avoid the Three Startup Danger Points Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 17, 2010
As a Kellogg alum (worlds greatest marketing school, after all, uh huh) I would be remiss not to write occasionally about marketing in the context of our world: online entrepreneurs. At crowdSPRING, we are constantly evaluating our own mix of marketing strategy, tactics, and resources and the “debates&# can get extreme. Like many small companies with limited marketing budgets, we are forced to work with the resources at hand, so creativity, partnering approaches, social media, and viral ef
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
MAY 10, 2010
Please forgive me for harping on about outsourcing in so many blog posts recently. At the moment I’m going through the process of hiring new full time workers, plus John Reese is launching his Outsource Force program and giving away free videos on how to outsource, so this subject is a bit in focus for me right now. If you haven’t caught the latest John Reese video, the third in the series talks about the six online business models and how you can outsource the tasks involved to make
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 16, 2010
Canceling meetings is part of modern day life. I seem to get so over programmed that if I ever want to have a “break-out&# unplanned trip somewhere I seem to have to reschedule meetings. Not fun, but a reality. And people reschedule meetings with me on a regular basis, too. If done correctly I never have any problem with it at all. Done poorly and it really puts a bad taste in my mouth.
Ben's Blog
MAY 30, 2010
“I mean damn, did you even see the test. You got D’s, motherf*$@%&, D’s! Rosie Perez”. —Kanye West. No position in a company is more important than the CEO and, as a result, no job gets more scrutiny. Sadly, little of this analysis benefits CEOs as most of the discussions happen behind their backs. This post is a step in the opposite direction.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 10, 2010
A sizable percentage of Capital Factory startup submissions take the form of the "marketplace." In fact, 3 of the 10 selected companies from the past two years has followed this business model. Marketplace companies are notoriously difficult to start, so I'm constantly amazed that so many entrepreneurs chose this route. Maybe it's the "go big or go home" mentality?
Software By Rob
MAY 13, 2010
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← StartupSchool Online A/B Testing Class Video is Available How to Avoid the Three Startup Danger Points → How to Find Your 4-Second Startup Pitch Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Steve Blank
MAY 10, 2010
I usually hear the “Should I get my MBA?” question at least once a month. If you’re an entrepreneur, the glib answer is “no.” It’s also the wrong answer. Should I Get My MBA? Last week I was having coffee with an ex engineering student of mine now on his second startup (and for a change it wasn’t a Web 2.0 startup) who wanted to chat about career choices.
deal architect
MAY 19, 2010
Ok, as we enter Day 3 of this event, let me lay out the stuff I have been impressed with/need to compliment so far A much more smiling Hasso Plattner than in prior years. We had a chance to spend.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 28, 2010
I’ve had this conversation so many times it’s painful. A friend calls me up from “you name it&# city: Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and says, “I’m thinking about moving to Los Angeles (or SF, NY, etc) and I’d love to start interviewing. Let me know if you hear of anything interesting.&#. I guess when I hear things like this I revert back to my shock jock instincts and say, “Don’t bother.
Sophia Perl of Wisdom
MAY 19, 2010
Alright, so you have a business and now you want to app-ify it and get in on the iPhone craze, but you don’t have (or want to hire) iPhone developers in-house. What do you do? You outsource it of course! I just happen to come across a string of messages of a group message board. The topic, the going rate for contracting out iPhone app development, not a developer’s salary.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 25, 2010
Investors are people too. They evaluate you like you should assess a possible co-founder or first employee. What are your credentials? What have you done that would convince me that my money is safe in your hands? Only after they’re sold on you, do they want to see your plan and hear your idea, not the other way around. Even with great credentials, it is all too possible for an entrepreneur to come across as a high risk investment.
Software By Rob
MAY 3, 2010
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Catch Me at the 2010 Business of Software Conference in Boston Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Out → I’m Writing a Book: “Start Small. Stay Small. A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup&# About this Blog , Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
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