April, 2009

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The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part V: Happy 100th Birthday.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? Sounds like a no-brainer, but I’d like to try and convince you that it’s not. All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. But all things are never equal.

Customer 167
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Front End Developer Resume, An 11-pound Notebook, A 2-pound.

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← How Third-Party Licensing Can Ruin Your Launch A Micropreneur’s Perspective: Selling Physical Products vs. Digital Products → Front End Developer Resume, An 11-pound Notebook, A 2-pound Netbook, and Internet 1996 Cool News, Links & Reviews If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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Southern California Tech Central

SoCal CTO

I am excited to be participating in and announcing the of: Southern California Tech Central This is a community of people in Southern California who have come together to help find and organize the best content from blogs, news sources and other web sites all around technology in So Cal. The goal is to create a place where it's easy to find current and highly relevant content.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

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

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Standard Metrics Revisited: #6: Daily, Weekly, Monthly Unique Visitors.

Occam's Razor

Do you have a sneaking, yet unshakable, suspicion that your Web Analtyics Vendor is sometimes just trying to mess with you? Guess what? It's true! All web analytics tools have a smattering of metrics and key performance indicators that were created just because someone decided it would be cute to add / subtract / multiply / divide some numbers.

Metrics 107
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Top 5 Take-Aways From CTIA

Seeing Both Sides

The annual wireless industry trade show, CTIA, had some interesting trends this year.   Putting aside the fact that Las Vegas feels like a ghost town, cab lines are uncharacteristically short, and my personal frustration that I find myself agreeing with an arch-conservative economist Arthur Laffer’s editorial in today’s WSJ on how Obama’s estate tax policy creates perverse Vegas incentives (!

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Lessons Learned: Built to learn

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, April 9, 2009 Built to learn Its been an exhilarating ride since the Web 2.0 Expo last week. Thank you all so much for making the event an overwhelming success (way beyond my wildest expectations) and a special thanks to all of you who have reached out to share your feedback, comments, and questions since then.

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Cover the basics before you raise capital

BeyondVC

No matter how many times I told my friend that he needed to get a deck together for a potential capital raise and model out some thoughts on market sizing and financials, I ran into resistance.  It was not because he didn't think it was important or that it mattered.  It was because he was understaffed and going 60 miles per hour trying to get a product released.  I can understand that pain but at the same time, if you want to raise capital from anyone, you need to have the

Revenue 79
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How I keep track of information

VC Adventure

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Google's Search Based Keyword Tool: Monetize The Long Tail of Search

Occam's Razor

Every once in a long while you come across a tool that just gives you goose bumps, you are instantly infatuated. The Search Based Keyword Tool (SbKT) was that for me. The data it brings together and the transparency it brings is just so. sexy. Let's see if you feel that by the time you are done with this post. I can tell you know that you'll never think of Paid Search the same way!

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@altgate » Blog Archive » 2009 Startup Executive Compensation.

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Law Firm Wilson Sonsini Now Preparing Term Sheets For Free More on the “VC Math Problem&# → 2009 Startup Executive Compensation Survey Opens Posted on April 26, 2009 by fnazeeri [UPDATE] The 2009 CompStudy survey results are now published here.

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SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Lessons Learned: Product development leverage

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a force that allows startups to build products at parity with much larger companies - cheaper and much faster.

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Pioneers get arrows in their backs

BeyondVC

Pioneers get arrows in their backs – I have experienced it firsthand from an active investor's viewpoint and written about it in the past.  Being early in a market is great but being too early can be deadly.  Just like the settlers in the westward migration, entrepreneurs who are too early will get arrows in their back.  It doesn't matter if you have a rock star CEO (Bill Coleman who founded BEA) and $100mm of funding from some great investors.  If you are t

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Bootstrap your venture - Startups and angels: Along the way to.

Tim Keane

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « Entrepreneurship for everyone | Main. | If you like snipe hunts, join the boy scouts » April 20, 2009. Bootstrap your venture. At last week's Business Plan Competition at Marquette University , the keynote speaker, Greg Gianforte, CEO of Right Now , talked passionately about the keys to bootstrapping businesses.  Greg is the well

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The Social Web Helps Content Live Forever

Eric Friedman

I was recently reminded of a survey I created at SocialToo.com which is a service I use to track followersunfollowers on Twitter as well as do short surveys that live on the web. I noticed someone responded and reshared this survey thus prolonging its life further into the black hole that is the Internet. It turns out that it has gotten over 1K+ responses (last time I checked it was less than 100).

Web 60
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Glue is coming together nicely!

VC Adventure

48
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The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part VI: Every World War II.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Speaking with Steve Blank at startup2startup; webcast on May 1.

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Speaking with Steve Blank at startup2startup; webcast on May 1; other upcoming events Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that Ill be appearing on stage with Steve Blank tomorrow, April 30th, at the startup2startup event in Palo Alto. For more info, you can read the event description here. Well be attempting some new material, so should be an interesting event.

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Growing your business in a recession

BeyondVC

I read a great article by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker the other day titled " Hanging Tough."  In the piece, James gives a historical perspective on companies that thrived and grew during previous recessions by increasing spending on on advertising and R&D.  While I am not advocating that companies go out and blow their cash on ads and spending on far-out development projects, I do want my readers to understand that it is possible to gain market share during difficu

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Twitter Feature Requests

Andrew Payne

My Twitter feature requests (for the Web interface): First-class support for tweet replies/comments. Put the search box right on the page, upper right. Let me add “searches to track” on my page, that scroll along in little widgets. Provide a subtle visual hint (e.g. highlighting) where the tweet stack was the last time I visited. I’m sure these features exist in the various Twitter clients.

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Develop Fast Websites

Eric Friedman

I came across the following presentation and thought it was worth sharing here. Design Fast Websites. View more presentations from Nicole Sullivan. You may remember my own thoughts on the importance of websites loading fast and working quickly noting that speed is a feature. For many reasons users equate speed with being “better” and having things work quickly on your site underscores how “well” it works.

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Glue is coming together nicely! | Seth Levine

VC Adventure

48
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Story Behind “The Secret History” Part III: The Most Important.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Web 2.0 Expo session followup

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Web 2.0 Expo session followup The room was utterly packed today at Web 2.0 Expo , and the discussion afterward at the web2open was amazing. Thank you all so much for coming. I had brought a stack of fliers with me with one of the "Ideas-Code-Data" feedback loop infographics on one side, and information about the upcoming workshop on the other.

Web 60
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Cover the basics before you raise capital

BeyondVC

No matter how many times I told my friend that he needed to get a deck together for a potential capital raise and model out some thoughts on market sizing and financials, I ran into resistance.  It was not because he didn't think it was important or that it mattered.  It was because he was understaffed and going 60 miles per hour trying to get a product released.  I can understand that pain but at the same time, if you want to raise capital from anyone, you need to have the

Revenue 78
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Finanical Innovation: Built-in Compensation

Andrew Payne

I thought Krugman’s Op-Ed about compensation in the financial sector was interesting. The one-sentence summary: “ I question the value of these financial innovations, and why are they getting paid so much? ” Financial innovators have a huge advantage: they build their compensation right into the innovation itself. Find a place to take a percent or two (as risk-free as possible), and at scale you’ve got real money.

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A business based on anonymous confessions

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

I’m sure most of you have heard about PostSecret in which people send in postcards with your confession. I came across another website called TruuConfessions.com targeted towards women. I thought it was interesting actually in that women definitely do love their gossip. When I read the About Us section which I always do on new startup websites, the founder talked about anonymous confessions as being therapeutic.

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Sam Zell at CU! | Seth Levine

VC Adventure

Partner 48
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SuperMac War Story 5: Strategy versus Relentless Tactical.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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WSGR online venture financing term sheet generator

Startup Company Lawyer

[Below is the text of a WSGR email update.]. Always looking for ways to better serve the entrepreneurial community, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is pleased to announce the release of the WSGR Term Sheet Generator , a publicly available online tool that allows entrepreneurs and investors to generate an initial draft of a term sheet for a preferred stock financing.

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Growing your business in a recession

BeyondVC

I read a great article by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker the other day titled " Hanging Tough."  In the piece, James gives a historical perspective on companies that thrived and grew during previous recessions by increasing spending on on advertising and R&D.  While I am not advocating that companies go out and blow their cash on ads and spending on far-out development projects, I do want my readers to understand that it is possible to gain market share during difficu

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Poor Design Drives Me Nuts

Andrew Payne

Driving home today, the FastLane toll ( E-ZPass for the rest of you) flashes “Call FastLane” So I call and am prompted for entering my account number “from my statement” There’s no option to bypass, but after three failed attempts, it gets through. Then I’m put on hold for a while, and then eventually it says “we’re closed” Unbelievable.

Design 40
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Try out a VC pitch feedback event

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

I have a friend who decided to attend a VC pitch roundtable event for the first time. He asked if I knew anything about that event and to be honest I did not know anyone who had attended such of an event. BUT, I said, look it’s $60 or so, just try it once, worse case you get to network with some VCs. So he went. Before the event, you get the bios of the VCs so that you get an idea of what each VC’s expertise is in, possibly even cater your pitch based on this.

Search 40
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How I keep track of information | Seth Levine

VC Adventure

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SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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