Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. Most components in a modern data center are completely stateless, meaning they just do batches of work that is handed to them, but dont store any data long-term. This is true of most web application servers, caches like memcached, and all of the network infrastructure that connects them.

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Cracking the Code

JANUARY 22, 2009

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Thursday, January 22, 2009. Building Your SaaS Sales Compensation Plan. Compensating the sales force is a difficult task and the key is usually to keep things simple, so that each sales rep knows what he needs to optimize to make more money at the end of the quarter.

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Software By Rob

JANUARY 7, 2009

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← MicroISVs, Software Products and Startups: Software by Rob’s Most Popular Posts of 2008 Marketing is Design: Three Words that Increased My E-commerce Sales 1000% Overnight → Expenses You Don’t Think of When Starting a Business Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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SoCal CTO

JANUARY 20, 2009

I'm happy to announce the launch of the Los Angeles Tech Content Community. This is the beginning of a content community that collects and organizes the best content from blogs and web sites. The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding Los Angeles Technology. To be clear Los Angeles Tech is a jump off point.

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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

Startup

Altgate

JANUARY 17, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← So Bad It’s Good Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds → Fidelity Center For Applied Technology Posted on January 17, 2009 by fnazeeri Yesterday I received a tour of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, a.k.a.

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BeyondVC

JANUARY 29, 2009

A friend of mine is putting together his first deck for potential investors.  In typical startup fashion, they launched a product, got a number of users, and then iterated several times to improve the service.  With the product in the hands of tens of thousands of users, they started getting inbound requests from larger organizations who were willing to pay for customized and private group related services.  While Version 2.0 will be released to the greater world in the next 6-

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Cracking the Code

JANUARY 7, 2009

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Wednesday, January 07, 2009. Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard. Happy New Year 2009 and thank you for your continued readership! I am working on a post-mortem of the SaaS 13 Index for 2008, but before getting into these gloomy numbers, I thought I would start the year with something more refreshing.

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Occam's Razor

JANUARY 21, 2009

Here is an astonishingly brilliant, yet simple idea (if I may say so myself!): Why just measure conversions as one purchase or conversions just as a submission of a lead or opening of an account on facebook / twitter / what ever? Why not measure Visitor behavior after that first purchase / lead / membership sign up (or the first super poke)? Why obsess about the "quickie" that is opening an account?

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Eric Friedman

JANUARY 28, 2009

Google today announced a new product , called Measurement Lab , to help you determine if your ISP is throttling bandwidth and perhaps interfering with your downloads. The product is described as follows: Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections.

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Altgate

JANUARY 5, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Layoffs In Venture Capital Be Glad You Are An Entrepreneur! → Top 10 Posts From 2008 Posted on January 5, 2009 by fnazeeri As ranked by traffic to website during the year (as opposed to when it was written): The Science & Art Of Term Sheet Negotiation 5 Reasons Convertible Debt Sucks Venture Debt For Startups Due Diligence – What To Expect How To Blog Like A P

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BeyondVC

JANUARY 22, 2009

I had lunch with a friend last week when we were talking about the days years and years ago where it was cool to have an email address on your business card.  In fact, I remember picking attorneys to work on our venture deals in the mid-90s not only based on cost and experience but also based on how digital they were – no AOL email addresses please and if you use IM, then great.  Now I can honestly say that I can be overburdened at times dealing with my email, IMs, sms messages

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 2, 2009 Lessons Learned on Mashable today I had the good fortune to be asked to write a guest post over at Mashable , which is running today, called HOW TO: Raise Money in a Down Economy. The major thesis will be no surprise to those of you whove been following this blog for a few months. Heres an excerpt: Our experience was different from the traditional VC model, in which funding is reserved for true domain experts, those with deep background in the

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Tim Keane

JANUARY 14, 2009

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « What Entrepreneurs and Angels Want To Know. | Main. | Now Is The Time for Entrepreneurs » January 14, 2009. Two Rules: No Ask, No Get. and. If Not Now, When? I'm reminded this morning about these two simple "rules" and how important they can be to entrepreneurs.

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K9 Ventures

JANUARY 3, 2009

Peter Rip , General Partner at Crosslink Capital recently authored a post on his blog EarlyStageVC that has been getting a lot of attention. Peter’s post “ The Coming Venture Capital Boom ” presents a view that is hard to find these days. I had a mixed reaction to Peter’s comments. To a large extent I agree with him that there will be another boom in venture capital.

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Eric Friedman

JANUARY 28, 2009

I am thinking about upgrading my Blackberry in a few weeks and have been bouncing around some ideas for what I wantneed in a mobile phone device. image from a great review of the Blackberry 8900. I recently mentioned that I wanted my phone to be a wallet, keys, and a universal ID system. While I think this is years away, this like this are certainly possible right now – just not in the United States.

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Hacking Startups

JANUARY 16, 2009

When building your next web app, you can create value by improving existing web dev tools or by making a compelling app. If you’re interested in making a great app, it’s best to use the best of existing tools and let others improve them. Most web pages served today are produced by one of these platforms: Static HTML (brochure-style sites). C or C++ (search engines mostly, some backends).

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BeyondVC

JANUARY 12, 2009

 As I look around post-holiday season, I am seeing more and more regular, non-technical friends and family get connected on their mobile devices.  What does that mean? A great example is that of my father-in-law who got rid of his old Motorola Startac and exchanged it for an iPhone.  Yes, he got an iPhone, and then days later I got a message to get connected to him on Facebook.  Ever since, he has been using the phone to take pictures nonstop, send emails and SMS messages

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 27, 2009 Three freemium strategies Im excited to see so much attention being paid to freemium businesses lately. These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses.

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Andrew Payne

JANUARY 26, 2009

I love video chat, but I’m currently stuck with my dad where we can see his video but he can’t see ours (using Skype). We know it works on our end. My dad can’t figure out why it doesn’t work any more, and (debugging remotely) I can’t figure it out either. I loved Skype when it first came out: it was simple, punched through firewalls reliably, and had great audio quality.

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K9 Ventures

JANUARY 19, 2009

VentureBeat just blogged about some new statistics published by Thomson Reuters and the NVCA in this post: Venture fundraising: Going, going, gone? Here is the most damning/shocking excerpt from this post: Venture capital funds raised only $3.4 billion in the last three months of 2008, according to new data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

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Eric Friedman

JANUARY 26, 2009

As I have been talking about recently the best social networks are the ones that arise to challenges when you need them to and are nowhere to be found when you do not need them as is the emerging case with Gmail as a social network. I have been thinking about this further with the recent addition of YouTube videos being available within Gmail as a quicker way to see videos shared from friends.

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Hacking Startups

JANUARY 16, 2009

'When building your next web app, you can create value by improving existing web dev tools or by making a compelling app. If you’re interested in making a great app, it’s best to use the best of existing tools and let others improve them. Most web pages served today are produced by one of these platforms: Static HTML (brochure-style sites).

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Altgate

JANUARY 28, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Randy Komisar on Failure Serial Inventor Woody Norris Talks Innovation at TED → What is the World’s Largest Fraud? Posted on January 28, 2009 by fnazeeri Hint: it’s not Bernie Madoff. I saw a press release today from ClickForensics proclaiming their most recent statistic that 17.1% of all pay-per-click advertising is click fraud.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 11, 2009 CPI > CPC Google revolutionized advertising by popularizing pay-per-click. This model has not translated well to the world of social networking, because customers of social networks engage sites in a different way than customers of search engines. The difference is intent: when youre searching for a specific topic, ads have a chance to fulfill your interest in that topic.

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San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Andrew Payne

JANUARY 23, 2009

I thought Matt Burns’s article about Apple’s relatively simple product line struck a chord: Garmin makes 82 GPS units that can be mounted in a car or carried in your hand. 82!?! That’s a lot and includes 27 designed specifically for the car. If Apple made a GPS, there would be two models available – maybe only one. Apple would shove everything they could into this one GPS and sell it at a profit instead of making similar different models that feature slightly different specs. .

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VC Adventure

JANUARY 29, 2009

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Eric Friedman

JANUARY 25, 2009

I have been thinking about the concept of data longevity and data rot lately after my sister asked me a very poignant question about her blog; “will my blog be around in 20 years?” I never really doubted that her blog would be around in 20 years but it got me thinking. I certainly put more faith in a blogging platform and website vs. a standard paper and pen approach simply because the bits saved in my hosting account are far more likely to be around in 20 years than a notebook or jo

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Jason Ball

JANUARY 29, 2009

I received this in an email today, in case anyone is interested in learning more about Amazon's services in Europe: Amazon Web Services Technology. Evangelist for Europe Simone Brunozzi and Cohesive co-founder Alexis. Richardson will be hosting the next AWS Meetup in London on Cloud. Computing and AWS, with details on S3, EC2, CloudFront and the other services!

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Altgate

JANUARY 27, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← How to Fail Successfully What is the World’s Largest Fraud? → Randy Komisar on Failure Posted on January 27, 2009 by fnazeeri Failure seems to be the topic of today. Came across this gem of an interview with KPCB partner Randy Komisar.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 6, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 6, 2009 Lessons Learned office hours For me, there were plenty of surprises in the survey I conducted a few weeks ago. One of them was that multiple readers suggested holding "office hours" Q&A sessions in the Bay Area. Im not quite ready to put out a shingle and take over my neighborhood Starbucks, but I have accepted two invitations to speak in a similar format in the coming weeks.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Andrew Payne

JANUARY 23, 2009

I was surprised at Microsoft’s recent layoff news: (a) this is their first major layoff, and (b) they’re only laying off 5%. The financial analysts are calling this the indicator of general technology/software woes. The technology sector is definitely challenged, but Microsoft’s problems are quite unique. They’re an old-line software company with a market structure and core business changing out from under them: Most high-volume, general purpose software components (e.g

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Pascal's View

JANUARY 26, 2009

The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at. Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, is commonly cited as the “proximate trigger” which. ushered in World War I.   The. resolution of this first Great War led not only to. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">the collapse and fragmentation of the. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;color:#122EB3;text-decoration:none; text-underline:none">Austro-Hungarian. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"> Empire, the. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:H

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Eric Friedman

JANUARY 6, 2009

I have not done a links roundup in awhile but it helps me flush out links that I want to share. Each deserves a read and perhaps a short explanation – enjoy! Wells Fargo has a blog and is clearly thinking about their outbound marketing. Discovered via Dave Armano. Think your idea sucks? Do it anyway. via Jason Cohen. Lessons Learned. Via Seth Godin.

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Professor VC

JANUARY 20, 2009

ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The Most Important Venture Capital Statistic. A couple of headlines caught my eye in this mornings VentureWire : Deals Slow As VC Feels Economic Chill Web Video Platform Fliqz Gains $6M In Series C Funding The funding news and general condition of the economy has been no secret and certainly wasnt a surprise that venture funding in the fourth quarter was the lowest level in four years and most expect the decline to conti

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Altgate

JANUARY 12, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Quote Of The Day Running & Reading → Why I Canceled My CO2stats Account Posted on January 12, 2009 by fnazeeri The intertubes have been full of debate about this article from The Times.  The gist of the story is that is that the authors "reveal" that the internet uses electricity.  Specifically they call out Google for emitting 7 grams of carb

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 1, 2009 Happy new year When I started writing this blog a few months ago, I wasnt sure if anyone would find it interesting. I certainly never expected the overwhelmingly positive feedback youve given me. Thanks to everyone whos taken the time to read, subscribe, and comment. Ive been really moved by your support and suggestions.

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