Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
This is part of my Startup Advice series. I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. You are constantly faced with decisions and there is always incomplete information.
Steve Blank
APRIL 20, 2009
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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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
DECEMBER 21, 2009
In the last post I beat you to death about ditching your business plan but failed to provide an alternative. Okay okay, "Planning == Bad," but the supposed benefits of planning are still important: designing for profitability, understanding your customers and competitors, focusing your attention, deciding what's worth doing next, changing directions, and ensuring the founders agree on important issues.
SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 9, 2009
I just had an all-too common conversation with the founder of a startup who had spent more than a year working with a software development company who had produced a mess. The mess really comes from a developer who was willing to get started on a product that was not fully thought out. I always take a very different approach in early conversations. If I’m being asked to do startup software development, I’m going to push fairly hard on key questions that the startup needs to have answered before
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 Lessons Learned
AUGUST 3, 2009
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. Its power is matched only by the amount of confusion that it causes, because its actually quite hard to do. It certainly took me many years to make sense of it. I was delighted to be asked to give a brief talk about the MVP at the inaugural meetup of the lean startup circle here in San Francisco.
Occam's Razor
NOVEMBER 24, 2009
Twitter is amongst new media channels that are challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people. Sadly execution and analysis of these new social media channels has been hobbled by old world thinking. When it comes to marketing because of the old world thinking from the worlds of sTelevision and Magazines, and when it comes to measurement because of the world of traditional web analytics.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
K9 Ventures
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009
In the past few days there has been a lot of discussion on the topic of a Founders Visa. The credit for starting this fire goes to Paul Graham from Y Combinator , who wrote a great essay titled The Founders Visa in April 2009. Brad Feld (Brad is an advisor to K9) from the Foundry Group was instrumental in keeping the flame alive by posting about it on his blog ( The Founders Visa Movement ) in September.
Software By Rob
JULY 24, 2009
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← The Future of the Web is Small, Academic Earth, Beatles Rock Band, Top Developer Blogs, et al. Startup Marketing Advice, “Failure,&# Things I Learned the Hard Way, and more… → Transitioning from Developer to Software Entrepreneur Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Altgate
JUNE 1, 2009
@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← “What’s Next in Tech&# Event in Boston Entrepreneurs on Twitter → Directory of Blogs by Entrepreneurs Posted on June 1, 2009 by fnazeeri This post was inspired by Fidelity Ventures Partner Larry Cheng who recently compiled a list of VC blogs and ranked them in order of Google Reader subscribers. I have a few hundred feeds that I follow in Google Reade
Startup Company Lawyer
MARCH 12, 2009
C corps, LLCs, and S corps differ significantly in the areas of taxation, ownership, fundraising, governance and structure, and employee compensation. Almost all technology startup companies that I work with are C corps. Any company that raises venture financing will need to be a C corp in order to issue preferred stock. If founders want the benefit of flow through tax treatment with respect to losses prior to an outside financing, an S corp election may make sense as long as there are no enti
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 3, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 craze. There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0 wares. Ajax was the new buzzword and many companies went overboard.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 9, 2009
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
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
DECEMBER 14, 2009
"You need a business plan" is the mantra of MBA types. As they say , businesses don't plan to fail, they fail to plan! Who could argue with such a clever turn of phrase? Let's do some quotes: "Without a business plan, how will you know whether you can make a profit?" ( source ). "A complete business plan should include five-year financial projections.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 6, 2009
Great post by John Shiple. He talks about a bunch of the different networking events that occur in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. In his post, he mentions the following events / event organizers, and you should visit his post for a bit more on each of them. LA CTO Forum Dealmaker Media Digital Family Reunion Startups Uncensored Social Media Club, LA Twiistup Mindshare LA LA Hadoop Meetup Dorkbot Geek Dinners LA Cloud Computing LA Web Application Developers LA PHP Developers
Startup Lessons Learned
JULY 29, 2009
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Embrace technical debt Financial debt plays an important and positive role in our economy under normal conditions. Yet, especially in times like these, it’s easy to rail against the badness of being in debt; it’s a very human feeling. Remember Hamlet? LORD POLONIUS: Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
Pascal's View
NOVEMBER 20, 2009
The current issue of Foreign Affairs features an important essay by Wesley Clark and Peter Levin (see bios below), Securing the Information Highway- How to Enhance the United States’ Electronic Defenses. General Clark and Mr. Levin not only succinctly summarize the fact that America remains “an easy target”, especially for “electronically advanced adversaries”, they spend a considerable amount of time on the topic of supply chain assurance and the massive challenge
Professor VC
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Thursday, November 19, 2009. Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught? I attended the annual LP meeting for a venture capital firm this week and got into a discussion about the above question. Seems like a good question to ponder given that I spend several hours each week as a professor of Entrepreneurship. At a high level, I definitely agree that being an entrepreneur and being in school dont necessarily mix.
Seeing Both Sides
DECEMBER 3, 2009
A lot has been written in the last week about the scandal at Canopy Financial , a venture-backed, high-flying start-up that attracted $75 million in capital at increasingly higher prices from top-tier firms, only to come crashing down in a dust of rubble and fraud. The VC community suffered a very similar scandal at Seattle-based Entellium last year, but few reporters seem to remember that one, perhaps because it wasn't located in the heart of Silicon Valley as Canopy was. &#
Software By Rob
AUGUST 11, 2009
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Startup Marketing Advice, “Failure,&# Things I Learned the Hard Way, and more… Why “Luck&# is a Terrible Marketing Plan for Your Startup → How to Compete Against Open Source Competition Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Altgate
JUNE 7, 2009
@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Directory of Blogs by Entrepreneurs Successories’ New Line of Posters for Venture Capitalists → Entrepreneurs on Twitter Posted on June 7, 2009 by fnazeeri [update 11-9-2009] Twitter added a new feature for lists so I created this list here. I've been wondering how the previous list of entrepreneur bloggers I posted maps to Twitter so I redid the list (
Occam's Razor
SEPTEMBER 29, 2009
One of the ultimate excuses for not measuring impact of Marketing campaigns is: "Oh, that's just a branding campaign." Admit it, you've heard it. I suspect you've even used it liberally!! : ). Before we go any further I must clarify that I love branding campaigns just as much as the next guy. I love campaigns that Visa runs.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 8, 2009
This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks. Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to invest. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue.
Steve Blank
DECEMBER 7, 2009
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
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-
abovethecrowd.com
OCTOBER 30, 2009
[Follow Me on Twitter] I like to think of myself as an aficionado of business disruption. After all, as a venture capitalist it is imperative to understand ways in which a smaller private company can gain the upper hand on a large incumbent. One of the most successful ways to do this is to change [.].
Startup Lessons Learned
JUNE 15, 2009
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. My previous startup, IMVU , has used this process to deploy new code as often as an average of fifty times a day.
K9 Ventures
JUNE 26, 2009
It was 2:00 AM and I was still sitting in ‘The Cave’ — the name we affectionately gave to the cubicles in the bowels of Wean Hall at Carnegie Mellon. It was called ‘The Cave’ because it’s all under ground, with no natural light portals whatsoever. The cave was kinda like Vegas — once you enter you lose track of time.
Babbling VC
DECEMBER 2, 2009
This post is very much directed at early stage companies in Germany as this is where I'm seeing it the most. Too many entrepreneurs are scared to take decisions. They are too often looking to their VC's to get consensus. I've seen this case both in portfolio companies where we've already invested as well as from targets we are considering for investment.
Startup Company Lawyer
JULY 20, 2009
[It's been awhile since I wrote anything. I am giving a presentation to some of the founders in TheFunded Founder Institute on incorporating their companies, so I thought I would recycle some thoughts.]. Founders of startup companies often wait to incorporate a company until they are confident that their concept is viable or fundable. At some point, however, an entrepreneur will need to formally incorporate a company.
Software By Rob
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Debt, Equity and a Third (and Fourth) Thing that Might Work Better Book Recommendations – The Best Marketing Books of All Time → Passion as a Competitive Advantage Micropreneurship , Software Development , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Altgate
DECEMBER 17, 2009
@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← 2009 Startup Executive Compensation Survey Results More “Open Source&# Legal Tools → Some Practical Advice on Executive Compensation at Startups Posted on December 17, 2009 by fnazeeri Because it's that season (bonus season, not holiday season) I've been getting questions about executive compensation from friends. But today I got an interesting ques
Occam's Razor
APRIL 20, 2009
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.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 25, 2009
Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage. If you pick the wrong spouse at least you can get divorced.
Steve Blank
JUNE 15, 2009
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
BeyondVC
JULY 1, 2009
I am not going to rehash Om Malik's excellent summary of "What went wrong with Joost" but I did want to dive deeper into a few points. As I have always said, raising too much money can be a curse and not a blessing. Here is an excerpt from my post in 2006 Trust me, I love having well capitalized companies. However, having too much money can be a curse, not a blessing.
abovethecrowd.com
AUGUST 24, 2009
[Follow Me on Twitter] Many are speculating that the year two thousand and nine represents a fundamental turning point for the venture capital industry. Some are arguing that the industry is in dire straits after years of poor performance. Others have argued that the math simply does not work for the industry’s current size. Another theory suggests that permanent challenges with the IPO [.].
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