Quotes For Entrepreneurs–October 2010
A collection of quotes of interest and use to entrepreneurs: these quotes for entrepreneurs were identified in October 2010.
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Knowledge That Is Not Written Down, Yet
There are categories of knowledge that are not written down, yet. They include observations that have not been curated but drive intuition-based decisions, first hand stories of events–successes and failures–that have not been filtered and sanitized but still offer insight and explanatory power. They are important because they are sources of competitive advantage. Knowledge That
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E-Mail Is Not a Conversation
E-mail is not a conversation. I have to remind myself of that from time to time. When I am deadlocked with someone and tempted to send one more e-mail to clarify or I find myself getting angrier I have to remember to take a five minute walk around the building and pick up the phone.
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Forming and Leading a Team of Experts at EL-SIG Oct 21
I have been invited to speak at the SDForum Engineering Leadership SIG next Thursday, October 21st. I will suggest methods for “Forming and Leading a Team of Experts” How can teams become more effective at making decisions quickly and reaching a working consensus? How can we as managers foster effective collaboration on teams made up
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Scope and Scale of Plans and Activities
Inspired by Eames’ “Powers of Ten” I explore the scope and scale of plans and activities based on duration. I take a one hour duration as the starting point and look at a factor or 10,000 in each direction: from 1/300 of a second to 10,000 hours.
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Entrepreneurs Still Welcome: 700 Blog Posts In Four Years
A recap of the inaugural blog post for SKMurphy blog 4 years ago and a roundup of lessons learned writing 700 posts since.
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Ash Maurya on “Running Lean”
Ash Maurya (@AshMaurya) has released the first two chapters of his new book “Running Lean” and here are my first impressions.
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Need Input on the Design Automation Conference
Patrick Groeneveld is the CTO at Magma and the Vice Chair in 2011 of the Design Automation Conference. He also chairs the DAC Strategy Committee for 2011 and he has asked me to take part, representing user and startup concerns in the planning process. My objective is to foster an exploration of some of
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–September 2010
You can follow @skmurphy to get these quotes for entrepreneurs hot off the mojo wire or wait until the end of the month when they are collected on the blog. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
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Mavericks, Iconoclasts, Dropouts and Misfits
“The truth is, start-up-land is littered with mavericks, iconoclasts, dropouts, and misfits.” Sramana Mitra in “The Real VCs of Silicon Valley” Entrepreneurship is Involuntary I have come to the conclusion that most entrepreneurship is involuntary. Either someone is an entrepreneur from the time they are young, which was my personal experience, or they are thrust
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Cold Calling Won’t Find Your First Business Customer
I meet teams trying to cold call for their first business customer and I just haven’t seen it work; the trust issues cripple them. Here is a relevant excerpt from Gabriel Weinberg’s interview with me for his traction book.
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The Limits of Legal Self-Help
Every bootstrapper has a limited budget for attorney’s fees. Attorneys can help you foresee problems and craft contract language, which looks remarkably similar to English but is in fact code that is executed by the legal system. Use them to protect valuable assets–intellectual property, source code, revenue streams–not create them. A small digression If you
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“Work For Equity” Panel at SVCC Set For Sun-Oct-10 2:45pm
If you are considering joining a startup or are in the process of building out your initial team I am moderating a panel at Silicon Valley Code Camp with three startup CEO’s that you should find helpful. It’s scheduled for Sunday October 10 at 2:45pm and you can sign up here. We will explore: Practical
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Pete Tormey on the Benefits of Attending a Bootstrappers Breakfast
Pete Tormey moderates the Dublin/Pleasanton Bootstrapper Breakfasts® (along with Richard Moerschell) and fills in from time to time in San Francisco as well. I asked him what he felt some key benefits attendees gained at a breakfast and he sent me a great three minute podcast that I have embedded below. He identifies three benefits
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The Future, Arriving Yesterday, Remains In Constant Motion
A review of Michael Malone’s “The Future Arrived Yesterday: the Protean Corporation.” Malone believes that successful companies of the future must find a way to continuously and rapidly change almost every one of their attributes but retain a core of values.
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Reminder: “Tips for Keeping Informed” Webinar Thu-Sep-23
Just a quick reminder that I will be presenting on “Feed Readers De-Mystified: Tips for Keeping Informed” this Thursday, September 23, 12:00-12:45 PM PDT. If you are not using feeds and alerts to track your competition, stay on top of developments at major customers, and keep abreast of significant developments in your industry, then you
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We Cannot Sate Your Hunger For Certainty But We Can Increase Your Odds of Success
A hunger for certainty will not help an entrepreneur make timely decisions or manage the level of ambiguity and uncertainty they need to navigate through.
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3 Equations & 3 Unkowns: Target Customer is Key Initial Value
I mentioned in “3 Equations 3 Unknowns: Customers, Features, and Message” that we spend a lot of time on the early customer stage. It requires very different sales style than you’ll see later on. It’s a conversational sales style. It’s much more about understanding the problem. You’re trying to solve three equations, three unknowns: Are
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Take a Minute to Recall 9 Years Ago
I apologize for this detour from our exploration of entrepreneurial issues, but this anniversary of my complete confusion is one that I continue to observe, still attempting almost a decade later to make sense of it. I am old enough to remember what I was doing when I learned that John Kennedy had been assassinated.
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How We Help You Explore Whether to Hire Us
My interview with Gabriel Weinberg has inspired a number of entrepreneurs to contact us about getting our help with their early customer acquisition issues. I thought I would outline briefly how we help them get to know us better. We work one or more of your issues with you in a phone call that lasts
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