Excerpts from Paul Grahams’ October 2014 essay “Before the Startup” with commentary interspersed. This essay is in some ways less self-confident than many of his earlier ones. He seems to recognize more explicitly the limits of his ability to offer advice that entrepreneurs in the Y Combinator portfolio–or entrepreneurs applying to Y Combinator–will actually follow. […]
Entrepreneurs Focus On Customers Not Startup Mechanics Read More »
The practical and spiritual aspects of entrepreneurship as a calling are well documented in “The Call of the Entrepreneur.”
Entrepreneurship As A Calling Read More »
Busyness won’t build your business, it closes off your creativity and your luck. Anticipate, or at least acknowledge, missed deadlines and commitments: triage or re-negotiate. Busyness I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something
Busyness Won’t Build Your Business Read More »
Don’t waste time painting Tom Sawyer’s fence: proving someone wrong is actually a poor source of motivation. It’s OK to ignore conventional wisdom, but don’t get trapped into doing someone else’s work (or building their platform) just to prove them wrong. Build something instead of trying to win an argument.
Don’t Waste Time Painting Tom Sawyer’s Fence: Proving Someone Wrong Is A Poor Motivator Read More »
Some advice from a couple of founders that ran successful crowdfunding campaigns: Matt Oscamou, CEO of Frontier Bites, Mark Palaima, Distinguished Engineer at Avagent, and Noah Dentzel, CEO of Nomad Goods.
Advice on Crowdfunding from Matt Oscamou, Mark Palaima, and Noah Dentzel Read More »
I will be a mentor at the B2B Startup Weekend June 6-8 in San Francisco.
Mentor at B2B Startup Weekend Read More »
Are you a startup founder who wants to make an objective assessment of your new product idea? Schedule a no-cost, no-obligation MVP Readiness Review. You can also use the session to prepare for customer discovery interviews or to debrief on interviews you have conducted to glean further insights.
Office Hours: Schedule Time to Review Your MVP Readiness Read More »
Peter Cohan from Second Derivative offers some of the best sales demo/pitch training and hands-on learning that we have seen. So we are honored to offer these interactive workshops to startups. Here is the upcoming schedule: March 5&6, 2014 “Great Demo!” San Jose, CA May 21&22, 2014 “Great Demo!” San Jose, CA October 15&16, 2014
Improve Your Sales Pitch Read More »
We get a number of questions about logos, here are three tips for designing or choosing a logo when you are bootstrapping or just getting started: Text Treatments: text logos are simple, the company name is always right there. Most high tech logos are text treatments, they are clear and simple. With text logos you
Tips for Choosing a Logo Read More »
If you missed SKMurphy and SalesQualia at Lean Startup Conference’s workshop, Sean Murphy and Scott Sambucci led an interactive workshop on developing and debugging your repeatable and scalable B2B sales process. In the workshop, we worked a number of sales issues that the attendees from lean startups had: Can’t get potential customers to call back
LSC Workshop on Engineering Your Sales Process Read More »
If you missed our “Working for Equity” panel at Silicon Valley Code Camp 2012, Theresa Shafer and the four CEO’s on the panel had a lively conversation about what’s really involved in leaving your day job and striking out on your own or with partners.
Recap of “Work For Equity” A Startup CEO Panel at SVCC 2012 Read More »
Here is a list of tools for finding a physical workspace: this covers desks, cubicles, offices, and meeting rooms you can rent by the hour, day, or month.
Tools for Finding a Physical Workspace: Deskwanted, LiquidSpace, Loosecubes, OpenDesks Read More »
MyPermissions: Checks for third party application access to your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. SocialMention: Allows you to do keyword and phrase search across more than one hundred social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc… HackerFollow: follow comments and posts by your favorite Hacker News contributors
Three Useful Tools: MyPermissions, SocialMention, HackerFollow Read More »
Here are the slides from today’s “Working for Equity” panel at Silicon Valley Code Camp. It was a standing room only crowd of over 70 that made for a very interactive session with the panel.
Slides from “Working For Equity” Panel at SVCC 2011 Read More »
Entrepreneurs feel a calling to improve the world by creating an exchange of value. They are motivated by a dissatisfaction with the status quo and blessed with the energy and gumption to change it. People who are content or phlegmatic rarely try to change things.
Restlessness & Discontent, Gumption & Sisu Read More »
The essence of entrepreneurship is a free exchange of value–what the Romans called “quid pro quo”–that leaves all parties better off: no one loses.
Zero Sum vs. Quid Pro Quo Read More »
Update Feb-24-2011: Since I first wrote this in 2010 the Effectuation.Org site has been considerably upgraded and contains a lot more information on research on entrepreneurship by Saras Sarasvathy. Recapping ideas, papers, and books that had changed my life yesterday reminded me of Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model from her 2001 paper “What Makes Entrepreneurs
Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model for Expert Entrepreneurs Read More »
Recapping on my earlier “Federated Entrepreneurship” post from January 5. A federation is a union of partially self-governing units with a constitution that does not allow unilateral changes by a central governing body. I think it’s also a good model for what’s required to create an economically dynamic region. One parallel would be to a
Federated Entrepreneurship 2 Read More »
Federated entrepreneurship was a phrase that William Krause used to explain 3Com’s model for management and innovation when he was CEO. Federation comes from a Latin word foedus for covenant or treaty and describes a union of partially self-governing units with a constitution that does not allow unilateral changes by a central governing body. It
Federated Entrepreneurship Read More »
I am happy to be able to offer another guest blog by Nanette Collins, her first was on “Volunteering, Lessons Learned from the Trenches.” Nanette is an entrepreneur in her own right, she is the principal at Nanette V. Collins Marketing and PR with offices in Boston and San Francisco and one the web at
Nanette Collins: Startup Culture is Critical Read More »
