Continuing my twitter experiment from April, May, June, and July I have continued to select a quote every couple of days that I believe is applicable to the challenges of entrepreneurship. I collect these quotes for entrepreneurs into a blog post at the end of the month. Enter your E-mail if you would like new …
Negotiating a software deal, from either side of the table, can be different from many other negotiations that you enter into. I have been surprised over the years at how folks who are successful in other domains can fail one or more of the following tests as they negotiate a software deal. Have You Created …
I spent the morning helping to facilitate a strategic planning meeting for PATCA. I was asked by Walt Maclay, the current PATCA president, to assist him and the board of directors (and any PATCA members how wanted to take part) in charting a course for 2009. PATCA is a Silicon Valley institution, a non-profit founded …
Robert May concludes his post on “Entrepreneurship: Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid” with the following If you want to be an entrepreneur, stop believing that ideas matter. That isn’t what entrepreneurship is about. Entrepreneurs aren’t idea people, everybody and their brother has ideas. Entrepreneurs are people that exploit ideas by matching them to market needs, executing …
This is a guest post on networking and referrals by Steve Moore of SPMSolutions. Networking and Referrals Networking and referrals continue to be the primary marketing strategy for many community-based small businesses (especially those with limited budgets). In contrast, many technology-oriented small businesses rely more upon on-line forums, social networking sites, user groups, etc. to …
Last week I attended Marketing Strategies in a Down Economy by Steve Moore. Steve stressed the importance of why you are different than your competition. One key differential can just be the reason why you started your business: what is the passion you bring to this business? Following that meeting, I updated our website home …
I am always surprised by how many basic mistakes CEOs make when giving demos. Learn to avoid them at Cohan’s Great Demo workshop. Starting the demo with your company history … who cares? Too many bullets on one slide. See Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint “Why I should care about your product” is left …
We’ve recently expanded the website to add a Startup Stages area that organizes the content based five distinct stages of evolution for a startup. It’s designed to offer you a perspective on content that’s directly relevant to your needs based on the logical next steps to build on what you have achieved. It’s an effort …
Welcome Your Feedback on New Startup Stages Section Read More »
One of the strategies we cover in our Getting More Customers workshops is blogging. Below is a 90-plan developed by a workshop attendee last year, anonymized and presented with permission. Actual implementation took more than 90 days but he has been blogging for a little less than a year and has 60 blog posts that …
90-day Plan for Blogging from “Getting More Customers” Workshop Read More »
At a Bootstrappers Breakfast you can: Take part in a serious roundtable conversation among bootstrapping entrepreneurs Compare notes and exchange ideas Learn from others’ mistakes Find potential business partners and co-founders The Check Is Not In The Mail Len Sklar joins us in Milpitas this Friday, he will make a short presentation on why “The Check is …
“The Check is NOT in the Mail” this Friday at Bootstrappers Breakfast Read More »
My younger son and I were walking across the field to soccer practice over the weekend when he told me “Papa, I know why cartoon characters are able to walk across the chasm without falling.” Entire books have been devoted to Crossing the Chasm, but I wanted to make sure we were both talking about …
Gumption is the ability to continue to try new things with confidence, in spite of past failures. Entrepreneurs need this to debug problems and build things that don’t exist–yet.
In an article in Scientific American Mind called “Sleep on it, How Snoozing Makes You Smarter,” Robert Stickgold and Jeffrey Ellenbogen conclude that at least six hours of sleep per night is essential to cognitive function (hat tip to Hacker News) …while we sleep, our brain is anything but inactive. It is now clear that …
