July 2014

Quotes For Entrepreneurs–July 2014

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Michael Ellsberg: Four Reasons Why Passive Income Is a Destructive Fantasy

It’s hard work not passive income that allows you to find your life purpose. I make a distinction between wanting to move beyond running a services business where you bill by the hour to either selling results or selling a product and entrepreneurs attracted to the passive income fantasies of the “Four Hour Work Week.” …

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Matt Wensing On Making the Transition to Growth

Matt Wensing On Making the Transition to Growth Stormpulse has gone from an idea bootstrapped on founder savings and credit cards, to a project funded by friends and family rounds, to a small business strengthened by angel money, to a company that’s raised “meaningful” capital (our last round was just over $2 million). Here’s what …

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Brad Pierce: Preserve Context in Writing to Manage Interruptions

Manage interruptions by writing down enough context to continue later: organized notes must detail status and next steps. Brad Pierce:  Preserve  Context in Writing to Manage Interruptions On longer time scales, when you must drop something for a while, it’s important, before doing so, to leave behind enough context for yourself to swap it back …

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Tools for Buzzword Compliant Business Models

A collection of humorous tools that generate buzzword compliant business models. Web Economy Bullshit Generators First there was Dack Ragus‘ (@dack) “Web Economy Bullshit Generator.” He started with sketches (“Kinda like Da Vinci’s sketchbook, except for bullshit”): “I made this massive list of potential bullshit terms while sitting on Miami Beach in January, 2000. Add a …

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We Help Teams of Experts Find Leads and Close Deals

If you have demonstrated domain knowledge and expertise, a plan for having a significant impact on a customer problem, and are in the process of exploring the early market for your offering or trying to build on a handful of early customers, we can help find leads and close deals. The majority of our clients …

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Tristan Kromer: You Can Tell a Good Advisor by Their Questions

Three interesting answers from Tristan Kromer’s interview with the folks at Startup Commons Startup Commons: What’s the best way to get started? Tristan Kromer:  Find someone you really want to help. Someone in pain. That’s your vision. Helping someone and solving a real problem. Find team members with complementary skill sets who are able to challenge …

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Neal Stephenson on Christianity, Grace, Sincerity, and Seeing Things as They Are

I have started to reserve Sundays to write on spirituality, charity, and a higher moral purpose to our life as entrepreneurs. I was struck by the quote that Stephenson puts in Juanita’s mouth in Snow Crash and have concluded that he is performing a similar ministry in his science fiction writing. There is a sense …

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Q: We Already Have a Prototype, Can We Still Do Customer Development?

Product-market fit is not a ratchet: competitive response, new entrants, changes in technology and customer preference require ongoing customer development. You will need to continue to do customer development–and customer discovery for that matter–even after you have a first prototype, an MVP, early customers, and an established niche. Markets and competitors don’t stand still, no …

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Founder Story: Steve DiBartolomeo of Artwork Conversion Software

Steve DiBartolomeo is co-founder of Artwork Conversion Software, Inc., an EDA software firm headquartered  in Santa Cruz CA with a development office in Manhattan Beach, CA. Founded in 1989, the company develops CAD translation programs, CAD viewers, plotting software and IC packaging software.  Artwork has over 5000 customers worldwide including Alcatel, AMD, Applied Materials, Agere, …

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Discovery Kanban Allows Firms to Balance Delivery and Discovery

I believe that Patrick Steyaert’s Discovery Kanban offers a critical perspective on how large organizations can foster the proliferation of lean innovation methods beyond isolated spike efforts or innovation colonies. I think Patrick Steyaert has come up with an approach that builds on what we have learned from customer development and Lean Startup and offers an …

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A Simple Checklist for Introducing a Collaboration Application

We work with several teams who have launched or are launching an application that makes a team or group more productive.  Here are a couple of suggestions for things to consider. Be compatible with the status quo if at all possible Collaboration or workflow applications that require at least two people to adopt in order …

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