Father’s Day 2018
Father’s Day 2018 has me reflecting on some things I learned from my father and my grandfather: making decisions, making lists, and always having keys to the house.
The Robin and the Cherries: Sharing Value You Co-Create With Customers
In the same way that we must share cherries with robins if we want them to nest in our neighborhood, we can only capture a part of the value that our software creates for our customers.
The Robin and the Cherries: Sharing Value You Co-Create With Customers Read More »
Suhail Doshi: Avoid These Seven Temptations as a First Time Founder
Suhail Doshi, founder of Mixpanel, shared a candid assessment of mistakes he made in the first 18 months of the six startups he has founded in “The first 18 months of starting a company: it’s life or death.” Here are 7 key pieces of advice that highlight mistakes first founders typically make.
Suhail Doshi: Avoid These Seven Temptations as a First Time Founder Read More »
Revisiting Neuromancer After Three Decades
Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. I recently re-read it and was struck by how things
Revisiting Neuromancer After Three Decades Read More »
The First Robin: Seeing the End of Winter
“The First Robin” is a Safed the Sage story by William Eleazar Barton collected in “The Wit And Wisdom Of Safed The Sage” (1919). I use it as a point of departure for how to determine if your startup’s initial journey through Winter is coming to an end.
The First Robin: Seeing the End of Winter Read More »
Superstimulus: Refining Online Interactions into Digital Heroin
Attention-selling business models have incentives for fostering unhealthy addictive behavior. They are refining online interactions into the equivalent of digital heroin: experiences that are highly pleasurable, highly addictive, and in the long run seriously harmful. My goal is to offer several perspectives on certain business models that encourage a “race to the bottom” and provide
Superstimulus: Refining Online Interactions into Digital Heroin Read More »
Six More from Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design
David L. Akin is the Director, SpaceSystems Laboratory at the University of Maryland. He is also the author of “Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design.” He lists more than 40 laws: I selected ten when I blogged about “Applying Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design To Startups” here are six more that I thought were directly applicable
Six More from Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design Read More »
Quotes For Entrepreneurs Collected in May 2018
I collect these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same
Quotes For Entrepreneurs Collected in May 2018 Read More »
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in April 2018
I collect these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in April 2018 Read More »
The House I Grew Up In
Some reflections on change, renewal, and transformation after watching a short video of the demolition of the house I grew up in. We think of our buildings as permanent, as much as we think of ourselves as permanent, but things change.
The House I Grew Up In Read More »
More Effective Discovery Conversations Lead to More Effective Demos
Highlights from a Wed-Nov-29-2017 panel of sales experts on how effective discovery conversations lead to more effective demos: Richard Smith of Refract, Peter Cohan of Second Derivative and author of “Great Demo,” Brian Geery of SalesNv and author of “How to Demonstrate Software So People Buy It,” and Warren Gouws of SumTotal Systems.
More Effective Discovery Conversations Lead to More Effective Demos Read More »
Mark Graban: Don’t Waste Time Looking for Meaning in Normal Fluctuation
Mark Graban gave a great talk at last year’s Lean Startup Week on how to avoid wasting your time–and your team’s time–looking for meaning in normal fluctuation. Here are some highlights.
Mark Graban: Don’t Waste Time Looking for Meaning in Normal Fluctuation Read More »
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in March 2018
I collect these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in March 2018 Read More »
CJ Cornell Deconstructs 7 Pieces of Lousy Advice For Entrepreneurs
CJ Cornell identified 7 pieces of commonly offered but lousy advice for entrepreneurs in “Great, Lousy Advice for Entrepreneurs.” Here is my take.
CJ Cornell Deconstructs 7 Pieces of Lousy Advice For Entrepreneurs Read More »
Sean Murphy Joins the LeanStack Mentor Community of Practice
Sean Murphy, a consultant with SKMurphy, Inc. has joined the LeanStack Mentor community of practice and will use the LeanStack toolkit as appropriate when working with bootstrapping startups.
Sean Murphy Joins the LeanStack Mentor Community of Practice Read More »
Recap From “Startups: What’s Hot, What’s Not (2018)” Today at WIC
A summary of my talk at Women in Consulting lunch meeting today on “Startups: What’s Hot / What’s Not (2018).” Includes slides and links to sources.
Recap From “Startups: What’s Hot, What’s Not (2018)” Today at WIC Read More »
How To Scale Up Qualitative Research Efforts
Qualitative research that allows firms to understand unmet and emerging needs is now the bottleneck for the specification, development, and delivery of significant new products. This is the result of substantial investment in the last two decades in tools for software development, quantitative evaluative research, marketing and sales. This has fundamental implications for how product
How To Scale Up Qualitative Research Efforts Read More »
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in February 2018
I collect these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in February 2018 Read More »
The Shape of Firms to Come: Key Values and Architectural Philosophy
This blog post is an overview of a series of blog posts on “The Shape of Firms to Come.” It’s an attempt to outline what I believe are key values that businesses will embrace to endure over the next 25 years.
The Shape of Firms to Come: Key Values and Architectural Philosophy Read More »
Quotes for Entrepreneurs, Collected in January 2018
Quotes for entrepreneurs collected from a variety of sources in January 2018, tweeted first on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same
Quotes for Entrepreneurs, Collected in January 2018 Read More »