Jeff Bezos on Strategic Planning
Excerpts that I found thought provoking and useful from an interview with Jeff Bezos in the October 2007 Harvard Business Review.
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Disruptive Tools Can Stall At Group Boundaries
Interesting web site demo at http://nextgenerationelectronicsdesign.com/ by the folks at Altium. Unlike any PCB demo I have ever seen and an interesting use of self-deprecating humor to talk about the challenges of linking FPGA, Board, and Mechanical design. Two time coded remarks at 2:25 “We did what any traditional EDA company would do, we denied
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Conserving Trust in a Downturn
A lot of is written these days about how to conserve cash in a downturn. In particular the need to cut expenses by cutting headcount and unnecessary fill-in-the-blank spending. But conserving trust is equally important. If you have been bootstrapping and only increasing expenses in response to revenue (versus in anticipation of revenue) then your
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Doing Less with Less
Startups survive because they can live on the scraps of a market (a niche) that larger competitors ignore or would be unable to pursue profitably. This is doing less with less.
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Daniel Pink’s “Free Agent Nation” Worth Revisiting
In April of 2001, as the euphoria from 1999 started to fall to earth again (by October it would be accessible only by Deep Submersible Rescue Vehicle) Daniel Pink wrote “Land of the Free” in Fast Company that was a teaser for “Free Agent Nation” as a hardback in May of 2001 and paperback in
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6 Work Weeks (or Less) Until 2009
Nov-17: the last full week before Thanksgiving, if you are trying to close business it can get much harder between Thanksgiving and New Years Day [Full Week] Nov-24: a half week at best. [Half-Week] Dec-1: normally a good week [Full Week] Dec-8: normally a good week [Full Week] Dec-15: unless you are chasing end of
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We Started With Two Empty Hands
“We started with two empty hands.” Icelandic expression It’s hard to believe the frugal and hardworking Icelanders have gone bankrupt. I re-read Njal’s Saga every few years and find new nuggets each time. In Letter from Iceland, Robert Jackson reported November 14, 2008 in the Financial Times on the complete meltdown of Iceland’s financial system.
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Odd Jobs With an Even Temper
When you are very angry, think about how momentary a man’s life is. Marcus Aurelius I worked in the router software marketing group at Cisco in the early 90’s. I had left engineering and taken up residence in the marketing department. I was playing asteroid to a number of dinosaur protocols: we had realized that
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Plan For Customer Reference as Much as Payment
Worry about a good customer reference more than getting paid. A reference will lead to payment, but just because they pay does not mean they’re a reference. Plan for gaining customer references by starting with a request for feedback don the quality of your services and the business results you enabled.
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Negotiate the Level of Reference in Parallel with Price and Others Terms and Conditions
Having a public reference, testimonial, or case study is a significant risk reducing asset for a startup. It’s prudent to negotiate the level of reference in parallel with price.
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Veterans Day
On Veterans Day 2008 we honor those who have served in the military and lived: thanks for putting your life on the line for all the things we hold dear.
EDA Bloggers’ BoF at ICCAD 2008 Wed-Nov-12 4-6pm in Fir Room
There will be be a birds of feather meeting for EDA bloggers at ICCAD 2008 on Wed-Nov-12-2008 at 4-6pm in the Fir Room.
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Overnight Success
The challenge with overnight success in a startup–like many things–is the time needed to integrate many inputs, your own hopes and fears among them.
In the Beginning…the Founders are the Business
The closing slide in our Idea to Revenue Workshop says In The Beginning…The Founders Are The Business. To Keep The Business Viable, Learn Faster Than the Competition. Successful Entrepreneurship Is a Self-Improvement Project.
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EDA Business Climate: A Retrospective
A look back over the last seven years to provide a context for an assessment of the EDA business climate and prospects for the future.
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How I Avoid Sending Email I Regret
I have several rules of thumb I follow to avoid sending and email I regret. I don’t hit send after 8pm, or when I am angry, or when the other person is angry, or when a phone call is called for.
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History of Silicon Valley: It’s 100 Years Old
The history of Silicon Valley is properly anchored by the founding of Federal Telegraph in 1909 by Cyril Elwell, marked by California Historical Marker 836.
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Scott Sambucci on “An Entrepreneur’s Lessons Learned”
I met Scott Sambucci when I spoke at TVC in July of 2007 in Menlo Park as a part of their “Entering the Entrepreneurial World” seminar. He was kind enough to blog about his take away from the talk in “Definition: Entrepreneurship” where he concluded that even though it was a noun it should be
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Using the Downturn to Launch Your Consulting Career
The last six weeks or so I have encountered a number of folks who have decided to use the downturn to launch their consulting career. Typically they have been encouraged in this by their former employer who has given them a large check a lot of free time. But some have chafed at cubicle life
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How To Measure Your Lead Generation Effectiveness
Many start-up founders believe that the sales process should be this straightforward: Get the phone to ring (or e-mail inbox or skype or web contact form) Tell your prospect about your offering Take the order Alas it is normally not this simple, especially if you are selling to businesses. We do encounter some startups that
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