Entrepreneurs, Luck, and Silicon Valley
2003 reflections on the dotcom crash–the year I started SKMurphy, Inc., and 4 rules of thumb from Richard Wiseman on making you own luck.
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How To Ask An Expert For Help
Entrepreneurs often have to ask an expert for help. Here is some great advice by Andrea R. Nierenberg in the “Ask the Expert” column of this month’s New York Enterprise report. Q: Like most small business owners, I find there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all I want to do. Plus there is another,
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CINA Holiday Mixer Sat-Dec-15
I have been invited to emcee this year’s CINA Holiday mixer, it will be held at Fenwick on Saturday December 15, from 10am to 1pm (with lunch included). It should be a lot of fun. The CINACon 2007 Showcase participants in attendance will be asked to answer three questions: “What is it you do again?”
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One Name or Two for Product and Company
Athol Foden was a guest speaker at today’s Bootstrapper Breakfast and he brought his passion for naming and deep knowledge of the issues that around it. One question that came up this morning–and comes up with a lot of very early stage teams–is whether or not to name the company the same as the product
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21 Great Questions for Developing New Products
Here are 21 great questions for developing new products, the checklist is from “Breakthrough Thinking form Inside the Box” by Coyne, Clifford, and Dye; the commentary is mine.
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Entrepreneurial Innovation Comes More From Borrowing & Combining Than Invention
I came across a good quote on innovation and invention in a 2004 article in Fortune Magazine by Harold Evans called “What Drives America’s Greatest Innovators“ (emphasis added) [The] defining characteristic of the innovator: a determination to bring a brainwave into the bustle of the marketplace. […] More innovations come from borrowing and combining than
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Finding And Adding People Successfully to Your Startup Team
Finding and adding people successfully to your startup team is a key skill and set of processes you need to master for growth.
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We Added a Second Idea to Revenue Workshop on January 19, 2008
To keep our workshops interactive we limit them to a dozen people. We’ve got two seats left in our Thursday December 6th “Idea to Revenue workshop” so we have added a second one Saturday January 19, 2008. This one will be held at the Moorpark Hotel in San Jose. We got a number of requests
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Three Points About Seeking Investment
Three key points about seeking investment.
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The Best Feedback From Your Early Customers Is a Story
The best feedback from early customers is a story: this post explores four kinds of stories you should listen for and how to take advantage of them.
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The Best Way To Get Feedback From Early Customers Is a Conversation
Resist the temptation to minimize the time you spend to get feedback from early customers. Focus on depth of insight. This can come only from conversation.
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Planning Will Save a Software Startup Money
One of the best ways to save money is to plan ahead: as simply as possible while being explicit about assumptions, defining what constitutes minimum acceptable forward progress, and identifying what results would justify external investment. For an example see Guy Kawasaki’s blog for Oct-1-2007: Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers
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Planning in a Bootstrapped Startup: a Model from Will Kamishlian
Some tips for planning in a bootstrapped startup. Planning is a means not an end, but without planning, everything encountered is completely new.
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Success for a Bootstrapper
Success for a bootstrapper is a startup with positive cash flow; this enables ongoing market exploration and additional investments in innovation.
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Giving Thanks
It’s appropriate on Thanksgiving to think of the things we have to be grateful for. My short list: Health Family Friends Opportunity As an entrepreneur I am interested in getting something new done. But life is what happens while you are making other plans. I can sometimes get so focused on trying to make a
Find a Problem so Bad That People Pay You To Solve It and Let You Keep the Software
Bill Paseman offers this advice to entrepreneurs: find a problem so bad that people pay you to solve and and let you keep the software.
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Peter Drucker on Why Entrepreneurs Reject Unexpected Success
Peter Drucker outlines four entrepreneurial pitfalls, starting with rejection of a new product’s success in a market that is different than was expected.
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Understanding vs. Mastery
“People tend to mistake understanding for mastery. Mastery is the ability to execute under pressure.” Ford Harding “The secret for discovering the ability to focus all of our mental and physical energy on a single task is no secret at all: recall the concentration of a child at play.” Edward Niam “Necessity may be the
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A Good Idea is No Match for a Bad Habit
Frank Hayes, a columnist for Computerworld, jotted down some “conventional IT wisdom” in 2000 in his “Frankly Speaking” column that they re-ran this month. Here were the best three nuggets:
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A World Built by Scientists and Engineers But Run by Salespeople
“We live in a world built by scientists and engineers, but salespeople run it.”
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