I had lunch today at El Cerrito with an old friend from college who has done a number of successful startups. We talked of old classmates, children, the energy we had in our twenties, his new son, and my new granddaughter. And we talked about what it was like to do a startup. He left […]
Two Images of Startups Read More »
Venk Shukla, CEO of Nusym, commented on Nusym De-cloaks 3 on Dec 4 We had met a long time ago but lost touch afterward. The points you make about website credibility are valid. We will measure the information we put out against this criteria once we decide to emerge from the shadows. Thanks for paying
I got Guidelines to Creativity by K. Bradford Brown as a gift and was impressed by these ten quotes. Some are clever re-statements of more famous observations but all have a certain poetry. Creativity will take me as far as my imagined limits. The building blocks of our creativity are quarried from the space between
Ten Quotes from “Guidelines to Creativity” by K. Bradford Brown Read More »
12 Books For the Busy CEO: spend an hour and leave with a summary of key marketing insights and some rules of thumb for successful innovation in Silicon Valley. You might even identify one or two books that you haven’t read that will be worth your time over the Christmas holidays. I will cover twelve
12 Books For the Busy CEO Tonight (Mon Dec-11-2006) @ SDForum Read More »
Just For Today I Will Feel Grateful For My Customers. I Worked Hard To Get Them. Without Them I Would Not Have A Business. I Will Be as Friendly as Can Be to Everyone That I Work With; I Will Treat Them as If They Are Responsible For Keeping Me in Business. If I Have
Just For Today by Ben Stein Read More »
Going pro means learning how to deliver the results required. Some key points to remember as you ask folks in larger firms to take a risk with your new offering or service. They are from a March 1993 column entitled “Going Pro” by Asa Baber.
Coffee Break with Gary Smith It’s a strange thing to know someone who’s making the front page of the paper for losing his job. I have known Gary Smith for almost 20 years: we met when he was a methodologist at LSI Logic and their salesman for 3Com dragged him in to encourage us to
Coffee Break with Gary Smith Read More »
I have been catching up on my reading and came across a profile of Larry Sonsini in Fortune’s Nov-27-06 print edition. The article in the print edition is titled “The Man To See In The Valley” but “Scandals rock Silicon Valley’s top legal ace” in the on-line version. It’s part of their “Portraits of Power” profiles,
Larry Sonsini Profiled in Fortune Nov-27-06 Read More »
A collection of quotes on perseverance, staying true to your character, and keeping your promises.
Thoughts on Perseverance and Promises Read More »
Always carry 3×5 cards with you wherever you go. I keep a handful in my shirt pocket and jot down those sudden inspirations or solutions to small problems that I would otherwise quickly forget.
Email overload has become an overused term. But I find myself with an inbox hovering near 6,000 messages (5932 at the moment) and so I have to make some serious changes.
John Nesheim, author of High Tech Startup, has been blogging for a little over a year. His most recent post, just before Thanksgiving, gives his perspective on bootstrapping BOTTOM LINE: Bootstraps are difficult to do. A few rare ones become giants (Dell). Most struggle and remain small, or go out of business. Buyers of such
Nesheim vs. Cowan on Bootstrap Economics Read More »
Here are a set of quotes for Thanksgiving to reflect on over the holidays.
Quotes for Thanksgiving Read More »
It’s been a month since my two posts on Nusym Technology. They upgraded their text treatment ( nu · sym ) to a nice logo. They still promise to deliver the “most significant breakthrough in functional verification in a decade. Nusym Technology is an EDA software company that provides an order of magnitude improvement in verification productivity while
Mary Sullivan addressed “Customer Centric Marketing” last Monday, providing a number of examples of marketing messages based on the customer’s operating reality. Mary highlighted the need for marketing campaigns to recognize that the customer is in charge of the buying process today. The example messages cut through the noise (Mary provided an estimate that every
Custom Centric Marketing Means Shifting to “Resolution Messages” Read More »
I dropped by tonight’s Stirr Mixer at Illusions on 260 California Ave in Palo Alto. It’s a better venue for parking and it’s not as loud as the Blue Chalk—-if it’s too loud you are too old? I am certainly at risk for this in the Stirr crowd. The West Coast team from Charles Rivers
Bruce Mau wrote 43 statements in 1998 to articulate his beliefs, motivations, and strategies in what he called “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.” His focus is on “growth” in the sense of increasing both craftsmanship and artisanship. I have selected eight that I think are are the most applicable to folks in software startups. I kept the
Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth Read More »
Mary Sullivan has prepared a great presentation on “It’s All About Them: Customer-Focused Messaging” for the tonight’s SDForum Marketing SIG at DLA Piper Silicon Valley. Mary offers a messaging framework for moving beyond product-centric features and product-centric benefits to demonstrating your understanding of a prospect’s problems, needs, and wants. If you want to see more samples of her thinking for
Mary Sullivan on Customer-Centric Marketing at SDForum Marketing SIG Tonight Read More »
I did my profile in http://kmi06.pbwiki.com/SeanMurphy in the form of a FAQ Q:Why do you come to KMWorld? This is my third year, so it’s something of a triumph of hope over experience, but I believe that there are a number of techniques and technologies in the “knowledge management” space that are going to have
KMWorld 2006 Wrap-up Read More »
There is a wiki for the conference at http://kmi06.pbwiki.com/ where I will also be doing some gardening (which I think sounds better than gnoming). We are also helping out New Idea Engineering with their booth; if you get a chance drop by booth 200 and say hello to Dr. Search, who first appeared in Issue
Blogging From KMWorld 2006 Read More »
