Keeping the Ball Rolling With Prospects
Keeping the ball rolling with prospects requires a mix of empathy for their situation and a project management mindset.
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3 Early Customer Stage
Quick Thoughts on Selling For Software Engineers
Some quick thoughts on selling for software engineers. Sell results, not method. Land and Expand. Get clarity on the customer’s view of the problem. Listen.
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Nomadic Entrepreneurs In Indigenous Markets
David Mamet in a 1997 interview with Richard Covington suggests a paradigm for entrepreneurs based on behavior of nomadic people in a new location: make a new solution that hasn’t occurred to the indigenous people because the indigenous people have been there too long.
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Good Decision, Bad Outcome
“Good decision, bad outcome” is a a reminder to judge the quality of a decision by your process and state of information at the time you decided.
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What To Do When An Early Prospect is Excited
Here is another excerpt from my September interview with Gabriel Weinberg. This one is focused on what to do when you encounter a B2B prospect who is excited about your product and this is only the first or second time this has happened with someone who wasn’t a friend or prior associate. The short answer
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Entrepreneurs Still Welcome: 700 Blog Posts In Four Years
A recap of the inaugural blog post for SKMurphy blog 4 years ago and a roundup of lessons learned writing 700 posts since.
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Ash Maurya on “Running Lean”
Ash Maurya (@AshMaurya) has released the first two chapters of his new book “Running Lean” and here are my first impressions.
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Cold Calling Won’t Find Your First Business Customer
I meet teams trying to cold call for their first business customer and I just haven’t seen it work; the trust issues cripple them. Here is a relevant excerpt from Gabriel Weinberg’s interview with me for his traction book.
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Gabriel Weinberg Interviews Me For His Traction Book
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), a Hacker Angel, insightful blogger, and frequent contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction and interviewing folks like Patrick McKenzie to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was delighted when he approached me to take part
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Appreciate Why Prospects Say “Your Baby Is Ugly”
When a prospect criticizes your product, or your suggestion for a solution, don’t react as if they said, “Your baby is ugly.” Appreciate their candor, make sure you understand their need, and probe for what’s wrong or needs improvement in your offering.
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Chalk Talk on Technology Adoption
A Chalk Talk on “Managing Risk In Technology Adoption” that covers some of key challenges technology providers have with getting companies to use their products.
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3 Equations & 3 Unknowns: Customers, Features, Message
We posted the interview I did with Floyd Tucker of DreamSimplicity about a month ago but in the last two days I have had two people comment to me directly and one tweet about my “three equations and three unknowns” answer: customers, features, message.
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Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups Part 2
Ed Weissman is a prolific contributor to Hacker News, this post collects some insights he has offered on B2B.
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Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups
Ed Weissman offers three reason why business prefers to pay for software: employee focus, a commitment to service, co-evolution with their needs.
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DreamSimplicity Interviews Sean Murphy
I was recently interviewed by Floyd Tucker of DreamSimplicity Marketplace and the interview can be seen below and on DreamSimplicity.com. We talk about how even though each startup team is unique, they have a common set of milestones they have to achieve to move from idea to revenue. We also chat briefly about the Bootstrapper
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Ken Imboden on Lessons From MMC, Candlestick, and NuSym
Ken Imboden offers lessons learned on developing software products from managing at large firms, and successful and unsuccessful startups.
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Collecting Unpaid Bills
In 1995 I did some work for one of the early web startups in Palo Alto. They had delivered a number of database driven websites using a proprietary software technology that they had developed, and had sold the technology to several firms. But they had a problem collecting unpaid bills: they had not been paid
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Tips For Modeling & Managing Cash Flow
A summary of tips for modeling and managing cash flow at a recent bootstrappers breakfast briefing by Rick Kadet.
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A Recent Experience As A Beta User
I check out a few new products every month that I think may be of use in our practice. The following is a true story of a recent experience I had experimenting with a new B2B oriented one that I will call Hotel California. I have changed the name because I signed a license agreement
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Steve Blank Plans to Crowdsource E-Schools
Steve Blank gave a thought provoking talk at the Startup Lessons Learned Conference on “Customer Development 2.0: Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups” (slides here and related blog post “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups” which is part of a category of blog posts on “Durant vs. Sloan“). He also referenced Robert Shedd‘s list of startup accelerators
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