Tonight I attended a KIN / KASE Event: VC Investment in Asia and What It Means to Korea. The guest speakers were Han Kim, Partner at Altos Ventures and Tae Hea Nahm, Partner at Storm Ventures. I have heard many VC’s speak on how they evaluate investment opportunities and what their criteria for investing is. […]
VC Investment in Asia and What It Means to Korea Read More »
Is my topic this Thursday, February 15, at 7:00 PM, at the IEEE-CNSV meeting at KeyPoint Credit Union, 2805 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, CA. The event is free. I will cover a number of practical suggestions for using blogs to promote a consulting practice and wikis to foster project team collaboration against a deadline. Blogs and
Ten Tips for Leveraging Blogs and Wikis in Your Consulting Practice Read More »
I attended FASTforward ’07, this week. There were some very interesting talks: John Battelle, author of Searchblog: Search is a conversion. Search becomes a way to have a dialog with your customers. Interaction with your website should mirror a conversation. Batelle offered the New York Times site as an example of one that did not seem
Interesting Discussions From Fast Forward 2007 Read More »
Another excerpt from William Feather’s “The Business of Life” From page 262, an entry entitled “A Conservative Club.” More than forty-five years ago a group of men…organized a club for men of common intellectual interest. It was agreed that the membership would be limited to thirty, and that twelve meetings would be held each year
Recipes For Longevity in “Mutual Improvement Clubs” Read More »
The Annual Stanford Entrepreneurship Conference featured Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, as its keynote speaker. Ed gave a great presentation on lessons learned from structurally organizing a company for effective communication across its departments. In the beginning, Ed believed they had created a very strong culture at Pixar. They had paired up programmers
Pixar’s Ed Catmull Highlights Value of Post Mortems Read More »
Today I attended the 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. One session that I truly enjoyed and found very informative was the “Going Solo or Partnering” Panel. Going Solo or Partnering Panel: Stanford E-Conference Below are three questions and answers I believe capture the importance of developing a solid team. Moderator Andy
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Last night I attended the IBDNetwork Strategies Series: Stepping on the Web 2.0 Scale. The event was hosted at Shasta Ventures and featured these guest speakers: Moderator: Tod Francis, Managing Director, Shasta Ventures Panel of Experts: Adam Gross, VP Developer Marketing, Salesforce Shawn Hardin, CEO, Flock Jason Pressman, Partner, Shasta Ventures Sam Schillace, Engineer, Writely/Google
Stepping on the Web 2.0 Scale at IBDNetwork Jan-23-07 Read More »
Over lunch today I attended the SVASE Startup-U Event: Do I Have What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur? Which was held at Plug & Play Tech Center. The guest speakers were John Kim founder of Five9 and LeadMarket, and Steve Stephansen, Board Director of the Sand Hill Angels. It was an open discussion with a
SVASE: Do I Have What it Takes to Be an Entrepreneur? Read More »
I had the good fortune to attend the SVASE CXO Forum Dec-6-06 where Peter Bakonyvari, Vice President of Sales at JPMorgan SymPro, explored some of the practical realities in building a sales team. In particular what is involved in hiring and firing a sales person. First 90 days Is Critical Bakonyvari’s made the point that the first 90 days
Tips for Hiring (and Firing) a Sales Person Read More »
Michael Sippey’s original title for his August 2, 2006 talk at SVPMA was “Iterating Towards Bethlehem” was changed to a less cryptic Making the Shift From Being a Packaged Software Person to Being a Hosted Services Person. The original title was a riff on Yeats’ Slouching Towards Bethlehem (not the Joan Didion book or the
Iterating Towards Bethlehem: Michael Sippey at SVPMA 8/2/2006 Read More »
Gone are the days of annual release cycle. For many companies, weekly releases are the new standard. Picking the best software release cycle impacts your customers, team, and management. At this roundtable discussion we will exchange tips and gotchas. Provide a look at the impact on business models, teams and product development. Tuesday October 30
SaaS Roundtable: Managing Rapid Release Cycles Read More »
Finding More Customers Every business owner asks “How do I Find More Customers? How can I get the phone to ring?” Is your New Year’s Resolution to develop a plan to grow your business? Now is the time to get started. SKMurphy offers a three hour Getting More Customers workshop where you develop a one-page
SKMurphy: Getting More Customers Workshop Read More »
Last night’s talk was well received. We had a good crowd, with folks filling the seats and and a few having to stand up along the back wall. Here’s the feedback from the talk: I was surprised that it was more than 12 capsule reviews back to back, that Sean was able to extract some
12 Books For the Busy CEO – Feedback 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 »
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
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 »
Here are 3 things I learned from Jennifer Vessels in Next Step’s workshop “How to Sell the Real Value of Your Solution” on Thursday, November 7. I need to align my sales efforts with my prospect’s success factors. This means that I need to figure how they are getting measured and how to influence and serve
3 things I learned at Next Step’s “How to Sell the Real Value of Your Solution” Read More »
On Nov. 8, I attended the Guy Kawasaki Art of the Start Seminar. This was the second time I have listened to Guy’s presentation. Guy is an amazing speaker and has given this pitch a hundred times. Even after 100’s of presentations, Guy continues to illustrate passion and enthusiasm in his Art of the Start
The “Art of Rainmaking” at Art of the Start Read More »
Art of the Start is one of the best workshops out there for startups. Here are 3 things I learned from it. Mary Hodder, founder and CEO of Dabble, reminded the audience of the saying “If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money!” One of the most important Guy
3 things I learned at Art of the Start Read More »
