Four Movies To Renew Your Gumption
Here are four movies that I watch when I need to refill my gumption or recover my sisu: The Verdict, Apollo 13, The Dish, and The World’s Fastest Indian.
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4 Finding your Niche
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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Tips For Modeling & Managing Cash Flow
Tips For Modeling & Managing Cash Flow There were a number of excellent suggestions from last Tuesday’s Bootstrapper Breakfast with Rick Kadet on managing and modeling your cash flow. Rick Kadet opened with some good points about common mistakes founders make in modeling and managing cash flow: They can focus too much on the current
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Distant Early Warning Signs of Market Disruption
Disruption is caused by the new business models an innovation enables. A disruptive innovation can be hard to spot because competitors can offer a different value proposition, not necessarily a better one.
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Focus On a Niche Increases Your Chances For Success
A market as the set of buyers who will be guided by each other’s purchase decision for a particular product. Focus on a niche market lowers your messaging and outreach costs and increases your chances for success.
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Common Mistakes in New Product Introduction Demos
A baker’s dozen of common mistakes that I have seen founders make preparing and delivering new product introduction demos and presentations.
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Killer Instinct Can Blind You to the Value of Partners
A “killer instinct” that allows you to focus and prioritize is helpful, but if it blinds you to win-win outcomes you will not succeed as an entrepreneur. Killer Instinct In “Killer Instinct” Rafael Corrales writes: “There are no plus-minus stats to measure a player’s ruthlessness, his desire to beat his opponent so badly he’ll need
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Better, Impossible, and Unthinkable Products
I think that there are better, impossible, and unthinkable products. Better products are “15 minutes ahead.” Impossible products relax one or two design key constraints. Unthinkable products restructure the design pattern or paradigm to achieve an unprecedented result.
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Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model for Expert Entrepreneurs
Update Feb-24-2011: Since I first wrote this in 2010 the Effectuation.Org site has been considerably upgraded and contains a lot more information on research on entrepreneurship by Saras Sarasvathy. Recapping ideas, papers, and books that had changed my life yesterday reminded me of Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model from her 2001 paper “What Makes Entrepreneurs
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Do Customer Development in Parallel with Product Development
It’s a good idea to do customer development in parallel with product development: talk to prospects, surveys are not enough.
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Marc Andreessen’s Entrepreneurial Insights Rescued from Bit Rot by Jed Christiansen
Marc Andreessen’s Entrepreneurial Insights were rescued from bit rot and decay first by Jed Christiansen and then by the Internet Archive.
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Good Marketing is Good Content
Good content is the basis for good marketing: your messaging must explain your knowledge of customer problems and how you can help.
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Bouncing Back
Bouncing back from a setback is a challenge that entrepreneurs need to navigate repeatedly. Bouncing Back On Hacker News about 18 months ago someone posted a question on “Dealing with Post Startup Depression” that read I recently shut down my first startup ever. I am having a really tough time getting over it and starting
The Limits of “I Will Know It When I See It”
Both engineering and entrepreneurship alternate exploration and verification cycles to develop a solution that satisfies a customer’s need. Both of these rely on the scientific method of “observation, hypothesis formation, prediction, and experimentation” to develop and validate testable theories, engineering solutions, and profitable products. Both require that a new configuration or an opportunity be recognized
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Hadoop Summit 2009 – Quick Impressions
A quick overview of the Hadoop Summit 2009: we are looking at project CPU budgets measured not in CPU years but CPU millennia.
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Andrew Chen: Most Web 2.0 Media Startups Have a B2B Enterprise Model
I don’t know how I overlooked Andrew Chen’s “Your Ad-Supported Web 2.0 Site is Actually a B2B Enterprise in Disguise” He succinctly outlines some hard facts that many founders of media startups spend a year of their life to learn:
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If Revenue is Drying Up
You are not alone. We talk to firms every day that are challenged by the current economic environment. Let me suggest a couple of things you can do: Come to a Bootstrappers Breakfast™ and compare notes with other bootstrapping entrepreneurs for the price of your breakfast. We host four a month, the next one is
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Startups Need Sisu and Creative Improvisation To Survive Recession
We are clearly in a recession that will test many startups in Silicon Valley and the rest of the United States. Those with determination and a willingness to embrace creative improvisation are more likely to survive.
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Entrepreneurial Motivation
Tim O’Reilly offers three ways to sustain entrepreneurial motivation: work on what matters to you, create more value than you capture, and take the long view.
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We Don’t Encourage Individuals to Form a Startup
Real entrepreneurs don’t need encouragement to form a startup–although they may benefit from outside perspectives on their plans. Encouraging non-entrepreneurs to form a startup does them a disservice.
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