Scott Swaaley is on a mission with MakeSafe Tools to improve workplace safety. He has a unique skill set and a range of experiences that have allowed him to not only identify the need for a new category of low cost power tool safety devices but develop them and bring [...]
CJ Cornell identified 7 pieces of commonly offered but lousy advice for entrepreneurs in “Great, Lousy Advice for Entrepreneurs.” Here is my take. […]
Mark Hanzo, CTO of Hanzo Archives, was interviewed by SimpleWeb as part of a series on validating startup ideas. I found his remarks on very practical and insightful and have added some observations of my own. […]
The following is an edited transcript of Elena Krasnoperova’s “Learning Hacks for Bootstrappers” briefing at the Bootstrapper Breakfast on Fri-Dec-2-2016. She had a “cheat sheet” she handed out that is interleaved here in her remarks. We have added hyperlinks where they help to clarify or elaborate on her remarks. […]
I ran into Shane Reiser (@ShaneReiser) at the Intrapreneur Conference in Silicon Valley and was impressed by his new startup (Your Ideas are Terrible) with cofounder Carie Davis to bring lean thinking to corporate innovation. What follows is a Q&A we conducted over email with hyperlinks added for context. [...]
An interview with Steven Kim, founder of edify.me which provides very well written summaries of business and personal improvement books. I think his summary of the Lean Startup is by far the best and most useful, I profiled it last year in “E-Book Summary for Lean Startup” […]
One documentary worth watching to get some context on the history of entrepreneurship and venture capital is “Something Ventured.” It’s a series of interviews with venture capitalists talking about their investments and their risk mitigation strategies in the 1950’s through 1970’s. It’s clear that they paid a lot of attention [...]
Painful cofounder experiences are more common than happy ones, and especially so when the parties don’t know each well to begin with and the business startup fails. Here is a real email exchange that explores some ways to minimize the risks. […]
An interview with Ben Yoskovitz on his recently launched Highline BETA, a new Toronto “startup co-creation company” that works with large companies to identify areas of opportunity, recruit founders, provide pre-seed capital, and co-create new startups. […]
This article explores the specific experiences of an entrepreneur (who uses the pseudonym “Hard Drive,” a nickname he earned early in his career for his tenacity and decisiveness) and lessons learned bootstrapping a high-tech software as a service business in the social media space. His sustained efforts enabled him to [...]
Edited transcript of an interview with Yodit Stanton (@YoditStanton), CEO of OpenSensors, by Jenn Webb (@JennWebb) at Strata + Hadoop World 2015 “Make Data Work” in London. Yodit talks about what led her to found OpenSensors. […]
Excerpts with commentary on Bill Watterson’s 1990 Kenyon College address: “Some Thoughts on the Real World By One Who Glimpsed it and Fled.” […]
Derek Sivers promises that his slim book “Anything You Want” is a one hour read that summarizes 10 years of his entrepreneurial experience into 40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur. It’s a practical book that’s well organized and easy to read. It took me much longer than an [...]
Unreasonable entrepreneur is almost redundant. By definition entrepreneurs want to change the status quo, offering better products and services as substitutes for established and successful ones. This often requires an unreasonable amount of effort and persistence, sometimes to the point of stubbornness, in the face of not only opposition but [...]
The History Channel’s “Men Who Built America” documentary recaps the history of the creation of key American industries: railroad, steel, petroleum, automobile, and finance. Covering a period from roughly 1850 to World War 2 it offers reenactments of key events in the evolution of American business. It’s worth an entrepreneur’s time to [...]
I got to know Edith Harbaugh (@edith_h) when she was moderating the Lean Startup Circle Group and published two guest blog posts by her: “It’s Your Execution, Not Your Idea” and “Managing Email Conversations With Customers.” I also invited her to take part in a webinar on Innovator’s DNA: Experimenting [...]
Matt Wensing On Making the Transition to Growth Stormpulse has gone from an idea bootstrapped on founder savings and credit cards, to a project funded by friends and family rounds, to a small business strengthened by angel money, to a company that’s raised “meaningful” capital (our last round was just [...]
Steve DiBartolomeo is co-founder of Artwork Conversion Software, Inc., an EDA software firm headquartered in Santa Cruz CA with a development office in Manhattan Beach, CA. Founded in 1989, the company develops CAD translation programs, CAD viewers, plotting software and IC packaging software. Artwork has over 5000 customers worldwide including [...]
Matt Oscamou, the founder of Frontier Bites, talked about lessons learned getting a food startup off the ground at the April 15 Bootstrapper Breakfast in Sunnyvale. Here is a short recording of his introduction, the benefits the Bootstrapper Breakfast® has offered him, and how he came to bootstrap Frontier Bites [...]
I didn't know Leonard Smith but I was forwarded a link by John McKenna two days ago to his obituary (originally published in GreenwichTime on Jan. 26, 2014) and I thought it captured the essential personality of people who bring change to organizations in trouble and often start new ones. Here are some [...]