Thanksgiving 2018: a Look Back at Founders Who Persevered
For Thanksgiving 2018 I wanted to recap how the events of the first Thanksgiving feast: here are excerpts from “Mourt’s Relation” and “Of Plymouth Plantation.” […]
Do You Ever Get the Feeling That Everything You Know is Wrong?
My longer answer to “Do you ever get the feeling that everything you know is wrong?” The short answer is “yes, every few years.” […]
Newsletter October 2018: Lessons Learned from 12 Years of Blogging
Here are some key lessons I have learned from 12 years of blogging that has produced 1842 posts and 1,281,326 words. This post was also sent as the SKMurphy newsletter for October 2018. […]
Professional Services Innovation: Customer Insight, Expertise, and Technology
Professional services innovation requires deepening your understanding of customer needs and emerging problem areas, deepening expertise, and incorporating technology and specialized tools into service delivery. […]
7 Sets of Insights from “Organize for Complexity” by Niels Pflaeging
Here are seven sets of insights from “Organize for Complexity” by Niels Pflaeging that I found useful for entrepreneurs who scaling their startup and intrapreneurs who are driving change in large organizations. […]
Napoleon Hill on Principles for Success in Business and Life
Napoleon Hill wrote “The Magic Ladder to Success” in 1930. Despite being a con man and failure for most of his life, Hill was able to accurately summarize a number of common sense rules for success. I have tried to pull out some key insights in this blog post, leaving [...]
The Startup Leap: Founders’ Lessons Learned at Lean Culture Tue-Nov-27
On Tuesday, November 27, I am moderating an eclectic panel of founders who will share lessons learned on taking the startup leap. Bring your questions. […]
This is Your Brain on Music
Daniel Levitin’s “This is Your Brain on Music” offers an interesting mix of insights based on research, interviews with musicians, and his own experience. […]
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Collected in September 2018
I collect these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a [...]
Q: How Do I Plan for Pivots or Even Shutting Down My Startup?
It’s useful to explore several paths in parallel and have a default list of pivots ready of your first few efforts don’t bear fruit. […]
Thomas Schelling on Strategic Surprise
It’s been 17 years since the Sep-11-2001 attack and almost 77 years since the Dec-7-1941 Pearl Harbor attack that started World War 2. Both attacks achieved strategic surprise and had substantial long-term effects. What follows are some excerpts from the forward by Thomas Schelling Roberta Wohlstetter’s book “Pearl Harbor: Warning [...]
SKMurphy Support Letter for Kinetic River SBIR
SKMurphy Support Letter for Kinetic River SBIR Wed-Sep-5-2018 I am writing to support the Kinetic River Phase II SBIR on a novel flow cytometry instrument. Since 2003 I have worked at SKMurphy, Inc. as a business development consultant for dozens of early stage technology startups. I [...]
College Graduation: From Traveling Station to Station to Navigating a Borderless Sea
David Brooks offers a metaphor for college graduation as a transition from traveling station to station to navigating a borderless sea. The same can be said for making the transition from employee to entrepreneur. […]
Newborns vs. a Startup’s First Product
Two folks in different Mastermind groups added newborns to their households in the last few months experiencing all of the joys and anxieties and frustrations and insights they bring. I thought it would be fun to compare a startup’s first product with a couple’s first child. […]
Derek Sivers: How to Start a Movement
In February 2010 Derek Sivers gave a great talk on “How to Start a Movement” that offered some important tips for leaders and but offered the surprising conclusion that concluded that the most important and underappreciated key to a successful movement was the follower’s courage to follow and ability to [...]
Newsletter August 2018: Making Adjustments at the Half While Navigating 2018
This August 2018 newsletter is an update on what we’ve been up to, reflections on lessons learned, some adjustments at the half for 2018, and other plans for the near term. […]
Hotels near October 2018 Great Demo! Workshop
The October 2018 Great Demo! Workshop at Embassy Suites by Hilton in Milpitas that past attendees have stayed at and enjoyed. A list of other nearby hotels. […]
What to Expect at a Bootstrappers Breakfast
A Bootstrappers Breakfast is “counter-cultural” to the VC ecosystem focus at many events for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Here are seven ways that we take a very different approach to facilitating events for entrepreneurs compared to most others in Silicon Valley. […]
Scott Swaaley Launches MakeSafe Tools to Improve Workplace Safety
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 [...]
Independence Day 2018: Live Free Or Die
In college a good friend put up an old New Hampshire license plate on his dorm room wall, he liked the state motto: “Live Free or Die.” […]