MVP: Are You Building a Death Star?
Empires build Death Stars, rebels build X-Wing fighters. If your startup’s minimum viable product is a Death Star you are doing it wrong.
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skmurphy
Podcast with Pete Tormey: Bootstrapper’s Delegation Checklist
Pete Tormey and I did a short podcast on a delegation checklist. We wanted to help bootstrapping entrepreneurs decide what tasks it made the most sense to delegate in an early stage startup.
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Before You Can Score You Must Have A Goal
Before you can score you must have a goal. If you haven’t set your goals for the next six months now is a good time to write them down.
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Byron Wien’s Lessons Learned in 80 Years: Seven for Entrepreneurs
7 Tips for Entrepreneurs from “Lessons Learned in 80 Years” by Byron Wien. The best is “Don’t try to be better than your competitors, try to be different.”
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Making Adjustments at the Half for 2013
The four day 4th of July weekend is a good excuse to take a break from the day to day pressures of bootstrapping, reflect on your goals for the year and what you have accomplished and learned so far…and perhaps make some “adjustments at the half.”
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–June 2013
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–May 2013
A collection of quotes of interest and use to entrepreneurs: these quotes for entrepreneurs were identified in May 2013. You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail if you would
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Paul Spaan Offers 3D Printing Show & Tell Fri-May-24 at Mountain View BB
Join other entrepreneurs for serious conversations about growing a business based on internal cash flow and organic profit at a Bootstrappers Breakfast®. Paul Spaan, CEO of Spaan Enterprises, will offer a seven minute briefing on “3D Printing For Bootstrappers” and circulate examples of prototype products he has printed. Paul’s briefing will be followed by our regular roundtable
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Reminder: Successful Consulting Engagements With Startups at IEEE-CNSV Tue-May-21
Quick reminder: I will be moderating a panel on “Successful Consulting Engagements with Startups” at the May 21 IEEE-CNSV meeting. I volunteered to pull this panel together after a long thread on the CNSV e-mail list June about the topic. I have been fortunate to attract three knowledgeable and experienced engineers to take part in the
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Holly DeVito on Basic Financial Controls for Bootstrappers Tue-May-21 BB in Sunnyvale
Holly DeVito presents basic financial controls that need to be in place early for bootstrappers to manage their business and ensure profitable growth.
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For New Products Prospect Objections Are Valuable Data
If your prospect keep raising the same stupid objections and asking the same dumb questions it’s likely that your presentation is lacking or you are frequently talking to the wrong people. For new products, prospect objections are valuable data. Explore the implications and adjust your presentation and demo accordingly.
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Learning the Right Lessons From Failure
John Finneran’s postmortem: “Fat startup: Learn the lessons of my failed Lean Startup” shows he did not learn the right lessons from failure.
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Due Diligence Checklist For Evaluating A Service Business for Acquisition
We recently advised a client on a possible acquisition of a small service business and developed this due diligence checklist.
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They Screwed Up: They Followed Our Specification
A story from my engineering days at Cisco about how a lack of trust led to a default assumption that “they screwed up.”
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Get Out of Your Batcave: Customer Development for Lean Startups
Join us on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 for a new class “Get Out Of Your Batcave: Customer Development for Lean Startups” from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at Education @ PARISOMA in San Francisco, CA. You’ll learn how to: Establish “ground truth” in an early market Use an MVP (minimum viable product) to explore the
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How To Thrive After An Acquisition
One common exit for a bootstrapping team is to sell their startup, here are some rules of thumb for how to thrive after an acquisition.
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–April 2013
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected in a blog post like this one at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts in your inbox.
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Hiring A Startup’s First Sales Person
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), an insightful blogger, and quality contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction due out this summer that includes interviews with folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was
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Vision Is Critical But Avoid The “Field of Dreams”
The Field of Dreams model–build it and they will come–is a variation on “build a better mousetrap,” a self-limiting belief that dooms many startups.
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16 Quotes on Customer Development From Asif Mandozai
Asif Mandozai (@asifmandozai) uses twitter to share customer development insights. Here is a set of 16 quotes I found to be practical and actionable.
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