Honor Customer Commitments To Avoid Poisoning the Well “In a small way, every talent acquisition poisons the well for future, bootstrapped startups. It erodes the confidence of users and potential customers. People put their company blog on Posterous, they add their business to GoWalla, they gave AdGrok a few hours of their time, etcetera, etcetera. […]
Honor Customer Commitments To Avoid Poisoning the Well Read More »
The first observation of a new insight is often published in a lab notebook or personal journal or as notes from a meeting that captured an anecdote. Self-publishing often marks the first generation of new knowledge because “new” is often hard to comprehend and not accepted by the status quo or established publication channels. If
Self-Publishing Often Marks The First Generation of New Knowledge Read More »
This originally appeared in my “Entrepreneurial Engineer” column in EETimes as “Linc Jepson’s 74ze leverages Russian and American engineering talent to persevere” on Jan-18-2011. I have added some additional hyperlinks in this version. Linc Jepson studied Electrical Engineering at Tufts and after he graduated with his BSEE he was drawn to Silicon Valley’s technology boom
Founder Story: Linc Jepson, 74ze Read More »
Last week was a thought provoking one for me with Big Data Camp on Mon February 27, a “Great Demo” workshop on February 29, and a tour of the Strata 2012 exhibit hall on March 1. I encountered either examples or stories of visualizations that required hundreds to thousands of CPU hours to create at
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand CPU Hours Read More »
Alberto Savoia defines pretotyping as determining that you are “building the right product before you invest in building your product right.” His book “Pretotype It” (Second Edition available as a Free PDF or on Kindle for $2.99) lists a set of seven techniques for pretotyping on pages 39-40. This post analyzes and elaborates on the techniques
Pretotyping – Techniques for Building the Right Product Read More »
Some comments on Rich Skrenta’s observation: “I think it’s still a long time before we’ll have building codes for software.”
Building Codes For Software Read More »
Startups originate in the mind of an entrepreneur, often as the result of observing something that seems odd, or is the result of juxtaposing two or three seeming unrelated or even incongruous ideas. The first challenge the entrepreneur faces turn his insight into something others can critique and improve upon: to show them sketches of
Sketching The Likeness Of An Imaginary Business Read More »
This originally appeared in my “Entrepreneurial Engineer” column in EETimes as “Octopart helps nearly a half a million people find the part they need every month” on Mar-3-2011. I have added some additional hyperlinks in this version.
Founder Story Sam Wurzel, Octopart Read More »
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Quotes for Entrepreneurs–February 2012 Read More »
On Wed-Feb-22 at Noon PST the Book Club For Business Impact covered lessons learned applying a number of techniques for associating from chapter 2 of the “Innovator’s DNA” by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen.
Associating, Pattern Matching, and Sensemaking Read More »
I have been really encouraged by some of the great comments I have received on some recent blog posts.
A Great Comment Can Brighten Your Whole Day Read More »
Steve Hogan and Sean Murphy provide an overview of the Innovator’s DNA webinar series offered by the Book Club for Business Impact.
Best Business Book of 2011: The Innovator’s DNA Read More »
The primary challenge when you are first targeting a set of prospects for your product is to resist the urge of seeing the product as broadly applicable, instead focus narrowly where you bring strong benefit to get traction.
Defining Your Benefit and Targeting a Set of Prospects Read More »
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until the end of the month when these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected on the blog. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
Quotes for Entrepreneurs–January 2012 Read More »
We have Fortune 500 clients who are launching new products and who want to take advantage of customer development methodologies (or have come to the conclusion that they need a framework to revisit assumptions that are not working). There are broadly two types of situations where a large company is launching a new product: It’s
Customer Development Is Not Just For Startups Read More »
MyPermissions: Checks for third party application access to your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. SocialMention: Allows you to do keyword and phrase search across more than one hundred social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc… HackerFollow: follow comments and posts by your favorite Hacker News contributors
Three Useful Tools: MyPermissions, SocialMention, HackerFollow Read More »
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until the end of the month when these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected on the blog. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs–December 2011 Read More »
If we are to reach better days we need as much entrepreneurial imagination as possible applied to the hard challenges facing us.
Entrepreneurial Imagination Read More »
“It’s a whole year between Christmases, but it’s a short Christmas between years.” Ashleigh Brilliant
Merry Christmas 2011 Read More »
We have four Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfasts® scheduled in the last two weeks of December. All of these Bootstrapper Breakfasts will feature a facilitated roundtable conversation among bootstrapping entrepreneurs, a chance to network before and after the formal meeting, and the opportunity to compare notes with other bootstrapping entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast. At a
December Bootstrapper Breakfasts Recap 2011 To Prepare for 2012 Read More »
