1 Idea Stage

What Happens When The “Come As You Are Party” is Over

“Nobody makes a video game about the quartermaster division, but armies win and lose on logistics and supply, and politics and diplomacy, and the work people do on the homefront.” Mike O’Malley in “History-ness and Video Games“ The first stage of a bootstrapped startup is a “come as you are” party. The founders are living …

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When Do I Need a Model? I am Bootstrapping

I have condensed this from a recent series of conversation with bootstrapping entrepreneur. I thought it captured many of the key questions that you need to be consider once you are “open for business.” Bootstrapping  Entrepreneur: I am just getting started on a new project. I have several advisors and one has suggested that I …

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Build On Your Passion With A Basic Model And Numbers

What follows is a chat transcript from an hour long  conversation I had with a  entrepreneur recently. I have cleaned up all of our typos and removed or modified some identifying information. The basic business was for a website to arrange services for travelers. I wanted the entrepreneur to move beyond his passion for the …

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3 Equations & 3 Unkowns: Target Customer is Key Initial Value

I mentioned in “3 Equations 3 Unknowns:  Customers, Features, and Message” that we spend a lot of time on the early customer stage. It requires very different sales style than you’ll see later on. It’s a conversational sales style. It’s much more about understanding the problem. You’re trying to solve three equations, three unknowns: Are …

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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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Finding a Co-Founder: 3 Months Is a Long Time

This post builds on my earlier “Finding a Co-Founder” and “Compromise & Get Started” posts on the challenges with finding a co-founder for your software startup. It assumes you are working at least part time with a potential co-founder exploring if you can collaborate successfully and generate revenue from a new jointly developed product or …

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Finding A Co-Founder: Compromise & Get Started

Building on yesterday’s “Finding A Co-Founder” I want to identify a couple of common challenges to getting started with people you have had prior shared success with  and offer some suggestions for how to compromise and get started working with them. Reconnect with Folks You Have Successfully Collaborated With I suggested the following approach: Make …

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Innovation Needs Starvation, Pressure, and a New Perspective

Successful innovation results when entrepreneurs manage their own shortcomings,  find a  problem they care about, and approach it from different angles with small safe-to-fail experiments. Dave Snowden on Culture and Innovation Dave Snowden has a thought provoking post on Culture and Innovation where he identified three  necessary, but not sufficient conditions for innovation to take …

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