Design Your MVP In Two Weeks
Design your MVP in two weeks to avoid adding unnecessary features and complexity to your offering. A two-week time box forces you to focus on essentials. […]
Concierge MVP or Service-First Forces You To Be Your Own Test Pilot
A concierge MVP or service -first approach delivers the benefits that your product offers as a service or consulting first, charging for the result not your time. […]
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. […]
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. […]
Suhail Doshi: Avoid These Seven Temptations as a First Time Founder
Suhail Doshi, founder of Mixpanel, shared a candid assessment of mistakes he made in the first 18 months of the six startups he has founded in “The first 18 months of starting a company: it’s life or death.” Here are 7 key pieces of advice that highlight mistakes first founders [...]
Q: How to Explore an MVP For Knowledge Worker Productivity
Applications that improve knowledge worker productivity have to satisfy “prepared users” not “casual users” and are especially challenge to do customer discovery and development for. With his permission, I have included William Pietri (LinkedIn williampietri) answer to a real question from an early stage entrepreneur because I found it incredibly [...]
Don’t Explore Thoughtland In Interviews
Whether you are interviewing potential employees or potential customers, don’t explore Thoughtland with a focus on predictions and beliefs. Instead, explore actual behavior and prior experience. […]
In the Beginning was the Doodle: Protecting Startup Secrets
Pete Tormey’s ebook “Startup Guide to Intellectual Property: Early Stage Protection of IP” is a great resource for founders on startup intellectual property. This blog post includes excerpts from the “Protecting IP Early” chapter that focus on protecting startup secrets early in its existence. […]
In the Beginning Was the Doodle: Defining Startup Intellectual Property
Pete Tormey’s ebook “Startup Guide to Intellectual Property: Early Stage Protection of IP” is a great resource for founders on startup intellectual property. This blog post includes excerpts from the “Protecting IP Early” Chapter of Pete’s book. They cover some of the basic concepts of intellectual property and how to [...]
A Common MVP Evolution: Service to System Integration to Product
It’s not uncommon for a startup’s offering to evolve from service to system integration to product. Here is an explanation for the reasons and benefits. […]
No Safety in Numbers
This post applies the moral of James Thurber’s “The Fairly Intelligent Fly”–that there is “no safety in numbers, or in anything else”–to entrepreneurship. […]
Q: Forming a Scientific Advisory Board
Q: I am in the process of forming a scientific advisory board for my startup in the healthcare / facility management space and I would welcome any insights or suggestions. […]
Q: When to Incorporate and Options for IP protection
Some quick answers to common questions about how to protect your intellectual property (IP) and when to incorporate. […]
Questions to Answer Before You Start Negotiating
Here are some questions to ask yourself before you start negotiating a complex business relationship: for example a software license, SaaS subscription, or a reseller or OEM relationship. Entire books are written on negotiation, I am trying to highlight some questions that can get overlooked. […]
Elena Krasnoperova on “Learning Hacks for Bootstrappers” Fri-Dec-2
Elena Krasnoperova has been a regular attendee at the Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfasts® for more than three years and I was delighted when she accepted my invitation to be a featured attendee and talk about her entrepreneurial journey. She plans to share some heuristics for learning faster than your competition and [...]
Cofounder Legal Challenges and Solutions at Hacker Dojo Tue-Nov-29
Sean Murphy will moderate a panel of three experienced startup attorneys on November 29 for a Silicon Valley Cofounder Academy event at Hacker Dojo on “Cofounder Legal Challenges and Solutions.” […]
Nine Rules from Monetizing Innovation
I am at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Palo Alto today and “Monetizing Innovation” by Madhavan Ramanujam and George Tacke. The book is a fast read that incorporates a some pricing theory into new product introduction, here are nine rules they offer for a successful innovation. […]
How Do I Move From Being Capable to Offering Expert Consulting?
Offering expert consulting means developing a specialization and focus that enable you to execute with distinction. The phrases “finding the niche for your product” and “product market fit” are essentially equivalent. A key definition of a market is that members reference each other’s buy decisions and therefore building up a [...]
Q: What Lessons Should I Draw From A Painful Cofounder Experience?
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. […]
Q: Making Effective Use Of Your Advisory Board
To make effective use of your advisory board you have to provide them written material in advance that offers context on your situation and the questions you want to explore with them. […]