Crafting Deals with Customers and Partners
Bootstrappers prosper by closing deals with customers and partners. Here are twelve tips if you are new to crafting deals.
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Startup Stages
Consider What’s Changed And What You Bring To An Opportunity
When you are trying to choose from a range of opportunities, a key step is to consider what’s changed that makes this a compelling opportunity for you.
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Slides and Audio From “Leading A Team of Experts” at PMI-SV Sep-17-12
Slides and Audio From “Forming Leading A Team of Experts” at Project Management Institute of Silicon Valley on Sep-17-2012. Audio includes a lively discussion.
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Three Great Books on Generating Innovative Business Ideas
Three Great Books on Generating Innovative Business Ideas These three books contain a wealth of useful suggestions for generating innovative business ideas from observing, questioning, and networking with customers and others: Innovator’s DNA “The Innovator’s DNA” by Christensen, Dyer, and Gregerson outlines a set of five skills that innovator’s use to develop entrepreneurial ideas: Associating:
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Entrepreneurial Passion and the Science of Startups
Successful entrepreneurs have a passion to see their inventions adopted as innovations not admired as works of art. This is the science of startups.
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George Gilder: Entrepreneurship is the Launching of Surprises
George Gilder address the mental and spiritual elements of entrepreneurship in “Unleash the Mind” defining entrepreneurship as the launching of surprises.
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Serious and Competent People
An exploration of Neal Stephenson’s suggestion that “whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.”
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Yanis Varoufakis: “Valve is an Enlightened Oligarchy”
An analysis of Yanis Varoufakis “Why Valve? What do we need corporations for and how does Valve’s management structure fit into today’s corporate world?”
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Neal Stephenson on Distinguishing Different Motives for Hypocrisy
You can fail to live up to your espoused beliefs due to hypocrisy or because the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. The difference is an important distinction and one with implications for the example you set in establishing the culture in a startup. Is there one set of rules that everyone strives
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Neal Stephenson on the Importance of Culture
Two excerpts from Neal Stephenson‘s “The Diamond Age” on the importance of culture of a startup or an economic region. These are from pages 24 and 25 and outlines two real life events as a part of the back story of one of the characters in the novel, hyperlinks have been added to provide context.
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Draper University of Heroes Takes Holistic Approach to Teaching Entrepreneurship
Tim Draper, founder of VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is taking a holistic approach to entrepreneurial education with Draper University in San Mateo.
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You Tried: It’s OK To Make a Change
Nothing new ever works, but repeatedly trying the same thing without variation is insanity (or bureaucracy). Fix your mistakes; make a change in approach.
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Innovative, Robust, Seamless, Disruptive, and Patented
Avoid “vendor speak” where you use words like innovative, seamless, robust, disruptive, or patented. These are not words a customer would use to describe your product.
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Case Study: eMOBUS Experience With SKMurphy
This is a case study of SKMurphy’s advisory support for eMOBUS. It includes a detailed write-up by Moe Arnaiz, CEO of eMOBUS.
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The Unfortunate Return of the Mainframe IT Mindset
PC’s and workstations allowed each knowledge worker to upgrade at their own pace. SaaS is witnessing a return to the Mainframe IT Mindset: sysadmins only support one system and upgrade at their convenience.
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Debugging Your Startup Requires Peace of Mind
Debugging your startup requires peace of mind because debugging any problem, including debugging yourself, requires peace of mind. It’s what enables you to stay in flow.
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The Early Bird Already Has The Worm
The last question in”The First Seven Questions Any Product Plan Should Answer” is What Are You Replacing? Every Product Has Competition But after careful experimentation we learned that most entrepreneurs would instinctively cast themselves in the role of the early bird who gets the worm and say “Nothing. We are brand new!” So we re-phrased
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The Fact That Your App Was a Weekend Project Is Not a Feature
The fact that your new application was a weekend project is not a feature! I see announcements like We just coded this up last weekend take a look… I wrote this on a Saturday afternoon check it out… We built the tool (over the last few weekends)… I don’t know if it’s Startup Weekend’s original
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Q: Is Building The Wrong Product A Waste Of Time?
Building the wrong product is not a waste of time you learn about the market and technical feasibility. Right and wrong are both gray, not black or white. Customer development and technical development typically require a sequence of prototypes that are “less wrong” over time under they become good enough.
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Entrepreneurs Need a Community of Practice Not a Movement
Entrepreneurs need a community of practice to improve their skills, not a movement they can join as a fad. I don’t consider myself a disciple or part of a movement. I consider myself a practitioner. I am a huge fan of Saras Sarasvathy, Clayton Christensen, Peter Drucker, Gary Klein, and Gerald Weinberg.
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