Good Decision, Bad Outcome
“Good decision, bad outcome” is a a reminder to judge the quality of a decision by your process and state of information at the time you decided.
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Startup Stages
What To Do When An Early Prospect is Excited
Here is another excerpt from my September interview with Gabriel Weinberg. This one is focused on what to do when you encounter a B2B prospect who is excited about your product and this is only the first or second time this has happened with someone who wasn’t a friend or prior associate. The short answer
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Scope and Scale of Plans and Activities
Inspired by Eames’ “Powers of Ten” I explore the scope and scale of plans and activities based on duration. I take a one hour duration as the starting point and look at a factor or 10,000 in each direction: from 1/300 of a second to 10,000 hours.
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Entrepreneurs Still Welcome: 700 Blog Posts In Four Years
A recap of the inaugural blog post for SKMurphy blog 4 years ago and a roundup of lessons learned writing 700 posts since.
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Ash Maurya on “Running Lean”
Ash Maurya (@AshMaurya) has released the first two chapters of his new book “Running Lean” and here are my first impressions.
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Cold Calling Won’t Find Your First Business Customer
I meet teams trying to cold call for their first business customer and I just haven’t seen it work; the trust issues cripple them. Here is a relevant excerpt from Gabriel Weinberg’s interview with me for his traction book.
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The Limits of Legal Self-Help
If you have limited experience with business contracts or software licensing issues, legal self-help approaches can be very dangerous.
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Pete Tormey on the Benefits of Attending a Bootstrappers Breakfast
Pete Tormey on the Benefits of Attending a Bootstrappers Breakfast Pete Tormey moderates the Dublin/Pleasanton Bootstrapper Breakfasts® (along with Richard Moerschell) and fills in from time to time in San Francisco as well. I asked him what he felt some key benefits attendees gained at a breakfast and he sent me a great three minute
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We Cannot Sate Your Hunger For Certainty But We Can Increase Your Odds of Success
A hunger for certainty will not help an entrepreneur make timely decisions or manage the level of ambiguity and uncertainty they need to navigate through.
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3 Equations & 3 Unknowns: Target Customer is Key Initial Value
The first 3 unknowns for a startup are Customers, Features, and Message. Of these the target customer is the key variable to lock down first.
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Gabriel Weinberg Interviews Me For His Traction Book
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), a Hacker Angel, insightful blogger, and frequent contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction and interviewing folks like Patrick McKenzie to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was delighted when he approached me to take part
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Appreciate Why Prospects Say “Your Baby Is Ugly”
When a prospect criticizes your product, or your suggestion for a solution, don’t react as if they said, “Your baby is ugly.” Appreciate their candor, make sure you understand their need, and probe for what’s wrong or needs improvement in your offering.
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Chalk Talk on Technology Adoption
A Chalk Talk on “Managing Risk In Technology Adoption” that covers some of key challenges technology providers have with getting companies to use their products.
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3 Equations & 3 Unknowns: Customers, Features, Message
We posted the interview I did with Floyd Tucker of DreamSimplicity about a month ago but in the last two days I have had two people comment to me directly and one tweet about my “three equations and three unknowns” answer: customers, features, message.
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Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups Part 2
Ed Weissman is a prolific contributor to Hacker News, this post collects some insights he has offered on B2B.
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Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups
Ed Weissman offers three reason why business prefers to pay for software: employee focus, a commitment to service, co-evolution with their needs.
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Four Movies To Renew Your Gumption
Here are four movies to renew your gumption, I watch one when I need to refill my gumption or recover my sisu: The Verdict, Apollo 13, The Dish, and The World’s Fastest Indian.
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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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Cool Business Cards
Here are some cool business cards I have encountered in the course of my networking at conferences and other events.
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Ken Imboden on Lessons From MMC, Candlestick, and NuSym
Ken Imboden offers lessons learned on developing software products from managing at large firms, and successful and unsuccessful startups.
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