Six Activities for Learning New Skills and Tools
Real life often presents entrepreneurs with a new problem or opportunity, so they find themselves learning new skills and tools on the fly.
5 Scaling Up Stage
Land and EXPAND – Recession-proof your Sales and Expand your Bottom Line
Land and EXPAND the fasting path to expand your bottom line. A key area where many companies don’t focus as much as they should – is expansion within their existing customers
Be Open Kimono With Partners
Work with trusted partners open kimono: disclose relevant financials, plans, and internal processes to increase synergy. Play a long game.
Interview with Patricia Watkins on Managing Sales In a Downturn
This is a ten minute interview (audio and edited transcript) I did with with Patricia Watkins on July 24-2020. Patrica is an experienced salesperson and sales executive who’s been helping companies drive sales for more than two decades. We discuss some of the challenges you need to manage during a major economic disruption. We look …
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How to Leverage Current Business Assets For Growth
We describe a process to evaluate and leverage current business assets for growth. We also address how to rework or re-configure existing assets to meet new customer requirements and those of potential prospects.
Paul Tyma on “The Old Man’s Business Model”
Paul Tyma defines the Old Man’s Business Model as taking the sure way, even though it may be longer than shortcuts that may not work. Tyma calls a “trade-off of investment up-front versus brute-force hope.” The “old man” makes an investment up front instead of hoping a quick and dirty approach may work.
Do You Ever Get the Feeling That Everything You Know is Wrong?
My longer answer to “Do you ever get the feeling that everything you know is wrong?” The short answer is “yes, every few years.”
7 Sets of Insights from “Organize for Complexity” by Niels Pflaeging
Here are seven sets of insights from “Organize for Complexity” by Niels Pflaeging that I found useful for entrepreneurs who scaling their startup and intrapreneurs who are driving change in large organizations.
SKMurphy Support Letter for Kinetic River SBIR
SKMurphy Support Letter for Kinetic River SBIR Wed-Sep-5-2018 I am writing to support the Kinetic River Phase II SBIR on a novel flow cytometry instrument. Since 2003 I have worked at SKMurphy, Inc. as a business development consultant for dozens of early stage technology startups. I have been an advisor to …
Hotels near October 2018 Great Demo! Workshop
The October 2018 Great Demo! Workshop at Embassy Suites by Hilton in Milpitas that past attendees have stayed at and enjoyed. A list of other nearby hotels.
Mapping Capability Development to New Product Design and Delivery
This is a first pass at development dependency “pinwheel” model for intrapreneurs fostering new capability development and executives adjusting a product roadmap for development risk.
The Shape of Firms to Come: Key Values and Architectural Philosophy
This blog post is an overview of a series of blog posts on “The Shape of Firms to Come.” It’s an attempt to outline what I believe are key values that businesses will embrace to endure over the next 25 years.
Q: We Have Grown From One Project To Many Projects, How To Manage?
Three keys to making the transition from a one project startup to scaling up with many projects: keep a list of all projects, finished, active, unstarted and contemplated; maintain a status page that is the single source of truth for where the project it; conduct, document, and act on post-project assessment findings.
John Cutler on Product Management Lessons Learned
Key product management lessons learned extracted from two blog posts by John P. Cutler: “50 Things I’ve Learned About Product Management” and “Feedback Loops and Done.“
Combine Clear Goals with Delegation Based on Expertise for High Impact
I re-read “Up the Organization” by Robert Townsend and was struck by how many of his insights were still applicable. The first chapter offers a recipe for breakthrough impact: combine clear goals with delegation based on expertise.
Constructive Pessimism
Constructive Pessimism: to anticipate problems you have to be willing to acknowledge their possibility and look for them. Many entrepreneurs who are naturally optimistic make a serious mistake in discouraging pessimistic thinking instead of putting it to good use. The clever utilization of constructive pessimism is one of the keys to success.
Choosing the Right Targets and Metrics
The targets that founders set for a startup, and the metrics they choose to measure their progress toward these targets, are key decisions in the definition of the business. The wrong targets–in particular selecting only targets that are easily achievable–will not only postpone difficult choices that will bring clarity but may doom a team from …
Tequity Helps Technology Startups Find Their Best Strategic Buyer
Tequity advises software and technology companies on how to get the best valuation from strategic buyers with a good cultural fit in an acquisition.
Be Clear on Product Roadmap to Customers
Be clear with customers about what is on your product roadmap. We recently did some win/loss interviews for a client to collect stories on why a customer purchased–and why a prospect failed to purchase. When we asked one customer about the quality of their support we got an answer that was initially a little surprising: “We …
Team Building: Rapid Ramp
Recently, we worked with a startup on team building as they wrangled with the rapid growth of their business. They needed bring on new team members and wanted them to be productive and effective as quickly as possible. Working with the leadership team we reviewed Bruce Tuckman’s four stages of team development.