As entrepreneurs we need to pay attention to the details that matter but to achieve even modest growth or scaling we also need to use delegation. We need to allow other team members to contribute their own strengths, experiences, and insights to the project at hand. […]
SKMurphy December 2015 Newsletter This blog post summarizes our December newsletter, you can subscribe to the monthly SKMurphy newsletter using the form at the right Retrospectives, Post Mortems, and After Action Reviews The end of year is always a good time to look back and assess what you have accomplished and [...]
LinkedIn allows you to post a professional profile and accept professional recommendations, and perform searches of the professional profiles of others you are considering doing business with. But with groups and posts it aspires to host content and be your first stop every morning. The risk is that it can [...]
Randy Cadieux, founder of V-Speed LLC, started to post some interesting articles in the Lean Startup Circle Group on LinkedIn in June of this year, in particular his “Working on the Edge of Failure.” The high reliability organization as a lot to teach startups so I decided to reach out to him [...]
It’s easy to mis-assess who your real competition is. We worry the most about competition that cares deeply. “You’re competing against people in a state of flow, people who are truly committed, people who care deeply about the outcome.” Seth Godin in “Texting While Working” […]
We recently helped a client frame the exploration of an opportunity for acquiring a small software firm. Here are some questions to consider if you are contemplating the sale or acquisition of small software company. […]
I remember first learning the principle that leaders eat last from John K. Russell, an advisor on a summer Presbyterian workcamp in Westpoint Mississippi. He had been an officer in the Army and talked about how the officers had nicer silverware and napkins but it was the same food and [...]
Some excerpts with commentary from "On Leadership" by John W. Gardner. Gardner outlines how leaders detect and act on weak signals of the future by looking beyond the horizon and planing for renewal. There is such a thing as the "visible future." The seedlings of [future] life are sprouting all around us [...]
I believe that Patrick Steyaert's Discovery Kanban offers a critical perspective on how large organizations can foster the proliferation of lean innovation methods beyond isolated spike efforts or innovation colonies. I think Patrick Steyaert has come up with an approach that builds on what we have learned from customer development and [...]
Dan Scheinman (@dscheinm) graduated from Duke Law School in 1988 and went to work as an associate at DLA Piper before joining the Cisco legal department. Once inside he worked his way up to General Counsel, then ran corporate development which included managing minority investments and acquisitions, and finally was general [...]
One of the hallmarks for success in a business-to-business market is the ability to form personal relationships as well as professional business relationships. Both require building trust. I am always dismayed when I read advice that advocates bait and switch or other forms of con games that erode trust and [...]
Let's face it, finding customers can be quite a challenge. In this interactive workshop, we will cover a variety of proven marketing techniques for growing your business: attendees will select one or two that fit their style and develop a plan to implement them in their business in the next [...]
Series profile Thinking about this using an OODA loop model - -- Observe -> Orient -> Decide -> Act Orient part is sensemaking -- its own kind of fast learning Often takes a long time in a complex situation (e.g., all situations where learning is involved); subject to error because [...]
Semifore , Inc. was founded in 2006 by Richard Weber based on his system design experience at several startups and some larger systems firms. All of them struggled with the need for tools and methods to keep the hardware architecture in sync with software architecture and to ensure that the [...]
Q: I am considering product market fit metrics for an add-on new product launching in a well established company that makes equipment to test electrical cables (for the last 29 years). We are introducing a new product that is an add-on to existing products (it is only useful if used with [...]
Q: I was CTO and co-founder of a small technology startup that was recently acquired by a much larger firm. We have a two year earn out that I would like to collect. I see myself as a serial entrepreneur (this is my first successful acquisition but I have founded [...]
It can take a while to determine what to ask in an opening conversation and which leads constitute opportunities. You have to follow up. […]
Just a heads up that the early bird rates for our next "Engineering Your Sales Process®" Workshop close Sun-Jan-28. This is the same workshop that Scott Sambucci and Sean Murphy offered at the Lean Startup Conference in December 2012 but we are limiting the attendance to 12 entrepreneurs to allow [...]
Q: We’ve sculpted our product in a niche that was a subset of the larger target audience. But it is not a niche product–and our investors agree–it’s aimed at the the middle of the bell curve. We feel impatient with our progress and are considering a significant investment in a traditional [...]
"In restless dreams I walked alone, Narrow streets of cobblestone." Simon and Garfunkel, "The Sounds of Silence" Nothing new ever works, but doing the same thing over and over again without variation or detecting and correcting mistakes is insanity (or at least bureaucracy). So many startup overnight success stories that [...]