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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5 Scaling Up Stage
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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Three Tips from Sid Faulkner For Preparing To Sell Your Startup
Sid Faulkner, CFO of Ciranova gave a talk today on “Navigating the Treacherous Path of Mergers and Acquisitions” at an event at Abbot Stringham and Lynch. Mr. Faulkner was Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Oak Technology, Inc. where he led the 1995 initial and secondary public stock offerings, established an active program of
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Four Excerpts from the Valve Employee Handbook That Belong In Yours
A link to the Valve Employee Handbook made it to front page of Hacker News recently and I can see why, it makes for very interesting reading.
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Startup Stages Overview Video
Here is our Startup Stages Overview video, it explains our startup stages model and the risk reducing milestones that separate each stage.
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Zoom In For Traction, Zoom Out For Impact
Your startup is a work in progress. When most entrepreneurs evaluate where they are it’s difficult not to include the promising future they foresee naturally ensuing from current efforts (or on bad days the certain doom no matter what they do). If you are not getting traction, if you don’t have the ability to reliably
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Learning From Netflix: Lenny Greenberg’s Response
Lenny Greenberg, Founder and CTO of Assistyx, e-mailed me a long and thoughtful response to my “Learning from Netflix” post.
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Successful Entrepreneurship Is Ongoing Self-Improvement
Three variations on the idea that “successful entrepreneurship is an ongoing self-improvement” project, program, or process.
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Refine and Curate Your Thoughts as FAQs, Articles, and Talks
Refine and curate your thoughts by reworking the first draft of your answers in an email or in response to a question from a customer or an audience member at a talk.
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It’s Not Bootstrapped vs. VC
It’s Not Bootstrapped vs. VC From Hillel Cooperman‘s “Bootstrapped vs. VC Funded–Who is Likely to Make the Most Money?” I bet that founders of bootstraps end up earning more money over the long haul out of their businesses than founders of venture-backed firms. The rare IPO may spike the numbers in the other direction, but
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Tom Van Vleck’s “3 Questions” Complement Root Cause Analysis
Tom Van Vleck has a great collection of software engineering stories on his site. One particularly good article is “Three Questions For Each Bug That You Find” which offers the following key observation: The key idea behind these questions is that every bug is a symptom of an underlying process. You have to treat the
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Larry Lang on Managing Incentives
[Note this post was written in 2011]. The recent troubles at Cisco have prompted a lot of commentary on the Cisco alumni e-mail list. One of the more thoughtful analyses was posted by Larry Lang (@llang629), who spent more than a decade at Cisco in a variety of positions. His last was as VP and
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Managing Email Conversations With Customers
A guest post by Edith Harbaugh that offers a number of practical tips and suggestions for managing email conversations with customers.
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New Capabilities We Plan To Develop in 2011
New Capabilities We Plan To Develop in 2011 To ensure that conversations and requests for help were productive, Anthony Scampavia kept a question at the top of his whiteboard in his various offices at Cisco for more than a dozen years: What is the problem you are trying to solve? Here are three problems we
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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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Tips For Modeling & Managing Cash Flow
A summary of tips for modeling and managing cash flow at a recent bootstrappers breakfast briefing by Rick Kadet.
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Distant Early Warning Signs of Market Disruption
Disruption is caused by the new business models an innovation enables. A disruptive innovation can be hard to spot because competitors can offer a different value proposition, not necessarily a better one.
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The Business is Everyone’s Business (Part 2)
To grow the business founders must assess the task relevant maturity of each employee’s experience with a particular task to manage them effectively.
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The Business is Everyone’s Business
Startups face time pressure and resource scarcity, they need to cultivate effective collaboration among everyone on the team to compensate. They need to act as if the business is everyone’s business. Jack Stack’s “The Great Game of Business” offers some useful models for fostering a shared understanding of the current challenges to enable effective joint
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Matt Perez on How Nearsoft Leverages Yammer
An interview with Matt Perez on how Nearsoft leverages Yammer and other collaboration tools to enable them to keep distributed teams providing development services and ongoing support in sync.
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