Email Overload
Email overload has become an overused term. But I find myself with an inbox hovering near 6,000 messages (5932 at the moment) and so I have to make some serious changes.
Nesheim vs. Cowan on Bootstrap Economics
John Nesheim, author of High Tech Startup, has been blogging for a little over a year. His most recent post, just before Thanksgiving, gives his perspective on bootstrapping BOTTOM LINE: Bootstraps are difficult to do. A few rare ones become giants (Dell). Most struggle and remain small, or go out of business. Buyers of such …
Quotes for Thanksgiving
Here are a set of quotes for Thanksgiving to reflect on over the holidays.
Nusym De-cloaks 3
It’s been a month since my two posts on Nusym Technology. They upgraded their text treatment ( nu · sym ) to a nice logo. They still promise to deliver the “most significant breakthrough in functional verification in a decade. Nusym Technology is an EDA software company that provides an order of magnitude improvement in verification productivity while …
Custom Centric Marketing Means Shifting to “Resolution Messages”
Mary Sullivan addressed “Customer Centric Marketing” last Monday, providing a number of examples of marketing messages based on the customer’s operating reality. Mary highlighted the need for marketing campaigns to recognize that the customer is in charge of the buying process today. The example messages cut through the noise (Mary provided an estimate that every …
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Stirr Mixer 1.8
I dropped by tonight’s Stirr Mixer at Illusions on 260 California Ave in Palo Alto. It’s a better venue for parking and it’s not as loud as the Blue Chalk—-if it’s too loud you are too old? I am certainly at risk for this in the Stirr crowd. The West Coast team from Charles Rivers …
Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
Bruce Mau wrote 43 statements in 1998 to articulate his beliefs, motivations, and strategies in what he called “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.” His focus is on “growth” in the sense of increasing both craftsmanship and artisanship. I have selected eight that I think are are the most applicable to folks in software startups. I kept the …
Mary Sullivan on Customer-Centric Marketing at SDForum Marketing SIG Tonight
Mary Sullivan has prepared a great presentation on “It’s All About Them: Customer-Focused Messaging” for the tonight’s SDForum Marketing SIG at DLA Piper Silicon Valley. Mary offers a messaging framework for moving beyond product-centric features and product-centric benefits to demonstrating your understanding of a prospect’s problems, needs, and wants. If you want to see more samples of her thinking for …
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3 things I learned at Next Step’s “How to Sell the Real Value of Your Solution”
Here are 3 things I learned from Jennifer Vessels in Next Step’s workshop “How to Sell the Real Value of Your Solution” on Thursday, November 7. I need to align my sales efforts with my prospect’s success factors. This means that I need to figure how they are getting measured and how to influence and serve …
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The “Art of Rainmaking” at Art of the Start
On Nov. 8, I attended the Guy Kawasaki Art of the Start Seminar. This was the second time I have listened to Guy’s presentation. Guy is an amazing speaker and has given this pitch a hundred times. Even after 100’s of presentations, Guy continues to illustrate passion and enthusiasm in his Art of the Start …
3 things I learned at Art of the Start
Art of the Start is one of the best workshops out there for startups. Here are 3 things I learned from it. Mary Hodder, founder and CEO of Dabble, reminded the audience of the saying “If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money!” One of the most important Guy …
KMWorld 2006 Wrap-up
I did my profile in http://kmi06.pbwiki.com/SeanMurphy in the form of a FAQ Q:Why do you come to KMWorld? This is my third year, so it’s something of a triumph of hope over experience, but I believe that there are a number of techniques and technologies in the “knowledge management” space that are going to have …
Blogging From KMWorld 2006
There is a wiki for the conference at http://kmi06.pbwiki.com/ where I will also be doing some gardening (which I think sounds better than gnoming). We are also helping out New Idea Engineering with their booth; if you get a chance drop by booth 200 and say hello to Dr. Search, who first appeared in Issue …
JotSpot Dissolves Into Google Business Model
As a Jotspot customer I am not at all excited by the portents around Jot’s announcement that they had been acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum and that, for the moment, no new accounts could be created. From Jot’s Home Page New users: We’ve closed off new account registrations while we focus on migrating …
Carole Edman, HR Manager To Go
I have had the pleasure of meeting Carole Edman at a number of networking events and been impressed with professionalism and expertise. She started consulting in 1986 as Carole Edman & Associates, and has been offering the following services to small and mid-size companies: High quality interim, on-call, or part-time Human Resources Management consulting services, …
Administrivia in Startups
I had lunch with Sylvia Nessan, a veteran of Synopsys, CoWare, and several high tech startups and she made an observation that I thought was worth writing down: the founding team, and CEO in particular, don’t pay enough attention to how much time they waste on administrivia. Hiring an admin or other outside service providers …
Nancy Blachman’s Google Guide
I’m late to the party on GoogleGuide, based on who else has written about it, this blog entry was triggered by Nancy Blachman’s upcoming talk, “What Google Can Do For Your Business,” Tuesday, November 21, 2006 7:00 PM, at the IEEE-CNSV meeting at KeyPoint Credit Union, 2805 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, CA. This looks to be a good …
Silicon Valley Meeting Locations
Here’s a couple of our favorite places to meet clients in silicon valley: Where in Silicon Valley can I meet with clients? Here are a couple of our favorites: Starbucks Caffe Adria 6174 Bollinger Road Cupertino CA 408-257-344 Printer’s Ink California Street Palo Alto Orchard Valley Coffee 349 E. Campbell Ave downtown Campbell CA 408-374-2115 …
Nusym De-cloaks 2
Some follow-ups to yesterday’s post on Nusym Why de-cloak? Don’t most stealth startups emerge? Yes, at least according to Google and EET. But a good Star Trek allusion (or is it Harry Potter?) always enriches a blog post and the Duke “invisibility cloak” demonstration announcement had recently gone out over the mojo wire, so it was fresh in my …
Nusym De-cloaks
Nusym has been on my radar screen ever since Venk Shukla came to a SIPA dinner on April 26, 2006 and joined their advisory board. Venk has been associated with a number of successful EDA companies (e.g. Cadence, Ambit, Magma Design, and Emulation and Verification Engineering (EVE)), a charter member of TiE, and definitely someone …