Start With a List of Customers and Problems That Build on Your Experience and Relationships
Identify what is unlikely to change: e.g. problem area, type of customer. Build on experience. Join communities that focus on these.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs–July 2014
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Michael Ellsberg: Four Reasons Why Passive Income Is a Destructive Fantasy
It’s hard work not passive income that allows you to find your life purpose. I make a distinction between wanting to move beyond running a services business where you bill by the hour to either selling results or selling a product and entrepreneurs attracted to the passive income fantasies of the “Four Hour Work Week.”
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Ten Mistakes Early Stage Bootstrappers Often Make
In the last eight years I have moderated several hundred Bootstrappers Breakfasts. After doing a hundred or so and working with many clients who were bootstrapping I came up with a checklist for common mistakes bootstrappers and bootstrapping teams make in their first year or so.
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Cultivating Mindfulness
Cultivating mindfulness requires you to maintain situational awareness and realize when your reflexes may trigger a reaction that is not as thoughtful as the situation requires.
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Things I Have Learned From My Children
Things I have learned from my children: “fall down seven times, stand up eight”, athletic ability flows from practice, and patience.
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Startup Stages: Survive, Explore, Focus, Refine, Grow
SKMurphy’s Startup Stages: Idea, Open for Business, Early Customers, Finding Your Niche, and Scaling Up also map to Survive, Explore, Focus, Refine, and Grow.
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Matt Wensing On Making the Transition to Growth
Matt Wensing On Making the Transition to Growth Stormpulse has gone from an idea bootstrapped on founder savings and credit cards, to a project funded by friends and family rounds, to a small business strengthened by angel money, to a company that’s raised “meaningful” capital (our last round was just over $2 million). Here’s what
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Brad Pierce: Preserve Context in Writing to Manage Interruptions
Manage interruptions by writing down enough context to continue later: organized notes must detail status and next steps. Brad Pierce: Preserve Context in Writing to Manage Interruptions On longer time scales, when you must drop something for a while, it’s important, before doing so, to leave behind enough context for yourself to swap it back
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Tools for Buzzword Compliant Business Models
A collection of humorous tools that generate buzzword compliant business models.
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We Help Teams of Experts Find Leads and Close Deals
If you have demonstrated domain knowledge and expertise, a plan for having a significant impact on a customer problem, and are in the process of exploring the early market for your offering or trying to build on a handful of early customers, we can help find leads and close deals. The majority of our clients
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Tristan Kromer: You Can Tell a Good Advisor by Their Questions
Three interesting answers from Tristan Kromer’s interview with the folks at Startup Commons Startup Commons: What’s the best way to get started? Tristan Kromer: Find someone you really want to help. Someone in pain. That’s your vision. Helping someone and solving a real problem. Find team members with complementary skill sets who are able to challenge
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Neal Stephenson on Christianity, Grace, Sincerity, and Seeing Things as They Are
I have started to reserve Sundays to write on spirituality, charity, and a higher moral purpose to our life as entrepreneurs. I was struck by the quote that Stephenson puts in Juanita’s mouth in Snow Crash and have concluded that he is performing a similar ministry in his science fiction writing. There is a sense
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Q: We Already Have a Prototype, Can We Still Do Customer Development?
Product-market fit is not a ratchet: competitive response, new entrants, changes in technology and customer preference require ongoing customer development. You will need to continue to do customer development–and customer discovery for that matter–even after you have a first prototype, an MVP, early customers, and an established niche. Markets and competitors don’t stand still, no
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John Gardner: Leaders Detect and Act on the Weak Signals of the Future
John Gardner outlines how leaders detect and act on weak signals of the future by looking beyond the horizon and planning for renewal.
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Tony Schwartz: Notice the Good, Cultivate Good Habits, Slow Down, and Do the Right Thing
Tony Schwartz wrote a great post on “Turning 60: The Twelve Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned So Far.” Here are my top four from his list (original numbering preserved).
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Founder Story: Steve DiBartolomeo of Artwork Conversion Software
Steve DiBartolomeo is co-founder of Artwork Conversion Software, Inc., an EDA software firm headquartered in Santa Cruz CA with a development office in Manhattan Beach, CA. Founded in 1989, the company develops CAD translation programs, CAD viewers, plotting software and IC packaging software. Artwork has over 5000 customers worldwide including Alcatel, AMD, Applied Materials, Agere,
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Q: Pricing Professional Services
Q: I am starting a service business that will help clients with advertising and search engine marketing but I am not sure how to price my services. Do you have any suggestions for how to look at pricing professional services?
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Discovery Kanban Allows Firms to Balance Delivery and Discovery
I believe that Patrick Steyaert’s Discovery Kanban offers a critical perspective on how large organizations can cultivate lean innovation methods for product delivery beyond isolated spike efforts or innovation colonies.
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Kurt Vonnegut: Replace the Code of Hammurabi with the Sermon on the Mount
Excerpts from Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement speech at Agnes Scott College, May 5, 1999. He suggests we replace the Code of Hammurabi with forgiveness.
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