Seth Godin’s “Bootstrapper’s Manifesto”
Seth Godin’s “Bootstrapper’s Manifesto” is worth and posting it where you can see it every day as a reminder to learn and to grow and enjoy.
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Perfectionism vs. Mastery
Perfectionism vs. Mastery Mastery’s great accomplishments require time and a willingness to release a sequence of prototypes. Perfectionism means you don’t ship until it’s perfect. Which means you never ship or what you ship has not learned from problems or needs that only visible post deployment. Randall Munroe’s “The General Problem” embeds this observation: “I
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Customer Interviews: Allow Yourself to Be Surprised
A few thoughts on customer interviews and why their capacity to surprise us makes them preferable to surveys and landing pages for early market exploration.
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Stay Tuned! We Are Being Purposefully Vague Right Now
I came across an interesting tool this week in the collaboration area. The web page invited me to apply for membership, prompting me to enter my e-mail, twitter handle, blog, and a brief bio. But they were “purposefully vague’ about who they were. It wasn’t exactly stealth mode, more like maintaining deniability if it failed
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Geva Solomonovich of Fraud Sciences at Fri-Nov-4 BB
Geva Solomonovich, an early employee at Fraud Sciences and several other startups joins us tomorrow to share lessons learned getting early customers and growing the business.
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Book Club: Brian Arthur’s “The Second Economy”
The Second Economy by W. Brian Arthur is the context for a though- provoking discussion of the emerging digital infrastructure for our world.
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The Startup Mythology of Silicon Valley
Align your startup with a higher purpose to sustain motivation. Avoid “entrepreneurial lifestyle” and startup mythology: build a going concern.
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Book Club: Seth Godin’s Bootstrappers Manifesto
Recorded Discussion on Bootstrappers ManifestoSteve Hogan moderates a discussion with Neal Tovsen of TelemetryWeb.com and Sarah Gray of MercuryApp.com on Seth Godin’s Bootstrapper Manifesto. This recording starts after the panel introductions please see View session www.skmurphy.com/blog/2011/11/14/panelists-announced-for-bootstrappers-manifesto-book-club-webinar/ for details on panelists. The E-book version of The Bootstrappers Bible is available at no charge from The E-book
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–October 2011
You can follow @skmurphy to get them hot off the mojo wire or wait until the end of the month when these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected on the blog. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
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A Professional Always Specializes
A Professional Always Specializes, great advice for entrepreneurs from the Bill Miner character in “the Grey Fox.”
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Planning for 2012: We Are Interested In Your Insights and Suggestions
We are starting our planning process for 2012 even as we scramble to finish everything still on the cooker for 2011. We have meetings scheduled with our partners to help us assess what we have learned from 2011 and arrive at a working consensus for 2011-13. I welcome any suggestions for: How to improve this
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Founder Story: Eric Deal, Cyclic Design
This originally appeared in EETimes on-line as “Eric Deal bounces back from a startup shutdown to establish Cyclic Design” on Dec-20-2010.
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Dave Stubenvoll Guest for “Origin & Evolution of New Business” Oct-26-2011
Dave Stubenvoll joins the panel for our Book Club for Business Impact to discuss “Origin & Evolution of New Business” by Amar Bhide
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Founder Story: Ghislain Kaiser, Docea Power
This interview with Ghislain Kaiser originally ran Nov-4-2010 as “Docea Power Successfully Bootstraps As a New EDA Player
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Founder Story: Paul van Besouw, Oasys Design Systems
An interview with Paul van Besouw, the founder and CEO of Oasys Design System, explores lessons learned from his entrepreneurial efforts at Ambit and Oasys.
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Business Model Representations
Business Model Representations In a blog post last October entitled “Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack” Steve Blank suggested Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur defined a business model as how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. More importantly they showed how any company’s business model could be defined in 9
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What Happens When The “Come As You Are Party” is Over
A bootstrapped startup is a “come as you are” party. The Founders rely on passion and their savings to build product and find customers.
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Expiration Dates: Deadlines and Commitments
Bootstrappers need to make commitments and meet deadlines to achieve their cash flow objectives. Deadlines and commitments are inextricably linked. Be explicit up front about how long offer is good or how long a customer needs to wait for delivery. Get them to be explicit on payment terms.
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Tips for B2B Customer Development Interviews
This post on customer development interviews is one of my most popular. If you would like help preparing for customer development interviews or reviewing results from recent interviews please sign up for a no cost no obligation office hours session and I will be happy to help you rehearse or de-brief. Here are my lessons learned from taking
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Purpose, Patience, Politeness, and Prudent Risk Taking
A bootstrapper needs four attributes to succeed: purpose, patience, politeness, and prudent risk taking. These are markers for strength not weakness.
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