On October 12, we are hosting Peter Cohan’s Great Demo! Workshop. It is open to the public and often participates travel from afar. The all day workshop held at the Moorpark Hotel, which several past attendees have stayed at and enjoyed. Here are some additional hotels that are nearby listed in increasing distance from the […]
Hotels Near Great Demo! Workshop Read More »
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.
Refine and Curate Your Thoughts as FAQs, Articles, and Talks Read More »
Here is a brief testimonial from Charles Minnich of Hyland Software after he attended our Great Demo workshop in September of 2010.
Charles Minnich of Hyland Software on “Great Demo!” Workshop Read More »
I will sometimes encounter an entrepreneur or team who is developing “a general purpose toolkit for X.” This may be at a Bootstrapper Breakfast or other networking event. They have often developed a core of a promising technology and see applications for it everywhere. Here is what I normally suggest: Write up a few examples
The Risk of General Purpose Toolkits as a First Product Read More »
The highly effective teams I have been a member of used a rapid prototyping approach to help bound uncertainties/risks in the project and delayed making decisions when more information would improve the situation, unless any further delay was effectively a decision. I think that a lot of individual productivity comes from problems avoided by a
Highly Effective Software Development Teams Read More »
Live Call-in Discussion on Wednesday, October 26, 2011Dave Stubenvoll, CEO & Co-Founder Wowza Media, Inc., Francis Adanza, Dir. Professional Services, Zephyr, Inc. and Sean Murphy, CEO SKMurphy, Inc. share insights from the book about how they explore uncertain and ambiguous opportunities. View recorded session Origin and Evolution of New Business by Amar V. Bhide’ The
Book Club: Origin and Evolution of New Business Read More »
At first we didn’t know what to call it, so we called it what happened. “Do you believe what happened?” “They think he died in what happened.” It was weeks before we called it 9/11. Sometimes tragedy takes time to find a name. Peggy Noonan in “We’ll Never Get Over It, Nor Should We“ I
Remembering What Happened Read More »
We have an outstanding panel lined up for next Wednesday’s Business Impact Book Club: Matt Cameron, CEO, WhoTo.com Jon Cline, Principal, Cirrus Path Brian K. Seitz, Managing Director, Intellectual Arbitrage Group We will discuss lessons learned applying Peter Cohan‘s methodology from his “Great Demo” book. If you are interested in improving your sales presentation you
Outstanding Panel for Wed-Sep-14 Book Club on “Great Demo” Read More »
“Startup Fantasy Camp: throw a group of strangers together for 48-72 hours and have them pretend to be a startup.” Sean Murphy Good ideas can be fleshed out and explored and an accelerated product prototyping experience can be had in a 48-72 hour camp. But I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that you can
Startup Fantasy Camp Read More »
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.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs–August 2011 Read More »
Texting While Working by Seth Godin “Text While Working” is a thought-provoking blog article by one of our must-read bloggers, Seth Godin. We discuss the topics Seth raises, such as being “in flow” and raising the stakes. The panelists share how they manage their tasks and ensure they focus on the important items that differentiate
Book Club: Discussion on Seth Godin’s Texting While Working Read More »
Call-in Book Review on TBD 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 9:00 a.m. Hawaii 1:00 p.m. Mountain / 2:00 p.m. Central 3:00 p.m. Eastern Signup to participate the live review _ Little Bets by Peter Sims How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discovers Little Bets describes a set of simple yet often counter intuitive experimental methods to
Book Club: Little Bets by Peter Sims Read More »
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.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs–July 2011 Read More »
I don’t often mention I went to Stanford when I meet people. I list it on all of my standard biographical summaries since it’s part of the formula, but I don’t lead with it. It’s rare to meet someone who attended Harvard or MIT not mention that in the first few minutes of the conversation.
I Heard You Went to Stanford Read More »
Len Sklar, author “The Check is NOT in the Mail” has spoken several times at Bootstrapper Breakfasts. Here is a recent talk he gave where he stresses the importance of putting payment terms and the consequences on non-payment in writing, communicating them in advance, and ensuring that they are understood. It all seems so obvious
Len Sklar: Be Clear About Payment Terms And Consequences Read More »
Jon Carroll wrote a wonderful column on July 5, 2000 titled “As You Get Older.” The whole thing is worth reading but there is a section that begins “This is your challenge…” that reads like poetry. So I have re-formatted it as blank verse, it contains a number of observations on advice and influence that
The Search for Validation is Baggage, and You Need to Travel Light Read More »
Competition is inevitable, that is why it’s wise to prepare for it and immunize yourself with difficult to copy differentiation where possible. A pure focus on implementing new features as fast as possible in an effort to outrun the competition is unlikely by itself to be enough. Here are some barriers you can erect that
Erecting Barriers to Competition That Are Difficult to Duplicate Read More »
Amazon’s S3 and AWS platforms, and similar on demand storage and computing services, are becoming increasing popular as core infrastructure for software startups. There is a tendency, because the costs are well defined, to base your price on adding a margin to these services. There are three problems with that.
Tangible Costs, Time, and Pricing to Value Read More »
Buster Benson lists “A few rules that I try to live by” on his “Cultivate the Core” blog post. Here are my top six picks from his list of 17 (the bold wording is Buster’s) with some commentary
Six From “A Few Rules That I Try To Live By” by Buster Benson Read More »
Rehearsal is key to making a successful presentation. If you can do at least two rehearsals of an important presentation it will pay huge dividends.
