SKMurphy Blog - Page 79 of 119

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Books / By Theresa Shafer / April 14, 2011

Call-in Book Review recorded on May 11, 2011 Charles Baugh, Terry Frazier and Sean Murphy recap Dan Roams’ “Back of the Napkin” followed by examples of how they have incorporated informal drawings into our business communication and collaboration. View the recorded session Buy NOW The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with […]

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Comments on Dan Roam’s “Back of the Napkin”

Books / By Theresa Shafer / April 14, 2011

Please leave your comments on the book … Did you find Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures insightful? What was one piece of advice you took away from it? Do you have any questions about the book?

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Signed up for Startup Lessons Learned Conference

Customer Development, Events / By Theresa Shafer / April 14, 2011

Hope to see you on Monday, May 23, 2011 in San Francisco, CA for the Second Startup Lessons Learned conference. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful

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Stoking the Star Maker Machinery Behind The Popular App

4 Finding your Niche, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / April 11, 2011

To many of the current incubators seem focused on “on hit wonder” startups designed to be acquired quickly. Apps are the new pop songs and the incubators are the music labels, stoking the star maker machinery.

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Georgi Dagnall on Steve Blank’s Visit to April Bootstrapper Breakfast

Events, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / April 10, 2011

Georgi Dagnall, founder of Geogad a mobile tours applications, offers her perspective on Steve Blank’s visit to the Bootstrappers Breakfast.

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Larry Lang on Managing Incentives

5 Scaling Up Stage / By Sean Murphy / April 7, 2011

[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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Making the Trains Run on Time: Software Release

Rules of Thumb, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / April 6, 2011

Making the Trains Run on Time: Software Release I recently took part in a small reunion of folks who worked on the “router software release” team at Cisco in the early years and I took it as an opportunity to jot down some rules of thumb I learned, mostly the hard way, about managing software

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Conversations Entrepreneurs Remember

Events, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / April 3, 2011

Bootstrappers Breakfasts are hot coffee and a shared meal with conversations that entrepreneurs remember and apply to their business..

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Failure to Thrive

3 Early Customer Stage, Demos, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / April 1, 2011

Failure To Thrive: “We need another two weeks to add this one last feature.” This mindset of hesitation kills more products than any competitor.

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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–March 2011

Quotes, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / March 31, 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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Address A Problem An Industry Promotes In Satisfying A Major Need

Rules of Thumb, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / March 30, 2011

There is always a the hill behind the hill. Address the next problem an industry promotes when they have solved a major problem.

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Human Nature As Applied to Software Development

Community of Practice, skmurphy, Startups / By Sean Murphy / March 20, 2011

Human nature, both at an individual cognitive level and a group social level, strongly influences software development methods.

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Connecting Technical Know-How With Customer Needs

4 Finding your Niche, Customer Development, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / March 19, 2011

John Cook observes that connecting technical know-how with customer needs requires skills outside of mathematics.

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Edith Harbaugh: It’s Your Execution Not Your Idea

Customer Development, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / March 18, 2011

This is a guest post by Edith Harbaugh. She moderates the Lean Startup Circle mailing list but doesn’t have a blog of her own, so I have offered her mine because I was impressed by her insights and writing. It’s Your Execution Not Your Idea An initially dispiriting thing to hear from a customer is

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Be Mindful of People’s Time

Sales / By Theresa Shafer / March 9, 2011

Tristan Kromer covers 8 tips for getting your email read. Keep it short Who are you? What do you want? What you think is irrelevant Everyone likes numbers Easy on the attachments Include all relevant information Follow up It’s a great set of points that also apply to meeting someone at a networking event, a

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Video: Early Revenue For Enterprise Web Apps

3 Early Customer Stage, Events, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / March 1, 2011

This webinar is for SaaS firms faced with an “enterprise sales” challenge by virtue of their minimum price point or number of job boundaries, business processes, or contractual relationships that have to change to create value. The focus is on early revenue. Here is the video from my February 24 webinar with DreamSimplicity on “Early Sales

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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–February 2011

Quotes, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / February 28, 2011

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Getting Unstuck From Perfectionism

Consulting Business / By Sean Murphy / February 27, 2011

Innovation is never able to “get it right the first time.” Getting unstuck when your perfectionism paralyzes you requires you to be willing to share bad versions and ugly drafts.

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Webinar Feb-24: “Early Revenue for Enterprise Web App Providers”

Events, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / February 23, 2011

I have teamed up with DreamSimplicity to offer a free webinar on “Early Revenue for Enterprise Web App Providers” on Thursday Feb 24 at 9:00 AM PST Registration is at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/745026866 and a recording will be made available if you are unable to take part. There is no charge for the live webinar or access

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Managing Email Conversations With Customers

3 Early Customer Stage, 4 Finding your Niche, 5 Scaling Up Stage, Rules of Thumb, skmurphy / By Sean Murphy / February 15, 2011

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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