Working On Christmas Day
I didn’t work Christmas Day but was glad that some other folks did.
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Three Answers We Need Before We Will Use a New Productivity App
Three Answers We Need Before We Will Use a New Productivity App Do You Have a Pricing Model? We use many web applications to run our business and deliver services. Often our clients are also users of the application. If the application has a problem our clients hold us accountable. We need to see a
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Cisco Presents Collaboration Technology as Sufficiently Advanced
I worked at Cisco for more than a decade in two stints between 1990 and 2003–taking time off from 1995-98 to work with a number of web startups–so I was intrigued to see John Chamber’s picture on the cover of the December issue of Fast Company. In the feature article by Ellen McGrit titled “Revolution
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Last Full Work Week of 2008: Tips for End of Year Planning
Five tips for end of year planning for startup entrepreneurs. As the year draws to a close dates in calendar are closer than they appear.
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Michael Arrington “Twice Shy” One Year Later
Last December Michael Arrington wrote “The Twice Shy Entrepreneur” lamenting that entrepreneurs like himself who had lived through the dotcom meltdown were more cautious. They were “once bitten, twice shy.”
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Late Night Comments and E-Mail
See www.xkcd.com/ for more comics. This scene plays out in one form or another several times a year.I have learned to: send the E-Mail just to myself and read it again in the morning. save the forum comment in a separate text file. save the blog post for review in the morning. Update Tue-Nov-5: Jim
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Prediction: Angel Investing Down in 2009
I was still mulling over the implications of yesterday’s briefing by Nate Burgess when I came across “Prediction: Angel investing in 2009 will be up?” by Alexander Muse on the Texas Startup blog. Briefly his thesis is: The angel investment market hovers around $12 billion each year. I predict that the turmoil on Wall Street
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We Don’t Encourage Individuals to Form a Startup
Real entrepreneurs don’t need encouragement to form a startup–although they may benefit from outside perspectives on their plans. Encouraging non-entrepreneurs to form a startup does them a disservice.
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Sobering Workshop By Corum on Software Mergers
I attended a “Merge Briefing” workshop today offered by the Corum Group Ltd. on the status of software acquisitions. I had learned a lot from a workshop that Ward Carter, Corum’s CEO, gave at the Software Business 2007 conference and felt that this would be informative. It turned out to be much more. It was
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Bob Lewis on Progress and Economizing vs. Cost Cutting
“Contentment comes from wanting what you have, Ambition from wanting what the other person has, Progress from wanting what nobody has.” Bob Lewis “Random Thoughts“ Bob Lewis writes the “Keeping the Joint Running” E-mail newsletter, devoted to practical advice for leading IT organizations effectively. From his column “In General, a Time for Generalists” Bob offer
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Cultivating Communities to Get More Customers
Attracting new customers is at the heart of every business. Active participation in a community can make you more visible and allows you to demonstrate expertise.
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs – November 2008
I now see books being written and thousand dollar a seat conferences offered on how to use twitter. My model is fairly simple, starting in April of this year I post quotes that I believe are useful, thought provoking or otherwise inspiring for entrepreneurs on @skmurphy. I try and post about ten quotes for entrepreneurs
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Offer Scope for Employees to Exercise Their Vital Powers
Some post-Thanksgiving musings on my belief that most people want to do a good job. As you grow your startup find ways for everyone involved to work hard, see an impact, and improve. “Ancient Greeks defined happiness as the exercise of vital powers, along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope” Edith Hamilton
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Thanksgiving 2008
A quick note of thanks that even in the midst of a serious economic downturn for Thanksgiving 2008 I have my health, my family, my friends, and the opportunity to make a living.
Yatin Trivedi on the Value of Coopetition
A great write-up by Yatin Trivedi on the value of coopetition: the motivation for a partnership program in any company is to better serve the customers beyond one’s ability.
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Three Software Startup News Aggregators: Hacker News, Techmeme, Alltop
Here are three startup feeds that I use at last weekly (I am skmurphy on Hackers News and may check there two or three times a day) that represent three different models to generate a stream of topical links for folks in software startups. Hacker News http://news.ycombinator.com/ Techmeme http://www.techmeme.com/ Alltop http://startups.alltop.com/ What are your favorite
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Unfamiliar Pain
I had an unfamiliar pain recently. It was sharp, sudden, and unexpected: I ended up talking to my doctor about it. I have been trying to understand why it was more frightening, even though it was less painful than many other problems I have experienced.
Jeff Bezos on Strategic Planning
Excerpts that I found thought provoking and useful from an interview with Jeff Bezos in the October 2007 Harvard Business Review.
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Disruptive Tools Can Stall At Group Boundaries
When introducing disruptive tools, the difficulty of adoption is proportional to the cube of the number of organizational silos who need to agree.
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Conserving Trust in a Downturn
A lot of is written these days about how to conserve cash in a downturn. In particular the need to cut expenses by cutting headcount and unnecessary fill-in-the-blank spending. But conserving trust is equally important. If you have been bootstrapping and only increasing expenses in response to revenue (versus in anticipation of revenue) then your
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