Sean Murphy

Peter Cohan: Differentiating Your Offers Starts With The First Contact

Demos, Events, skmurphy, Workshop / By /

Another excerpt from Peter Cohan’s very insightful new article  “Stunningly Awful vs. Truly Terrific Competitive Differentiation – What, When, and How” From the customers’ perspective vendors are “differentiating”, positively or negatively, with every contact, every meeting, and every deliverable.  Let’s explore possible negative differentiation first.  How do you feel about: Vendors that cold call you – repeatedly? […]

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FounderSuite Worth a Look for Saving Time On Your New Startup

1 Idea Stage, 2 Open for Business Stage, Founder Story, Legal Issues, Tools for Startups / By /

There are a number of forms packages now available for entrepreneurs that provide templates for incorporation, investment term sheets, hiring employees and contractors, etc.. And there are several business model canvas tools that are designed to facilitate useful discussions among founders and advisors (and potential investors) about a new startup. But Nathan Beckord‘s Foundersuite is

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SVCC 2013 Work for Equity Panel of Startup Founders Announced

Events, skmurphy / By /

Join us next Saturday October 5 at 1:45 for the “Working for Equity Startup CEO Panel,” an exploration of what’s really involved in getting a technology startup off the ground. We have four entrepreneurs,  an artist, an athlete, a scientist, and a community organizer, who will share lessons learned and take questions from the audience.

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Preserving Trust And Demonstrating Expertise Unlocks Demanding Niche Markets

3 Early Customer Stage, Customer Development, Rules of Thumb / By /

Preserving Trust And Demonstrating Expertise Unlocks Demanding Niche Markets Q: We are preparing to enter a B2B  market where the potential buyers are high-value but relatively few in number and close-knit. I am concerned that they will have a low tolerance for a minimum viable product (MVP) approach; much less pre-MVP research that misses the

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Remarks from “Future of Professional Consulting” at PATCA June-13-2013

Consulting Business, Events, skmurphy / By /

PATCA is a non-profit organization created in 1975 specifically to help connect businesses and independent consultants. I was invited to take part in a PACA panel on “The Consulting Landscape: Forward Looking Skills and Practices” on Thursday June 13, 2013. It offered me a chance to clarify my thinking on the future of professional consulting and

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Peter Cohan: Discovery Conversations Enable Effective Product Differentiation

Demos, Events, skmurphy, Workshop / By /

Peter Cohan has a very insightful new article out, “Stunningly Awful vs. Truly Terrific Competitive Differentiation – What, When, and How“, that outlines how to use discovery conversations to enable effective product differentiation.  What follows are some excerpts with additional commentary but the entire article is worth reading.

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Don’t Miss “Capturing Intellectual Property” Silicon Valley Workshop Oct-19-2013

Events, Legal Issues, skmurphy, Workshop / By /

Register for  “How to Invent” for free Udemy course at http://www.udemy.com/how-to-invent/ “How To Invent” is a step-by-step guide for non-inventors to start inventing. It is organized as  screencast lectures, practice sessions, and quizzes. It  offers process for capturing on paper key ideas in your head that you want to document as intellectual property and possibly

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Working For Equity CEO Panel Returns to Silicon Valley Code Camp 2013

Events, Founder Story, Silicon Valley, skmurphy / By /

We are reprising our “Working for Equity” CEO Panel for the fourth year at the 2013 Silicon Valley Code Camp. Here is the current write-up, we will be adding panelists’ bios in a few days. Many of us in Silicon Valley seek either to found or to be an early employee at a technology startup.

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BeamWise Blends Biophotonic And Model Based Design Expertise

Clients in the News / By /

The following announcement went out this morning: Biophotonic System Design Optimized Through New Technology BeamWise from Design Parametrics, Kinetic River, and Plan Energy I have added some additional hyperlinks for clarity. Giacomo Vacca will include a brief overview of BeamWise in his talk at the Bio2Devices Group on Sep-24-2013, “New Tools for Cancer Research: Probing Cellular Processes

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Remembering 9-11: Our Children Will Also Live In Interesting Times

skmurphy, Spirit / By /

Remembering 9-11: I found this video very moving because it focused on the people and not the destruction. h/t Victory Girls Remembering 9-11 Take ten minutes to reflect on Sep-11-2001, a watershed event for the US in the 21st century that I have come to believe is a harbinger and not an outlier. Last year

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Audio: Paul Spaan’s Briefing on 3D Printing at May 24 2013 Bootstrapper Breakfast

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Paul Spaan worked as a mechanical engineer for more than two decades at major Silicon Valley technology firms before launching Spaan Enterprises to explore his long term interest in 3D printing. On Friday May 24, he shared lessons learned from the installation and bringup of two 3D printers and some examples of prototypes he has designed and

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Lisa Solomon: Effective Meetings Choose One of Reaching Understanding, Generating Options, or Making Decisions

Lean Culture Videos, Rules of Thumb, skmurphy, Video / By /

Lisa Solomon says that an effective meeting can do one–and only one–of 3 things: build a common understanding, generate option, or make decisions. In this talk on “Designing Time: Make Meaning” she elaborates on this and challenges the person calling the meeting to work backward from the end of the meeting and define: what has

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Q: How Do You Iterate An MVP So That It’s “Good Enough For Government Work”

3 Early Customer Stage, skmurphy, Startup Advice Column / By /

Q: I am part of a hardware/embedded device startup working on our MVP. We want to develop a minimum product to cut our initial development costs and iterate scientifically through experimentation.  My concern is that State governments are my primary customer type and their buying model is to do a pilot project and then write what

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