Theresa Shafer met Ari Halberstadt at a Bootstrapper Breakfast in SF earlier this year and was very impressed with his approach to his new startup, Catalee. Ari volunteered to talk with me about Noam Wasserman‘s “The Founder’s Dilemmas” as well as Catalee. Here is a 12 minute podcast and transcript of our phone call. Or download […]
Quick reminder: I will be moderating a panel on “Successful Consulting Engagements with Startups” at the May 21 IEEE-CNSV meeting. I volunteered to pull this panel together after a long thread on the CNSV e-mail list June about the topic. I have been fortunate to attract three knowledgeable and experienced engineers to take part in the
Reminder: Successful Consulting Engagements With Startups at IEEE-CNSV Tue-May-21 Read More »
Holly DeVito presents basic financial controls that need to be in place early for bootstrappers to manage their business and ensure profitable growth.
Holly DeVito on Basic Financial Controls for Bootstrappers Tue-May-21 BB in Sunnyvale Read More »
If your prospect keep raising the same stupid objections and asking the same dumb questions it’s likely that your presentation is lacking or you are frequently talking to the wrong people. For new products, prospect objections are valuable data. Explore the implications and adjust your presentation and demo accordingly.
For New Products Prospect Objections Are Valuable Data Read More »
John Finneran’s postmortem: “Fat startup: Learn the lessons of my failed Lean Startup” shows he did not learn the right lessons from failure.
Learning the Right Lessons From Failure Read More »
We did some work recently advising a client on a possible acquisition a small service business and came up with a checklist of items to review: key employees – plan for retention and role in merged entity financials check register – all checks in last two years bank statements income sheet and balance statement contracts
Due Diligence Checklist For Evaluating A Service Business for Acquisition Read More »
A conversation with Pete Tormey on forming a team, dividing equity, and gaining early traction in a startup.
Podcast with Pete Tormey on Forming a Team, Dividing Equity, and Gaining Early Traction Read More »
A story from my engineering days at Cisco about how a lack of trust led to a default assumption that “they screwed up.”
They Screwed Up: They Followed Our Specification Read More »
Q: I was CTO and co-founder of a small technology startup that was recently acquired by a much larger firm. We have a two year earn out that I would like to collect. I see myself as a serial entrepreneur (this is my first successful acquisition but I have founded or co-founded several less successful
How To Thrive After An Acquisition Read More »
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected in a blog post like this one at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts in your inbox.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs–April 2013 Read More »
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), an insightful blogger, and quality contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction due out this summer that includes interviews with folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was
Hiring A Startup’s First Sales Person Read More »
The Field of Dreams model–build it and they will come–is a variation on “build a better mousetrap,” a self-limiting belief that dooms many startups.
Vision Is Critical But Avoid The “Field of Dreams” Read More »
Asif Mandozai (@asifmandozai) uses twitter to share customer development insights. Here is a set of 16 quotes I found to be practical and actionable.
16 Quotes on Customer Development From Asif Mandozai Read More »
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until these quotes for entrepreneurs are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs–March 2013 Read More »
Here are the slides and audio from a “How To Bootstrap Your Startup” presentation at an Emerging Business Group Best Practices Seminar at Abbott, Stringham, and Lynch.
Slides and Audio From “How To Bootstrap” ASLCPA Mar-27-2013 Read More »
I will be moderating a panel on “Successful Consulting Engagements with Startups” at the May 21 IEEE-CNSV meeting. The genesis was an e-mail thread on the CNSV list last June that started with this question: I have a new client which is a very-early-stage start-up, funded by one of the founders out of the proceeds
May 21 at IEEE-CNSV: Successful Consulting Engagements With Startups Read More »
Luxr has produced a clever encapsulation of the 5 Whys methodology, a technique for persistently probing the symptoms to find the root cause of a problem. Compared to several other “5 Whys” videos YouTube steered me to after I viewed this one I was struck by how practical and tactical Luxr’s explanation was. It communicated the
Communicating Complex Concepts in Video: Luxr’s 5 Whys Video Read More »
Mark Stiving is a serial entrepreneur and a pricing expert. In this video he tells the story of being mistaken for a lost lamb by a shepherdess in Las Vegas after being screwed by a cab driver. He uses her business model to illustrate three important pricing principles: Know Your Value Segment Your Market Offer
Mark Stiving: Three Pricing Principles I Confirmed In Las Vegas Read More »
Q: Appreciate your thoughts on qualitative vs. quantitative approaches to market exploration. Customer development is like qualitative research; it is good for exploring hypotheses (and associated issues) but cannot validate them (by its very nature it is small sample size). To validate startup hypotheses one needs to do quantitative research, e.g. surveys, measurements (A/B tests), and have
Market Discovery and Exploration Requires Models from Physics, Biology, and Psychology Read More »
The most effective ways to start a warm conversation with prospect are introductions, responding to questions in a forum, and face to face at an event.
How To Start a Warm Conversation About a Customer Problem Read More »
