Ash Maurya on “Running Lean”
Ash Maurya (@AshMaurya) has released the first two chapters of his new book “Running Lean” and here are my first impressions.
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Startup Stages
Cold Calling Won’t Find Your First Business Customer
I meet teams trying to cold call for their first business customer and I just haven’t seen it work; the trust issues cripple them. Here is a relevant excerpt from Gabriel Weinberg’s interview with me for his traction book.
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The Limits of Legal Self-Help
Every bootstrapper has a limited budget for attorney’s fees. Attorneys can help you foresee problems and craft contract language, which looks remarkably similar to English but is in fact code that is executed by the legal system. Use them to protect valuable assets–intellectual property, source code, revenue streams–not create them. A small digression If you
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We Cannot Sate Your Hunger For Certainty But We Can Increase Your Odds of Success
A hunger for certainty will not help an entrepreneur make timely decisions or manage the level of ambiguity and uncertainty they need to navigate through.
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3 Equations & 3 Unknowns: Target Customer is Key Initial Value
I mentioned in “3 Equations 3 Unknowns: Customers, Features, and Message” that we spend a lot of time on the early customer stage. It requires very different sales style than you’ll see later on. It’s a conversational sales style. It’s much more about understanding the problem. You’re trying to solve three equations, three unknowns: Are
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Gabriel Weinberg Interviews Me For His Traction Book
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), a Hacker Angel, insightful blogger, and frequent contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction and interviewing folks like Patrick McKenzie to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives. I was delighted when he approached me to take part
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Appreciate Why Prospects Say “Your Baby Is Ugly”
When a prospect criticizes your product, or your suggestion for a solution, don’t react as if they said, “Your baby is ugly.” Appreciate their candor, make sure you understand their need, and probe for what’s wrong or needs improvement in your offering.
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Chalk Talk on Technology Adoption
A Chalk Talk on “Managing Risk In Technology Adoption” that covers some of key challenges technology providers have with getting companies to use their products.
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3 Equations & 3 Unknowns: Customers, Features, Message
We posted the interview I did with Floyd Tucker of DreamSimplicity about a month ago but in the last two days I have had two people comment to me directly and one tweet about my “three equations and three unknowns” answer: customers, features, message.
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Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups Part 2
Ed Weissman is a prolific contributor to Hacker News, this post collects some insights he has offered on B2B.
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Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups
Ed Weissman offers three reason why business prefers to pay for software: employee focus, a commitment to service, co-evolution with their needs.
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Four Movies To Renew Your Gumption
Here are four movies that I watch when I need to refill my gumption or recover my sisu: The Verdict, Apollo 13, The Dish, and The World’s Fastest Indian.
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DreamSimplicity Interviews Sean Murphy
I was recently interviewed by Floyd Tucker of DreamSimplicity Marketplace and the interview can be seen below and on DreamSimplicity.com. We talk about how even though each startup team is unique, they have a common set of milestones they have to achieve to move from idea to revenue. We also chat briefly about the Bootstrapper
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Cool Business Cards
In the course of my networking I meet a lot of people and get a lot of business cards – every once in a while I will get a card that really stands out. Here are three cards that lead to deeper discussion about their company and products. Not only is this business card unique,
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Ken Imboden on Lessons From MMC, Candlestick, and NuSym
Ken Imboden offers lessons learned on developing software products from managing at large firms, and successful and unsuccessful startups.
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Moving Cash Into & Out of Your Bootstrapped Startup
Here are five tips for moving cash into and out of your bootstrapped startup.
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Finding a Co-Founder: 3 Months Is a Long Time
This post builds on my earlier “Finding a Co-Founder” and “Compromise & Get Started” posts on the challenges with finding a co-founder for your software startup. It assumes you are working at least part time with a potential co-founder exploring if you can collaborate successfully and generate revenue from a new jointly developed product or
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Finding A Co-Founder: Compromise & Get Started
Building on yesterday’s “Finding A Co-Founder” I want to identify a couple of common challenges to getting started with people you have had prior shared success with and offer some suggestions for how to compromise and get started working with them. Reconnect with Folks You Have Successfully Collaborated With I suggested the following approach: Make
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Finding A Co-Founder
This is based on both my direct experience and stories folks have shared at the Bootstrappers Breakfast® over the last few years about finding a co-founder.
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Collecting Unpaid Bills
In 1995 I did some work for one of the early web startups in Palo Alto. They had delivered a number of database driven websites using a proprietary software technology that they had developed, and had sold the technology to several firms. But they had a problem collecting unpaid bills: they had not been paid
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