Three Good Books for Consultants
Here are three good books for consultants that I routinely recommend: “Trusted Advisor”, “Secrets of Consulting”, and “Rainmaking.”
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Startup Stages
“Startup Maturity Checklist” Slides From Today’s SVCC Session
I very much enjoyed the opportunity to present our startup stages model and the “Software Startup Maturity Checklist” at Silicon Valley Code Camp today. I have posted the slides here.
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Good Marketing is Good Content
Good content is the basis for good marketing: your messaging must explain your knowledge of customer problems and how you can help.
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Bouncing Back
Bouncing back from a setback is a challenge that entrepreneurs need to navigate repeatedly. Bouncing Back On Hacker News about 18 months ago someone posted a question on “Dealing with Post Startup Depression” that read I recently shut down my first startup ever. I am having a really tough time getting over it and starting
Sign-up for Software Startup Checklist Seminar at Silicon Valley Code Camp
With Athol Foden‘s encouragement I have submitted the following session (links added) for this year’s Silicon Valley Code Camp: Software Startup Maturity Checklist This session is for both aspiring and active entrepreneurs. We will walk through a 36 point checklist that covers Product Development, Customer Development, and Business Operations. You will leave with a better
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The Limits of “I Will Know It When I See It”
Both engineering and entrepreneurship alternate exploration and verification cycles to develop a solution that satisfies a customer’s need. Both of these rely on the scientific method of “observation, hypothesis formation, prediction, and experimentation” to develop and validate testable theories, engineering solutions, and profitable products. Both require that a new configuration or an opportunity be recognized
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Founders vs. Employees
Abishek Desai wrote an interesting post in April of 2008 “What Happens With People Having No Aim?” that I commented on (it appears that he has changed blogging systems and lost comments from his older posts) and I came across my answer and thought it would make a nice short blog post. First Mr. Desai’s
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Michael Schrage on Innovation, Collaboration, Tools, and Incentives
Michael Schrage offers some useful insights on innovation: he stresses the need for collaboration both within the startup (or new product team) and between the startup and its early customers.
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Why Partners Are Critical
We invest a lot of effort in finding partners and maintaining partner relationships. We do this for a variety of reasons. One of the advantages to working in a large firm is that there are normally resources and expertise you can call on when confronted with a challenge. There are typically other specialists who have
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Hadoop Summit 2009 – Quick Impressions
I spent today at the Hadoop Summit 2009 (hadoopsummit09). Although I paid my $100 registration fee in advance I made the mistake of getting there a few minutes after 9am with the first keynote underway and joined a thick knot of hangers on in one of the doorways to the ballroom (don’t tell the fire
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Andrew Chen: Most Web 2.0 Media Startups Have a B2B Enterprise Model
I don’t know how I overlooked Andrew Chen’s “Your Ad-Supported Web 2.0 Site is Actually a B2B Enterprise in Disguise” He succinctly outlines some hard facts that many founders of media startups spend a year of their life to learn:
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Website Peer Review at PATCA June 11
We are facilitating another website peer review Thursday June 11 at PATCA. At our April 17 website peer review, we were asked by Jerry Rice to produce a similar event for PATCA and were happy to oblige. Theresa is a member of PATCA and regularly attends their events. She blogged about “Three Reasons to Attend
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Athol Foden at Friday May 8 Bootstrapper Breakfast in Milpitas
Athol Foden of Brighter Naming is our guest speaker Friday May 8 for the Bootstrapper Breakfast™ at 7:30am at the Omega Restaurant in Milpitas. Athol has over 16 years of experience helping clients name companies, products, services, and taglines. Athol’s opening remarks will be followed by a question and answer session on developing the right
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Conway’s Law: the Co-Evolution of Business Organization and Product Design
One formulation of Conway’s Law is that communication problems in an organization will manifest in their finished products: communication channels matter.
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If Revenue is Drying Up
You are not alone. We talk to firms every day that are challenged by the current economic environment. Let me suggest a couple of things you can do: Come to a Bootstrappers Breakfast™ and compare notes with other bootstrapping entrepreneurs for the price of your breakfast. We host four a month, the next one is
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Startups Need Sisu and Creative Improvisation To Survive Recession
We are clearly in a recession that will test many startups in Silicon Valley and the rest of the United States. Those with determination and a willingness to embrace creative improvisation are more likely to survive.
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Cecily Drucker’s Startup Secrets
Cecily Drucker, CEO and Founder of Bottom Line Time–and daughter of the late Peter Drucker–has a good post up on the “What Would Dad Say” blog entitled “Secrets of a 64 year old Startup Virgin” that lists fourteen startup secrets she has learned with her first startup. She has a few more insights in her introduction
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Sales 2.01
Francis Fischbach attended the first Sales 2.0 conference in November of 2007 and blogged about it in “Inside Sales 2.0: A Report From the Front Lines.” I just realized that we missed the 2009 version that was held this week so I am recycling two comments that were added to Francis’ original post since I
Other Customer Development Models
In “The Challenges of Measuring Non-Existent Markets” Scott D. Anthony outlines four principal challenges in measuring non-existent markets: Data does not yet exist. When a market doesn’t exist, there are no baseline market research reports or time-series data sets to analyze. Lack of comparable products. Without existing data, there is a natural tendency to look
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Fewer of You Will Be Listening To Someone Else
I worked at Monolithic Memories from 1984 until 1988, in 1985 Irwin Federman, who was CEO at the time announced that the company was informally banning meetings on Fridays. It seemed reasonable to me and I thought it would probably make us more productive. A few weeks later he announced that the company was going
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