Product roadmaps are entirely driven by solving problems for your customers. Start by asking your customer, “how can we help you?”
Building A Great Product Roadmap: Eric Walczykowski, Deloitte Ventures Read More »
Last night I attended the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup. Below is my opinion of the companies, the presentation, and my attempt to capture the content from the questions and answers. The first presentation was given by MyThings, a website that allows you to catalog your belongings on-line. The site was first used as a service called
March Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Read More »
This morning I attended the SDForum Quarterly Venture Breakfast with PWC’s Seed Investment Report given by Steve Bengston from Emerging Company Services (ECS) group at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In the United States, last year the reported amount of VC investments totaled to $25.5B. Of the 25.5B, 1.2B was invested at the seed stage across 311 companies. Moderator
SDForum Quarterly Venture Breakfast with PWC’s: Seed Investments Read More »
Startup Epicenter has just announced two back to back entrepreneurial education events that together offer an intensive program designed to help you prepare for the grueling demands of an entrepreneurial journey. SKMurphy is a sponsor for the events. March 27-29 Startup Epicenter Intensive Workshops March 30-31 Startup Epicenter Challenge & Festival The program on March 29 starts at 2 in the afternoon, which leaves your morning free
Startup Epicenter Offers Intensive Workshops, Challenge & Festival Read More »
Getting early customer feedback is critical to fine tuning your product so that you can scale up. The temptation is to use a on-line survey tool to save your time, but I think for your early customers a questionnaire may only give you the answers that you are looking for, not the information that you need.
Getting Early Feedback Read More »
We have added Google’s Search Co-op to our Resources page. As an entrepreneur, you need to dabble in so many fields. Some areas of expertise an startup needs are legal, accounting, funding, marketing, sales, public relations, recruiting, hiring, partners, and advisers. We work with some great experts and partners and you can take advantage of
Building Communities using Search Co-op Read More »
Commentary on Julian Fellowes answers to 3 interview questions about the need to get started, persist, and accept the logical consequences of your choices.
Julian Fellowes on Persistence, Getting Started, and Logical Consequences Read More »
Tonight I attended a KIN / KASE Event: VC Investment in Asia and What It Means to Korea. The guest speakers were Han Kim, Partner at Altos Ventures and Tae Hea Nahm, Partner at Storm Ventures. I have heard many VC’s speak on how they evaluate investment opportunities and what their criteria for investing is.
VC Investment in Asia and What It Means to Korea Read More »
Last night, I attended the SDForum Business Intelligence SIG. The guest speaker was Barry Klawans, CTO of JasperSoft who spoke on 2 Disruptive Trends: Open Source & SaaS. From Barry’s talk I learned: The advantages vs. disadvantages of SaaS (Software as a Service) The similarities between SaaS and Open Source How to leverage open source
2 Disruptive Trends: Open Source & SaaS Read More »
Clark Dong gave an interesting demonstration of a new action item tracking tool for startups called TaskPick at last night’s SDForum Startup SIG. He came on after my show and tell on how and why we use Central Desktop in our practice. He was articulate and energetic and I was very impressed with his approach. His message below is
Clark Dong: Software Startups Don’t Need VC’s To Start Read More »
Don’t forget the dream to change the world that got you started: your passion is an important element of craftsmanship and a commitment to excellence. What’s Your Passion? Recently, I chatted with a well-established consultant–she’s been working for more than a decade. She was having trouble developing a short elevator pitch to describe what she
What’s Your Passion? Read More »
Greg Knauss wrote “An Entirely Other Day” sporadically from 1994 to 2006 (with five year or so gap between 2001 and 2006 and who knows, he may start up again). It’s experiential blogging at its finest, with some sharp observations–some introspective–of work, marriage, children, illness, aging, and death.
9 From Greg Knauss’ “An Entirely Other Day” Read More »
An excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard writing on helping others to understand. The key is to start from a deep understanding of the other person’s world view. This echoes Steven Covey’s fifth habit: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Kierkegaard on the Art of Helping Others to Understand Read More »
Is my topic this Thursday, February 15, at 7:00 PM, at the IEEE-CNSV meeting at KeyPoint Credit Union, 2805 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, CA. The event is free. I will cover a number of practical suggestions for using blogs to promote a consulting practice and wikis to foster project team collaboration against a deadline. Blogs and
Ten Tips for Leveraging Blogs and Wikis in Your Consulting Practice Read More »
Key takeaways triggered by Fast Forward 2007 talks, still a huge difference between Internet search and enterprise search.
Interesting Discussions From Fast Forward 2007 Read More »
Another excerpt from William Feather’s “The Business of Life” From page 262, an entry entitled “A Conservative Club.” More than forty-five years ago a group of men…organized a club for men of common intellectual interest. It was agreed that the membership would be limited to thirty, and that twelve meetings would be held each year
Recipes For Longevity in “Mutual Improvement Clubs” Read More »
Join other bootstrappers–startup CEO’s, CTO’s, and founders–for breakfast and discussion. We meet at different restaurants in Silicon Valley from 7:30-9AM, your only cost is your meal and a tip. Come compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. If you are serious about your business and are open to discussing substantive issues and helping your peers,
Bootstrappers Breakfast – Bootstrapping Startups Invited Read More »
Greg Knauss was a guest blogger on kottke last year and ended his two week stint with this observation on referential and experiential blogging: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. […] The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at
Greg Knauss on Bloggers: Experiential vs. Referential Read More »
In “Perseverance Rewarded” William Feather offers some good advice for getting started. Many folks succeed because they don’t realize how hard it is to accomplish what they have set out to do (of course several orders of magnitude more fail).
William Feather on “Perseverance Rewarded” Read More »
The Annual Stanford Entrepreneurship Conference featured Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, as its keynote speaker. Ed gave a great presentation on lessons learned from structurally organizing a company for effective communication across its departments. In the beginning, Ed believed they had created a very strong culture at Pixar. They had paired up programmers
Pixar’s Ed Catmull Highlights Value of Post Mortems Read More »
