Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Any credible software developer should be willing to tackle this kind of tool for a couple of thousand dollars. Then there are full-featured software sites like Facebook. The logic behind all these features is millions of lines of code, and cost millions of dollars to develop and maintain.

Cost 220

Cost Startup Hosting Bootstrapping 220

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Starting out, you can’t hit every network and outlet full-force. Prioritize social networks. As a startup, you’re working with limited resources and a lean business model. Building your brand presence on specialized outlets holds immense value for your business – especially in early stages. Startup Example: Cloudera.

Social Media 158

Social Media Media Viral Startup 158

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 22, 2016

What’s the hottest trend in business right now? Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter? Or Software as a Service for the enterprise, such as Salesforce? Leveraging network effects. Another way to build your network is to increase the value of the platform by opening it up for others to build on.

Japan 100

Japan Global Asia API 100

Reid Hoffman

JULY 27, 2021

When I decided I wanted to start a company, I realized that I needed to pick up certain skills first, like product management, knowledge of online services, and a practical understanding of commercial software development. The Network May Not be as Valuable as It Seems. Networks are both safety nets and trampolines.

Silicon Valley 69

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Balance Sheet Cofounder 69

Reid Hoffman

JULY 27, 2021

When I decided I wanted to start a company, I realized that I needed to pick up certain skills first, like product management, knowledge of online services, and a practical understanding of commercial software development. The Network May Not be as Valuable as It Seems. Networks are both safety nets and trampolines.

Silicon Valley 69

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Balance Sheet Cofounder 69

Gust

FEBRUARY 22, 2014

When people would ask a similar question back then about the difficulty of software development, my usual response was “anyone can write a TAP program over a weekend that will work with 80% of the paging systems in the world…but getting it to work on the other 20% will take you a year.”

Belarus 107

Belarus Kazakhstan Portugal Accredited Investor 107

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

Part of me wants to just say that entrepreneurship education needs to be moved out of the business school altogether, but I know that's probably too jarring for most schools to think about. If anything, the business school students need to figure out what their value add is to a design or software development student.

Incubator 133

Incubator .Net Cofounder Software Developers 133

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 6, 2012

Students will even receive a minor in entrepreneurship as they develop their own business plans. Some of the i-lab’s long-term residents include mobile app ActivePepper, baby gear rental company Baby Buggle, and software developer Rover. Innovation Depot. This article was first posted in Best Colleges Online.

Incubator 202

Incubator New York City Boston Intellectual Property 202

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it. Today open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. Not kind of wrong but going out of business wrong.

Restful 238

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 238

View from Seed

APRIL 21, 2015

million raised, per CrunchBase): It was January of second semester of my second year, and Michelle [Zatlyn, Matt’s co-founder] and I were brainstorming different ideas to enter into the business plan competition. NextView Ventures: Did you start to seriously work on the idea during business school or after? Tom Eisenmann.

Founder 120

Founder Las Vegas Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 15, 2012

Fall In Love With Your Business, Not Your Business Plan – [link]. crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: RentValet – [link]. Achieving The Network Effect: Solving The Chicken Or The Egg – [link]. Fall In Love With Your Business, Not Your Business Plan – [link].

Social Media 90

Social Media Small Business Design Media 90

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 26, 2010

Tap global design network – [link]. 5 Design Trends That Small Businesses Can Use in 2011 – [link]. How can crowdsourcing work for your business? Building Great Software: Less is More – [link]. crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: DressRush.com – [link]. Need a logo?

Social Media 96

Social Media Small Business Design Media 96

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 25, 2010

Three important factors that founders have to consider (no matter their location) are networks, funding, and talent. Here’s how we viewed each of these: Networking was critical to us. Nor was there a widely established network of Angels with a track record of supporting local companies.

Chicago 81

Chicago Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Entrepreneur 81

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

There's a thriving geek culture in Paris, and no lack of software development expertise, thanks to superior universities that produce superior engineers. Startups can submit their projects to Fing, which provides support to over 200 projects a year through events, programs, and access to a large network of resources.

France 163

France Technical Review Incubator Early Stage 163

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 10, 2010

Business plans for entrepreneurs: the three ‘Rs’ – Part I – [link]. “ nobody wins if you go out of business&# – On Pricing – [link]. Business plans for entrepreneurs: the three ‘Rs’ – Part I – [link]. The 4G forgery – T-Mobile does not have a 4G network – [link].

Social Media 92

Social Media Costa Rica Small Business Design 92

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 21, 2012

“your business plan cannot be secret anymore.” The Do Plan, or Why We Know But Don’t Do | zenhabits – [link]. Facebook Stops Its Long-Awaited Ad Network Before It Starts (For Now) | AllThingsD – [link]. 35 Chicken Logo Design Perfect for Poultry Business – [link].

Social Media 100

Social Media Small Business Design Media 100

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Start With a Business Model, Not a Business Plan | WSJ – [link]. Facebook makes it official — an external advertising network is coming soon | Gigaom – [link]. 25 Illustration Based Business Card Designs – [link]. The ABCs of MVPs: How to Get the RIGHT Product out Faster – [link].

Social Media 100

Social Media Small Business Central African Republic Design 100

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Why Use a Consulting CTO A consulting CTO can help you complete a business plan by estimating costs and timelines for the company’s technology development and deployment. He can help you determine whether to outsource development (locally or overseas) or build an inhouse team. Beware, however!

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

www.tangosource.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Executing the non-technical parts of your business plan is a must, but often this translates to providing funding for enough runway for V1 and possibly a major pivot afterwards. Build up your network. I go over an example of this in my blog post about volunteering for a non-profit, Vittana , which ended up turning into business.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Founder SEO LLC 48

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

For software developers 37signals has a great job board as does TechCocktail and if you’re looking for design talent Krop , Smashing Magazine , and elegant.ly The first place to start when looking for that certain someone is within your own network. Related posts: Ten small business tax planning tips for 2010!

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Hiring Employee Harvest Salary 99

Tim Keane

MAY 22, 2006

  Tomorrow, you're going to close your first professional investment with "Fred," a wealthy individual you met at a networking event.     He's also requiring that you source your software development through his consulting company at a price "to be negotiated." 

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Offshore Warrant Angel Investor 60

Seeing Both Sides

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to drop out of Harvard and move to Silicon Valley was a plot point in in the movie “The Social Network,” it looked like a watershed event to many in the local technology community.

Massachusetts 33

Massachusetts Silicon Valley Washington Boston 33

discuss.joelonsoftware.com

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

Right now, my business is just myself and a part-time employee who does support, testing, and product usability design. I intend to rewrite my internal 50-page business plan into an investors proposal. In particular, I want to bring on a full-time marketing person, and a full-time developer. You simply need to network.

Sweat Equity 40

Sweat Equity Equity Angel Investor Affiliate 40

Software By Rob

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

Jokes aside, the top-down approach has its place in business plans and pitch decks commonly used to ask people for money. Your Market is Smaller Than You Think | Software by Rob – some tips to help you avoid over estimating the size of your market [.] #10 But it worked for a lot of the dot com’s in the early 2000s.

Marketing 64

Marketing Software Review Matching Bootstrapping 64

thebarefootvc

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

I have just started a new job with the Omidyar Network. At the Clinton Global Initiative last September, Pierre Omidyar, co-founder of eBay, announced a commitment from his philanthrocapitalist firm to invest millions of dollars in mobile applications and services, with a focus on developing markets globally. Now, the present.

Silicon Valley 45

Silicon Valley India Africa Burma 45

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

This isnt trivial - believing in the projections and selling your passion and networking to find investors are all really hard. I cant keep count of the number of people who I talk to on a daily basis online or in person, at networking events, etc. social network/web analysis/etc. Hint: these arent real businesses.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

A business person may have equal or more valuable skills than a software person, but they are not universally understood in the simplistic way that software people’s skills are. Ask anybody what a software developer does and they can give you the one-sentence “makes software” answer.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Software By Rob

AUGUST 18, 2010

at 1:59 pm i do believe it depends on your business model. if your model requires a “network effect&# to get to where you’re product is useful — foursquare, multiplayer games, sharing apps in general — then freemium if for sure the way to go. at 1:59 pm i do believe it depends on your business model.

Software Review 78

Software Review Software Revenue Cofounder 78

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

How to stay lean and iterate quickly while you’re building a two sided marketplace, especially when “network effect” and “critical mass” are the two main focuses? Spend 20% of your time building a network of advisors that can help you. How I can find the right investor (software)?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

They write everything from assembly to jQuery, on PCs to mobile phones, doing hard core computer graphics to high level social networking. Big things, like obscuring the networking stack under so many countless layers of abstraction that it’s virtually impossible to even imagine what bytes are actually going over the wire.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

blog.captainrecruiter.com

MARCH 8, 2012

If you want to build a business that requires software, be prepared to invest a little money. I recently met a junior software developer working for $200/week + room & board at a business geeks house. The business geek needed a working software prototype and the programmer needed experience.

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Software Engineering 40

www.virtuosimedia.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Gather your market research, your business plan, and your prototype and make your presentation to potential CTOs. Software development is like an iceberg – 90% of it is under the surface. Sign that person to an NDA if necessary. Test your prototype in your target market. Rework it as necessary.

Technical Cofounder 41

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review NDA 41

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Steve Smith • Nov 8, 2010 I've always thought that a funny thing to do would be to post an ad on Craigslist saying "I'm a rockstar developer who is looking for the next great idea. you can steal an idea just from hearing it, it is not really a good defensible business idea. Yishan Wong • Nov 8, 2010 lol.if

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42