March, 2009

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supermac War Story 1: Joining supermac

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Lessons Learned: Combining agile development with customer development

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. Hes often felt that there was something missing. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

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What type of entity should I form?

Startup Company Lawyer

C corps, LLCs, and S corps differ significantly in the areas of taxation, ownership, fundraising, governance and structure, and employee compensation. Almost all technology startup companies that I work with are C corps. Any company that raises venture financing will need to be a C corp in order to issue preferred stock. If founders want the benefit of flow through tax treatment with respect to losses prior to an outside financing, an S corp election may make sense as long as there are no enti

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Here is My Glimpse of the Future

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← A Glimpse of the Future What is the Micropreneur Academy? → Here is My Glimpse of the Future Micropreneurship If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place. Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

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ProfessorVC: Bootstrapping 101

Professor VC

ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Tuesday, March 10, 2009. Bootstrapping 101. I moderated a panel discussion last night on one of my favorite topics, bootstrapping, as part of our Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship Eminent Speaker Series at San Jose State. One of my colleagues, Joel West, beat me to the punch with a summary of the program.

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Hybrid clouds are coming

BeyondVC

Amazon has taken off with its cloud compute infrastructure but there still have been some limitations from an enterprise perspective.  Mainly, some enterprises are concerned about keeping their data private, about reliability, and storage costs over time.  Any enterprise looking at potentially leveraging the cloud would love to have a hybrid solution which allows them to manage their own internal cloud and then burst over to a public cloud for either automated failover, extra storage

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More Trending

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Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free Im honored to announce that my Lean Startup session at the Web 2.0 Expo has been selected as one of a few "hybrid sessions" for Web2Open , the expo unconference. What does this mean for you? Two important things: Those of you at the Expo will be able to join in an open discussion session immediately following my talk on April 1st.

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Entrepreneurship for everyone - Startups and angels: Along the way.

Tim Keane

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « How does your marketing react to the economic crisis? | Main. | Bootstrap your venture » March 17, 2009. Entrepreneurship for everyone. Marquette University today approved the creation of a Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship , which will be offered through the Graduate School of Management starting in fall 2009.  I'm really

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A Glimpse of the Future

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Something Big is Coming… Here is My Glimpse of the Future → A Glimpse of the Future Micropreneurship If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place. Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed.

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Trail Mix and Online Advertising

Eric Friedman

What does trail mix have to do with online advertising? More than you might think as explained in the new white paper linked below. Trail Mix by sylvainleprovost. Darren Herman , who is a thought leader in the ad planning world, recently published Disintermediation of Online Display Advertising ( Link to the PDF ) In which he recounts the early stages of online advertising and brings you up to speed in a clear and concise way.

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Targeted television advertising is finally here

BeyondVC

I have written a few post about the future of television advertising ( 10/2004 , 11/2006 , and 12/2006 ).  Yes the web has taken over and yes video on the web is advancing rapidly but that does not mean that the $60b spent on television advertising will disappear overnight.  What is needed for the industry is a way to make television commercials more relevant, targeted, and dynamic.  In other words, some of the best practices and technology from Internet advertising should be b

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SuperMac War Story 3: Customer Insight Is Everyone's Job « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st A surprising number of respondents in the latest Lessons Learned survey hail from one of the flourishing startup hubs in Canada. Who knew? In order to reduce my incredible ignorance about other such hubs, Im heading to Vancouver. In keeping with my recent theme of blogging about upcoming events, Im happy to announce that Ill be speaking at Agile Vancouver on April 21.

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How To Monetize a Social Network: MySpace and Facebook Should Follow TenCent

abovethecrowd.com

“Little Joe never once gave it away Everybody had to pay and pay” — Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side The consensus seems to be that social networks have a monetization problem. On this topic, both the leading technology industry blogs and the world’s top news organizations agree. [.].

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Something Big is Coming…

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Marketing is Design: Three Words that Increased My E-commerce Sales 1000% Overnight A Glimpse of the Future → Something Big is Coming… Micropreneurship If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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The “Googles” of the World

Eric Friedman

I am not sure there is such thing as “the Google’s of the world” There is Google, then there are other search engines and companies. You cannot group a bunch of companies together by claiming “they” are the “Googles of the world” This is not in support of or against Google, but rather acknowledging there is currently no way to generalize them.

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Don’t Regulate, Bound Corporate Liability Limitations

Andrew Payne

Recent discussions about bailouts and regulations have got me thinking. Corporations enable capitalism. The main feature is limited liability, which limits owner’s losses to their original investment and employee’s to losing their jobs. In other words, if a corporation has obligations it can’t fulfill, the owners (stockholders) and employees aren’t on the hook.

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If I Told You I'd Have to Kill You: The Story Behind “The Secret.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Lo, my 2295 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 4, 2009 Lo, my 2295 subscribers, who are you? Ive previously written about the advantages of having a pathetically small number of customers , and how to get started with customer segmentation. Since my subscriber count has doubled again (thanks!), it seemed time to return to the subject of investigating who my customers are.

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Looking For Work: Are You an Insurance Agent?

abovethecrowd.com

While it may seem hard to believe in such a dire hiring environment, one of our investments, LiveOps, has excess “demand” for workers. That’s right — excess demand for workers. For those of you that don’t know, LiveOps is a very, very cool company. Their core technology is a SAAS “contact center in cloud.” Just [.

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The Collapse of the VC Ecosystem & What It Will Look Like Post.

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Come Attend the First TheFunded East Coast Event in Boston The Absurdity of the Madoff Conspiracy & the Dangers of the Slippery Slope → The Collapse of the VC Ecosystem & What It Will Look Like Post Recovery Posted on March 8, 2009 by fnazeeri The venture capital ecosystem is in the midst of an historic collapse.

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More on Financial Regulation, Its Unintended Consequences, and the Geithner Plan

Pascal's View

The media is full of negative reactions related to. the announcement of Treasury Secretary Geithner’s extensive regulatory reform plan for the oversight of the capital markets.   I can't imagine that an announcement of this nature wasn’t widely. expected.   On November 28 th , 2008 I posted a warning on this specific issue: A Case. Study in the Unintended Consequences of Financial Market Regulation: The Death. of the Small Cap U.S.

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Teaching Google

Andrew Payne

If you extrapolate to a future where all information is on-line, how important is “knowing” vs having the ability to find what you need? “Knowing” will always be important, especially when combined with experience. I wouldn’t want to cross a bridge designed by someone who learned finite element analysis by reading Wikipedia.

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The Story Behind the Secret History Part II. Getting B-52s through.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Lessons Learned: Venture Hacks interview: "What is the minimum.

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 23, 2009 Venture Hacks interview: "What is the minimum viable product?" I recently say down with Venture Hacks for an interview. Part one is up on their site today , in text, audio and slide format. Here are some topics and excerpts of what we covered, edited lightly for how I wish Id said it at the time. To hear full audio and a complete transcript, click through to Venture Hacks.

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Note To Timothy Geithner: Do Startups & Venture Capitalists Really Need More Regulation?

abovethecrowd.com

Mr. Geithner: In the late 1990′s, in response to the obvious financial shenanigans of large companies like Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom, Washington handed us the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. I have no idea how effective Sarbanes has been at reducing fraud (it obviously did not prevent our current economic malaise), but I do know one thing. Sarbox created [.].

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Five Steps to Music Nirvana

Jason Ball

Step 1. Get Spotify. Step 2. Sign up for an account at last.fm. Step 3. Enable scrobbling inside the prefs pane in Spotify. Step 4. Check this site to find new artists based on your las.fm recommendations [link]. Step 5. Enjoy your new found music nirvana. Tags: Music.

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ITSEF III– Protecting our Nation’s Critical Infrastructure and Our Innovation Ecosystem Are Both Matters of National Security

Pascal's View

Mark Weatherford, the Chief Information Security Officer at the State of California , posted on his blog, Securing GovSpace, about his experience as a panelist at the third annual IT Security Entrepreneurs Forum.  He commented on his overall experience as well as on the panel which I moderated " Is There an Innovation Crisis in America ?": "While all of the sessions were unique and informative, the panel discussion on "Is There An Innovation Crisis in America" was very

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Idea: Cell Phone Companies Provide Virtual Household Numbers

Andrew Payne

As we give up land-lines for cell phones, there’s still one useful purpose for the plain-old telephone: providing a number for the entire “household” There are a bunch of cases where a household number is needed: giving an emergency contact number for school/camp/etc., having a contact to give the power company/cable company/bank, etc.

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Watch This Space

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico

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Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? My answer is almost always the same: dont. First off, what does it mean to launch? Generally, we conflate two unrelated concepts into the term, which is important to clarify right up front.

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Popular Posts

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Global Nuances of Startup Compensation Obama Shoots Down 90% Tax Bracket → Popular Posts Posted on March 17, 2009 by fnazeeri Once again, here is a list of some of the more popular posts on this blog. The two most popular posts remain this one on term sheet negotiation and this one on venture debt , although this one on convertible debt is giving them a run for their m

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The Future of Search

Jason Ball

I've been blogging about the search space for a couple of years , and this has to be one of the most promising developments I've seen: Wolfram Alpha. While Nova Spivak has an excellent overview of what Wolfram Alpha is trying to achieve, this will give you an idea: Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know.

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American Innovation Is In Crisis: Why and How To Fix It

Pascal's View

I’ve been to Washington, D.C. twice in the last two weeks to. speak with legislators and government agency representatives about the need for. a renewed public policy commitment dedicated to supporting long-term innovation in. America. This morning I gave a keynote speech at the Cybersecurity Applications. and Technologies Conference for Homeland Security (CATCH) , delivering the. message that U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship, the crucial growth engines of. the U.S. economy, are at risk of s

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The Venture Capital Shakeout

Andrew Payne

The venture capital business is in the middle of a shakeout. For too long, venture’s been over-funded and over-staffed with homogeneity: the same kinds of partners, operating with the same fund model, looking at the same investments, in the same markets. It took an economic meltdown for LPs to finally realize they were putting money into an asset class that wasn’t generating a return commensurate with the risk.

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SuperMac War Story 2: Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions.

Steve Blank

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (22) E.piphany (6) ESL (7) Family/Career (21) Market Types (9) Marketing (17) MIPS Computers (1) Rocket Science Games (7) Secret History of Silico