Sat.Nov 14, 2009 - Fri.Nov 20, 2009

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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of my Startup Advice series. I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. You are constantly faced with decisions and there is always incomplete information.

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Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

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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Passion as a Competitive Advantage

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Debt, Equity and a Third (and Fourth) Thing that Might Work Better Book Recommendations – The Best Marketing Books of All Time → Passion as a Competitive Advantage Micropreneurship , Software Development , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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Fighting an Asymmetrical Cyber War– Why We Need to Take A Different Approach

Pascal's View

The current issue of Foreign Affairs features an important essay by Wesley Clark and Peter Levin (see bios below), Securing the Information Highway- How to Enhance the United States’ Electronic Defenses. General Clark and Mr. Levin not only succinctly summarize the fact that America remains “an easy target”, especially for “electronically advanced adversaries”, they spend a considerable amount of time on the topic of supply chain assurance and the massive challenge

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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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Don’t Roll out the Red Carpet on the Way out the Door

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of my Startup Advice series. Before I started my first company in 1999 I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). One of the things I noticed was that when really talented people – The “A players&# – wanted to quit, the firm would quickly scramble to try and keep that person from resigning. Suddenly it was star treatment and all sorts of promises about the future.

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ProfessorVC: Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?

Professor VC

ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Thursday, November 19, 2009. Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught? I attended the annual LP meeting for a venture capital firm this week and got into a discussion about the above question. Seems like a good question to ponder given that I spend several hours each week as a professor of Entrepreneurship. At a high level, I definitely agree that being an entrepreneur and being in school dont necessarily mix.

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Negative Customer Acquisition Costs - Creative Startup Marketing Ideas - Eric David Greenspan

SoCal CTO

I’ve recently had a chance to reconnect with Eric David Greenspan ( LinkedIn , Twitter ) He’s the CEO of Make It Work a high quality, personal, high touch technology service provider for homes and small businesses. He’s done several startups and is a board member of the Technology Council of Southern California (which is where I met him originally).

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Closure

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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Why Aren’t People Reading Your Blog?

Rembrandt Communications

Many new clients tell me that they have a blog, but no one is reading it. Other clients ask me if they need a blog. Well, if you have a blog, or are wondering if you need one, you may have these questions: What’s the point? Before you start writing, figure out why you want [.].

PR 113
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You Hardly Ever Fail Because of Your CTO

Babbling VC

This has been said many times before but I'll say it again. It's not about technology or innovation. It's all about customers and sales. I've noticed recently that you have lots of entrepreneurs always pitching their newest "mousetrap". Unfortunately, the discussion about how you're going to find customers for your product and sell it to them comes late or never.

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Quick way to know whether you are a good leader

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Scarce resources means that you have to be creative in getting people motivated to work for you. Leadership is a big word. So how can you gauge how effective you are as a leader. Here are some quick ways. It’s good to do a self assessment periodically so that you can stay on your A game. Most people are better at it than others. Me, I tend to pick up the clues that people give whether it be a joke or a feedback sit down session.

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Be Careful What You Wish For…

Pascal's View

Everybody has an agenda, and we are all influenced by our personal experiences and biases. In reading many of the media reports after the release of the Grant Thornton study, A Wake Up Call for America , I have seen both thoughtful commentary in publications such as The Economist and the Wall Street Journal , as well as dismissive reports by some who find that the Grant Thornton study’s facts inconveniently stand in the way of their own agendas.

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Are You Using This Skill To Build Your Customer Base?

Rembrandt Communications

If you want to increase your level of returning customers, there is one major thing that you need to take care of at the very beginning of every relationship – Expectations. This may sound simple, but if you don’t spell out what you are going to provide for the money, you can run into major [.].

Customer 113
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Time for Massachusetts to Pass Education Reform

Seeing Both Sides

I've been blogging for five years about the start-up, innovation economy and I almost never write about politics. But this week is different. This week, the Massachusetts Legislature is about to vote on a bill to (finally) reform education in Massachusetts - to lift the cap on charter schools, empower commissioners to reform the worst-performing schools and create "Readiness Schools" that get around the usual bureaucracy and drive towards academic excellence.

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Spencer Fry — Three's Company

Spencer Fry

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Link to Archived Grant Thornton Webcast; Accounting Bloggers Weigh in on Study

Pascal's View

The Big Four Blog , written by professionals and alumni from the accounting firms of Accenture, Andersen, BearingPoint, CapGemini, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. made the following comments on Grant Thornton’s Wake Up Call for America: First of all, we must say it is a compelling read with some disturbing trends and conclusions that vividly show that the US has experienced serious decline of leadership in the IPO market, and overseas markets hav

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Are You Using This Skill To Build Your Customer Base?

Rembrandt Communications

If you want to increase your level of returning customers, there is one major thing that you need to take care of at the very beginning of every relationship – Expectations. This may sound simple, but if you don’t spell out what you are going to provide for the money, you can run into major [.].

Customer 100
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Debt, Equity and a Third (and Fourth) Thing that Might Work Better

Software By Rob

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Highlights from the 2009 Business of Software Conference Passion as a Competitive Advantage → Debt, Equity and a Third (and Fourth) Thing that Might Work Better Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

Equity 42
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To the Entrepreneur, Cash is Almost As Important As Breathing (But Only a Close Second) - Part II

Small Business Force

Business Master QuickTip - Cash Management In a previous posting, we made the point that cash flow, its generation, its conservation and, overall, its management is the single most important discipline an entrepreneur must learn to be truly successful. In that posting we dealt with cash generation. Today, we'll address an increasingly critical problem � cash management � controlling collections and payments.