Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2011

Since my background includes software development, I often get the question about when to build a solution in-house, versus outsourcing it to a local company, near-shore service, or off-shore organization in China, India, or Eastern Europe. In the USA, “near-shore” is a euphemism for connected countries, like Mexico and Canada. There is no simple answer to that question for all cases, but there certainly are some key considerations which will help you select the optimal solution for your case.

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Intellectual Property Non-disclosure Agreement Non-Compete Vietnam 225

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 16, 2011

It’s easy to think that the wife of a well-known & successful VC ( Fred Wilson ) would have had an easy and storied life of wealth and privilege. I had previously had the opportunity to spend time with Joanne Wilson , Fred’s wife, and knew otherwise. That’s why I was so interested in having “ The Gotham Gal &# come on This Week in VC ( video link on YouTube , download iTunes, episode 15) ) and dispel those myths.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment with a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. With two weeks and two more updates to go, this post is part six. Parts one through five are here , Syllabus is here. While we’ve been pushing hard on the teams, this week the teaching team was about to get its socks blown off. All the teams were showing us what agile looked like, but this week several would remind us what focused and relentless really meant.

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Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. Home. About Me. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Cliff Notes S-1: Kayak. April 17, 2011. I thought it was time to revisit my series of “Cliff Notes” S-1s. In 2010 I deconstructed the filings for GameFly and Quinstreet. Quinstreet priced at $15.00/sh and debuted on 2/10/10, today they’re at $20.53 (close 4/13/11) an increase of nearly 40%.

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Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

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

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 21, 2011

In a second, with Google, I can find a phone number that was assigned to you ten years ago, but it takes me an hour to find your phone number on that business card you gave me last week. That’s just wrong. We need instant access to the most important of all resources, current contact info. Too many of us have piles of business cards scattered around the office and home, as well as additional contacts on your cell phone, PDA, Outlook, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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Technical Review Technology Software Review Social Network 209

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

I recently sat down with Matt Coffin , the founder of LowerMyBills, which sold for $400 million but was very nearly a bankruptcy only a few years early, and talked “startups.&#. Matt is one of the most transparent, focused & honest startup guys you’ll meet. You can watch him on YouTube , download in iTunes (for gym or commute) 3/31/11 edition.

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ReadWriteStart

APRIL 19, 2011

It's a familiar story: a startup launches their beta. The tech blogosphere writes up the news: "Sign up now!" Droves of people rush to do so (well, hopefully). There's a spike in traffic and solid number of names and email addresses of interested people. But then what? Do you have the right people in your beta? Are you going to get the right feedback?

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Technical Review Viral Startup Email 118

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

The best survival guides tell you how to be proactive and avoid the probabilities of ending up in a worst case scenario. Of course you need to learn how to recognize a bad situation before it bites you, and you need to know all the secret ways to wiggle your way out, before you succumb. The challenges stem from the simple fact that every entrepreneur is starting something new, where things are predictably unpredictable.

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Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. One example is that they introduced a program where their founders can pool together shares from their company and exchange them for a small portfolio of other First Round Capital companies.

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Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review Cofounder Cram Down 284

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 18, 2011

After almost five years of working closely with a partner in an internet venture, I have had a great deal of time to think about how to do it better. At times it has been as easy as could be – enjoying the work together, assisting one another seamlessly, being greater than the sum of our separate parts and more able than the sums of our separate skills.

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Up and Running

APRIL 20, 2011

Tweet A few weeks ago a co-worker sent me an instant message: “You’ve got to watch this business plan pitch. It’s crazy!&#. Of course I clicked and watched it. It only takes a few minutes before the “disbelief&# starts. I’ve seen professionals shun slick PowerPoint slides to use handwritten or even marked up on whiteboard slides instead.

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Business Plan Technical Review Software Review Audience 68

Growthink Blog

APRIL 18, 2011

The founders of wildly successful companies - with their world-changing impacts and their awe-inspiring wealth creation - receive much well-earned praise and financial rewards for turning their great entrepreneurial visions into reality. But what about those with 1-2 degrees of separation who also benefit immensely? Angel investors like Andy Bechtolsheim - who put $100,000 into Google in September 1998, a position now worth more than $1.7 billion.

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Russia Software Review Angel Investor Stock 76

Start Up Blog

APRIL 22, 2011

A short review of some of the changes in technology in the past 10 years. Who has arrived on the seen, what’s different and new and how Moore’s law is still rapidly changing the world. Enjoy! 10 years in Tech. View more presentations from sammartino.

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Technical Review Technology Advertising Finance 63

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2011

When the student is ready, the master appears. Buddhist Proverb. Lots of entrepreneurs believe they want a mentor. In fact, they’re actually asking for a teacher or a coach. A mentor relationship is a two-way street. To make it work, you have to bring something to the party. A Question from the Audience. Recently when I was at a conference taking questions from the audience, I got a question that I had never heard before.

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Early Stage Audience Hiring Business Model 295

Hippoland

APRIL 17, 2011

The customers we serve at LaunchBit are entrepreneurs, so they tend to be pretty creative in getting what they want. I thought I’d share some of the ways they’ve taught me to be a more effective customer. . 1) Just show up. At LaunchBit, we often speak in public, and almost all of our events sell out quickly. When all our tickets are gone, we often get a barrage of requests asking if there are extra tickets.

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Customer Massachusetts Software Review Email 48

deal architect

APRIL 19, 2011

I wrote a few weeks ago about why I was excited about SuiteWorld coming up May 9. “It is NetSuite’s first global customer event. You have to admire their discipline – many vendors have one even before their first year.

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Global Customer 253

Start Up Blog

APRIL 22, 2011

A short review of some of the changes in technology in the past 10 years. Who has arrived on the seen, what’s different and new and how Moore’s law is still rapidly changing the world. Enjoy! 10 years in Tech. View more presentations from sammartino.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Technology Advertising Finance 63

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2011

Face reality. As an entrepreneur, you should assume none of your customers is like you, yet I find that most entrepreneurs assume just the opposite. Customers don’t have your technical base, the passion, and interest in your solution. In fact, even if they did, they couldn’t find you in the clutter. An underrated portion of every startup effort must be about communication and marketing.

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Marketing Startup Database Social Media 249

Life Beyond Code

APRIL 22, 2011

How does a smart person get smarter? It’s not an easy question to answer. For questions like this, you will be tempted to take an “escape from it&# approach by saying that “smartness&# cannot be defined in absolute terms so it is a waste of time. Worse yet, you can take the approach of saying “everyone is smart in their own way&# so why bother?

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Jordan Operations Sales Management 152

deal architect

APRIL 21, 2011

Fred Reichheld coined the term “good profits” in his book Ultimate Question. His point was in pursuit of financial goals we often focus on certain fees (and related profits) which actually turn off customers and lead to dissatisfaction and worse.

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Revenue Customer 236

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 21, 2011

I was going to write a different post this morning, but I came across this post by Matt Haughey titled Ev’s assholishness is greatly exaggerated and, after reading it, sat for a few minutes and thought about it. Go read it now and come back. Welcome back. I’m not an investor in Twitter directly (I am indirectly in a tiny amount through several of the VC funds I’m an investor in) but I’m an enormous Twitter fan and user.

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Cofounder Seattle Founder Naming 141

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2011

A while back I emphasized how important is to have a company website these days ( Publish Your Website Or Customers Won’t Find You ). I should have added that a website not optimized for search engines is lost in the heap of a billion dead websites. Unless someone searches for your company by name, it won’t show up in the first few pages of any search results.

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Search SEM SEO Engineer 233

Life Beyond Code

APRIL 18, 2011

You would have observed this in your own life. You are meeting someone for the first time. You have heard from your friends that the person you are going to meet is very smart. You Google d this person and learned a bit more. You go to the meeting with high expectations. The meeting is great but by the end of the meeting, your viewpoint about the person has changed a bit.

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Conversion Design 143

deal architect

APRIL 21, 2011

For the most part, Dennis Howlett is right about how Oracle communicates with the world. But differently from him, I actually see a thaw there. I was pleased to be invited to meet with SVP, Steve Miranda a couple of.

Software 225

Software 225

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 16, 2011

I strongly believe that entrepreneurial education and community building is not a zero sum game. So when Jim Franklin, the CEO of SendGrid (one of our portfolio companies and a TechStars Boulder mentor) asked if I would write a post about the Founder Institute program in Boulder, I told him that I’d give him control of my blog to write a guest post on it.

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Colorado Founder Denver Cofounder 135

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 19, 2011

Entrepreneurship is not a job for the Lone Ranger. Every startup requires building and maintaining effective relationships with people, including partners, team members, customers, and investors. That means giving and asking for feedback, and learning from it, especially negative feedback. “Friction” is feedback mixed with emotion, making it all the more difficult to sort out the value.

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Rembrandt Communications

APRIL 18, 2011

Your Website is up and running, and you love it. But, what do your customers think? If your site traffic is low (check your Google analytics to find out), it’s time to take a closer look at your site. The good news is, you can make a few, free changes that result in drastic improvements. [.].

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Analytics Customer SEO PR 113

deal architect

APRIL 16, 2011

On the New Florence blog John Deere’s FarmSight Virgin Galactic seeking pilot-astronauts Mattel games and brain-machine interfaces Hamilton County, Indiana next-gen 911 Lexmark Genesis – printer for our social, mobile, cloud times.

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Indiana Cloud Mobile Technology 218

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 16, 2011

After my Schoolhouse Rock posting on how a bill becomes a law, several people sent me alternative versions of the video. This one rang true to me. This one – not so much – but it made me laugh out loud. And then there’s this.

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Video 127

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 18, 2011

Every entrepreneur wishes that he could predict whether his idea could be the “next big thing,” before he spent his life savings and years of energy on it. Investors, on the other hand, typically don’t even look very hard at the product or service, but prefer to evaluate first the entrepreneur, and secondly the business plan. I define these products and services as “solutions” (customers buy solutions to a problem), but Guy Kawasaki more generically calls them causes, meaning any new idea, compa

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Entrepreneur Search Web Business Plan 228

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 18, 2011

Businesses, startups especially, always have a hard time sourcing quality candidates for new jobs, even if they have big budgets for a Human Resources team or outside recruiters who can scrape around and find leads. But for startups and small businesses looking to hire for new positions in order to operate at optimal speed, hiring new team members that work out in the long-run can be one of the more difficult challenges.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 19, 2011

Yesterday, an entrepreneur asked me whether or not First Round does convertible notes. I wasn’t trying to be evasive, but after saying that we have done them on occasion, I pushed the entrepreneur to think deeper about his fundraising goals. To me, asking about a whether a VC does a specific security seems like the wrong question. It’s like asking an assassin whether or not he uses rifles or grenades—it really depends on the situation and what you’re trying to optimize fo

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Paraguay Dilution Valuation Seed Stage 110

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 18, 2011

Many entrepreneurs have heard that 90% of startups fail within two years. Looking at the number of startups launched every month and the many that hit the deadpool, that’s not a shocking number. There’s research suggesting that the failure rates are actually smaller. However, this is a disctinction without a meaningful difference for companies that are unable to build strong teams.

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Startup Chicago Community Video 110

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

APRIL 20, 2011

“Know what you want – and get it&# - Sushmita Sen, Miss.Universe, 1994 ‘Take what you want, and pay for it’ says God - Old Spanish proverb The Secret Of Success I’m going to tell you a little story. It’s about a man who wanted to know the secret of success, and decided to find out from a Guru. Now this was a wise, old sage who knew every secret of Life.

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ReadWriteStart

APRIL 21, 2011

On April 16, I was in Mumbai doing a live 1M/1M event with TiE Mumbai and Indian Angel Network (IAN). While in Mumbai, I also finalized a deeper partnership with IAN, which I will discuss later in this post. I presented my usual 1M/1M perspective on bootstrapping. After the event, I received an email from Aneesh Khanna saying, "The Saturday Mumbai TiE session was a very enriching experience.

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Growthink Blog

APRIL 22, 2011

Last week I held our monthly Growthink University (GTU) members-only call. On the call, GTU members ask me all of their business questions, and I dish out answers based on my years of experience starting, growing and selling companies. The calls are usually a lot of fun for everyone.although I tend to lose my voice near the end. Why? Because I tend to get excited when answering questions and start speaking louder and faster.

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Jordan Stock Entrepreneur Customer 97