Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. Fundamentally, lean startups do more with less, because they systematically find and eliminate waste that slows down value creation. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it? I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Cracking the Code

JANUARY 22, 2009

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Thursday, January 22, 2009. Building Your SaaS Sales Compensation Plan. Compensating the sales force is a difficult task and the key is usually to keep things simple, so that each sales rep knows what he needs to optimize to make more money at the end of the quarter.

Software Review 91

Software Review Clawback Sales Salary 91

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 20, 2009

I'm happy to announce the launch of the Los Angeles Tech Content Community. This is the beginning of a content community that collects and organizes the best content from blogs and web sites. The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding Los Angeles Technology. To be clear Los Angeles Tech is a jump off point.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles San Diego Viral Metrics 150

Altgate

JANUARY 17, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← So Bad It’s Good Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds → Fidelity Center For Applied Technology Posted on January 17, 2009 by fnazeeri Yesterday I received a tour of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, a.k.a.

Technical Review 31

Technical Review Technology Venture Capital Social Network 31

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

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 21, 2009

Here is an astonishingly brilliant, yet simple idea (if I may say so myself!): Why just measure conversions as one purchase or conversions just as a submission of a lead or opening of an account on facebook / twitter / what ever? Why not measure Visitor behavior after that first purchase / lead / membership sign up (or the first super poke)? Why obsess about the "quickie" that is opening an account?

Analytics 75

Analytics Conversion Campaign Metrics 75

BeyondVC

JANUARY 22, 2009

I had lunch with a friend last week when we were talking about the days years and years ago where it was cool to have an email address on your business card.  In fact, I remember picking attorneys to work on our venture deals in the mid-90s not only based on cost and experience but also based on how digital they were – no AOL email addresses please and if you use IM, then great.  Now I can honestly say that I can be overburdened at times dealing with my email, IMs, sms messages

SMS 60

SMS Search Email Campaign 60

Andrew Payne

JANUARY 23, 2009

I thought Matt Burns’s article about Apple’s relatively simple product line struck a chord: Garmin makes 82 GPS units that can be mounted in a car or carried in your hand. 82!?! That’s a lot and includes 27 designed specifically for the car. If Apple made a GPS, there would be two models available – maybe only one. Apple would shove everything they could into this one GPS and sell it at a profit instead of making similar different models that feature slightly different specs. .

Product 40

Product Design Networking Management 40

Professor VC

JANUARY 20, 2009

ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The Most Important Venture Capital Statistic. A couple of headlines caught my eye in this mornings VentureWire : Deals Slow As VC Feels Economic Chill Web Video Platform Fliqz Gains $6M In Series C Funding The funding news and general condition of the economy has been no secret and certainly wasnt a surprise that venture funding in the fourth quarter was the lowest level in four years and most expect the decline to conti

Venture Capital 28

Venture Capital Silicon Valley San Jose Bootstrapping 28

BeyondVC

JANUARY 22, 2009

My brother-in-law, composer and recent Emmy winner, Ben Decter , is kicking it this week in Sundance while two of his movies Heart of Stone and We Live in Public make the rounds. This summer he and I spoke about We Live in Public and Josh Harris.  It took me a few minutes to remember who he was and meeting him more than a few times while he was out raising capital for one of his many projects, Pseudo.com.

Hockey Stick 60

Hockey Stick Web New York Social Network 60

Altgate

JANUARY 18, 2009

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Fidelity Center For Applied Technology How to Fail Successfully → Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds Posted on January 18, 2009 by fnazeeri Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds is one of my favorite books and included in it is one of my all time favorite quotes: Men, it has been well said, think in herds ; it will be seen

Mississippi 28

Mississippi Venture Capital Green Internet 28

Andrew Payne

JANUARY 23, 2009

I was surprised at Microsoft’s recent layoff news: (a) this is their first major layoff, and (b) they’re only laying off 5%. The financial analysts are calling this the indicator of general technology/software woes. The technology sector is definitely challenged, but Microsoft’s problems are quite unique. They’re an old-line software company with a market structure and core business changing out from under them: Most high-volume, general purpose software components (e.g

Software 40

Software Revenue Technology Marketing 40

Jason Ball

JANUARY 18, 2009

Every year I start off with a retrospective of what’s just happened over the past 12 months. I guess the difference this year is that everyone knows 2008 was simply awful across the board… Icon Corporate Finance has provided the data points though, demonstrating that 2008 looked very grim: You’ll notice the vast majority of exits were sub $100M last year, while valuations outside of this band are falling fast.

Merger 28

Merger California Acquisition Valuation 28