A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

In the last post I beat you to death about ditching your business plan but failed to provide an alternative. Okay okay, "Planning == Bad," but the supposed benefits of planning are still important: designing for profitability, understanding your customers and competitors, focusing your attention, deciding what's worth doing next, changing directions, and ensuring the founders agree on important issues.

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In that post, I took it for granted that vanity metrics are bad for you, and focused on techniques for creating and learning from actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 21, 2009

Sometimes financial decisions that are seemingly rational on their face can precipitate mass exodus of your best engineers. We Hired the CFO. Last week as a favor to a friend, I sat in on a board meeting of a fairly successful 3½ year-old startup. Given all that could go wrong in this economy, they were doing well. Their business had just crossed cash flow breakeven, had grown past 50 employees, just raised a substantive follow-on round of financing and had recently hired a Chief Financial Offi

Engineer 335

Engineer Valuation Hiring Stock 335

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 21, 2009

This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts , Ability to Pivot , Resiliency and Inspiration.

San Jose 290

San Jose Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Los Angeles 290

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

Rembrandt Communications

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Congratulations! You’ve made it through the unique challenges 2009 had to offer small business owners, and now it’s time to celebrate. With this in mind, here are a few tips to have a G-R-E-A-T holiday: G: Give Back To The Community. Volunteer to help a local charity. Donate your used clothing and other items to [.].

Community 113

Community Small Business Public Relations PR 113

Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 21, 2009

You know what is the one thing stopping you from finding truly actionable insights from your web data? Web analytics gems lie deep in the data and we spend our lives looking at the top ten rows of data. It does not matter which report you look at. Affiliates. Products sold. Referring URL's. Pages viewed. Search keywords. Promotions. Geographies.

Analytics 94

Analytics Metrics Cloud Web 94

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 19, 2009

This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. If you haven’t spent time over there you should. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. I then covered Street Smarts , Ability to Pivot and Resiliency.

Entrepreneur 288

Entrepreneur Early Stage Leadership Salary 288

OnlyOnce

DECEMBER 21, 2009

Innovating in New York City Last week I wrote about speaking at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup. One of my other key takeaways from this, which I've known for a while and have been meaning to blog about, is just how vibrant the tech startup community is here in New York. I know others have been blogging about this like mad - Fred has some thoughts here , here , and here , and Charlie has some here and here.

New York City 48

New York City New York Silicon Valley Denver 48

A Crowded Space

DECEMBER 25, 2009

60

60

Startup Company Lawyer

DECEMBER 22, 2009

[I know it's been a long time since I posted anything, but I was recently accused of having a dead or dying blog and felt compelled to post something.]. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati provides a powerful online tool that provides clean technology entrepreneurs and companies with a searchable, easy-to-use source for federal and state government funding opportunities and guidance on how to apply.

Government 30

Government Aggregator Finance Search 30

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 20, 2009

This has been a year where people got mad in mass at financial institutions. It’s hard not to when you think about the amount of money that flowed into their coffers and the size of expected bonuses this year – of all years. Frankly, it disgusts me. But I’m not one to take on the big investment banks – I’ll save that for somebody else.

Direct Marketing 263

Direct Marketing Private Equity Sacramento Marketing 263

entrepreMusings

DECEMBER 22, 2009

I couldn’t end the year without at least one more post! It has been quite a year, and I needed to take a break so that my off blog/real life wouldn’t bleed too heavily into my online blog life as it seemed to start to do. For those of you who are writers, you know how hard it is not to let your real life affect your writing even if it’s only subtly profound.

Incubator 28

Incubator Austin Hosting Business Model 28

Spencer Fry

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Cofounder 63

Cofounder Founder 63

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 24, 2009

I’m sitting next to the fireplace in my favorite chair listening to holiday music, looking at the ocean and making occasional attempts to “help” get ready for Christmas dinner. We went for a hike checking out our new trail signs and playing “spot the bobcat.” Our kids are home for the school break, some friends are visiting from the east coast and we have everything for the holidays but snow on the California coast.

Thailand 150

Thailand Michigan Vietnam California 150

Genuine VC

DECEMBER 23, 2009

It’s been almost month or so since the covers have been lifted on the newly public AOL and their newly refocused strategy under the helm of Tim Armstrong. In a CNBC interview a few weeks ago he explained his vision : “We’re building the world’s largest niche, you know, media business. And niche meaning at scale. We wanna have a lot of properties with a lotta users on them.

Arkansas 100

Arkansas Algorithm Advertising Audience 100

Genuine VC

DECEMBER 23, 2009

It’s been almost month or so since the covers have been lifted on the newly public AOL and their newly refocused strategy under the helm of Tim Armstrong. In a CNBC interview a few weeks ago he explained his vision : “We’re building the world’s largest niche, you know, media business. And niche meaning at scale. We wanna have a lot of properties with a lotta users on them.

Arkansas 100

Arkansas Algorithm Advertising Audience 100