January, 2009

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Lessons Learned: Lean hiring tips

Startup Lessons Learned

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.

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Cracking The Code: Building Your SaaS Sales Compensation Plan

Cracking the Code

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.

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Los Angeles Tech Launched - Hot List

SoCal CTO

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.

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@altgate » Blog Archive » Fidelity Center For Applied Technology

Altgate

@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.

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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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Excellent Analytics Tip #15: Measure Latent Conversions & Visitor Behavior

Occam's Razor

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?

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Bandwidth Throttling? Find out with Measurement Lab

Eric Friedman

Google today announced a new product , called Measurement Lab , to help you determine if your ISP is throttling bandwidth and perhaps interfering with your downloads. The product is described as follows: Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections.

More Trending

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Cracking The Code: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop.

Cracking the Code

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Wednesday, January 07, 2009. Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard. Happy New Year 2009 and thank you for your continued readership! I am working on a post-mortem of the SaaS 13 Index for 2008, but before getting into these gloomy numbers, I thought I would start the year with something more refreshing.

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Going old school – how to reach people effectively

BeyondVC

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

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top 10 posts from 2008

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Layoffs In Venture Capital Be Glad You Are An Entrepreneur! → Top 10 Posts From 2008 Posted on January 5, 2009 by fnazeeri As ranked by traffic to website during the year (as opposed to when it was written): The Science & Art Of Term Sheet Negotiation 5 Reasons Convertible Debt Sucks Venture Debt For Startups Due Diligence – What To Expect How To Blog Like A P

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Two Rules - Startups and angels: Along the way to success

Tim Keane

'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « What Entrepreneurs and Angels Want To Know. | Main. | Now Is The Time for Entrepreneurs » January 14, 2009. Two Rules: No Ask, No Get. and. If Not Now, When? I'm reminded this morning about these two simple "rules" and how important they can be to entrepreneurs.

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My wishlist for the future of the Blackberry

Eric Friedman

I am thinking about upgrading my Blackberry in a few weeks and have been bouncing around some ideas for what I wantneed in a mobile phone device. image from a great review of the Blackberry 8900. I recently mentioned that I wanted my phone to be a wallet, keys, and a universal ID system. While I think this is years away, this like this are certainly possible right now – just not in the United States.

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Lessons Learned: Three freemium strategies

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 27, 2009 Three freemium strategies Im excited to see so much attention being paid to freemium businesses lately. These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses.

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Thoughts about “The Coming Venture Capital Boom”

K9 Ventures

Peter Rip , General Partner at Crosslink Capital recently authored a post on his blog EarlyStageVC that has been getting a lot of attention. Peter’s post “ The Coming Venture Capital Boom ” presents a view that is hard to find these days. I had a mixed reaction to Peter’s comments. To a large extent I agree with him that there will be another boom in venture capital.

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Sundance and a movie about a web pioneer you may have never heard of

BeyondVC

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.

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Choosing a web dev platform: Rails or PHP?

Hacking Startups

When building your next web app, you can create value by improving existing web dev tools or by making a compelling app. If you’re interested in making a great app, it’s best to use the best of existing tools and let others improve them. Most web pages served today are produced by one of these platforms: Static HTML (brochure-style sites). C or C++ (search engines mostly, some backends).

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Wanted: Simple Skype

Andrew Payne

I love video chat, but I’m currently stuck with my dad where we can see his video but he can’t see ours (using Skype). We know it works on our end. My dad can’t figure out why it doesn’t work any more, and (debugging remotely) I can’t figure it out either. I loved Skype when it first came out: it was simple, punched through firewalls reliably, and had great audio quality.

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Always Logged In

Eric Friedman

As I have been talking about recently the best social networks are the ones that arise to challenges when you need them to and are nowhere to be found when you do not need them as is the emerging case with Gmail as a social network. I have been thinking about this further with the recent addition of YouTube videos being available within Gmail as a quicker way to see videos shared from friends.

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Lessons Learned: CPI > CPC

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 11, 2009 CPI > CPC Google revolutionized advertising by popularizing pay-per-click. This model has not translated well to the world of social networking, because customers of social networks engage sites in a different way than customers of search engines. The difference is intent: when youre searching for a specific topic, ads have a chance to fulfill your interest in that topic.

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70% drop in venture fundraising?

K9 Ventures

VentureBeat just blogged about some new statistics published by Thomson Reuters and the NVCA in this post: Venture fundraising: Going, going, gone? Here is the most damning/shocking excerpt from this post: Venture capital funds raised only $3.4 billion in the last three months of 2008, according to new data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

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Is 2009 the year of mobile computing?

BeyondVC

 As I look around post-holiday season, I am seeing more and more regular, non-technical friends and family get connected on their mobile devices.  What does that mean? A great example is that of my father-in-law who got rid of his old Motorola Startac and exchanged it for an iPhone.  Yes, he got an iPhone, and then days later I got a message to get connected to him on Facebook.  Ever since, he has been using the phone to take pictures nonstop, send emails and SMS messages

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Choosing a web dev platform: Rails or PHP?

Hacking Startups

'When building your next web app, you can create value by improving existing web dev tools or by making a compelling app. If you’re interested in making a great app, it’s best to use the best of existing tools and let others improve them. Most web pages served today are produced by one of these platforms: Static HTML (brochure-style sites).

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Simplify your product!

Andrew Payne

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. .

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Data Longevity

Eric Friedman

I have been thinking about the concept of data longevity and data rot lately after my sister asked me a very poignant question about her blog; “will my blog be around in 20 years?” I never really doubted that her blog would be around in 20 years but it got me thinking. I certainly put more faith in a blogging platform and website vs. a standard paper and pen approach simply because the bits saved in my hosting account are far more likely to be around in 20 years than a notebook or jo

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Lessons Learned office hours

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 6, 2009 Lessons Learned office hours For me, there were plenty of surprises in the survey I conducted a few weeks ago. One of them was that multiple readers suggested holding "office hours" Q&A sessions in the Bay Area. Im not quite ready to put out a shingle and take over my neighborhood Starbucks, but I have accepted two invitations to speak in a similar format in the coming weeks.

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What is the World's Largest Fraud?

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Randy Komisar on Failure Serial Inventor Woody Norris Talks Innovation at TED → What is the World’s Largest Fraud? Posted on January 28, 2009 by fnazeeri Hint: it’s not Bernie Madoff. I saw a press release today from ClickForensics proclaiming their most recent statistic that 17.1% of all pay-per-click advertising is click fraud.

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hiring as a core competency

VC Adventure

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Amazon Web Services Meetup- London

Jason Ball

I received this in an email today, in case anyone is interested in learning more about Amazon's services in Europe: Amazon Web Services Technology. Evangelist for Europe Simone Brunozzi and Cohesive co-founder Alexis. Richardson will be hosting the next AWS Meetup in London on Cloud. Computing and AWS, with details on S3, EC2, CloudFront and the other services!

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Microsoft’s Ain’t the Gorilla No More

Andrew Payne

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

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Links Roundup 01/06/09

Eric Friedman

I have not done a links roundup in awhile but it helps me flush out links that I want to share. Each deserves a read and perhaps a short explanation – enjoy! Wells Fargo has a blog and is clearly thinking about their outbound marketing. Discovered via Dave Armano. Think your idea sucks? Do it anyway. via Jason Cohen. Lessons Learned. Via Seth Godin.

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Happy new year

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 1, 2009 Happy new year When I started writing this blog a few months ago, I wasnt sure if anyone would find it interesting. I certainly never expected the overwhelmingly positive feedback youve given me. Thanks to everyone whos taken the time to read, subscribe, and comment. Ive been really moved by your support and suggestions.

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@altgate » Blog Archive » Randy Komisar on Failure

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← How to Fail Successfully What is the World’s Largest Fraud? → Randy Komisar on Failure Posted on January 27, 2009 by fnazeeri Failure seems to be the topic of today. Came across this gem of an interview with KPCB partner Randy Komisar.

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Sarajevo, Lehman Brothers, and the Panic of 2008

Pascal's View

The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at. Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, is commonly cited as the “proximate trigger” which. ushered in World War I.   The. resolution of this first Great War led not only to. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">the collapse and fragmentation of the. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;color:#122EB3;text-decoration:none; text-underline:none">Austro-Hungarian. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"> Empire, the. 13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:H

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ProfessorVC: The Most Important Venture Capital Statistic

Professor VC

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

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Developers are now like aspiring novelists

Andrew Payne

I just read a blog post about a developer with a #1 iPhone app that quit his day job. The “indie developer” market seems alive and well (and not just for iPhone apps). If you have talent and an SDK, you can give it a shot. If you’re lucky, you can make a good living. Software applications have become an expressive art like novels, paintings, music, and screen plays.

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M&A Trends for 2008/2009

Jason Ball

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.

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Lessons Learned: Sharding for startups

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. Most components in a modern data center are completely stateless, meaning they just do batches of work that is handed to them, but dont store any data long-term. This is true of most web application servers, caches like memcached, and all of the network infrastructure that connects them.