Ben's Blog
MAY 14, 2010
“Teachers teach and do the world good. kings just rule and most are never understood”. - KRS 1, My Philosophy. “Most managers seem to feel that training employees is a job that should be left to others. I, on the other hand, strongly believe that the manager should do it himself.”. - Andy Grove, High Output Management. When I first became a manager, I had mixed feelings about training.
Growthink Blog
MAY 13, 2010
A fantastic article in Fortune Magazine this month - " The Temptation of Facebook ," talks about the early days of the social media giant. Of most interest is the story of Mr. Peter Thiel investing $500,000 into the company in 2004, at an effective valuation of $4.9 million. Given that the estimated market value of Facebook is now north of $20 billion - for those doing the math at home, that represents a 1,000x return - a short 6 years later, Thiel's investment surely falls into the category of
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Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
MAY 10, 2010
Please forgive me for harping on about outsourcing in so many blog posts recently. At the moment I’m going through the process of hiring new full time workers, plus John Reese is launching his Outsource Force program and giving away free videos on how to outsource, so this subject is a bit in focus for me right now. If you haven’t caught the latest John Reese video, the third in the series talks about the six online business models and how you can outsource the tasks involved to make
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 10, 2010
A sizable percentage of Capital Factory startup submissions take the form of the "marketplace." In fact, 3 of the 10 selected companies from the past two years has followed this business model. Marketplace companies are notoriously difficult to start, so I'm constantly amazed that so many entrepreneurs chose this route. Maybe it's the "go big or go home" mentality?
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
Software By Rob
MAY 12, 2010
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Out How to Find Your 4-Second Startup Pitch → StartupSchool Online A/B Testing Class Video is Available Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Steve Blank
MAY 10, 2010
I usually hear the “Should I get my MBA?” question at least once a month. If you’re an entrepreneur, the glib answer is “no.” It’s also the wrong answer. Should I Get My MBA? Last week I was having coffee with an ex engineering student of mine now on his second startup (and for a change it wasn’t a Web 2.0 startup) who wanted to chat about career choices.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 12, 2010
I recently wrote an article on how to respond to board members between meetings. I basically took some time on a weekend and just hacked out what was on my mind. Two people whom I respect (Babak Nivi and Brad Feld) added commentary that made me want to come back and clarify my thoughts. If I were to re-write the original post I would have taken out the section on “how to get better intro’s from VC’s&# and made it it’s own post.
deal architect
MAY 12, 2010
First of all, I wish SAP had not done this. They have enough on their plate without adding another layer of complexity and chaos to distract management. But having said that, Sybase is a nice move, if it can give.
Sophia Perl of Wisdom
MAY 14, 2010
Over at HackerDojo , I attended a womens panel on “Mobile Paradigm&# organized by Asian Professional Women in Technology. There were about 50-60 people in attendance, of which I knew about 4-5 people. PayPal provided pizza and drinks for the event, Thanks PayPayl! The panel consisted of a CEO of a travel guide app for the iPad, a bootstrap developer of many iPhone apps and an iPad app, and a marketing person from a Shazam-competitor app.
Steve Blank
MAY 13, 2010
Consultants can help startups leverage their limited resources. But startups can shoot themselves in the foot when founders use consultants at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Here’s why. Your Process Doesn’t Work. A friend of mine asked me to chat with a startup he’d invested in. “They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. I waited for the shoe to drop – and it did, as he continued carefully, “But they don’t seem to be making much progress.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 11, 2010
I haven’t written a blog post in a week. I travelled for a couple of days for work and decided to get some sleep on those days rather than staying up into the wee hours as I often do when I travel. I closed one deal (I’ll talk about that soon) and issued one term sheet (I hope to talk about that soon, we’ll see!). It has also coincided with the kickoff of our Launchpad LA educational series which has taken some of my time.
deal architect
MAY 13, 2010
In this interview, Larry Ellison picks on ex Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz for blogging. Am I the only one to find it ironic that the title of the story is his about his role in Ironman 2 and he talks. Tags: Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP).
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 12, 2010
Deciding to be an entrepreneur is a lifestyle and career move. You shouldn’t be making this decision just because you are mad at your boss, you would like to be rich, or someone else thinks it’s a good idea. In these changing times, if you already have a startup, maybe it’s time to rethink your existing strategy. Formally, that’s called developing and maintaining a strategic plan.
Rembrandt Communications
MAY 12, 2010
Things may be tough right now, but there are new customers out there who need your products and services… But how do you attract these new customers, and keep them, without a big budget? Well, here’s a quick reminder of the top three, cost-effective ways to start increasing your sales: 1. Look at Your Offer. [.].
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 13, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a great leader and seem to be having this conversation a lot lately about Facebook, Yahoo!, Zynga and others. I wrote several of the characteristics when I did the Top 10 (11) Attributes of an Entrepreneur. One thing that I’ve realized over the years is that to be an effective leader you can’t aspire to be loved by everybody.
deal architect
MAY 12, 2010
Dennis Howlett tried to include me and other bloggers in an exclusive meeting he had with Vivek Ranadive, CEO of Tibco, while we are at the vendor's conference. It is a phenomenon Jeff Nolan noticed when he invited bloggers for.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 11, 2010
For a few, delegating comes easily, maybe too easy. For others who are perfectionists, letting go of even the most trivial task is almost impossible. If you are in this second category, you probably don’t like the references behind your back that you are a “control freak” or a “micro-manager.” The challenge is delegating the right things, and not delegating the wrong things.
This is going to be BIG.
MAY 13, 2010
By the time of this post is done, Diaspora, the web decentralization play from four NYU/Courant students in New York , will undoubtedly have $100,000 raised on Kickstarter. Over and above that, it seems like they’re on a clear path towards a million dollars. Think I’m poking the bear? I’m dead serious. You watch. A week from now, they get to seven digits.
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 10, 2010
There are few things you can do that are more important than delivering a good presentation. Nor are there few things that most entrepreneurs do as poorly. We tend to be dependent on slide decks, but the decks we use are often poorly thought out, thematically confusing, and esthetically challenged. Slide decks should support the presenter, not the other way around, though this is rarely the case and many speakers use their slides a crutch, simply reading to their audience the words on the screen
deal architect
MAY 13, 2010
SAP executives are saying the Sybase database option is about “customer choice” Given this customer centricity mood SAP finds itself in I am going to ask them next week at Sapphire when they plan to: support Zoho and Google Docs. Tags: Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP).
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 8, 2010
It takes a great entrepreneur with a great vision to start a business, but it takes a collaboration of many people to make it a success. That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts. I was just reading a new book by my friend Amilya Antonetti, titled “ The Recipe: A Fable for Leaders and Teams ” which illustrates the key concepts with stories and specific guidance on how to develop your natural le
Start Up Blog
MAY 14, 2010
It’s never been easier to test market anything in the history of startups. The web is our best friend for testing regardless of which market we compete in, or are launching into. How would we do it? There are many simnple methods: - Google adwords testing various ideas to see which ones get clicked on the most. - Build a landing page for a certain product idea to see how many hits it gets. - Set up a ‘coming soon’ registration facility to assess market interest and ask the punt
Up and Running
MAY 14, 2010
I posted here yesterday about the Willamette Angel Conference , a local group of angel investors, of which I’m a member, choosing to invest at its annual conference event. The winner turned out to be Good Clean Love , selling natural organic healthy intimacy products. For more on that, click here for Our Angel Group Chooses to Invest in Healthy Natural Organic Intimacy Products on my main blog today.
crowdSPRING Blog
MAY 11, 2010
In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 14, 2010
Everyone seems to like the aspect of being an entrepreneur that goes with “being your own boss” and “able to do things my way.” But sometimes they forget that this kind of freedom comes with a price of personal accountability. Accountability means “the buck stops here,” and “all the failures are mine.” Too many people seem to do whatever it takes to avoid accountability, both before and after the fact.
Start Up Blog
MAY 9, 2010
You may have heard I’ve taken up a new role in advertising with the Grey Group Global. You can read about it here. Many of my readers have been curious about my decision. Both as it pertains to my role as founder & CEO of rentoid.com , but also as an entrepreneur and startup blogger. So in the the age of authenticity, I’ll lay it all on the line right here at startup blog: I didn’t go searching for a job, it kinda just happened.
Life Beyond Code
MAY 9, 2010
Sequence or Order of things is very important – both in our personal and professional lives. It is easy to forget the old adage – &# don’t put the cart before the horse.&# Here is a (funny) mini saga to illustrate the point. [ Remember that the story is only to make a point. You can have a quick laugh but the real lesson is what is hidden within the story ].
K9 Ventures
MAY 13, 2010
Here are the slides from a talk I gave at a Carnegie Mellon Alumni event in the Bay Area today. #20tweets is tweet-sized advice for founders of tech startups. In the presentation I went into more detail and provided some rationale/anecdotes behind these tweets. For now, here are just the tweets: #20tweets by @manukumar. View more presentations from K9 Ventures.
Startup Professionals Musings
MAY 9, 2010
Why is it that most of the business plans I see are really product plans? I define a product plan as a detailed description of your product or service, with a bit of business thrown in at the end. A business plan is a detailed description of your business, with a bit of product description thrown in near the front. Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely positive to have a product plan.
Start Up Blog
MAY 12, 2010
We can only beat the big guys with focus. It has to be so small the big guys don’t care. Big guys rarely buy big businesses anyway, especially not in the tech or web scene. They want it to fit tightly into their portfolio. We ought put all our eggs in a tiny basket. In this way we wont get short short of resources, both human and financial. When we do this in startup land, we have a chance of winning.
Life Beyond Code
MAY 11, 2010
Airlines love frequent flyer miles. Why? If they convince that the travelers win with frequent flyer miles, they win. Most travelers won’t keep track of them and you can always change the rules at whim to make miles worthless at some point in time. So, the idea is to keep telling a story that seems super compelling about what someone can do with their airline miles.
Up and Running
MAY 12, 2010
I was very happy to meet journalist Daria Steigman a couple of weeks ago for a phone interview, even more so after seeing the results of that interview, a piece called Planning Matters: myths and musts about business planning on the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) website. Daria does a very nice summary of our talk. She hits all the right points.
The Entrepreneurial Mind
MAY 12, 2010
The latest survey of small business owners taken by the NFIB is out and the results show the mood of entrepreneurs has not gotten any worse. The NFIB Index of Small Business Optimism gained 3.8 points in April, rising to 90.6 and ending seven straight quarters of under 90 readings. Two statistics show that small business owners do not trust a recovery is really underway.
Start Up Blog
MAY 10, 2010
The internet is a bit like dogs. Life moves a bit more quickly. Which is why I still laugh whenever I hear that the latest hit website is going to be the dominate force forever in that that category. As Facebook is currently being touted to be, then I love to remind the pundit just a little bit about the history of the internet. Yahoo was search. it was game set and match, then came Google.
The Startup Lawyer
MAY 10, 2010
Several weeks back, 37signals asked “Employment Contracts: What are they good for?&# on Signal vs. Noise. Basically, they questioned the value of their employment contracts since they have never had an employment dispute: “Why have we become so dependent on lawyers to control every relationship inside our companies? Why is “just in case” the default answer when asking questions about contracts?
Babbling VC
MAY 13, 2010
Mike Butcher asked me to write down some thoughts on my two days at Next10. Below is the text which appeared on Techcrunch a couple hours ago for your reading pleasure should you of not seen it there yet: What is it with German events? Take an established event, put it in the capital city, invite lots of people and you should have a party, right? That’s what I thought initially.
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