A debate with the Doctor of Failure
Failure happens. There are many issues and stakeholders in any technology implementation process and any of them adds complexity that can lead to failure. The question is how much technology, the DNA of the technology vendor, and other stakeholders contributes to the failure. Is it always a project management issue…
Failure Fridays
Someone very close to me is about to begin a very cool new gig. Its a role that most would love and in fact be envious of (I sure am – and will be blogging about it soon!). So this…
And They Call Me Crazy
Nine years ago today I was driving into the city of Boston to pick up my wife. Normally she’d take the ferry from Boston back to Hingham, but today was different. I quickly noticed while driving northbound on Hwy 93 that all of the cars were headed South. There wasn’t a single car driving North [...]
There Is No Upside In Being A Jerk
The world is full of jerks. But it must be some kind of innate instinct, because there is no upside to being a jerk. One of the first questions I ever responded to on Quora asked if being nice was an advantage for VCs. The consensus was that success trumps affability, and that entrepreneurs would [...]
Little Bets and the Power Of Quitting
As an entrepreneur or a company, you should appreciate the underrated power of quitting. While we often glorify a never-say-die attitude, and celebrate the entrepreneurs who build great companies despite near-universal criticism, extreme persistence comes at a price. I caught up with a friend yesterday, a high-profile entrepreneur who will remain nameless (I forgot to [...]
What is the Right Amount of Money to Raise at a Startup?
This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Recently I’ve been debating with a number of young startup companies that are raising money in the next few months, “what is the right about of capital to raise at a startup?” It’s a tricky question with no clear answer. There are trade offs. [...]
Social Media is the New Collaboration
When we look at corporate frameworks and how we use collaboration and innovation across corporate boundaries, including collaborating with other companies to get a product out to market we are looking at social networking. We just have a fancy new label for it, but in the longer run, what we saw as collaborative teaming and [...]
You’re Most Vulnerable Right After You Win a Deal
This is part of my ongoing series, “Start-up Lessons.” Recently I wrote a blog post about how I hated losing, but I embrace it. My starting line with every entrepreneur is that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned from F’ing it up on my first business. I even put that in the [...]
What did You Learn From Your Failures
Image via Wikipedia I have been reading what Fred wrote over at AVC on failure, and how failure tends to redefine the things we do as long as we learn from those failures. Some people do learn from failure and successfully work out ways to mitigate or minimize similar failures. Others unfortunately do not learn [...]
Follow up and close out of the Month of Startup Hades
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Things are finally starting to return to normal, we had a bumper crop of sales over the last week, and got our internal problems solved. What is interesting is that rather than “go be your creative best” the leadership style had to change over to completely authoritative, here is [...]
Day Two of Startup Hades
Looking for inspiration by reading Marcello’s and Andy’s blogs today. If you do not know, Marcello owned Sampa, and Andy Sack owned Judy’s book. Sampa closed on August 15th, and Judy’s book closed over a year ago, but both are prolific bloggers and have also documented their experiences. Where I am at right now is [...]
A Month of Fail – Lessons in Startup Management
Image by lumaxart via Flickr Ever had one of those exceptional months were you have not only caught the fail boat, but threw a fail boat party and no one else showed up? This is the world of failure, deep hard core failure that you have to step back from many of the things you [...]
Webstock – Nat Torkington – Better, Stronger, Faster Failures
Home-town hero Nat Torkington, ex (and sometimes current) alumni of O’Reilly media is always a good choice for an entertaining show, he didn’t disappoint this time! What is the ultimate feedback loop? Science needs failures to progress, Torkington gave historical examples to prove his contention. Within technology we also use a failure fuelled feedback loop [...]
*Chirp, the Twhirl-killer Wannabe. DOA.
Gotta love new killer apps – like Chirp – actually, it is *chirp – the Twhirl-killer mother-of-all Twitter Clients. Only for Vista – oh, well, if I am stuck with Vista, for once in my life let this be a benefit – let’s try this baby. First installation attempt crashes Windows Explorer. Not a good [...]
Is Hulu the First Casualty of the Inauguration?
O-Day was supposed to be the first US Presidential Inauguration largely available online. 54% of our readers are based in the US, and it’s probably fair to say the lives of others will also be affected by the change of guards in the US, so I thought it was a good idea to provide the [...]
