Build a profitable business while spending as little as possible (the lesson of Xobni)
It’s not that complicated to build a success startup. Just build a profitable business while spending as little as possible. It’s not complicated, but it’s hard. I recently saw the news that Yahoo! had bought Xobni. Xobni was a noble attempt to tackle the email overload problem (xobni = inbox backwards). According to the stories […]
Don’t Accidentally Bootstrap Yourself to Death
There’s a phenomenon, a type of SaaS company, that I think if you are scrappy, if you can make things happen as a founder — that you need to be careful not to become. It’s the Bootstrapped-to-Death Start-up. I’ve known quite a few over the past 7 years, and each and every one is […]
Atlassian: Fully Funded. By Customer Revenue. Oh, and the $60M T-shirt
It was 2006, the first Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and I just met Jeffrey Walker, President of Atlassian. I had followed the company for a while (OK, I admit, had been a fan), met Mike, but this was the first time with Jeffrey, so we took our box lunch to a cozy little […]
VCs Are Useless? That's Bullshit.
Vivek Wadhwa has a guest post up on TechCrunch, “What Have VCs Really Done For Innovation?” It’s obviously meant to court controversy. Mission accomplished. This post is my refutation. Wadhwa’s post claims: VCs have little to no impact on startup success, and in fact, may have a negative impact Venture capital slows the innovation process […]
Blog Storm Rising on a Lazy Sunday (What Have VCs Really Done…)
We devote a lot of attention to Startups here @ CloudAve, and it’s no secret that some of us, e.g. Ben and myself are infatuated by the bootstrapping model: going out on one’s own, risking one’s own financial well-being, but then reaping the rewards without having giving up control and major equity. As in .. […]
Do You Really Even Need VC?
I recently spoke on a panel in Santa Monica organized by my friend Jason Nazar, CEO of DocStoc, titled Startups Uncensored, Pitching Venture Capitalists. There were about 200 people in the audience. Jason started by asking the audience how many of them were start-ups – 90% of the hands went up. He then asked for […]
