If you don’t have time to explain, you’re not decisive, you’re unfocused
One of my pet peeves when it comes to management is when someone tells me, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to explain.” When that happens, I think that person has been watching too many action movies. If you’re on the run from a secret government conspiracy, you probably don’t have time to explain […]
Sell Used Music on Redigi: A Threat to Apple’s iTunes?
I remember a time when the only way to buy music was to drive down to the local music store and purchase a cassette tape. You had to buy the whole album then. Yes, I’m serious. When the tape got old or the music fell out of favor I threw it away, listed in the […]
InnoPrise – Call for Startups
Two words you don’t see so often together are innovation and enterprise. Innovation is often associated with young upstarts that intend to disrupt the established order – better, faster, cheaper. Enterprise conjures images of large organizations that were, at one time, innovative upstarts. But we know that is not true. Large enterprise organizations can be […]
Impatience Kills Startups
We live today in am impatient world. In many ways, that’s good. We’re unwilling to wait for the world to change; instead we go out and change it. But this impatience has a cost. People tend to view startups these days as overnight successes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most successful startups had […]
What Internet Startups Can Learn From Comics And Porn Stars
It’s no secret that media businesses have struggled with monetization in the Internet era. Journalism, for example, is famously in free-fall. But all the hand-wringing conceals a simple fact: There is a very successful model that has been around for decades, and it still works today. All we have to do is learn from porn […]
SaaS Startup Strategy – Three SaaS Sales Models
Choosing the right go-to-market sales model for your SaaS startup can be a make it or break it decision. Choose right and you grow smoothly from seed funding to A round to B round and beyond. Choose wrong and you spend precious cycles chasing your tail as cash runs out. While most B2B SaaS startups […]
The Real Seed Of A Startup Is A Need
With all due respect to the genius that is Jessica Hagy and Indexed, the seed of a startup is *NOT* cheap technology, disgruntled workers, and an anemic economy. While that portion of the Venn diagram represents the ideal soil for starting a company, the real seed of a startup is a need. Every successful startup […]
Observations on my own Startup
Starting a company is a hard thing to do, you will make mistakes, you will have wins, and you will have your good days and your bad days. Over the last year I have been working on my startup to take it to the next level, crossing the 40,000 a year gross line might seem […]
Now We Know Why The City Never Sleeps
Now we know why The Citi Never Sleeps: they are busy censoring their customers. If you are a Citibank customer and they dislike your blog, you may just get in trouble. (Disclosure: I do have a Citi account… so am taking a risk by writing this post.) That’s just what happened to fabulis, a social […]
What Can You Learn from the 4-Hour Workweek?
A couple of years ago I read the popular book, “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss. It was recommended to me by my friend, Net Jacobsson, who was trying to do some basic Life Hacking. If you’re not familiar with the term it’s basically trying to help all of us who are deluged with […]
Maybe it is time for you to do a startup
This message over on FriendFeed from Mo Kargas caught my attention this morning because I am hearing it more and more from friends, family, and people who I follow in social circles on the internet. There is a common running thread through the opinions of many people I know that work, and that is a […]
Save Your Spin for Someone Who Cares
Handling PR with VCs This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally. I recently got a phone call from an entrepreneur whom I respect and who runs a company that I hope will do great things one day. He had pitched me […]
Are Business Plans Still Necessary?
This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0 craze. There were tons of young entrepreneurs showing their latest Web 2.0 wares. […]
Who Should you Hire at a Startup?
This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find. I’m not one of those. I believe that you should always hire people are are looking to “punch above their weight class,” which means to hire people who […]
