founders, VC's, mentors and startup experts.
This new manager had to fire someone for the first time—and while she knew it would be hard, she couldn't have anticipated some of the challenges she'd face. Read on for three important lessons every manager should know. ...
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Via: Daily Muse
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This is not going to be an easy topic to talk about, but it needs to be said. This post is about failure, the way we talk about it in the startup world, and the disparity between the way we talk about it and the way it is. ...
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Via: Jordan Cooper
NYC based entrepreneur...Sling the Venture Capital rock on t |
Being a startup founder is hard, tough, frustrating and rewarding - possibly all within the space of a nanosecond. And yet, it is like a high none other. I have experienced it in others. And quietly, I have lived it for over six years. Here are some lessons I learned from my journey. ...
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Via: Om.Is.Me
Founder of GigaOM. Venture Partner at True Ventures |
I went to meet Jason Fried so I could learn how to stop selling software by accident. Since I started programming 10 years ago, I've made a fair amount of money online. But those sales were mostly coincidental. By that I mean, I never thought deeply about how and why products were bought. I would [...] ...
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Via: Dan Shipper
UPenn junior. Co-Founder at @UseFirefly. Jets fan. |
Our friend Cass Phillipps knows a bit about failure. After all, she produces FailCon, a conference where leading entrepreneurs and designers speak about their own failures. So it's no surprise that she's got a story or two of her own. And she's got a good one on how failure turned into her passion. ...
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Via: ZURB Blog
ZURB is a close-knit team of product designers who help comp |
I often reflect upon the differences between my previous startup and Buffer, and think about what changes to my mindset affected the better outcome this time compared with my previous attempts. The key thing has been to focus on a goal of succeeding overall with creating a startup, rather than to focus on being successful with a particular idea. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
Founder Feedback gives you insight from the startup trenches. In a post from his blog, Dave Parker, Co-Founder and CEO of Bundled.com and Director of the Seattle Founder Institute, explains how to hypothesize appopriate product pricing. Instead of putting off pricing until the last minute, Founders should begin thinking about and planning their financial model early on. ...
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Husband, Dad, Entrepreneur, Board Member, Founder @OneAccord |
how do people respond when they are presented a product or service without a corresponding price? I am specifically referring to situations where the seller invites the buyer to name his own price for something of value that is being offered by the seller. Evidence shows that when the user is asked to name his price he often quotes $0! ...
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Via: Filepicker.io
Co-Founder Filepicker.io. Growth hacker. Software sales & bi |
Listening to my the family talk about dividing up the cooking chores for this Thanksgiving dinner, including who would peel the potatoes, reminded me that most careers start by peeling potatoes. KP - Kitchen Patrol One of the iconic punishments in basic training in the military was being threatened by our drill instructors of being assigned to KP - Kitchen Patrol - as a penalty for breaking some r ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
When recruiters ping me about open positions at hot companies, I tell them "thanks, but the next company I work for will be (another) one I start myself." It's not clear whether I'm masochistic or just dumb; life was a lot easier before I got started on this whole founder thing. ...
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Via: Numerate Choir
http://t.co/rPjQvufk; help w/ data/growth (@500startups); st |
Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer at Netflix, wrote a good answer on Quora to the question Why doesn't Netflix offer "Advanced Search" on their site? It's a great Product Management lesson: Nothing is purely additive unless everyone uses it. ...
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User experience design & strategy at @flow_sa. Contributor t |
The story of why we started a fully focused content marketing strategy here at Buffer is actually one that isn't glamorous at all. It was born out of pure necessity that we couldn't get any press coverage for the launch of Buffer. For the first few weeks I was on board, I tried restlessly to [...] ...
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Via: Buffer Blog
Co-founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share Tweets, Fac |
This post dives deep into how we're developing and launching Fizzle, our new video training platform for online business builders. A little over a month ago, we intentionally launched a very unfinished product. Functionality was missing, content was meager and many questions were unanswered, yet we opened the doors to real customers anyway, on a date we had scheduled months in advance. ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B |
Company culture can have a real impact on your bottom line. Two stories from Mikey Trafton's Business of Software 2012 presentation. ...
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Founder and CEO of Fire Ant Software. We help doctors get pa |
One of the hardest lessons for an entrepreneur to grasp is to hire slow and fire fast. Every new entrepreneur thinks it won't be a problem. It sounds easy until they are faced with the situation. I have no idea how many people I've hired over my career, but I know how many peopl e I've fired - twenty-three. It's stressful on everyone. It never gets easier, but with more experience, the faster you ...
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Via: Under30CEO
I share info about start-ups, business, and entrepreneurshi |
I enjoyed doing this interview (embedded below) with Starto.TV. I think it captures a bunch of good stuff, such as: The one big thing that changed my (business life) How TechStars got started My graceful failure and the hard lesson I learned and much more. ...
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Via: David G Cohen
Founder/CEO of TechStars. Investor 150+ Amazing Startups. Ge |
The team were "killer smart", witty and - looking back - a little insecure, just enough to give a feeling of "we can't screw this up; we can't let each other down." ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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About a year ago I was approached by a stranger and was asked to join a Seattle startup. This stranger, my soon-to-be-cofounder, asked me to take the CEO role in the startup. It has now been more than a year since this fateful day and I feel it's as good of time as any to review some lessons I have gathered through my first year as CEO of a fledging startup. ...
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Via: So Entrepreneurial
CEO of Seconds, Entrepreneur and Blogger |
Konstantin Guericke knows more about marketing than the typical engineering graduate. As a LinkedIn co-founder and the founding marketing vice president of the company, he helped grow the social network from zero to six million members. ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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Let's face it, if you're starting a business, one of your main concerns is going to be growth. It won't matter how great your idea is if you fail to gain any traction. In today's world, there are countless strategies. IN this post 8 Startup Founders Reveal Their #1 User Acquisition Tactic. ...
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Via: Treehouse Blog
User Growth Team Lead @treehouse |
I'm TIRED of answering this question so I'd rather write it out and just point people to this post. After running AppSumo for over 2 years I've finally understood that Facebook made the right decision to let me go. ...
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hi* |
Every one fails at some point or another. However, very few can survive so many failures, and fewer would take one hit after another, and turn them into a lifetime of accomplishments. The following is the true story of a man who did exactly so... ...
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Via: Amir Khella
Made in Egypt, Assembled in America. Entrepreneur, UX , hack |
Today one of our portfolio companies is holding their internal management training in our offices. They have asked me to talk a little bit about my own experience with the challenge of going from being an individual contributor to being a manager. I remember this being a very rough transition for me and it took me quite a long time to get comfortable as a manager. ...
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Via: Continuations
VC at http://usv.com |
When I first started working on my own business ideas, I didn't understand how important it was to do something unique. I borrowed other ideas without contributing anything new or noteworthy and then scratched my head when my implementation never took off. The next time around, I decided to take the complete opposite approach. I then thought you had to invent something completely new to succeed. T ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B |
It take significantly longer for most companies to hire their first employee than it does to hire subsequent ones. Reasons ...
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Via: Eladgil
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There's a lot of good suggestions out there for how early stage startups can approach (or improve) board meetings. There's a range of different approaches from the somewhat traditional to the more radical (e.g. single slide board mtgs). I personally think there's no single template that's "right" for all startups. Regardless of what template or style you choose, the common facets I've seen from ...
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Via: AGILEVC
Co-founder & Partner of NextView Ventures, former entreprene |
The phrase "Shut up and take my money!" may have come from a cartoon, but it's not a myth. "Shut Up Money" (SU$ for short!) has happened to me and I've watched it happen to my students ...
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Via: UnicornFree
I put the Amy in anomaly. Bootstrapper, product crusader, Ru |
Culture at a startup is like capital - once you've started running out, it becomes harder to raise more; and once you're out, you're done. I've twice worked at startups that doubled in size within a year. The first time, it was bad - for morale, for productivity, for overall quality. ...
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Via: Cindy Alvarez
Making people more awesome through building better software. |
Entrepreneurs put off what they are most afraid of - failing. For most, that's selling their idea. They will stick their head in the sand and build a product for 6 months, come up for air, only to realize no one wants it. ...
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Via: The Equity Kicker
I'm a VC in London |
Wait what? INCREASED support requests? Isn't our goal at startups to reduce the support requests? After all, support requests means time taken away from developing code right? ...
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Via: Phil's Blawg
Startup guy, Founder of BudgetSimple, Soccer player, beer dr |
... We weren't getting work done very fast. We were putting in long hours, but it always seemed like there was more motion than their was progress. We didn't realize it at the time, but we had run afoul of one of the most important rules of startup productivity: If two people work on a task, it takes twice as long. ...
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Via: Dan Shapiro
Google acquired @sparkbuy, so I now work on www.google.com/a |
One question that everyone who starts a new venture has is how long it takes to start having results of this endeavor. As you can see in my previous posts from the numbers of my startup the path seems to be long. The interviews I did with other startups in order to include other startup cases in my book always show a history counted in years until the first positive financial results. ...
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Locaweb product development and product management. And open |
One thing I've found through personal experience as well as looking at the paths of founders I admire, is that a startup journey is a process which is best treated like a career (read: it takes a while). Unless you are extremely lucky, the chances are that you won't hit the jackpot first time around. It took me a few tries, and in the process I learned a massive amount. I often call my previous no ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
And failure was fantastic too. We've learned so many things, and as people were still loving us after each and every of those failures we were happy. And we were keep going, and we were keep on failing. But finally we understood that we had to stop chasing this vision. At least for the time being. After all it's all about the team, not the product. And some times you need to let go. ...
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Via: VentureGeeks
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I sat back and analyzed my startups today and compared my funded startups with my bootstrapped startups. It's logical to assume that my funded startups did better because we essentially had a huge influx of cash to invest into people, marketing, and product; however, my bootstrapped startups have done remarkably better time and time again. ...
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Founder of @TourWoo, the easiest way to book a tour online. |
How being open with your ideas, and vocal about sharing progress can put you in a much greater position over time because you gradually grow a following and audience to use as a launchpad for future ideas. ...
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Via: Software By Rob
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
Getting asked by reporter about where I went to school made me remember the day I had to choose whether to lie on my resume. I Badly Want the Job When I got my first job in Silicon Valley it was through serendipity (my part) and desperation (on the part of my first employer.) ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
I'm a huge fan of bootstrapped businesses. Those who bootstrap a business enjoy a unique satisfaction knowing they created value from nothing with very-little-to-no outside financial support. I have started several businesses, successfully exiting two, and along the way I have found a few things to be consistent when starting a business, especially when bootstrapping. ...
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Via: Silicon Prairie News
Business builder and sometimes fixer. Enjoy the ride. http: |
If there's only one passionate party in a relationship it's unrequited love. Here's how I learned it the hard way. ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
When Paul Mockapetris invented the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), he had no idea his creation would come to shape parts of the web for many years to come. But because he started simple and had a future-looking plan, his concept worked. He thinks startups should follow the same principles. ...
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Via: Venture Beat
Writer at VentureBeat covering mobile/media/cloud, social me |
At the heart of what we do is The Hypothesis. Getting the hypothesis right is the first key to validating (or invalidating) our assumptions underlying our entire startup. If you get out of the building with a bad hypothesis, you won't hear anything valuable from your customers. ...
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Via: Lean Startup Machine
product manager/designer/foodie/musician/husband/father and |
What we should have said to PG... "So it's like a wiki?" he says, moving his fingers in circles against his temples. His eyes are closed. He's concentrating. He has 10 minutes to understand me. ...
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Via: Rocketr
Founder @Rocketr / EIR @JetCooper. I'm here to make bets and |
In the early days of Buffer, one of the things I did quite well was Steve Blank's notion of "getting out of the building". When I built the product-less MVP to test whether people would want and pay for the product, I was in touch with many people via email and I had Skype calls to chat about the problems people had in being able to post consistently to Twitter. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
In the year before that last story, back when I was a wage slave, I worked for a firm which hired me out as a consultant. I worked on some interesting projects, including one of those fancy stealth startups so popular in the mid-aughts. ...
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Via: UnicornFree
I put the Amy in anomaly. Bootstrapper, product crusader, Ru |
Dimon acknowledges he was too complacent. But this vignette affirms my belief that leaders need to "go to the source" even before they turn to their best people. Seeing the data raw instead of analytically pre-chewed can have enormous impact on executive perceptions. ...
We had a blast at Stack Overflow Co-Founder and Coding Horror blogger Jeff Atwood's soapbox on May 11. During Jeff's nearly 50-minute talk, not only did he delve deep into the origins of Stack Overflow, but he gave us some great insight into why the status quo is frustrating and why it should be challenged. Here's how Jeff put it: It's like having a cold for your entire life ...
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Via: ZURB Blog
ZURB is a close-knit team of product designers who help comp |
It's one thing to read posts from founders and investors dispensing advice on the particulars of building a team and setting company culture. It's another to have them look you in the eyes and share their experiences in their own words. This video provides the latter in a direct and concise way that you can feel. Not required, but definitely worth your time to look into their eyes ...
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Via: Bryce DOT VC
VC, Dad |
"Work harder on yourself than you do on your job." - Jim Rohn. I feel that in a startup, the quote is even more relevant. I feel that in a startup, the quote is even more relevant. Here are some of the reasons I've discovered that tell me that you may want to seriously consider working harder on yourself than you do on your startup: ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
One month ago on March 20 I released a short eBook entitled "Step by Step UI Design". Since then, I've sold the eBook over 2000 times and almost reached $10,000 in profits. A lot of people have asked me for more details about how I wrote, launched, and promoted the book, so here is a post-mortem to see what went right, what went wrong, and what you can learn from my own experience. ...
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Via: SachaGreif.com
Designer from Paris, now living in Osaka. Creator of @YoFoly |
Everyone may be wondering why Facebook paid $1 billion for what appears to be just a simple photo-sharing app, but the biggest lesson to learn from Instagram's success is just how important it is to build network effects into the core of your service. ...
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Via: Gigaom
I'm a senior writer at GigaOm, a former columnist with the G |
We can be correct about the founders being weak, we can be correct about the market being impenetrable, we can be correct about a lot of the reasons so many of these companies can and should fail. And we'd be perfectly correct in passing. Great founders fail, and weak ones grow to be great ...
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Via: Bryce DOT VC
VC, Dad |
For those of you who want to get in on the ground floor of a new venture, but haven't yet worked up the nerve to start your own, begin with a job at a startup. I say that it's not just the nerve to start your own; it's also the resume, experience, and resources. And that you shouldn't feel that every entrepreneur proves him or herself by jumping straight from childhood to business owner. ...
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Via: Tim Berry
Founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software; entrepreneur, bu |
I went through the 50 transcripts of interviews I've done with millionaires. I wanted to pull out some amazing stories for you. I chose three that I thought you would like, and as I was going through them, this theme came up in each one: Focus On Serving Your Customers ...
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This 'Golden Rule' drives business in and outside of Silicon Valley. Regardless if you are looking for funding, sales leads, a job or just advice, you need to follow these 5 basic rules to be successful. ...
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Via: Under the Radar
Biz strategist. Quirky writer. Director at Dealmaker Media. |
Five lessons that marketers could learn from a lethal weapon designed by Gaston Glock, "an obscure Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer" and inventor of the Glock semi-automatic pistol. ...
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Via: Marketing Profs
Writer, ironist, doctor of philosophy. Also, editor at Marke |
Some of the most important lessons you can learn from someone is how they were able to pick themselves back up after a failure. Successful entrepreneurs weren’t always at the forefront of business. Quite a few weren’t so lucky with avoiding limitations, such as dealing with issues with other professionals, and procuring and keeping funding. A good handful of CEO’s have had to shut down or se ...
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Via: Bostinnovation
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I'm an idiot. Not all of the time, mind you, not even most of the time, but every now and then, I'm an idiot. Like the time my friend and co-founder Brian Halligan asked me to read the book “Moneyball”. This was back when we had first launched our startup, HubSpot. “But, I'm not a baseball guy,” I said. “It's not about baseball. It's about data. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
I don't normally comment on the day's news, but I want to make an exception today to share something from Facebook's S-1 filing. Over the next few days, astronomical amounts of attention are going to be paid to Facebook's incredible business results: the 800 million active users, the $3.7 billion (!) in revenue, and their growth rates, too. I hope at least some of that attention will be paid to t ...
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Via: Startup Lessons
Trying to change how startups are built. |
My wife isn't in business, but she is wise in the way of funding. Just as I have experience on both sides of the funding table (as an entrepreneur and as an angel), so does she. As a research scientist, she gets her own grants and also reviews grants from others. While she doesn't talk in startup lingo (pivots, minimum viable product, etc.), she has taught me that many of the issues we face as e ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
You can’t go very far without running into Drew Houston’s company Dropbox. It considered one of the hottest tech companies and its rise since 2006 can teach you a lot about marketing and business. Let’s take a look at six lessons you can learn from the rise of Dropbox. Lesson #1: Create a profitable model [...] ...
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Via: Quick Sprout
I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
US Bureau of Labor Statistics research indicates that almost 60% of businesses shut down within the first four years of operation. Â Why? Â Most fail for one of these reasons. 1. No viable market for their products Many businesses start with the strong conviction that customers will want their products, but without solid experience or data [...] ...
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Via: Business Planning
All things social enterprise/social ventures, author Venture |
Recently I critiqued a number of websites (links at the bottom of the post) and made suggestions for improving their conversion rates. I noticed that the key problems were pretty much the same for most of them. It’s highly likely... read more ...
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Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
Startup a business requires some level of skills. But you don’t need to be an expert to start that business you have been thinking of. And you don’t need to [...] Related posts:14 Business Lessons For Every Entrepreneur Your Startup Failed. Why? 2010 Startup School Lessons And Notes ...
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Via: AllTop Startups
Technology blogger and startups analyst. Founder and editor |
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