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- Video from Business of Software : Everything I Know About StartupsNovember 5
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Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to present at the Business of Software conference held in Boston.
Here’s a video of that event. Though I was a bit off my game (not enough sleep), people did seem to find it interesting and/or useful and the presentation was highly rated.
I’ll watch it along with you and add some notes to this article later today. Enjoy (and please leave your comments and criticims). Would love to hear them.
1. Your idea can suck. Just get started.
2. You can be in the middle of nowhere and still build a great business.
3. Not having cash breeds good behavior. It’s helpful to have constratints.
4. In defense of the modest outcome: You don’t HAVE to build the next Facebook. Modest liquidity events are highly under-rated.
5. “I’m a complete introvert. It’s not that I don’t like people, I just don’t like beind aroun
- Advice On Partnering With The Big and Powerful: Don'tOctober 7
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The topic of partnerships comes up relatively frequently in startup circles. The common question entrepreneurs have about partnerships with Some Big Powerful Company (SBPC) can be reduced down to something like this:
Q: “My startup has the opportunity to explore a partnership with a Big, Powerful company. What should I do?”
(Short) Answer: Don’t.
Of course, there are exceptions, but on average, not knowing anything about you, your startup, the big company you are dealing with or the terms of the deal, I think this is good advice almost all of the the time.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into some of the analyis that I’d put into making the decision. One warning/disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV. This is not legal advice. If you’re signing a deal, make sure to get competent counsel.
Thoughts On Partnerships With Some Big Powerful Company
1. Beware The Distraction: Big companies have something you don’t. Time. They can commit one or more people to the ongoing task of “exploring partnership opportunities”. You probably can’t. You have a day job (and probably a night job too). As such, the mere act of continued conversations with a big company to expore a partnership can be a major distraction for
- Entrepreneurs and...Hey, There's A Shiny New Thing!September 25
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If you’re one of those rare entrepreneurs that has the discipline to stay reasonably focused on what you should be working on, feel free to skip the rest of this article with the comforting knowledge that you have my admiration and envy.
But, if you’re like most of us, you are probably plauged at one time or another by the “Shiny New Thing” (SNT) bug. This particular syndrome is pretty easy to describe. There you are, minding your own business (literally) and working on your startup. Then all of a sudden, BAM! Some shiny new thing comes along and tries to distract you. You either get distracted, or you stay up nights wondering if you should have gotten distracted. If you’re like me (my sympathies if you are), you have this experience quite frequently. I think it harkens back to our childhood days when just about any shiny new thing would immediately grab our attention. [Hence the toy robot photo, blog image selection is not a core competency.]
There are various manifestations of this Shiny New Thing (SNT) phenomenon. Here are a few:
1. New technology/platform/language/framework: This applies mostly to developers. There you are coding away on your project, and this article comes up in Google Reader about this new paradigm-driven-framework. BAM! It’s so c
- Startups and The Power Of PolarizationSeptember 24
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Startups, particularly those world-changing, curve-jumping, bet-the-farm kind are a tricky business. The temptation for startups is, as Seth Godin would say, “to create average products for average people”. The reason is simple, there’s a massive market of average people. And, they want average products. Nothing too controversial. Nothing that makes them too uncomfortable.
Guy Kawasaki, one of my favorite business authors addresses this in a recent article titled “The Art of Innovation”. Here’s #4 from that article:
“Don't be afraid to polarize people. Most companies want to create the holy grail of products that appeals to every demographic, social-economic background, and geographic location. To attempt to do so guarantees mediocrity.”
But, my advice would be to not try and “solve for the middle” — but strive to polarize an audience. If you’re really looking to make a big difference, you want a group of people that passionately disagrees with your idea/approach/business. Why? Because when you’re doing something that polarizes, and you have a bunch people that passionately disagree with you, you have a chance to find people that passionately agree. It is these passionate people that help fuel the growth and help spread your idea. And curve-jumping c
- 8 Startup Insights Inspired By The Mega Mind of Seth GodinSeptember 10
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I’ve had a really interesting and crazy week (crazy in a good way). As many regular readers of OnStartups.com know, I’m a huge Seth Godin fan. I’ve read most of Seth’s books over the years and keep up with his blog. He’s even been kind enough to comment on one of my prior OnStartups articles (“Why Your Startup Shouldn’t Hire Seth Godin”). But, until recently, I’ve never had the opportunity to actually hear him speak in person. This past week, I got to hear Seth twice.
Most recently, Seth was a keynote speaker at the recent Inbound Marketing Summit in Kendall Square, Cambridge (MIT central). Not only did I get to hear Seth speak, live and in person, I had the thrill of getting to have lunch with Seth and “just chat about stuff” (like getting some advice about my startup). This has got to be the most thrilling thing that’s happened to me all year. Very exciting. [Interesting trivia: Early in Seth’s career he worked in Kendall Square for Spinnaker Software].
So, here are some of the ideas and insights I gleaned from Seth, that I thought might be useful to other startup fanatics. Although the core insights were insp
