blackenterprise.com (via Paul Kedrosky):
David Wanetick, Managing Director of The Wall Street Transcript, said, “Entrepreneurs are often intimidated to conduct due diligence into the venture capital firms from which they are soliciting investment. This represents more than a missed opportunity, as failure to thoroughly investigate venture capital firms is often fatal to companies that accept VC investment.”
Technorati tags: vc, due diligence, funding, research
One of the most fascinating things I saw last week at the Parelli conference was a demonstration of taking three different extremely nervous (what they refer to as “right brain”) horses–fearful, pacing, tense–and bring them to a relaxed state. What I expected was what we’re all taught to do (or do instinctively with both pets and people)… a process of trying to be as calm and reassuring as possible. After all, becoming excitable ourselves can’t possibly do anything but add more feul… right?
But what I saw was just the opposite.
Technorati tags: interaction, calm, emotion
I’ve spent the last five weeks on Codesnipers writing about some of the mistakes I made when starting my company, and during the development and marketing of my products. I doubt they’ll be the last, and I’m sure I’ve already made a few more that I just haven’t identified yet, but I’m done for now.
So, to round off this batch (and in case you missed any), I decided to do a quick rundown of the mistakes series so far.
Technorati tags: mistakes, startup, entrepreneurship, software
James Gross at Stanford University in California and Jane Richards at the University of Texas at Austin showed 57 volunteers a disturbing film about a surgical procedure, then asked them questions about their emotional state, how much effort they put into hiding their feelings, and their memory of events in the film.
They found people who made the most effort to keep their emotions in check had the worst recall for what they had seen.
Technorati tags: emotions, memory, psychology
The truth about Google? It isn’t simple.
Look, I like Google. It’s a great search engine. But I am sick and tired of hearing people praise its clean, elegant look. Hell, all search engines have that clean elegant part to them: type your search terms into the box and hit “Enter.”
No, it wasn’t in King George III’s best interest to fund the American Revolution. And great change does not come when we expect the Crown to fund it, when we present our case to the King and believe that he will all of a sudden “get it,” when we leave it up to His Majesty to give us what we want and need. No, it won’t happen. Matching grants, permission, change—whatever you want to call it—doesn’t come to us when we sit and wait for it. Or when we ask for official sanction for it.
Technorati tags: change, diy, revolution
Somewhere between scribbling your idea on a cocktail napkin and actually starting a business, there’s a process you need to carry out that essentially determines either your success or failure in business. Oftentimes, would-be entrepreneurs get so excited about their “epiphanies”—the moments when they imagine the possibilities of a given idea—that they forget to find out whether that idea is viable.
Technorati tags: marketing, research, startup, entrepreneurship, idea
I just read a wonderful article about a film released last year. “Lemonade Stories” tells of the unheralded role of Moms in entrepreneurs’ lives.
As I read the quotations from each of the interviewed entrepreneurs, I can see they have very similar Moms to mine. A major theme that emerges is a Mom’s belief “when no one else believes” in the entrepreneur. This support turns out to be the last push needed to tip the entrepreneur to success.
Technorati tags: relationships, entrepreneurship, family
Here’s the thing. Seth’s main thesis is that, with the crumbling of what he calls the TV-Industrial Complex, mass marketing has become broken. Suddenly mass media has become to cluttered, too noisy, too fragmented, people are too busy to pay attention, they have too much choice etc etc. So unless you already have a product that is heavily mass marketed successfully, you will probaly fail if you try going down the same road. So what to do?
Seth’s answer is for companies to stop trying to think of clever, “creative” ways to mass market ordinary products, but instead to start making remarkable products.
Technorati tags: design, marketing, pomotion, remarkable
I have to say though, that this has probably been the most stressful week I’ve had in a while. It is a real roller coaster. I find mood hinging on the hit counts and sign up counts. One day only a few people signed up and it really bummed me out. I really need to adjust my expectations to the long haul better. Little good comes out of constantly checking the statistics.
Technorati tags: web2.0, launch, entrepreneurship
Ken Dyck 