Month: October 2005

Jason Fried:

Apple started in a garage. Dell started in a dorm room. Starbucks started with a single store. Nike started out of a car trunk.

Frank Ross (via Dane Carlson):

There are lots of reasons in favor of going into business for yourself (be your own boss, work your own hours, etc). But there are also a variety of reasons why people don’t go into business for themselves. Some common obstacles are…

Paul McNamara (via Anthony Cerminaro):

Entrepreneurs in early stage companies can spend many months, and sometimes years, developing a new product. For many, the moment when the product is finally ready to go to market fosters feelings of great accomplishment and great anxiety. Can I make my sales projections? Will the company scale? Do we have what it takes to be successful?

Ultimately, these questions boil down to one: how to accelerate revenue formation. In this article, I want to share with you five proven revenue accelerators.

Joel Spolsky:

JetBlue launching a shuttle between New York and Boston is a brilliant move, for subtle reasons. It’s not really that they need a share of the NY-Boston market, although that would be nice. It’s not that they want to strengthen their JFK hub by feeding in passengers from Boston, although that would be nice, too.

Here’s my theory. They’re launching this because Delta and USAir consistently make huge profits from the Boston shuttle … profits which subsidize their other loss-making routes. By forcing down prices in the shuttle market, eliminating those excess profits for their competitors, they’re going to make it harder for those airlines to accept losses on other routes elsewhere which compete with JetBlue.

Ramit Sethi (via Dane Carlson):

One of the most rookie mistakes young entrepreneurs make is keeping their ideas secret. It goes something like this:

You: “So what are you working on?”
Rookie: “Oh, sorry. I can’t really talk about it.”

Really! Your idea is so grand that you can’t share it with even your close friend? Wow, I want to invest in you right now!!!

Samuel Gregg:

Since the 1960s, judicial activism has long exercised the patience of many Americans with their judges. Normally this is associated with concerns about courts identifying and promoting various “rights”—such as an alleged constitutional right to privacy—that even some of their most passionate supporters freely concede cannot be derived from the American Constitution.

Judicial activism, however, took a new step on June 23, 2005, when the United States Supreme Court decided in Kelo v. City of New London to expand the definition of what is known as “eminent domain.”

Via Jeff Cornwall, who writes:

Over time, Kelo will become known as the sharpest blow to free enterprise and entrepreneurship since this country was founded.

David Beisel:

I think that there are a number of good reasons why a startup would find the need to be covert about its plans. Alternatively, there are many motivations why a startup would pursue a clear, articulate, and open communication policy to their strategy and intentions.

Entrepreneur.com:

Need help reenergizing your business? Out of creative ideas for reaching your business goals? We’ve compiled a list of the top 100 tips to improve your business. Consider it your checklist for maintaining a successful business.

Paul Graham:

The first Summer Founders Program has just finished. We were surprised how well it went. Overall only about 10% of startups succeed, but if I had to guess now, I’d predict three or four of the eight startups we funded will make it.

Ellen McGirt, Janet Paskin and Donna Rosato (via Dane Carlson):

If you dream of launching your own private enterprise, a stealth plan can be the key to freedom.