Category: Uncategorized

Bijoy:

Greg, the founder/CEO of RightNow and author of the new book, Bootstrapping Your Business, recently gave a talk at a TiE Institute event in Santa Clara. You can download a pdf (2MB) of the talk and view it on the website.

To EVERY bootstrapper (and entrepreneur thinking about starting a company): WATCH THIS – and watch it twice!

Fred Wilson quotes Herbert Simon:

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Steve Pavlina:

I’ve decided to try a new experiment to see if I can attract a large sum of money into my life. I arbitrarily opted for $1 million, since that’s a significant enough sum that I’ll definitely notice it. So basically I’m going to attempt to become a millionaire. And most of all, I’m going to attempt it by using the intention-manifestation model to make it more fun and challenging. This means I’ll allow myself to be guided by intuition as opposed to rigidly planning out every detail. I’m also not planning to directly spend any of my existing cash to get it, except through reinvesting cash that comes by way of the experiment. So I’ll be starting with $0 seed money, and if I happen to need cash for some kind of initial investment, I’ll have to attract that cash too.

Tim Grahl (via Dane Carlson):

Fear in a suit walked into my office the other day.

This fifty-something sat in front of me and tried to sell me… I can’t remember.

I remember being filled with a horrible fear of that being me in thirty something years.

Don Dodge:

Entrepreneurs like to solve problems and improve things, which often leads to “solutions looking for a problem”. It is important to remember the difference between Consumer problems and Enterprise problems. Entrepreneurs fall into the “solution looking for a problem” trap when they try to solve problems from a technical perspective and don’t completely understand the business aspects.

I’m on vacation this week, which for me means spending most of my time working on odd jobs around the house, and very little at a computer. Naturally, and regrettably, that means less blogging.

Things should return to normal next week, Nov. 7.

Milestone Group:

Milestone: What two to three key pieces of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a company today?

Feld: Every entrepreneur that I have ever worked with, including myself when I was starting companies as an entrepreneur, was doing something you are incredibly passionate about. If you are really excited about the domain and the thing that you are working on, your probability or chance of success is dramatically higher than “well I am just starting a company because it seemed interesting or important.” Look for something you are really passionate about because it is going to consume you and it should consume you. Secondly, surround yourself with awesome people. It sounds trite but that is the biggest, driver of success, especially early in the life of a company. If you are an experienced entrepreneur you have been through that cycle, you have a collection of people. If you are not experienced, if this is the first time you are doing it, go find people that are experienced. Check them out carefully because you are going to have to live with them for a while. Make sure that you get the best possible people on your team early on.

Lacey Rose (via Bill Keaggy):

If I told you lying was good for you, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But trust me–I’m not lying.

Simply put, we lie because it works. When we do it well, we get what we want.

Brett Nelson (via Brian Plexico):

Many [tech startups] don’t have the resources to hire a shiny-shoed sales force nor a comprehensive training program. Here, then, are some hard lessons–gratis–from the front lines.

Peter Caputa:

I am starting to realize that anything that touches the consumer has to be free. If you want to launch and run a consumer facing service (the more obvious applications to write for any developer or company that relies on advertising as their revenue source), you have to give it away.