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Category: Managing start-ups

  • Managing Start Ups: Startups’ New Creed: Patent First, Prototype Later

    Alfred Nobel's application for patent, regarding his percussion cap and principles for initial ignition of nitroglycerine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Featured in a Businees Week artilce by Ashlee Vance on August 09, 2012, Craig Ciesla set out five years ago to do something ridiculous and wonderful. He wanted to develop technology that would cause buttons to…

  • Managing Start Ups: The Launch Pad

    Image via CrunchBase For budding entrepreneurs looking for insights into life inside an incubator, or ideas on how to best prepare/get accepted, the just published The Launch Pad, is the place to start. Detailing life inside Y Combinator, The Launch Pad gives an unvarnished view of how to successfully start a company in three months.

  • Managing Start-Ups: Vision Without Resources is Delusional

    English: YouTube business model canvas sketch by Alexander Osterwalder (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I see a lot of smart young entrepreneurs who have spent many hours fine tuning  their brilliant and disruptive ideas on how they are going to change the world. The reality is that they should spend as much time thinking about their business…

  • Managing Your Start-up: Creating a Killer Value Proposition

    Value Proposition Exercise (Photo credit: groop_lab) Dave's on vacation this week, so here's a neat piece on creating a killer value proposition for your startup which originally appeared in Xconomy on May 29, 2012. The author, Michael Skok, is a general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. His investments include Apperian, Akiban Technologies, Acquia, Unidesk, and Demandware…

  • Managing Start Ups: What Startups Should Do Before They Get Into The VC’s Office

    English: The City of London skyline as viewed toward the north-west from the top floor viewing platform of London City Hall on the southern side of the Thames. In the foreground: Dixie Queen and Millennium Time at Tower Millennium Pier. This is a 5 segment panoramic image taken by myself with a Canon 5D and…

  • Twillo’s Nine Things–Corporate Culture at it’s Simplest

  • Managing Your Start-up: Stripes Aims to Reinvent Web Payments

     (Photo credit: Wikipedia) According to BusinessWeek (27 February 2012),  when Patrick Collison began trying to sell Marc Andreessen on the need for a drop-dead simple way for website owners to accept credit cards, the venture capitalist and creator of the Netscape browser cut him off. “I know!” Andreessen said excitedly before launching into a story…

  • Managing Your Start-up: How to Run a Board Meeting

    Image via CrunchBase Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures had a great post in BusinessWeek recently on how to run a board meeting. The only addition is making sure that you speak with all Board members in advance if you have a possible contentious item on the agenda.  No one likes a surprise…. "Board meetings…

  • Managing Your Start-up: How to Get Buy-In for Needed Change in your Company

    Roger Jones, a top management consultant and good friend, provides some interesting insights into how you can get buy-in for transformative change in your company: "Firstly I suggest that leaders have to act in a way that is consistent with the change they want to see in others. In other words, they have to lead…

  • Managing Your Start-up: The Wal-Mart Syndrome

    It happens at almost every start up I have worked with over the last decade–the emergence of a huge potential client who wants to pay a lot of money to use your technology. Sounds simple enough and could be a breakthrough event for the company, right? The Board gets all excited along with the founders–…