Category: entrepreneurship
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Working for Free as Promotion
Could working for free be one of the best promotional tools available to an individual or SME? 37signals believes so, saying that their 37Better Project was “one of the best promotional things [they] ever did”. To illustrate their point they also take a look at R.BIRD’s excellent consumer packaging patterns, stating: If you’re looking to…
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What Should I Do With My Life?
In a follow-up to his previous article on the same subject, Po Bonson asks, ‘What should I do with my life, now?’ Don’t tell me you don’t know what you want from your life. Don’t ever say that, don’t ever fool yourself into that stupor. Of course you know what you want — you know the feeling you…
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Overnight Success Takes Years
Paul Buchheit—original developer of Gmail and Google AdSense, founder of FriendFeed—discusses how projects can obtain ‘overnight success’. This notion of overnight success is very misleading, and rather harmful. If you’re starting something new, expect a long journey. That’s no excuse to move slow though. To the contrary, you must move very fast, otherwise you will…
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Work on Stuff that Matters
Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, implores business owners (and everyone else) not to follow the money, but to ‘work on stuff that matters’ by following these three principles: Work on something that matters to you more than money Create more value than you capture Take the long view I want to make clear that…
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Executing Your Idea
Serial entrepreneur Alex Mann implores us to take action, in this series of posts on executing your business idea: Be An Executioner Who’s Your Market Building Your Team Gaining Momentum Develop Your Moat As Alex reiterates in Gaining Momentum, this advice that originally appeared in the comments section of the introduction (written by friend and…
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Pro Poker as a Startup
As a former professional poker player, Matt Maroon got a lot of enquiries from people asking him if they should ‘go pro’. Now an entrepreneur, he gets similar enquiries from people asking him whether they should start their own company. He discusses the similarities between pro poker and start-ups in A Little Better Advice. My goal…
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How to Do What You Love
Paul Graham, he of Y Combinator fame, offers up some learned and insightful advice on how to do what you love. What you should not do […] is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can…
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Advice on Being a Consultant
Consultant Steve Friedl offers some fantastic advice on being a consultant. I found this comment interesting: I purposely put the technical part of this Tech Tip last, to reinforce the notion that “customer service”, not “computer science” skills are the biggest factors in a successful consulting practice. But it’s foolish to think that technical skills…
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Raising Money for a StartUp Company
Jason Nazar, founder of DocStoc, digs up an old document on Raising Money for a StartUp Company Good information within on the ‘funding lifecycle’, bootstrapping, angel investors vs. venture capital, and valuation methods, amongst others. Entrepreneurs face a great deal of challenges in building a successful venture. They have to identify a good opportunity, in…
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Upping the Odds of Startup Success
After debunking the myth that only one-in-ten startups succeed (the rate of success is more likely around 60-70%), Dan Kehrer offers us four key factors that improve the odds of new business survival: People. If you can afford to hire employees, do it. Well-staffed businesses have better survival rates than solo operations. Startup capital of…