Letters Remain

Tag: entrepreneurship

  • Entrepreneurship and the Possibility of Real Failure

    In 2007 Vinicius Vacanti quit his highly-paid job in finance to take on life as an entrepreneur. In a short post describing his reasons for doing so, Vacanti says that most of us haven’t faced the possibility of real failure, and entrepreneurship is a way to test your limits by attempting to create something of…

  • WordPerfect Business Advice

    In 1980, as a $5-an-hour part-time office manager, W. E. Peterson joined the small company that would go on to become WordPerfect Corporation. Then, twelve years later, after helping grow the company to half a billion dollars in annual sales and becoming the Executive Vice President, Peterson was forced out of the company and set out to…

  • Preventable Startup Mistakes (That Caused the Downfall of Seven Startups)

    Verifiable, Wesabe, Storytlr, TwitApps, Vox, Swivel and EventVue: All companies or products that no longer exist after preventable problems caused their downfall. 37signals collects their stories so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes, presenting a set of brief post-mortems on failed startups. The recurring issues seem to be: solving problems that the world isn’t…

  • Focus Points for Entrepreneurs

    When someone asked for advice on How to become a millionaire in 3 years on Hacker News, serial entrepreneur Jason Baptiste took the task seriously providing thirty-seven things to focus on when starting a company, including: Market opportunity Inequality of information Surround yourself with smart people Your primary metric shouldn’t be dollars If you do…

  • Selling Software on a Shoestring

    From the early days of development through to the release and refinement of the final product (and further), Patrick McKenzie has been chronicling his journey as a one-man Micro ISV (Micro Independent Software Vendor). McKenzie has recently compiled a fantastic list of his best posts and this acts as a list of practical advice for…

  • Essential Startup Essays

    Om Malik presents what he believes are the ten essential startup essays of 2009: Paul Graham: What Startups Are Really Like Sean Ellis: Milestones to Startup Success Eric Ries: Myth: Entrepreneurship Will Make You Rich Venture Hacks: What Is the Minimum Viable Product? Mike Speiser: The Power of Continuous Improvement Mike Speiser: Getting Comfortable With…

  • The Keynote MBA

    Truth is, the great value in most MBA and JD programs can be boiled down to 5 to 10 talks, presentations, classes and conversations that changed the way you experienced the world. Following up on this comment, Jonathan Fields presents The Seven Keynote MBA: seven keynote speeches, from a diverse group of people, that together…

  • Journalism Online and Internet Entrepreneurship

    In profiling a number of ‘online journalism entrepreneurs’, The New York Times does a good job of providing a relatively cliché-free, high-level overview of the current state of online news publishing. The article looks at the “new breed” of blog-based journalists, a few business models, and the problems associated with advertising online. There’s nothing new…

  • MacLeod on Entrepreneurship

    Hugh MacLeod shares a list of random thoughts on being an entrepreneur–a simple list of twenty-six inspirational titbits on business, positioning and success. My favourite five: In a world of over-supply and commodification, you are no longer paid to supply. You’re being paid to deliver something else. What that is exactly, is not always obvious.…

  • Summarising Joel on Software

    Now that Joel Spolsky has ‘retired’ from blogging at Joel on Software (in the format the site has been known for, at least), Jan Willem Boer is reading the entire back-catalogue of entries and condensing the knowledge within each essay into a single sentence (or two). The result is a stunning list of tips on…