Tag: entrepreneurship
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The Benefits of Side Projects
The creation of 3M’s Scotch Tape, the Declaration of Independence and Metallica: just three of the stories Ben Casnocha retells to show the importance of innovation through side projects. Is giving away a day a week of your employees’ time worth it? Google executives seem to think so. They cite first the enormous goodwill generated internally:…
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When (and When Not) to Consider Venture Capital
On discussing why he and his co-founders are seeking venture capital funding for their programming question and answer site (StackOverflow), Joel Spolsky provides a number of scenarios for when a company should give consideration to VC funding: There’s a land grab going on. There is a provable concept that’s repeatable. The business could benefit from…
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Icon-Based Business Plans
Depending on who you listen to, a business plan is either a waste of your time or an essential document. A good compromise could be Peter Hilton’s idea to create a concise, icon-based business plan visualisation: Inspired by the simplicity and success of the Creative Commons icons, which condense pages of information that no one ever…
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The ‘Solution Looking for a Problem’ Syndrome
In characteristically colourful style, Dave McClure admonishes the entrepreneurial community for pitching their products solution-first. This isn’t how you should pitch and it isn’t how you should position your product, suggests McClure. Problem-first pitching is how one should engage an audience and is how to create a product that has a use. Pitch the PROBLEM…
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The Entrepreneur’s Ignored Demographic
Andrew Warner of Mixergy recently interviewed Alex Algard: the entrepreneur who founded the $57m a year (revenue) business WhitePages. One exchange in the interview I particularly enjoyed is when Warner ponders WhitePages’ target demographic. Realising that he, his colleagues and his friends don’t use the site, don’t talk about the site or even hear about the…
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What People Pay For
As a natural follow-up to his Monetizing Your Web App article [previously], Dan Zambonini looks at user needs and what people are willing to pay for: Time: Convenience, Efficiency, Immediacy Scarcity Comfort Esteem: Id, Desirability, Self-Image, Ego Belonging: Relationships, Sex, Affection Survival: Health, Safety, Wellbeing Financial Security: Wealth, Success, Career Entertainment: Emotion, Experiences Intellectual Stimulation:…
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Three Words of Startup Advice
Posted one at a time to his Twitter feed and spread using the #StartupTriplets tag, Dharmesh Shah–founder of HubSpot–has distilled his best startup advice into forty-seven three-word chunks: startup triplets. My favourite ten: Hire generalists early. Hire specialists later. Invest in culture. Encourage diverse thinking. Decide with data. Accept imperfect data. Encourage rational debate. Make…
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What a Non-Programmer Should Do In a Startup
Twenty things a non-programmer should do in a startup; a list compiled by Spencer Fry in response to a question asked on Hacker News: Writing the copy for the website. Mainly keeping the support documents up-to-date. Doing all the business related tasks. Doing all the customer service. Handling all incoming e-mail. Doing all of the…
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Apple, Disney and Pixar: It’s the Products
Written in early 2006 shortly after Disney’s acquisition of Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock deal, BusinessWeek looks at the relationship between the Disney and Apple CEOs and where their relationship may lead. Prescient in that it accurately predicted the Apple TV and the iPhone, the article also briefly looks at Jobs and his product-first…
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Entrepreneurial Success Not Correlated to University Prestige
An analysis of the educational backgrounds of tech company founders has shown that an elite education does not provide as much of an advantage as many expect. In fact the results seem to show that where one studies has no correlation to entrepreneurial success, as long as one actually does study. The 628 U.S.-born tech…