July 2010
6 posts
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“If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each...”
– Paul Graham in a 2005 Essay “How to Start a Startup”
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“tuition on someone else’s dime”
– Chris Fralic of First Round Capital talking about a hypothetical situation of raising $10 million, failing, and starting another company and doing it again. The point I took away from his anecdote was that failure doesn’t prevent you from going out and trying again. Future investors look at...
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5 Reasons Your Startup Should Teach Everyone to... →
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“There are two theories in hiring people:
• Find the candidate who lacks major...”
– Guy Kawasaki in “Art of the Start”
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Can't Miss Indiana Startup Event: The Combine
Vital Statistics
When: September 9th - 12th, 2010 Where: Bloomington, Indiana What: “The Combine is a display of talent, entrepreneurship and innovation. It’s an event about tech, specifically the people, ideas and environments that drive technology.” Featured Speakers: See below Ticket price as of writing: $199 (buy yours)
Lucky for you, the guys at SproutBox love the town of...
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June 2010
10 posts
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“Feedback is important, selling is important, getting the market to recognize...”
– Seth Godin ”Validation is Overrated“
Blink vs. Moneyball →
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“(Founders) spend so much of their time trying to convince everyone around them...”
– Eric Ries on why we want press coverage and why and when we should fight that urge.
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Don't Launch →
Sometimes just learning a new word can completely change the way you operate your business. Just one little word can have that much power. In this article that word is “Market Launch.”
The next time my investors ask me when we’re going to launch I will have two answers for them. One will be our “product launch” and the next will be our “market launch.”
...
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Another Video From Aaaron Patzer, Founder of Mint →
First off, did you know Aaron Patzer is from Evansville, Indiana? I had no idea, and considering how often I link to and post his stuff, I should have known that.
Anyway, some of my big takeaways:
“About 8 or 9 months before we launched Mint, we started a personal finance blog. We didn’t really have much money at this time, so we couldn’t hire any writers. We did the blog mostly ourselves....
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“There’s a big difference between adding a feature to an existing product and...”
– Dustin Curtis, I don’t laugh at startup ideas anymore
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My Issue with Entrepreneur Education
I wrote a response to a post on Smaller Indiana by Doug Karr about the 21 Fund and their mission.
In particular, I was responding to this quote: “(Steve Hourigan) shared that the benefit of the fund really isn’t the money as much as it is the education that they could be providing companies with the right resources.”
My comment:
“I really enjoyed this post and your...
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“Nail it before you scale it”
– @msuster http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/06/08/steven-blank-kills-it-at-greycroft-ceo-summit/
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“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”
– Pablo Picasso
May 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Learning From Game Design: 11 Gambits for... →
For obvious reasons (i.e. Pocket Tales is a social reading game) this link is extremely valuable to me.
The biggest choice you’ll make in looking at this list is what gambits not to implement. Focus is key, especially if your application isn’t a game, so decide what behaviors or outcomes are the biggest priority, and design your “game” elements around those.
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“His scarcest resource was his youth and the energy he had to put into startup...”
– Mark Suster’s Blog
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Tell me the features because you don't know the...
Have you ever heard someone say that you should sell the benefits not the features?
I don’t get it - I mean, I GET it, but really I don’t get it.
I heard this a few times when I was at Cantaloupe.tv and I was responsible for a sales quota. I heard it from sales consultants who would come in to coach the team and I would also hear it from amateur sales consultants - in other words, a...
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“Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine. ...”
– Mark Suster http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-an-entrepreneur-four-lettersjfdi/
April 2010
8 posts
5 tags
WatchIn less than 7 minutes this video shows us that kindergarteners are the natural champions of the lean startup methodology and every business class we take further dilutes our successful, natural instincts.
“Business students are trained to find the single, right plan…what kindergarteners do differently is that they start with the marshmallow and they build prototypes” (Biz...
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“We don’t pay you to work here—we pay you so you can work here.”
– Venture Hacks “We don’t pay you to work here”
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The Difference between a CTO and VP of Engineering →
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WatchThis presentation explains how to use Survey.io to measure product/market fit. You will get more out of it if you visit the source of this presentation at Venture Hacks and take a look at the sample survey. You should also consider reading the transcript or listening to the audio that goes along with this presentation.
“There are lots of ways to make money, if you have a lot of traffic. It is kind...”
– Evan Williams on making money with Twitter
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“The Lean Startup methodology does not advocate using optimization techniques to...”
– Eric Ries
Go read the full article ”Learning is Better than Optimization” because the idea that we don’t have to use optimization techniques to make startup decisions is heresy in a lot of circles and this quote just doesn’t capture the whole article.
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The best thing about starting a company in...
The best thing about starting a company in Indianapolis is you can avoid the “startup” hype. Indianapolis in general (not the tech community, but the general community) doesn’t care about startups. The only way they’ll pay attention to you is if you’re successful.
This is a good thing.
Even the most good intentioned founders can get caught up in the hype.
The...
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“In the predator model, the entrepreneur’s advantage is analytical -...”
– Malcolm Gladwell, “The Sure Thing”
March 2010
10 posts
4 tags
Startups are Like Puppies
“…a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model.” -Steve Blank, Teaching Entrepreneurship-Logistics
Emphasis on the “temporary.” A lot of people like to say they’re interested in startups (just look at a lot of twitter profiles, you’ll see), but that seems ridiculous to me. Startups have their charms, but most of...
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“The difference between me and David Hampton isn’t that he’s a con artist and I’m...”
– Clay Shirky explains why sometimes we need to be “self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in (our) best interests to do so.”
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How Mint Acquired 1.5 Million Users →
Mint continues to serve up great real-world examples of how to successful start and operate a new company. Here are a couple gems to demonstrate why you should read this article:
“The Product. Maybe we didn’t have a high viral coefficient but we had a great net promoter score…The delight after a quick setup, and having all those graphs and balances was palpable and emotional.”
...
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“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.”
– Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels quoting Winston Churchill (via www.twitter.com/paulroales
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WatchNetflix Presentation on their “Freedom and Responsibility” Company Culture
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Lessons Learned from our First Press Release
If our first press release at Pocket Tales has taught me anything it’s that the press:
Doesn’t read closely
Is not as concerned about facts as you might think
Okay, that’s not entirely fair. I only have two data points to speak of and they’re both online publications. No offense to my fellow bloggers, but your average print publication does a lot more fact checking...
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Watch2pockettales:
Actual Slides from our pitch at the 2010 SXSW Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator Competition
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“Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance.”
– Seth Godin
I was inspired to include this quote on Man Indy Arena after Pocket Tales participated in the 2010 SXSW Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator Competition. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced more anxiety for a longer period of time, and all that anxiety was was me expecting to fail...
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WatchIf you’ve ever thought about adding an advisor to your startup or you’ve NEVER thought about it because you don’t know what value they can provide, read this presentation. It’s a great intro and answers a lot of questions you probably never thought to ask.
It’s not pretty, but it’s an effective presentation.
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“But look, even if you have no cash, you always have time and creativity. Find a...”
– Rob May, “What I Learned Raising A Million Dollars For a Startup With No Business Plan and No Financial Projections (While Drinking a Beer)”
February 2010
17 posts
2 tags
Upcoming Deadlines for Incubator Applications →
Click the link (brown box, white type above) to see more, but here are immediate deadlines:
SproutBox - March 1 i/o Ventures - March 1 YCombinator - March 3 Startl - March 15 Tech Wildcatters - March 19 Techstars, Boulder - March 22 Dreamit Ventures - March 22 Betaspring - March 22
*Thanks to David Weisburd for showing me the link
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WatchOverview of the Lean Startup method from the methods biggest evangelist Eric Ries. Presentation came from 6 Essential Startup Decks
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6 Essential Startup Decks and More →
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WatchBRILLIANT! talk by Jesse Schell on the future of the world (okay, technically it’s the future of game design but everyone creating anything ever should watch this)
This video came from this GigaOM post Video: Reality TV, the iPhone & the Future of Technology — Why It’s All a Game
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How Could Someone “Thoroughly Unqualified” Raise... →
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Running More Effective Board Meetings at Startups →
Very unique and tangible advice on running better board meetings.
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Seed Funding Best Practices →
More very concise, immediately useful advice on raising a seed round from Angels or even VC’s.
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In VC Deals, the Promote, Not the Price, Matters →
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“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof...”
– Thomas Edison from Google Books
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WatchStartup Usability Testing presentation from Cindy Alvarez. See a collection of usability resources from Carter Cleveland.
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WatchLean Startup Usability Testing presentation from Meetup.com’s Andres Glusman. See a collection of usability resources from Carter Cleveland.
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The Old Rusty Pivots Upon Which Startups Turn
Last week, my partner Yaw Aning and I were preparing information to file our taxes. Like an old couple that’s been married so long they hardly notice the passing of time, we suddenly realized that very day was our one year anniversary for forming Pocket Tales.
(I’ll pause for gratuitous congratulations)
I didn’t attach any significance to the anniversary until I read a startup...