January 2010
11 posts
6 tags
Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, on Leadership →
Memorable quotes from the interview:
“One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of...
4 tags
Hackers and Founders Indianapolis - February... →
We have a new name, a new website, and a new meetup.
Don’t worry, the mission is staying the same - to bring together Indianapolis’ startup community.
Our next meetup is Monday, February 1 at the Upper Room (located upstairs at Broad Ripple Steak House). Click through to join the group and RSVP
1 tag
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can...”
– Albert Einstein
3 tags
ChaCha Still Doesn't Work for Me. Does it Work for...
The Indianpolis-based mobile answer service ChaCha and I have had a tumultuous relationship.
It started out great, like most relationships do. I’m talking about Autumn 2007 through Winter 2008. I loved ChaCha and I used it often for serious reasons (What’s the address of the Broad Ripple Brew Pub?), for curiosity’s reasons (What does the Pope’s brother do?), and for laughs...
5 tags
Venture Hacks Guide to Creating a Slide Deck for... →
Provides a great outline in short order. Also see Part I of this series: Elevator Pitch
2 tags
“Watch the downside; the upside will take care of itself.”
– Marty Gruss from Malcom Gladwell’s article “The Sure Thing: How Entrepreneur’s Really Succeed”
5 tags
How to Raise Seed Funding from Angel Investors →
This is a thorough, yet brief post on how to raise money from Angels and other seed investors. It gives very tangible advice. If you’re in this stage of your startup (which we are at Pocket Tales), you can start using this information immediately.
2 tags
“Startups generally suck at “wide open networking”—where the purpose of a meeting...”
– Charlie O’Donnell, Read this quote and the rest of the post about the NYC First Round Startup Trek here
5 tags
WatchAnother presentation Mint used to pitch investors before launch.
3 tags
What the Kids are Talking About: "Formspring Me" →
There was a great write up in Techcrunch about a product from Indianapolis-based startup formspring called formspring.me. (Almost anytime a local company gets attention in Techcrunch, I get excited)
If you haven’t heard of it, formspring.me is a super simple tool that allows people to ask you a question anonymously. It’s particularly popular on Tumblr.
I know a few of the guys at...
4 tags
Detailed Stats of How We Hired a Frontend Web...
When Yaw and I decided to start Pocket Tales before we had a programmer on board (we must be idiots right?) we knew hiring was going to be one of our biggest, most important challenges.
To be frank, it’s been a much bigger challenge that we expected, but a few months ago we made our first technical hire. Jeromy Darling joined our team just before Thanksgiving as our frontend developer. This...