Plinky
http://www.plinky.com/
OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN | Ten Tiny Things Every Small Business Owner Should Do in 2009
http://blogs.openforum.com/2008/12/31/ten-tiny-things-every-small-business-owner-should-do-in-2009/

Need to pop these on my list

Interactive Video. Check it out.

cool use of flash and video

advertising integrated into videocontent. interactivity with the user.

Down economy?  Perfect time to start it up. Chris Brogan posted a great post on if he started in social media today, what he would do. It got me

Andrew Hyde's tips for starting a company today.

"Or maybe it's because it's too easy to overlook the messy details, or to get caught up in details that seem very important, but aren't. I also get very bored by endless debate." Code (and demo) is better than some slides... I agree.

"Consider spending less time talking, and more time prototyping, especially if you're not very good at talking or powerpoint. Your code can be a very persuasive argument. The other point is that it's important to make prototyping new ideas, especially bad ideas, as fast and easy as possible. ... Fortunately for Gmail, they've recently found a rather clever solution that enables the thousands of Google engineers to add new ui features: Gmail Labs. This is also where Google's "20% time" comes in -- if you want innovation, it's critical that people are able to work on ideas that are unapproved and generally thought to be stupid. The real value of "20%" is not the time, but rather the "license" it gives to work on things that "aren't important""

On the importance of prototyping as quickly as possible, especially if you're idea is a bad one: it can be taken to the backyard and shot ASAP <i>' Some people can sell their ideas with a brilliant speech or a slick powerpoint presentation. I can't '</i> via <a href="http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2009/01/23/bad_ideas/">The Fishbowl - Charles Miller</a>

quick and dirty ってのは真の実力だよな・・・。

from haruki_zaemon (Simon Harris)

This is just an awesome post about the value of prototyping and has some great code

This is also where Google's "20% time" comes in -- if you want innovation, it's critical that people are able to work on ideas that are unapproved and generally thought to be stupid. The real value of "20%" is not the time, but rather the "license" it gives to work on things that "aren't important". (perhaps I should do a post on "20% time" at some point...)

Twitter was born about three years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco.

Twitter was born about three years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco. The company had just contributed a major chunk of code to Rails 1.0 and had just shipped Odeo Studio, but we were facing tremendous competition from Apple and other heavyweights. Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves.

L'histoire du projet twttr qui est devenu ce que l'on sait. Je me souviens l'avoir découvert via Tara Hunt & Factory Joe lors d'un SxSW festival en 2007.

companies world map

More excellent insight from Fred Wilson about Internet startups, online business models, and revenue vs. cash. Important insight for anyone in business that needs to understand how next-generation economics are not what Wall Street was doing, but what the Web is doing today.

o a business is worth the sum of all of its future profits, discounted back to a net present value (buffet thinks this is the intrinsic value). its a lot easier to decrease costs than increase revenues. forget that ROE is so high for companies like craigslist. have a 1B company on 30 employees. any need to get big and grow.

Good article on Web based business profits, costs and revenues

BuzzGain is an online service for discovering and engaging with the people who will help your business thrive in today's social economy - where attention is a precious commodity. It empowers businesses to identify the previously hidden communities who are actively defining and shaping its future, including blogs, Flickr, youtube, Twitter, and traditional media. Much more than a Social Media monitoring solution, BuzzGain reveals influential voices and corresponding conversations so that companies can listen, learn, and engage in the connection of mutually beneficial relationships. BuzzGain provides socially networked suite that connects companies to the conversations that will help foster valuable relationships, increase customer acquisition and loyalty, and garner invaluable market intelligence. It is ideal DIY solution for marketing, public relations, advertising, sales, and customer service.

nu ştiu ce contine

Gotta love these lists

So you’re a skilled developer or design freelancer who has established a handful of customers who pay your bills and provide you with an income. That’s great. You may wish to keep things just the way they are or you might want to build on this and build up your own small business. If you’re opting for the later then here are a few tips to help you ride the bumpy road from freelancer to fully-fledged small business.

999 free business ideas for possible brainstorming, journaling, etc. Possible crew activities?

Ideas are a dime a dozen. The money is in the execution. Need proof? For Seth Godin's Alternative MBA program, this week the nine of us came up with 111 business ideas each. But ideas are only valuable when someone (like you) makes something happen. What follows are our 999 business ideas, free for the taking. 1. Prepackaged school supplies based on the lists from the school districts 2. Incubator site providing office space, hosting, etc. for startups that are seed funded. 3. In-grocery store prep service (buy vegetables first and drop them off to be chopped to your specs - pick them up on the way to checkout) 4. A website that you can submit your design and work with vendors to manufacture your own clothes line. 5. Online discount brokerage that has no closing hours and provides access to all exchanges throughout the world and handles currency and legal issues automatically.

website

Stuck for ideas? Here's 999 new ones: http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html

Most guides on management are written for big bosses at big companies, not people starting something new who want their team to be as effective as possible. (Hi, startup founders!) So herewith, a guide to effective non-hierarchical management.

Vary responsibilities (not efficient, but unhappy = worse efficiency) * Delegate responsibility (develop the team... either manage or work, not both) * Competent people get things done anyway. Ineffective ones let the excuses pile up. * proactive as well. People tend to suffer quietly * Part of your job is helping people decide what to tackle first. * stop procrastination is to sit down with someone and come up with the next concrete step they have to take and then start doing it together. * people are much happier and more productive when they have control over the way they work. Never take that away. * And if people fight back, know when to step back and say “look, you’re the expert. I was just giving my two cents.” (Hint: It’s right after they start fighting back.) * not to dictate or micromanage, but to have a Socratic dialogue to help figure out what the best answer is. *

A better way to think of a manager is as a servant, like an editor or a personal assistant. Everyone wants to be effective; a manager’s job is to do everything they can to make that happen. The ideal manager is someone everyone would want to have.

Useful CL

twitter history

Sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of years ago by its author, Jack Dorsey (@jack), who started Twitter in 2006 along with co-founders Evan Williams (@ev) and Biz Stone (@biz).

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document. Part I

The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

facebook, django

primer on ruby

One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?

The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases

Probably the most important thing I've learned about dilution is that it's measured more in behavior than users. It's bad behavior you want to keep out more than bad people. User behavior turns out to be surprisingly malleable. If people are expected to behave well, they tend to; and vice versa.

Paul Graham on communities

addictiveness of games and social applications is still mostly unsolved || <is that w/ chiefdelphi? feels diluted to new members and forbidding?> to keep away bad people But this way gentler and probably more effective than overt barriers || Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you... || <again, transparency> it's important that a site that kills submissions provide a way for users to see what got killed || compare quality comments on community sites, average length good predictor. || <there's hope for me? 'cos I am always afraid my ideas are stupid> Prob stupidity more often ... having few ideas than wrong ones. || <so being able to make people laugh is not always admirable? hrm> put-downs are the easiest form of humor. || So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants || <ouch> disaster to attract thousands of smart people to a site that caused them to waste lots of time.

Three things you need if you want more customers Seth Godin I går, 12:26 PM If you want to grow, you need new customers. And if you want new customers, you need three things: 1. A group of possible customers you can identify and reach. 2. A group with a problem they want to solve using your solution. 3. A group with the desire and ability to spend money to solve that problem.

You'd be amazed at how often new businesses or new ventures have none of these. The first one is critical, because if you don't have permission, or knowledge, or word of mouth, you're invisible.

great resources here. thanks tim. love the random generation and then checker

A rose is a rose is rose... but not with domain names. (Photo: nickwheeleroz) I am James Siminoff. I’m an ...

Raising money is never easy, but in a recession it gets even harder. Here's a quick guide to raising money in a down economy.

Start a business

Lean startups - a lesson in bootstrapping.

Amazing javascript work. It's sure a heck lot of work unless there is a tool to make it really easily. Anyway here is an awesome javascript timing example.

watch Paul Graham type an essay

「Startups in 13 Sentences」の作成過程。文章の作成と推敲過程がよくわかる

Tips for the Mac!

The boot process on a Mac is a magical process, all you see is a grey screen with the magic happening in the background. Did you know that very are various keys which you can use to change how you Mac boots and access certain settings. They are not for every day use, mostly troubleshooting. They are worth knowing if anything goes wrong.

There are three types of amateur entrepreneurs out there, and in my young life, I’ve been every single one of them. By coming to terms with my failures, I’m more prepared to classify which type of amateur entrepreneur I am, and thus preventing myself from failing in the same way again.

Type 1 Amateur Entrepreneur: All ideas, no implementation. Type 2 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas and half assed implementations.

great article here! Google, twitter, social networking, and of course my favorite topic- entrepreneurship

1. Launch a scaled-back version 2. Notice sluggish competitors 3. You don’t need virality if your product is good 4. Follow your passion 5. Sometimes you have to go off on your own

Must-read Wired article about the new Chief Software Architect of Microsoft - Ray Ozzie. Bill Gates him one of the top 5 programmers in the universe. That's a compliment!

This makes me want to dig up that "Ozzie is trying to build that thing he's been trying to build for the last 25 years; nobody cares, still" article.

Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com

Really interesting article about the issues facing Microsoft, Cloud Computing and other problems and possibilities for Microsoft.

The Future of Web Apps: 7 Things Companies Must Do to Succeed

News Flash: Web 2.0 is so over. Here are seven things web app companies will need to do to succeed in the future.

Several weeks ago, we took a look at the founders’ pie. I noted that frequently the founding team divides 100% by the number of founders. I also cautioned that this is the WRONG WAY! I then went on to identify the factors that should be considered when making these decisions. Since then, I have had several people tell me that while what I wrote certainly made sense, it wasn’t very helpful. They said that when it came to “rug cutting time,” absent an alternative method, equal shares was the only method that seemed to be “fair.” As a public service, I have “invented” a Founders’ Pie Calculator. As you will soon see, this calculator is not particularly profound. In fact, I’m sure I haven’t “invented” it, but, at the same time, I have never seen it before. [Caution: perhaps there’s a fatal flaw that I haven’t considered.] Its primary benefits are that it provides a way to quantify the elements of the decision making process, and that it appears to be logical and fair.

Equity Calculation between founders

The problem is that trying to copy one company's model is a fool's errand. It's hard to figure out which part of the Starbucks formula made the business a smash hit while so many of its rivals failed. Starbucks's success is the product of a combination of factors that came together in precisely the right way at precisely the right time. It's nearly impossible to isolate which one was the most important. You would probably have to look at the hundreds of small coffee chains that didn't make it big before you stood a chance of seeing what really distinguished Starbucks.

probably

A start-up requires patience: As in tuning a shortwave radio, you have to make a number of adjustments to get it just right.

Here are the top 10 social networks for entrepreneurs. Each helps entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with the guidance and resources to setup their company.

resources for entrepreneurs

save

"It seems like a fool-proof plan: start up with a close friend. You’ll get along (obviously), and you’ll get to share the exciting, fantastic, scary experience of starting up with someone you care about. It’s not a bad idea, but there are a few caveats that you should be aware of before you proceed..."

Good advice on the early stages. This is targeted at friends starting up but also good for anybody starting with somebody else.

Interesting article about how to found a startup with friends.

lmost cost us our friendship. We got through this thanks to the help and mediation of anot

Recently I made a post on BHW with this adsense screenshot and lots of people wanted to know how it's done. here's how it's done: I start with keyword lists from adsenseheaven dot com which guesstimates the most expensive keywords to bid on in the PPC AdWords side of the Google ad world. I generally ignore the top 1000, as they are very competitive and saturated. I am not concerned with the top payouts. I store this data every month in a mySQL database with the previous months data, and over time I am able to see which phrases are consistently in the lists and unlikely to disappear. I call them long term performers. I cross check each phrase with the number of pages currently indexed in google, to see how much competition there is for a each key phrase. It's usually easier to land a top 10 first page SERP position if there is less competition for the phrase. I also cross check each phrase with google trends data which has an RSS feed which is also collected and stored in a

When we sold our startup in 1998 I thought one day I'd do some angel investing. Seven years later I still hadn't started. I put it off because it seemed mysterious and complicated. It turns out to be easier than I expected, and also more interesting. The part I thought was hard, the mechanics of investing, really isn't. You give a startup money and they give you stock. You'll probably get either preferred stock, which means stock with extra rights like getting your money back first in a sale, or convertible debt, which means (on paper) you're lending the company money, and the debt converts to stock at the next sufficiently big funding round.

nor tactical advantages to using one or the other. The paperwork for convertible debt is simpler. But really it doesn't matter much which you use. Don't spend much time worrying about the details of deal terms, especially when you first start angel investing. That's not how you win at this game. When you hear people talking about a successful angel investor, they're not saying "He got a 4x liquidation preference." They're saying "He invested in Google."

How to Be an Angel Investor

Notes from Paul Graham on angel investing. Actually pretty interesting. The key, as he describes it, is to pick the right companies... the terms you get when investing don't matter much and can even hurt your chances of success if you're strict enough.

Here's a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? My answer is almost always the same: don't. First off, what does it mean to launch? Generally, we conflate two unrelated concepts into the term, which is important to clarify right up front. 1. Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. (Marketing launch) 2. Make a new product available to customers in the general public. (Product launch) In today's world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. In fact, in most situations it's a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events.

Discover Great Food.

an online marketplace marketplace where people can buy specialty food directly from artisanal foodmakers. Foodoro aims to be an online e-commerce site for artisanal food makers, exposing these vendors to a greater audience of food aficionados than they would get from their own sites or selling solely to specialty food stores.

Merchant account

test

Describe the pain of getting a merchant account with a bank. Give some tips on how to do it.

"guide to obtaining a merchant account, from the cash-strapped start-up’s point of view". chargebacks, 3D-secure, AVS/CV2, PCI-DSS. Start the process early; Apply to several banks; Exaggerate your volumes (realistically); Know all about fraud; Be serious to ensure the bank feels you’re a trustworthy business; Read the fine print and negotiate the terms.

http://www.boxuk.com/blog/monetizing-your-web-app-business-models boxuk.com

Business models for web applications

monetizing web apps

Article about what OpenSource software generally lacks, and how to compete with them.

ever, users like know that there is someone who will be happy to help them out if they need it. That is the main purpose of offering customer support — decreasing the perceived risk of using your software by demonstrating that there is a safety net. (This is one reason you should write your support page with an eye to it being seen by someone who isn’t even using your software.)

2) Design OSS projects, particularly the 99% that are relevant to this discussion, routinely do not allocate resources to creating attractive designs. For whatever reason, opened source graphical work is still rather rare, most developers (myself included) have the artistic skill of inept mole rats, and the obvious pay-somebody-who-does-it-better solution runs into the problem that the typical OSS project has no budget and no patience to deal with “unfree” licenses, which are the only kind commercially available stock icons have.

" However, users like know that there is someone who will be happy to help them out if they need it. That is the main purpose of offering customer support — decreasing the perceived risk of using your software by demonstrating that there is a safety net."

Some good points, particularly on how OSS focuses on the software pitch too much (most folk don't think of their problem as a software issue)

So, my best advice is to say, "Today, right now, your contribution is worth 5% of the company and my creation of the company is worth 5%. The other 90% is based on what each of us does over the next 18 months. Here's a list of what has to get done, and what we agree it's worth..."

my best advice is to say, "Today, right now, your contribution is worth 5% of the company and my creation of the company is worth 5%. The other 90% is based on what each of us does over the next 18 months. Here's a list of what has to get done, and what we agree it's worth..."

Viral Marketing Guru

i suspect this'll be pretty big

From Angus

Hunch helps you make decisions and gets smarter the more you use it.

Over beslissingen en advies. Van een van de oprichters van Flickr. Nog niet kunnen uittesten, is nog in beta stadium, alleen op uitnodiging. Kan interessant zijn.

Shows cities on a innovation scale from McKinsey. The dynamic graphic is particulary good in making a comparion between Europe and the rest of the world.

What Matters, a blog about topics of global importance, curated by McKinsey & Company and featuring essays by respected experts in a variety of disciplines, including biotechnology, climate change, credit crisis, energy, geopolitics, globalization, health care, innovation, the Internet and organization.

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies - we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. We're studying a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care. We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance.

Venture Capital - by Google. We seek to discover and grow great companies - we fundamentally believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things.

eployment script. At IMVU, we built a serious deployment script that incrementally deploys software machine-by-machine and monitors the health of the cluster and the business along the way so that it can do a fast-revert if something looks amiss. We call it a cluster immune system. But we didn’t start out that way. In fact, attempting to build a complex deployment system like that from scratch is a bad idea.

development deployment programming testing agile

Blog post, 5 lessons learned from YouSendIt.com

Joel Spolsky on salaries

Mashable is exclusively announcing the 19 finalists in a European startup competition, selected by a panel including Amazon CTO Werner Vogels.

Silicon Valley isn't the only place that's a hotbed for social media and web entrepreneurship: Europe is filled with skilled entrepreneurs and successful

Mashable is exclusively announcing the 19 finalists in a European startup competition, selected by a panel including Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. It’s all part of the 2009 Next Web Conference in Amsterdam this month, which gathers together Europe’s tech community and brings it some well-deserved international attention.

I read all of these blogs. They all have incredibly useful archives. And they’re all written by people who teach and practice, so the advice is practical.

Here are one hundred characteristics and attributes of people who start companies—some born of experience, education or birth. Most can be learned by study and practice.

Surprise: there's never been a better moment to bootstrap your own Internet business. All you need is a laptop, a broadband connection and a great idea. Inside the new start-up boom

Need to build a presskit? This guide is fantastic

for online business

The 10 Secrets of Selling Online

We're often asked, what is the secret of selling online? We're happy to tell you. We make tools that help you sell online. So we don't want these secrets to stay secret. We want you to succeed.

1. How will you reach a massive audience? - Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users. 2. What is your unique value proposition? 3. Will your business be capital efficient?

ages. How does a company rise above the noise to attract massive discovery and adoption? YouTube did it through existing channels like MySpace, which already reached millions. Yelp had strong SEO, which found them a mass audience searching for restaurants and nightlife. Facebook’s University-centric approach landed them 80% adoption across a campus within 60 days of launch. Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users.

You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Free term sheet generator from leading Silicon Valley law firm.

This tool will generate a venture financing term sheet based on your responses to an online questionnaire. It also has an informational component, with basic tutorials and annotations on financing terms. This term sheet generator is a modified version of a tool that we use internally, which comprises one part of a suite of document automation tools that we use to generate start-up and venture financing-related documents. Because it has been designed as a generic tool that takes into account a number of options, this version of the term sheet generator is fairly expansive and includes significantly more detail than would likely be found in a customized application.

This tool will generate a venture financing term sheet based on your responses to an online questionnaire. It also has an informational component, with basic tutorials and annotations on financing terms. This term sheet generator is a modified version of a tool that we use internally, which comprises one part of a suite of document automation tools that we use to generate start-up and venture financing-related documents. Because it has been designed as a generic tool that takes into account a number of options, this version of the term sheet generator is fairly expansive and includes significantly more detail than would likely be found in a customized application.

I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn't imagining this -- a term sheet generator from Wilson Sonsini? I love it. Makes them more accessible. There are also so many "viral term sheets" out there this will be useful. Another form of thought leadership marketing.

Online Term sheet generator from Website: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati -

"take as much risk as you can as early as you can"

+ excellent quote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” —Jim Rohn.

Not sure I'm the target audience for this, but the article does mention *many* interesting companies that I should probably be checking out

Brilliant!

K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s a mantra that always pops into my head when I’m looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past. But that’s a bad idea. Way too many new products and services are too complicated. And I would suggest, often fail as a direct result of that.

A great article on simple design and how it just...works.

is that it was so much neater, cleaner — yes, simpler. But with an explosion in growth, came an explosion in features. And, in turn, an explosion in complexity.

K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s a mantra that always pops into my head when I’m looking at new startups

I liked this article -- particularly the part about Google Labs (so true about how to add new features)

Spolsky on how to make a successful social site

Subscribe to ReadWriteWeb * Subscribe to RWW via RSS * Follow @rww on Twitter * Join the RWW FriendFeed Room *

It isn’t surprising that the tournament directors found Eurisko’s strategies beyond the pale. It’s wrong to sink your own ships, they believed. And they were right. But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.

"Insurgents, though, operate in real time. Lawrence hit the Turks, in that stretch in the spring of 1917, nearly every day, because he knew that the more he accelerated the pace of combat the more the war became a battle of endurance—and endurance battles favor the insurgent."

Got images ? Create videos. Stupeflix is a REST web service that turns your pictures, videos, and text into professionnal videos

Video slideshow creation service.

This application creates videos from slides and or video clips and soundtracks

Create video from your pictures, sound, video.

We “finished” and the launch came and went. We were not making as much money as we thought we would. We weren’t even getting as many signups as we anticipated. People demanded grandiose features we didn’t have the time to implement. Our cash reserves were running low and we soon needed to return to consulting. Which was always part of the plan, but I had hoped we’d be optimistic about FamSpam’s future when that time came. We were not.

keynote from Startup Riot 2009, about how to become successful - do what you want!

Text of Chris Wanstrath's from Github's keynote at Startup Riot 2009

the most amazing features imaginable would make us money. We had no data available on whether building features specifically to make money would work.

startupriot.textile

The Entrepreneurs Handbook – 54 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs

"tagged startup business tips"

Great video & slides from Davie McClure's talk at 'Presentation Camp SF' -

No time for pri-twos. In project parlance, a "pri-one" is a work item that is essential to the success of the project. Bootstrapped companies don't have any pri-twos. Once you determine that a task is a pri-two, forget about it forever. Sadly, this is why Urbanspoon still doesn't have "hours of operation" for our restaurants.

Viral growth resolves at least part of the expensive and complicated headache of actually marketing your application, by getting the application to grow all by itself.

Everyone wants their application to “spread virally”. And why shouldn’t they? Viral growth resolves at least part of the expensive and complicated headache of actually marketing your application, by getting the application to grow all by itself. So, then, the question that forms on the lips of any entrepreneur is: “How can I make my application viral?”

A reminder to use to the good old A/B split testing with a control group to not be fooled so easily by numbers and variation.

"The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions."

Profitable boot strap Mock Up application

Regator.com

Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studio by Peldi Guilizzoni. August 5th, 2008 under Branding / Marketing, Company / Business — 12 Comments First off, the title of this post is a bit pretentious for my taste, but I wanted to pay homage to Mike Speiser’s excellent post on A/B testing using AdWords, and take advantage of his $10.87 investment while I was at it! ;). Mike is one of the brightest people I have ever met, and I highly encourage everyone to read his Laserlike blog. I say that the post is pretentious for my taste because I hardly feel like I am a marketing expert, in fact I consider myself a beginner at most things. Still, I can’t deny that Balsamiq has received a very good amount of coverage in the blogosphere: I am timing this post to coincide with the 100th review of Balsamiq Mockups (the full list is here), the website has received over 32,000 unique visitors and sales are exceeding all my expectations. For 6 weeks of operation, I can’t complain. ;)

Good advice and links for marketing a startup such as Balsamiq

) is Wired's editor in chief.

Get in-depth tech news coverage from Wired and read about how it is shaping culture, education, entertainment, communications and technology.

Article de Wired sur l'économie du 21ème sicèle

> しかし一方で思うのは、4人というのはやはり大所帯だったということです

>しかし、プログラマーはやる気と集中力次第で生産性が（誇張ではなく）100倍ぐらい上下しますから、本当に心から面白いと思っているプロジェクトであれば、それは必ずしも大きな壁にはならないでしょう。

さらには、個人で開発するということは、意志決定の速さが格段に違ってきます。たとえば作っている最中で何かが根本的に間違ってるのでプロジェクトを中止したほうがいいと思っても、チームでやっていると中々言い出せず、ずるずる引きずって時間を浪費してしまうというようなことがあると思います。しかし、10発撃って1発当たるかどうかという世界で勝負していくには、そういう「見切り」の速さこそが命ではないでしょうか。

っていないということは、本人はどこか別のところで生計を立てられるだけの

それで、上記のようなもろもろで何を言いたかったかというと、この分野では「企業の競争相手が個人になる時代は目の前まで来ている」ということです。スタートアップ企業を作って数名で作るのと、一人の個人が副業で立ち上げるのとでは、最終的に出てくるモノの差がだんだんなくなってきており、単に「かかるコストだけが100倍違う」ということになりかねない、と思うのです。 さらには、個人で開発するということは、意志決定の速さが格段に違ってきます。たとえば作っている最中で何かが根本的に間違ってるのでプロジェクトを中止したほうがいいと思っても、チームでやっていると中々言い出せず、ずるずる引きずって時間を浪費してしまうというようなことがあると思います。しかし、10発撃って1発当たるかどうかという世界で勝負していくには、そういう「見切り」の速さこそが命ではないでしょうか。

Interesting look at the different elements of a web startup.

Learn how to construct a lean startup that focuses on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, instructor Eric Ries guides entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas of startup success: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. You'll emerge with a clear plan to bring lean-startup thinking back to your company. Multiple Events: San Francisco, CA

Thirteen key characteristics of a great startup culture

Thirteen key characteristics of a great startup culture - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

The place to find the hottest entrepreneurial work experience and full time roles.

"The place to find the hottest entrepreneurial work experience and full time roles."

could be a great place for Mindbox to find talent and cheap labor

There is such a thing as “Social-Business Protocol.” Not all of us in the startup universe are born with it, we can all learn it. So, here are my 10 tips for founders en route to the power-party circuit.

So you’ve got your engineering degree, and your marquee MBA, and a business-plan. You’re on your way. But at some point you’re going to have to ‘grace’ your way through an important networking or social event. How you handle this matters—probably more than you care to admit.

"Startup 101" is a serialized book about the thrills and spills of starting a Web technology venture. It will be a regular feature in our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. Startup 101 is for first-time entrepreneurs who want to go through the whole startup life cycle - including raising money, building a valuable business, and making a lot of money by selling the venture or taking it public.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Word Press and Automattic, manages a successful Internet business where everyone is working from home

The best blog post ever

Success and Motivation

"Should Print Out and Bound"

Some simple customization tips for a fresh ubuntu installation to make it a productive, useful, desktop os that helps meet the needs of most.

My primary reason for using Ubuntu Linux, is that I find it a far more productive, cost effective and customizable system. Everyone has their own reasons and

Potential startup founders are always looking for ideas to implement, when they should be looking for problems to solve. I see startups who are on the road to implementing an idea, but haven’t figured out what problem it solves – the business plan waxes on about how great the product/tech is, but never gets around to defining the problem (investors call it the “solution looking for a problem” syndrome). A related red flag in a business plan is a missing competitive analysis section or “this product has no competition.” My reaction is, if there is no competition, then there is no market demand for your product, so why are you building it? Luckily, many startups are smart enough to keep morphing their idea until it finally fits a real-world problem, and they can move forward in the marketplace. Unfortunately they could have saved themselves much lost time, money, and heartache if they had just focused on identifying the problem before they built a solution.

He purchased a Mail Boxes, Etc. mail box and paid a little extra to have it not show a P.O. box number. By keeping one mailing address (and consistent phone numbers through Google Voice) Jagger doesn’t have to reprint company stationary every time they move.

article on managing a startup and growing rapidly adapting to what users want

Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. Eric takes a different approach. He believes that many early stage startups are labors of learning. The customer is unknown, the product is unknown, and startups must be built to learn.

Alice is a service that provides you a cost effective way to manage all of your household essentials online. You tell Alice what you buy—choosing from great deals on 1000’s of products—and we go to work. We organize all of your products, find coupons and deals for you, remind you when you might be running low, and help you order just the items you need so you can avoid the chore of household shopping. And all this convenience comes direct to your door with free shipping included.

As profiled in the Wisconsin State Journal on June 23, 2009

Luknąć

risk management in business

Good reading material

Whether you’re a victim of cutbacks, outsourcing or your own personal ambitions, your side business is probably more than just a hobby. And since you’re intent on growing your company into something respectable and profitable, you’ll need the tools and connections to help you project a professional image. Check out our list of 100 essential web tools for anyone who’s starting up a side business.

Most advice to entrepreneurs focuses on what they should do: build a great product, assemble a great team, provide great service. All are “duhisms.” Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t realize that there are things they should specifically avoid doing too. These are also duhisms, but somehow no one ever talks about them. Here is my list of the twelve most important things that entrepreneurs should not do.

HT: Chuck Smith

VC blogs

top venture capitalist blogs. One of which is Guy Kawasaki

l

TO READ

amazing story

Over the past couple months, I've spent a bit of time looking at Flash gaming on web portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds. There are over 14,000 games spread across 30,000 portals with hundreds of new games coming out every month. The output alone is amazing. Let me cut to the chase. I think that you, Flash game developers, are some of the most talented and inspirational people working today in game development. Your passion for building games burns so incredibly brightly. Your ability to quickly make and distribute games is second to none. You hold immense potential to transform the future of games.

Ads are a really crappy revenue source For a recent game my friend Andre released, 2 million unique users yields around $650 from MochiAds. This yields an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of only $0.000325 per user. Even when you back in the money that sponsors will pay, I still only get an ARPU of $0.0028 per user. In comparison, a MMO like Puzzle Pirates makes about $0.21 per user that reaches the landing page (and $4.20 per user that registers) What this tells me is that other business models involving selling games on the Internet are several orders of magnitude more effective at making money from an equivalent number of customers. When your means of making money is 1/100th as efficient as money making techniques used by other developers, maybe you've found one big reason why developers starve when they make Flash games.

In order to understand why this promising game platform is such a surprising dissapointment, we'll look at Flash games from three perspectives: * Chapter 2 - Making money: How do Flash developers currently make money. * Chapter 3 - Generating value: How Flash developers currently create 'valuable' game for their players? * Chapter 4 - Reaching customers: How developers currently reach their players. * Chapter 5 - Premium Flash games as a service: A mental model for understanding the new world of web gaming.

A very unique type of investment

In Bloomington, IN, the SproutBox team is taking four startups at a time and pumping around a quarter of a million dollars into each one over the course of ten months. In addition to all that mouth-watering lettuce, the 'Box is also investing teams and resources. Although they just launched this year, they plan to start a new cycle every three months. How They Invest: SproutBox gives funding and resources in exchange for equity. Startups They've Helped: DecideAlready, CheddarGetter

Before you launch your startup, you should be thinking about how you're going to make money. Here are 5 ways social media startups can bring in some cash.

Six Month Alternative MBA

The 6months MBA diary from the students of Seth Godin

Blog of Seth Godin's 'Six Month Alternative MBA' - some interesting thoughts on entrepreneurship and marketing.

Sigh. I think the mindless bookmarking of little lists masking at blog posts is pretty annoying, but I can't help doing it myself. Damnit. Here's one such article that contains some obvious, but practical advice for both start-ups and those seeking to work for them.

Good questions

“We don’t have 200k RSS subscribers because of my deliciously swirly hair” - a central question (asked also during the Q/A session): how on the earth did Basecamp and other 37signals products become so popular? All of a sudden, they emerged from nowhere! As David points out, it was not that ‘out of the blue’ as it looks like. When they started with Basecamp, they already had 2000 subscribers on their blog, Signal vs Noise, so they built a channel which through they could advertise themselves. This advice meshes with one of my favorite points from Getting Real which goes something like “Just start doing something”. Really. Start blogging. Creating/contributing to open source software. Get on twitter. Let your voice be heard! You probably won’t have thousands of listeners right away, that’s OK - it takes time. But you can start today!

Please do not take the term literally. Living on instant ramen would be very unhealthy. Rice and beans are a better source of food. Start by investing in a rice cooker, if you don't have one.

Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. This is a different form of profitability than startups have traditionally aimed for. Traditional profitability means a big bet is finally paying off, whereas the main importance of ramen profitability is that it buys you time.

37 comments about having a business/startup

Great talk about how to market your product.

Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department At last year's conference, Seth gave an inspiring talk on the title of "Why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department". Make sure you watch it until the end, where he gives a preview of his (then upcoming) Tribes talk.

via dst

"So instead of being arrogant, take every opportunity you get to learn new things. Whether it is from an experienced entrepreneur who has been around the block, or a 16-year-old kid, everyone can teach you something. You just have to learn what to take away from a conversation because there are going to be some things that are going to benefit you and others that won’t."

what's not to like about a piece of advice that says you don't have to be perfect to succeed?

Interesting presentation on setting company culture...

Internal Netflix document detailing culture and practice that is *very* different to almost everyone else. Some amazing and inspiring stuff. I hope they walk the talk.

In this 30 minute video from the FOWA Tour, you’ll learn the key points you need to consider when deciding on the business model for your product or service.

Carsonified on thinking about models for your online business - when to, and when not to, consider freemium models and building up a viable paying customer base.

How to Choose a Business Model

illiquid asset

buildabrand.com is an online branding system that allows entrepreneurs, businesses and individuals to create, manage and apply instant and personalised branding to their business.

Presentations, Keynotes, and Interviews with 37signals

Invest in technical debts that may never come due.

In a startup, we should take full advantage of our options, even if they feel dirty or riddled with technical debt. Those moralizing feelings are not always reliable. In particular, try these three things: Invest in technical debts that may never come due. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. This is a sad outcome which we should work very hard to avoid

bpettichord thoughtful discussion of the pros & cons of technical debt. http://bit.ly/tDjuI #yam http://twitter.com/bpettichord/status/3111092688

Under no circumstances should you...Write A Long Business Plan

# Who are you? # What is the problem you are going to solve? # What is your solution? # Why will the market accept your solution? # What does the competition look like? # Who are your customers? # What are the details of your product? # How will you acquire customers? # What is your best approximation for the financials of the business? # What are the risks/challenges? # What’s the timeline? # Bonus: What’s The Exit Plan?

While business plans are important, writing a long one isn't such a good idea. It makes sense really, especially for new businesses there is so much uncertainty that big complex models of revenue and cost projections can be nothing but farcical.

Phew! This article ended up being much longer than I expected (I banged it out in one sitting, as I do most articles). I’m still not sure I ans

ubstantial cost to you. This problem is made even more acute by the fact that in a fair numb

Excellent advice for startups for pricing their Enterprise Software!

Recommendations engine plug-in

Empfehlungs-Engine a ala Amazon

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

good article on basic terms of a first round investment

My last 2 posts were about things to avoid, so I thought it might be helpful to follow up with something more positive. Having been part of or observed about 50 early stage deals, I have come to believe there is a clearly dominant set of deal terms. Here they are:

Interesting points about demos, pricing infrastructure, release schedules etc

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

here are some terms included below that are needed in larger deals and which aren’t absurd for VCs to ask for. So both documents are highly relevant. Start with the Y Combinator docs for your first early angel round, an

If you're an entrepreneur thinking about getting funding, this is a must-read. It outlines very fair guidelines for a first-round term sheet. Often, first-time entrepreneurs only concentrate on the big terms of a term sheet (e.g. round size, valuation) and neglect the "smaller" but often equally important things like stock preferences and triggers.

Now, a lot of people, including prominent angel investors and venture capitalists, are starting to listen to him. Tomorrow Ressi will announce a new, basic term sheet for use by investors and founders. The goal is to protect founders and reduce legal fees, which average $50,000 or more per venture round. (This is an excellent idea. "Free" at work.)

A wealth of resources for business owners — videos, articles, blogs, and expert advice to boost your business, sponsored by American Express OPEN.

It's quite easy for small business owners to become distracted by their day-to-day responsibilities. But in this competitive economy you can't afford to miss out on the newest business innovations. That's why we asked 50 of the top small business bloggers to share their best tips for small business owners. Their response was incredible. While some shared nuggets of wisdom, others gave us actionable tips you can use right away. Here's your crib sheet to the best business advice the blogosphere has to offer.

Great roundup of tips for small business by successful bloggers.

In doing so we discovered Customer Development, a product development methodology formulated by veteran entrepreneur Steve Blank. Based on the premise that start-ups tend to fail through lack of customers rather than lack of technology or product features, customer development is a systematic way of identifying who the customer is, what it is they need and whether that need is sufficient to build a business on. One of my co-founders describes it as ‘an algorithm for building products users want and are willing to pay for’.

The crucial question in the survey is “How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?” Sean has benchmarked the results of that survey and found that if less than 40% of respondents say “Very disappointed” then your product doesn’t yet have sufficient traction to scale.

A few months ago I was tipped off to world of Steve Blank and customer development. Simply put, if you’re an entrepreneur understanding these concepts will likely mean the difference between success and failure. Steve personally has taken five companies through this process to IPO. Not a bad track record. While there’s a ton of great stuff about customer development on the Web I wanted to gather up all of the resources and put them together in one place. I’ll update this post over time as I come across stuff (please add any additional resources you find in the comments so I can add them to the post) so bookmark it and check back from time to time (or just subscribe to the RSS feed).

Customer Development: The Definitive Resource w/tons of links

We are focused on one thing — delivering the latest in new website launches to people that are interested in and passionate about them so their owners can get the feedback they need to succeed

Launch your website in a forum dedicated toward launches. How meta.

Even before I had a single customer, I "knew" it was important to look professional. My website would need to look and feel like a "real company." I need culture-neutral language complimenting culturally-diverse clip-art photos of frighteningly chipper co-workers huddled around a laptop, awash with the thrill and delight of configuring a JDBC connection to SQL Server 2008.

Why small companies should look and act like small companies instead of fluffing their feathers

ade $800,000 in their first year of operations, so don't tell me "big companies" need to hear garbage PR/marketing language. Balsamiq got 100 product reviews during their first six weeks of operation, so don't tell me "a couple of guys in a studio" isn't a good public persona.

- Blog - Startups + Marketing + Geekery

5. Respond. This is the single biggest advantage you have over the big guys. Not only are you in charge, you also answer the phone and read your email and man the desk and set the prices. So, don't pretend you have a policy. Just be human.

2 1. Go where your customers are. Jacquelyne runs a tiny juice company called Chakwave. I met her in Los An

Good reading, follow up on it!

operating

"...the idea that software should be priced low enough to pass the average user's "why not" threshold is a powerful one."

codinghorror application software pricing price discount appstore apple iphone coding horror

What I think isn't well understood here is that low prices can be a force multiplier all out of proportion to the absolute reduction in price. Valve software has been aggressively experimenting in this area; consider the example of the game Left 4 Dead: Valve co-founder Gabe Newell announced during a DICE keynote today that last weekend's half-price sale of Left 4 Dead resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales (in dollar amount) that beat the title's original launch performance. It's sobering to think that cutting the price in half, months later, made more money for Valve in total than launching the game at its original $49.95 price point. (And, incidentally, that's the price I paid for it. No worries, I got my fifty bucks worth of gameplay out of this excellent game months ago.) The experiments didn't end there. Observe the utterly non-linear scale at work as the price of software is experimentally reduced even further on their Steam network: The mass

One of the side effects of using the iPhone App store so much is that it's started to fundamentally alter my perception of software pricing. So many excellent iPhone applications are either free, or no more than a few bucks at most. That's below the threshold of impulse purchase and squarely in no-brainer territory for anything decent that I happen to be interested in.

"This pattern — “success” based on forecasted future success instead of current success — shows up all over the tech-business press. Instead of metrics like “they make more money than they spend” we see stuff like “user count growth” and “followers” and “impressions” and “friends” and “visits” qualify success. Whenever you see someone piling big numbers into made up metrics, it’s a diversion."

This pattern — “success” based on forecasted future success instead of current success — shows up all over the tech-business press. Instead of metrics like “they make more money than they spend” we see stuff like “user count growth” and “followers” and “impressions” and “friends” and “visits” qualify success. Whenever you see someone piling big numbers into made up metrics, it’s a diversion.

This pattern — “success” based on forecasted future success instead of current success — shows up all over the tech-business press. Instead of metrics like “they make more money than they spend” we see stuff like “user count growth” and “followers” and “impressions” and “friends” and “visits” qualify success.

The USA as the most interesting tech startup of '09, Anil Dash style.

was at 16 min in video... really interesting interview from US gov CIO/Wired

Ireland needs to reward govt APIs.

I think the most promising new startup of 2009 is one of the least likely: The executive branch of the federal government of the United States.

Each site has remarkably consistent branding elements, leading to a predictable and trustworthy sense of place when you visit the sites. There is clear attention to design, both from the cosmetic elements of these pages, and from the thoughtfulness of the information architecture on each site. (The clear, focused promotional areas on each homepage feel just like the "Sign up now!" links on the site of most Web 2.0 companies.) And increasingly, these services are being accompanied by new APIs and data sources that can be used by others to build interesting applications.

Innovation-works company

创新工场是一个全方位的创业平台，旨在培育创新人才和新一代高科技企业。

How come you can recognise the tune of the number one song of 1968 as being Hey Jude by the Beatles, but not the number two song? Why has the iPod had the success that the Zune has been denied?...

Joel Spolsky's talk at Business of Software 2008 on being number one

Ambition makes determination, and then determination makes wealth.

This feels like it needs some more fleshing out.

good blog on determination. Indeed, if you want to create the most wealth, the way to do it is to focus more on their needs than your interests, and make up the difference with determination.

That brings us to the $2.4 billion question: how do you succeed on the App Store? We’ve spent the last few weeks trying to answer that question and have come up with a list of tips and tricks that’ll help you edge your way into App Store glory. Now, none of these will replace making a good product or compensate for a million-dollar advertising and PR budget, but they’ll likely help you get noticed or keep your current momentum.

So with that caveat, here is my list of ten traits I see in great companies. This is aimed at web/tech companies but I believe it can and should be applicable to all companies.

Interesting take on what makes a great company

Yesterday I got to do one of my favorite things. Our portfolio company Etsy invited me out to their new offices in Dumbo to talk to the entire team. Since they didn't ask me to talk about anything in specific,...

Silicon Alley Insider has partnered with leading technology law firm Cooley Godward Kronish to explain common legal issues facing start-ups and provide sample legal documents that you can review and download.

Casey: We’ve got 430,000 registered users, in a month we’ll see 200,000 of those, about 135,000 in a week and about 70,000 in a day. We peak at 3.6 million pageviews per day. That’s registered users only (doesn’t include the very few pages that are Google accessible) and does not include the usual API calls, RSS feeds, AJAX. Actual requests that hit Rails per day is 10 million. 900 new users sign up per day. The forums are very active with about 50,000 new posts being written each day. Some various numbers — 2.3 million knitting/crochet projects, 19 million forum posts, 13 million private messages, 8 million photos (the majority are hosted by Flickr).

Some various numbers — 2.3 million knitting/crochet projects, 19 million forum posts, 13 million private messages, 8 million photos (the majority are hosted by Flickr).

Stunningly Awful Demos: Five Things Not To Do in a Demo

putting some absurdly expensive item on the menu. Rapp doesn’t expect many consumers to buy it, but having it there makes expensive items appear cheap by comparison

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and found some ridiculously priced item on the menu? Of course you didn’t buy it — you’re no sucker. Or are you? This Today Show piece on Gregg Rapp may surprise you. Rapp is a menu engineer. He helps restaurants maximize revenue by hacking common flaws in human decision-making. For example, by simply removing “$” signs from prices, people are less intimidated by them. And he advises against listing items from least to most expensive, because that focuses the consumer on price. Instead he mixes up items, making it hard to find their price — thereby encouraging the customer to emotionally commit to something before finding out what it costs. But my favorite strategy of his is that of putting some absurdly expensive item on the menu. Rapp doesn’t expect many consumers to buy it, but having it there makes expensive items appear cheap by comparison. Think about it: How many times have you ordered a bottle of wine in the middle of the price range?

Interesting Article on the human mind and price from a "Menu Engineer"

Redbeacon isn't like typical local search directories that simply return local business listings with ratings and reviews, leaving you to sort through dozens of entries. Instead, we notify businesses and professionals in your area that we believe can serve you best, and invite them to submit a price quote for your job.

Compare prices and book an appointment for any local service!

""this is good""

Comparar estadisticas de Hosting

Dyn

Includes details on web host, email, dns, registrar

Matchmaker app for Facebook. Search profiles of friends and friends-of-friends.

Freunde von Facebook-Freunden finden

The best way to meet people is through friends. Thread makes it easy to see your entire social network and find common friends using Facebook Connect.

Your friends know awesome people. Browse their Facebook profiles and see if you connect. You can ask a friend for an intro, or play matchmaker with your own friends.

Yet another abstraction layer between you and people working for you. Managed crowdsourcing via outlets like MechanicalTurk

Orrick's Start-Up Tool Kit is a comprehensive set of resources designed to aid start-ups and their founders on the journey from the "garage" to the global marketplace. Use our Start-Up Tool Kit to memorialize agreements with co-founders or potential investors, understand the terms and terminology of key legal documents, and network and learn business strategy and the latest industry news.

Relevant for nonprofits too: use plugins, integrate social media, keep the design simple but professional, host it yourself, and have a prominent "about us" section

We want this wiki to reflect the collective wisdom of you, the start-up community, regarding business resources you found useful. As such we want to avoid companies promoting their own resources (albeit free ones) because it wouldn't be in line with the purpose of this wiki. However, if you have a few startups who have happily used your resources then encourage them to contribute to the wiki!

Business Resources for Startups As startups are notoriously short on time we thought what better way to maximise their productivity than by providing them with the most relevant business resources all in one place! Even better, why not ask the teams involved in the startups themselves to share their good experiences with resources they ACTUALLY used? Us folks at Seedcamp have included each resource with a list of start-ups that have found them useful. If a startup cannot back-up a resource it should not be included here. Companies that have contributed to this wiki include: Atomico Ventures, Entrip, HyperNumbers, Speedsell, Stupelix, TAG, Toksta, TV Pixie, uberVU, Yoose, Wasabi Ventures, Zoombu

This guest post was written by Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg. It is the first in a series of posts he's writing about the ...

From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

experience Entrepreneurship from Meebo founder

Focus on your immediate resources to make something plausible working as fast as you can rather than waiting for something allegedly genial to grow by itself. It never happened and it will never happen.

How Ravelry Scales to 10 Million Requests Using Rails

Interessantissimo articolo su un sito web fatto in rails (www.ravelry.com) che ha raggiunto volumi di traffico davvero ragguardevoli. L'articolo illustra come è nata l'idea per il sito (si tratta di un sito per gli appassionati di cucito e lavoro a maglia), come si è arrivati a quei numeri (10 million requests a day hit Rails, 3.6 million pageviews per day, 430,000 registered users. 70,000 active each day. 900 new sign ups per day), dell'architettura adottata, e delle lezioni imparate.

Tim Bray has a wonderful interview with Casey Forbes, creator of Ravelry, a Ruby on Rails site supporting a 400,000+ strong community of dedicated knitters and crocheters.

find any moment on any movie clip

Hilarious!

37 signals smartly mocks the new Twitter valuation and the hoopla surrounding it by valuing itself at $100 billion: http://j.mp/2yfvs [from http://twitter.com/JMaultasch/statuses/4367035641]

"you should see the spreadsheet models we’re making up. Really breakthrough stuff"

In order to increase the value of the company, 37signals has decided to stop generating revenues. “When it comes to valuation, making money is a real obstacle. Our profitability has been a real drag on our valuation,” said Mr. Fried. “Once you have profits, it’s impossible to just make stuff up. That’s why we’re switching to a ‘freeconomics’ model. We’ll give away everything for free and let the market speculate about how much money we could make if we wanted to make money. That way, the sky’s the limit!”

nice one

CHICAGO—September 24, 2009—37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1.

Good presentation

1 hr talk (via DaringFireball)

Leaders retire with $, but then get bored, then have to do something else. Should have stuck with it

As a MINT user, the only real question I had was whether I trust my data in the hands of Intuit. I have decided to take that chance until I learn something differently.

"As more great new companies are absorbed into big old companies, a whole new generation of change is lost. They can issue press releases saying how excited they are to be able to bring their product to a whole new world of customers, and how their new suitor will bring enormous resources to bear, but we know that’s usually not really what happens. Development slows, products stall, the staff that built the great stuff leaves, and mediocrity creeps in. Not always, but usually."

stanford video

Excellent article chock full of down-to-earth advice.

Despite the fact that the year isn't over yet, I have learned some valuable lessons that have helped me grow ...

As part of our lead-up to The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, which is just over two weeks away, in this post we're listing 50 leading companies of the Real-Time Web. Like any list, it is bound to be missing some worthy companies - so we invite you to list more in the comments. Our aim is to unveil the top 100 Real-Time Web companies at our event.

As part of our lead-up to The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, which is just over two weeks away, in this post we're listing 50 leading companies of the ...

News, Current Events, Latest News and Worl

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

"Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on"

When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard. We worked all waking hours, we didn't stop. My Hunch cofounder Chris Dixon and I were talking about how hard we worked on our first startups, his being Site Advisor, acquired by McAfee -- 14-18 hours a day. We agreed that a lot of what we then considered "working hard" was actually "freaking out". Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn't have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn't -- and other time-consuming activities. This time around we have eliminated a lot of freaking out time. We seem to be working less hard this time, even making it home in time for dinner.

"Edison, of the "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" quote, tried thousands of materials looking for the right filament for the electric bulb. That might have been hard work, and the fact that he persisted through many failures is key to making something work, but he was also working on the right problem. So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

"So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

So true. I can think of a few people I think need to read this.

Some invaluable resources for anyone preparing to start their own business.

Is there such a thing as too founder friendly?

TheFunded.com: Complete Set of Founder Friendly Legal Docs

I have come to the conclusion, over the last three years, that working hard is overrated. This is an idea I have been kicking around for a while, but it was thrown into sharp relief by a blog post entitled The Only Alternative Is To Work Harder, by a gentleman named Paras Chapra over at Wingify. Paras and I have corresponded over email a few times, so I say as one analytics junkie to another: the notion that working longer hours is correlated to better business results is a pernicious social pathology.

In this video from The Future of Web Apps London (FOWA), Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, WeFollow and Revision3, shares 9 things he did to increase his users to 1,000,000 and beyond.

by Kevin Rose

How much money to raise and what to do with it: using mint as a case study

In order to get that seed round, you'll need to understand your competition, and come up with projections. Everyone knows this will change...but you need to show your thinking around it anyway. As an example, MINT originally projected $30/user/year for lead-gen and CPA. (Aaron noted that the company is pretty close to this today. But this is the exception rather than the rule.) Know how the business model works. People do X behavior and it turns into $Y income, add up those $Ys and it's a $Z business. If you can walk people through these assumptions convincingly, you'll get that seed round.

The straight shot: Why should you raise money, and how much? * Step 1: When you're ready with an Idea: Raise $100K from friends and family, and use it to build a prototype. * Step 2: Once the prototype is done: Raise < $1M in seed capital, and get into market with an alpha launch. * Step 3: After that initial launch has traction: Raise $5-10M, and use it to prove/scale the model.

business

Last night I posted the video of Mint CEO Aaron Patzer’s 45 minute presentation on building startups from the ground up. If you are an aspiring startup entrepreneur, you’ll want to watch that more than a few times. The candid disclosures and advice he gives is rarely seen in Silicon Valley. Some readers requested to see the presentation deck as well, so here it is. Patzer shows how he raised and spent money, and generated revenue, throughout the lifecycle of Mint, from the very beginning to the $170 million acquisition. He also showed historical slides from early presentations to investors and compares those to the actual results.

Startups 101: The Complete Mint Presentation

Last night I posted the video of Mint CEO Aaron Patzer's 45 minute presentation on building startups from the ground up. If you ...

If you’re an entrepreneur who has been seduced by social media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, you may ...

Useful information for business owners interested in using social media for their business

Summary: In Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank lays out a customer development process that complements a startup’s product development process. This post includes video and slides where Steve explains the ideas in his book.

via @neilperkin

Entrepreneurship video. Presentation by Digg founder, Kevin Rose on how to take your site from one to one million. Interesting strategies to attract traffic to youu website

Interest Aggregator

YourVersion is a real-time discovery engine that discovers new, relevant content for you based on your interests and makes it easy to bookmark and share that content with friends.

Ten Teen Entrepreneurs To Watch

모든 기업가들이 꼭 읽어야 하는 열가지 책

@newsycombinator: "Chile Wants Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses, Your Tech Entrepreneurs http://bit.ly/Jcm2n" (from http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/4762877839)

Looks like an awesome deal!

The world is rife with business opportunity, and nowhere more so than online. I often think of the web as something of a wild west frontier, awaiting anyone

shopping cart

The world is rife with business opportunity, and nowhere more so than online. I often think of the web as something of a wild west frontier, awaiting anyone intrepid enough to stake out a claim. But to start an online venture you first need to have an idea of what you want to do. For many would-be entrepreneurs ideas are many and easy to come by, but not everyone feels this way.

So let’s say I was setting out to start a new business tomorrow. I would sit down and think about what sorts of problems I have, both offline and on, and how I wish they could be fixed with an online solution. When thinking of solutions, I always ask myself whether I, myself would really use the solution if some other company magically brought it to market right now. It’s important to be honest and realistic with yourself because if you wouldn’t use the thing, chances are neither will others.

Reference Guide on ourFreedom &amp; Responsibility Culture <br />These slides are meant for reading,<br />rather than pr

What we find particularly intriguing is the section on hiring and firing. They want every manager to ask themselves: “Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?” Anybody who doesn’t make that list should be offered a severance package right now so we can open a slot to find a star performer for that role. Another highlight: Netflix has no vacation policy! They don’t have a “rule” about 9 – 5 work - their rule is simpler: get your job done, and do it well. They realized if they didn’t track the hours employees worked, why would they track the hours they DON’T work? There is also no policy on clothing, but as of yet, no one has come to work naked (Patty McCord, 2004). The lesson: You don’t need detailed policies for everything. Here’s the part where they devalue training (you should probably stop reading here. . .)

This makes me want to work for Netfilx. No, wait. It makes me want to built the same values into meta4 so I never have to leave.

This post is a little different than what you might be used to. Instead of talking at you, I would like to talk with you. I would like to propose a blogging outline, not actually blog on the given subject (yet!). First, allow me to explain myself. I have been under-utilizing my blogging privileges the last three months and I would like to try to make this up to you. I have made the ...

Founder diagnoses why his startup failed. Good comments on traffic business models

Who are your users and are they really useful/real users?

An article on the difficulties and surprises in starting a startup.

Really good ideas and facts about starting a startup.

What I can do!

As I was looking for bloggers to contact, I found some posts/articles that were extremely relevant to what I was doing. In other words, these are posts that people looking for a tool like mine would find and read.

Some useful stuff about blogger outreach

take it for what it is, a description of what I have done so far. Implement at your own risk! ;)

Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studio

Great marketing tips from Balsamiq, made much greater by the fact that his micro-startup has been awesomely successful.

There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible?

Selling presentation time is clutch. Lesson Learned: Think outside the box. No, actually, there is no fucking box.

Bicycle tires pump up

Six minute video of Stanford professor describing her 'make as much money as you can with $5 and 2 hours' assignment.

Interesting

Stop wasting your time trying to find the right answer for your business questions. You’re not alone. We know you have business questions that need to be answered right now. That’s why we’ve put together a great team of Hosts composed of successful entrepreneurs, seasoned businesspeople, academics, advisors, and many more willing to give you a hand. Not only that, our community of users will be available to give you their best answer to any question you might have. With all these people ready to answer all your questions, it would be difficult to not find the answer to the business question that’s eating your brain. Don’t forget to give those that need help an answer, there’re plenty to go around, and more than likely you know the answer to a couple. At Startups.com you’ll find your business question answered within minutes. Useful answers, fast and free.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fblog.scoutapp.com%2Farticles%2F2009%2F11%2F04%2Frunning-a-freemium-web-app-heres-a-big-reason-were-growing

business models for journalists, courtesy of CUNY and Jeff Jarvis

CUNY: "We have developed four business models for a new news ecosystem. The question we attempt to answer: What happens to journalism in a top-25 metro market if a newspaper fades away. Can journalism be sustained? And how?"

We have developed four business models for a new news ecosystem. The question we attempt to answer: What happens to journalism in a top-25 metro market if a newspaper fades away. Can journalism be sustained? And how?

Advanced game theory is exceptionally useful. Basic game theory is dangerous — because it assumes that you’re dealing with a bunch of rational “players”. It’s like trying to design a real car that’s going to be driven on a theoretically frictionless surface, with no air resistance and no idiots on the road.

ory is exceptionally useful. Basic game theory is dangerous — because it assumes that you’re dealing with a bunch of rational “players”. It’s like trying to design a real car that’s going to be driven on a theoretically frictionless surface, with no air resistance and no idiots on the road.

"No amount of strategic planning will ever substitute for managing your cash flow" - "There are always more things to do than there is time to do them" - "It helps not to call people “human resources”. They’re people. And, as it turns out, people like to be treated like people. Go figure" - "There’s a lot of value to being likable" - "Advanced game theory is exceptionally useful. Basic game theory is dangerous — because it assumes that you’re dealing with a bunch of rational “players”.

Every startup needs to pick a major among three drivers of growth. It's simply too hard to focus on more ...

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It’s hard to express just how much settling those questions has galvanized Redfin to attack the monsters under our bed. Sure, we were dimly aware of those problems before, but we existed in a state of seething, unacknowledged tentativeness. Weeks of contemplating what it will take for us to win prepared Redfin to swallow the red pill, stuff the TaunTaun, hack the Kobayashi Maru. At very few moments in a company’s history does it makes its way so deliberately. Like the recovered patient who saw while sick everything she had always meant to do, we want to make the most of our new lease on life.

For me, the most important point is that whatever questions others ask about your business are worth recording, cataloguing and quantifying

" the questions VCs asked Redfin that changed how we think about our business."

10 Essential Online Tools for Your Startup - http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/11/23/essential-online-tools-for-your-startup/

Tools interessanti per lavorare

We’ve gathered up 10 of what we feel are the most essential tools for your business to use when you’re first getting started online.

studies your wrist movements to wake you at the optimal time for non-grogginess

Data at work

잠 잘 깨워주는 기계! 신기하군

Tired of feeling tired? Get the WakeMate, the cell phone accessory wristband that lets you sleep less and feel better! See how it works:

Listening to Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon, is like going to startup school where you learn that failure is part of entrepreneurial growth. Whenever I have talked to Bezos in the past, the things that have stuck in my head have been his willingness to be wrong and his unflinching abhorrence of the status quo. At the Wired Business Conference in New York City, Bezos reiterated some of those points in a conversation with writer Steven Levy.

Innovation is hard for large companies because you need to be long-term oriented. And since the innovative projects are such a tiny part of a large company, there is tendency to be dismissive of the innovation. “You need a culture that high-fives small and innovative ideas and senior executives [that] encourage ideas,” he said. In order for innovative ideas to bear fruit, companies need to be willing to “wait for 5-7 years, and most companies don’t take that time horizon.”

Startups are often smaller with fewer resources, smaller staffs, less capital, and not enough time to get everything done. Here's how to simplify.

Startup businesses are often smaller than more established competitors, with fewer resources, smaller staffs, less capital, and not enough time to get everything done.

Many of the strategies employed in competitive and recreational sports are applicable in business and our personal lives. One lesson I learned from alpine ski racing was the "40-30-30 Rule." During training, early on, I tried to go fast, and I also focused on not falling. On a ride up the ski lift, my coach told me I was missing the point. He explained that success in ski racing, or most sports for that matter, was only 40% physical training. The other 60% was mental. And of that, the first 30% was technical skill and experience. The second 30% was the willingness to take risks.

If you're not risking failure, you're not risking enough. Why pushing outside of your comfort zone is a crucial part of the creative process.

The 99 Percent

So here's my rule: The rule of 80%. For anyone selling on an incremental basis, set your break points that the per-unit costs of the new tier are 80% of the per-unit cost for the previous tier.

In just the last week, two different people have come to me to get feedback on their pricing. One was a startup selling a very sophisticated product to corporate enterprises. The other was selling consulting services to individuals, small businesses, and trade associations. In both cases, however, the questions were the same: how should I price this on a per-head basis? When should I charge a flat fee? How do I make sure I'm not leaving money on the table? How do I make sure I'm not losing customers?

Start accepting payment cards immediately with Square. No contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs. Effortlessly manage all the money you take with an easy and intuitive interface. Read payment cards from any device with an audio input jack, including your mobile phone.

Start accepting payment cards immediately with Square. No contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs. Effortlessly manage all the money you take with an easy and intuitive interface.

No credit card machine needed: Read payment cards from any device with an audio input jack, including your mobile phone.

Company started by Jack Dorsey, who also founded Twitter.

This was a hard chapter to write. It feels like a chapter that would work better in the final book. You have to have a mission and strategy and plan, right? So why does writing them feel like one of those make-work projects you have to do to keep investors happy? Come to think of it, you could outsource the production of your vision, mission, and strategy via Mechanical Turk?

The idea has to be one that just won't leave you alone. Such ideas often seem totally out of sync with current reality and are dismissed as crazy. That is because in the current environment they are crazy. The idea that everybody would own a PC was crazy in the 1970s, when Microsoft was starting out. People who are driven by these ideas very often feel doubt. On all sensible levels, the idea is crazy.

ed, just that it's something that you should be willing to experiment with on an ongoing basis with the knowledge that it's going to take a long time to get it exactly right.

Interesting blog abour freemium strategies

interesantan projekat googlea sa NYT i WP za buduci prikaz vijesti. Mislim da su interfejsi interesantni tako da bi mogli razmisliti o slicnim stvarima za ubuduce.

"The Living Stories project is an experiment in presenting news, one designed specifically for the online environment. The project was developed by Google in collaboration with two of the country's leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post."

会社の設立方法

会社を設立しよう (その1)

How to get 18,000 beta users in 4 weeks

Alan was co-founder of Fast Company magazine and former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review. More specifically related to this post, Alan developed a very interesting habit more than 20 years ago, when he began to carry a supply of 3 x 5 index cards wherever life took him. He wrote down and collected the lessons and insights he gleaned from his experiences travelling the world and in his interactions with people ranging from CEOs and spiritual leaders to basketball coaches, novelists, and stars from dozens of other worlds… His new book, Rules of Thumb, is a collection of 52 truths he’s culled from these notes specifically related to winning in business. I asked him if I could have an exclusive excerpt, and he graciously agreed.

Think outside the box. Do it different than its being done.

Start-up Strategy

RULE #24 – If you want to change the game, change the economics of how the game is played.

To give you a preview of this post, what you will learn is that there are two key parameters that drive how viral growth happens, the Viral Coefficient, and the Viral Cycle Time. To fully illustrate the arguments, I have included two spreadsheet models (embedded) that you can play with interactively to see how viral growth works. There is a risk with this level of depth, that some readers will find this too technical, and if you find yourself reacting that way, may I recommend that you jump straight to the conclusion, which is under the heading Lessons Learned towards the bottom of the article.

The Viral Coefficient (K)

Free is not a business model, it’s a marketing and distribution tactic. Don’t forget this, and don’t get distracted into thinking otherwise. Free is not an excuse to make a lesser product, in fact it forces you to make a better product or no one will ever pay. Free will expand your market size and scope instantly

Most advice to entrepreneurs focuses on what they should do: build a great product, assemble a great team, provide great service. All are “duhis

A wealth of resources for business owners — videos, articles, blogs, and expert advice to boost your business, sponsored by American Express OPEN.

Good article!

So you just built the next great web app, the launch day has finally come and .... silence. Crickets chirping. You anxiously check your Google Analytics stats

Early Adopters: 5 Ways To Get Users To Your New Website

Herramienta que reporta cifras y analisis alrededor de la cuenta del twitter.

Perfil de tus seguidores. De pago

I'm just trying this out now to see what I think...you may want to check it out, too.

Herramienta para analizar a tus followers.

The number one question you all asked after reading my last blog post about starting a business from scratch was how do I ...

Therapists don't tell you what to do. Rather, they ask probing questions that get you to discover for yourself what is true for you, your situation, and what you want. Similarly, these ten questions will force you to make the important decisions about your business. Ask them of yourself every month instead of writing a useless business plan.

My partner Ben Horowitz and I are delighted to announce the formation of our new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and our first fund -- $300 million in size -- aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products,...

Marc Andreessen's blog

My partner Ben Horowitz and I are delighted to announce the formation of our new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and our first fund -- $300 million in size -- aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the technology industry.

Here are the some of the rules that evolved that seemed to work for our family.

"This life isn’t practice for the next one" "What will your epitaph say?"

STARTUP

There are three ways to get a great URL. The first is with magical inspiration: that perfect and available name comes to you in the shower. The second is with a ton of money, by buying an existing domain. The third (if inspiration and money are lacking) is with the process outlined below, which may yield a workable name. These days, you start with the URL and then check that some variation of the company name is available (for registration purposes). That part is relatively easy.

Naming your business: how to do it.

uspto.gov

Compare the recent sale of Friendster for a reported $26.4 million with Facebook’s projected 2010 revenues, of $1 billion, and we have a stark reminder of how the inability to scale can kill a startup. “All they had to do was keep the damned servers up and running,” Matt Cohler, a former Facebook executive and general partner at Benchmark Capital, says in Adam L. Peneberg’s book “Viral Loop,” but Friendster failed to scale and the cost was enormous.

Top 10 Internet Startup Scalability Killers – GigaOM

I remember when I first booted up Ubuntu on my computer three years ago that I wasn't very impressed with the dull black usplash screen. It gave me a feeling

In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key

e lead

Despite a worsening economy, some bootstrapped startups are witnessing tremendous growth, both in user participation and back-end development. Case in point, Tip'd, a four month old financial news ...

Despite a worsening economy, some bootstrapped startups are witnessing tremendous growth, both in user participation and back-end development. Case in point, Tip'd, a four month old financial news site which has seen its monthly traffic double, submissions almost triple, and its user base increase by an average of 60 new members every day. But what is it about this niche vertical site that has in such a short period of time grown to become one of the leading financial news sites on the Web? According to Muhammad Saleem, Tip'd's community director, there is no secret ingredient to success. Instead, it's about maintaining focus on community and continuously delivering tools to help them sort through the noise that has become an unfortunate side effect of today's information age.

Community Building 101 for the Bootstrapped Startup - ReadWriteWeb

The Ubuntu and Debian EC2 images published on http://alestic.com allow you to send in a startup script using the EC2 user-data parameter when you run a new instance. This functionality is useful for automating the installation and configuration of software on EC2 instances.

Outside of building companies, reading has been one of my daily passions since I was a young child. Each year, I attempt to read more books than the previous year. This year I read 146. The following books were the five that made the most impact and immediate improvement on my performance as an entrepreneur.

2read

i wish i knew ;) - added by harper reed's google reader

Defer renting space

Good business ideas cross over into good businesses with the following factors in place: Natural Passion and Interest + Skill and competence + Business model that delivers the life you want to live + Solid business planning with well-defined market

s a website banner, mobile video or out-of-home digital sign.

gaho online adverting managment system

open source free adnetwork

Ad platform

very good site

50 Free Sources for Business Plans, Templates and Models

We’ve never had a lot of chargebacks (a chargeback is when a customer calls their credit card company to dispute a charge they don’t recognize), but last year we made a simple change that reduced our chargebacks by 30% as a percentage of sales. I can’t be certain the reduction is entirely due to this technique, but we didn’t change anything else related to how we deal with chargebacks.

008 I was thinking about how we could do a better job explaining a charge, but we were only allowed a limited number of characters on the customer’s billing statement. According to the merchant/card rules: Your company name/DBA section must be either 3, 7 or 12 characters and the product descriptor 4, 8 or 13 characters. That means we could do something like: 37signa*Basecamp 800.xxx.xxxx IL or even…

If you don’t use a product descriptor (“Basecamp” or “Backpack”), you get 22 characters. So I decided to register 37signals-charge.com, redirect it to 37signals.com/charge, write up a page explaining why there’s a charge on your card, and put that URL on people’s charge slips instead of “37signals, LLC” or “Basecamp” or “Highrise” etc.

This is an interesting one for all of those who are accepting credit card payments online via their website. Chargebacks are the worst and EAT UP your profit. They came up with an interesting way to prevent 'em.

A great little bit of online business advice - having your line item charge on customers' credit card statements read as a URL they can use to identify what they're being charged for.

The use of social media as a business tool is a relatively new concept, but it is one that is allowing Gen-Y entrepreneurs to challenge established norms and leave their mark on the business world.

With 22.7% of 16-19 year olds unemployed and the financial and corporate landscape contracting right in front of them, the so-called Y Generation (Gen-Y) currently has the opportunity to take a strong hold on today’s business landscape. And it seems that they intend to. Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job and 70% of today’s high schoolers plan on starting their own companies.

8 Excellent Web Resources for Startups - Stepcase Lifehack - http://www.lifehack.org/articles/management/8-excellent-web-resources-for-startups.html

great article on how and why to be a lean startup

Discussion of the principals of Lean Startups with many useful hints.

How I manage my most valuable asset – Time

Notes and links on pricing your work, especially for people in creative fields

Discussions from around the web on pricing webapps

An ongoing discussion of web app pricing strategies by Paul Farnell, founder of Litmus.

"Here's what I realized: 1. My perfect is not their perfect. 2. They don't have a perfect. In fact, there is no they. There are 2000 individuals, each of whom wants something a little different. 3. The more perfect I think it is, the less willing I'll be to let anyone change it. 4. The only way to make it useful to everyone is to allow each person to change it to suit him or herself. 5. The only way people will use it is if they do change it in some way. 6. The only way I will encourage them to change it and make it their own is if I make it imperfect.

Unfinished, Half-finished, half-baked is sometimes best.

"Why won't this work for you?" -- a powerful question to ask, at the right moment. Really thought-provoking article exploring why perfection is so hard, and hinting at why projects fail.

This guy works for aaron wall >>>>> One way I’ve found to cut down on support requests is to make sure I write publicly about any issue that keeps coming up for my customers. Other small companies contact me for advice fairly frequently, and that also tends to retread the same issues, so I’m going to blog it in depth once rather than giving fifteen people 30% of my thoughts on the same issue. One common issue is “How do I improve our SEO?”

Lots of good tips on marketing ISV and other stuff.

A possibly useful resource flagged up on the LRUG list.

Excellent article on using a merchant / gateway combination. Can be cheaper than paypal al told

Seth Godin's Pearls of Wisdom. We love lists and Seth's list is impossibly insightful. It must be read and spread.

A great, short list of useful thoughts and tips for anyone who wants to grow a business or gain momentum for their new idea.

Random rules for ideas worth spreading

Don't plan on appearing on a reality show as the best way to launch your idea

marketing internet

An utterly enthralling rant about the economics of the web, written 40,000 feet up in the air. "Newsflash folks: The Internet does NOT want to be FREE... It wants to GET PAID on Fucking Friday, just like everybody else on the damn planet."

password friction paypal login

ASSERTION #2: The default startup business model for 2010 & beyond will be subscriptions and transactions (e-commerce, digital goods). Newsflash folks: The Internet does NOT want to be FREE... It wants to GET PAID on Fucking Friday, just like everybody else on the damn planet.

(+ why Facebook, Google, & Apple will own your wallet by 2015)

It is easy to forget that the big popular sites were once small too. The first version of Digg cost $200 to build and launch. After Kevin Rose came up with the idea back in 2004 he found Owen Byrne through eLance to develop the idea. He was paying $99/month for webhosting and got the domain name for $1,200. A few months later he launched the site with an announcement on his blog. This is what it looked like.

サービスは最低限で始めてよし

Launch your line is a platform where you can launch your clothing line, fashion line, fragrance line, footware line, sports line. Anything you wish.

<blockquote> <font color="#595959" size="2" face="Arial">Step 4: Manage your line via the dashboard.</font></strong></td> <td rowspan="2" valign="top" width="47%"><img alt="" src="_layouts/images/Guide_4.jpg" border="1"></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="51%"> <p>From the Dashboard, you can complete every task necessary to launch your line. You can also make it as simple or as complex as you wish… your Dashboard is customized for your needs. Using the Dashboard, you have complete control of all aspects of your business. From your Dashboard you can:</font></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in;" type="disc"> <li>Find a manufacturer</font> </li> <li>Create packaging</font> </li> <li>Create a business entity</font> </li> <li>Create a corporate identity</font> </li> <li>Order affordable graphic design</font> </li> <li>Create a website</font> </li> <li>Create a prototype of your product</font> </li> <li>Find buyers for your line</font> </li> <li>And more!</font> </blockquote>

social micropayments system

Social subscription/payment system

We aim to revolutionize how people pay and get paid for content on the internet. Come, join and show the world that good content is worth some coins out of your pocket.

New micropayment website, founded by the PirateBay guys

"We aim to revolutionize how people pay and get paid for content on the internet. Come, join and show the world that good content is worth some coins out of your pocket."

Adura Technologies

I completely agree here with Steve's comments on what matters when measuring startups, and it's not balance sheets and income statements

Startups that are searching for a business model need to keep score differently than large companies that are executing a known business model. Yet most entrepreneurs and their VC’s make startups use financial models and spreadsheets that actually hinder their success.

to read

SEO for Startups: Top 7 Lessons + A Trip to YCombinator http://bit.ly/c4onTX

Next, since it's hard to do any slide deck justice with just the slides, a list of top advice and recommendations, not just from the slide deck, but from many years of interactions, consulting and Q+A help for startups:

whoa

Bloom Energy is changing the way the world generates and consumes energy. Our unique on-site power generation systems utilize an innovative new fuel cell technology with roots in NASA's Mars program. Derived from a common sand-like powder, and leveraging breakthrough advances in materials science, our technology is able to produce clean, reliable, affordable power,... practically anywhere,... from a wide range of renewable or traditional fuels. Our Energy Servers™ are among the most efficient energy generators on the planet; providing for significantly reduced electricity costs and dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions. By generating power on-site, where it is consumed, Bloom Energy offers increased electrical reliability and improved energy security, providing a clear path to energy independence.

Bloom Box!!!

Localized energy "servers" for your home.

Automated recruitment test reduces the cost of screening of a programmer. Recruitment testing decreases the amount of interview work by up to 90% by requesting the candidate to write a snippet of a code in an online assessment tool. It also allows the recruiter to test employee in a natural working environment.

Automated tests of programming skills.

Some details about the mechanics of Five Whys

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fstartuplessonslearned.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F07%2Fhow-to-conduct-five-whys-root-cause.html

Excelente curso para starup 3.0

Inc: How Hard Could It Be? By Joel Spolsky

Good article on using blogs for marketing

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inc.com%2Fmagazine%2F20100301%2Flets-take-this-offline.html

Joel on Software explains what makes a good blog (and why he's quitting)

I believe this "more features = better" mindset is at the root of the misjudgment, and is also the reason why so many otherwise smart people are bad at product design (e.g. most open source projects).

Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else.

What's the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product -- the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can't make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That's it -- no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg -- nothing but the essentials, well executed. ...By focusing on only a few core features in the first version, you are forced to find the true essence and value of the product.

アカデミーヒルズ

僕がここ1、2年で明らかに起業のスタイルが変わったと感じることがあり、起業を志している人の役に立てばと思いそのノウハウとイマドキの起業法を伝授したい。

起業を志している人の役に立てばと思いそのノウハウとイマドキの起業法を伝授したい。

Being intelligent is like having a knife. If you train every day in using the knife, you will be invincible. If you think that just having a knife will make you win any battle you fight, then you will fail. This believe in your own inherent ability is what will kill your startup. Success comes from the work and ability you put in becoming better than the others, and not from some brilliance you feel you may have within you.

These are an even better idea than the Common Application for college.

open source term sheet templates and share contracts created by Marc Andreessen's company.

Open Source legal documents for startups from Andreesen Horowitz

Free templated – but flexible – legal documents for entrepreneurs to use for seed-stage deals.

Ironing out the little problems can make it so companies can avoid big disasters. At 24:14

pixar guy talks about their process

Very nice talk, lot's of agile aspects in this story about what went wrong at the succefull Pixar company

Fantastique vidéo de Ed Catmull sur les méthodologies de travail des films chez Pixar et sur les processus de Pixar en tant que compagnie.

how pixar builds high performance teams - codinghorror.com

Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small

Ironing out the little problems can make it so companies can avoid big disasters. Recorded: January 31, 2007Related Article: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/ne...

http://www.torstensson.com/weblog/2009/08/overnight-successes-rarely-are.html

title says it all

Il fondatore di Friendfeed parla delle prospettive del suo prodotto e della ricetta per un'applicazione di successo.

My expectation is that big success takes years, and there aren't many counter-examples (other than YouTube, and they didn't actually get to the point of making piles of money just yet). Facebook grew very fast, but it's almost 5 years old at this point. Larry and Sergey started working on Google in 1996 -- when I started there in 1999, few people had heard of it yet.

Good advice.

You just hit the power button your PC and now you've got enough time to brew a fresh pot of

The Startup Lawyer gives some advice

Issue list for launching a startup company

Using RentACoder

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1206649

Conversation and Empowerment, No one cares about your company. They’re into their journey. .....the most powerful way to do marketing in this day and age is to build ’social capital’. It’s a lot like Karma: do good and help others and it will come back to you.

Try and make sense of this

Viral isn't everything after all... interesting. http://bit.ly/bkXehM - How Mint.com Acquired 1.5M+ Users

Bra beskrivning av hur Mint lyckades locka 1,5 miljoner användare

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1229038

Brainstorming / Mindmaps, Checking Domain Names, Prototyping user interfaces, Screen sharing, conferencing, feedback, Project Planning and Story/Task tracking, Usability testing, Cross-browser,email testing, Build and keep in contact with your following, Price-scalable hosting, Gathering feedback / market research.

누구 블로그

By O.S. Card

Funny but so close to the real.

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

Concise and spot on. Splendid

Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out or he brings in management types who end up driving him out or else he changes and becomes a management type himself. One way or another, marketers get control.

How Software Companies Die - Orson Scott Card

It’s true that building a business requires plenty of time and effort. But the idea that you need to quit your job to do it right is misguided.

I don't believe in evolution.

Hanging on to your day job gives you a longer period of time to build your idea. It lets you give a sustained effort over time. There’s no get rich quick option. You build it slowly, one day at a time.

"Some have doubted our advice that you should hold on to your day job and start something on the side. They argue building a business requires such persistent effort that you need to devote all your time to it to do it right. And it’s true that building a business requires plenty of time and effort. But the idea that you need to quit your job to do it right is misguided. If you quit your job, you shift everything. You don’t gain time, you lose it. You put a shot clock on your business. You box yourself into a position where you have to profit immediately or the whole thing goes under. You’ve got to make it work now or give up forever."

Some have doubted our advice that you should hold on to your day job and start something on the side. They argue building a business requires such persistent effort that you need to devote all your time to it to do it right.

How Tim Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Work Week, used Google Ad Words to decide on a title.

Tim and Kevin meet up/hang out & talk their talk, take 1. Interesting stuff - let's push em to do more!

Fascinating talk by the two funniest and most adventurous millionaires out there about the "behind the scenes" of some of their stories :)

Tim and Kevin talk about naming products/companies. Great story about how Tim tested how many people picked up books placed in different locations in Borders. Also talk about advising/etc. "remove dominant stuff from the front page, have one big image drive people to one signup button" that resulted in a 19% increase

Tim and Kevin meet up/hang out & talk their talk, take 1. Interesting stuff - let's push em to do more! Think the show is now temporarily being called Randomness.

Talk about startups

for my non-profit idea...

expanding your biz model --- vertical & horizontal integration

"Think hard about what you do. Look closely at everything you do. There are probably by-product opportunities everywhere. Hell, even your office space could be a by-product. You rent it to work, but what about after hours? Could you rent it out for events? Maybe you could hold stand-up comedy shows like Maryʼs Futons in San Rafael, California does. Sometimes customers return to buy the futon they were sitting on during the show. That’s extra sweet."

Reality Check #1: Do one thing well If your startup tries to do too much, you’ll lose. Guy told me, “I meet companies every day who say, ‘well we’re software services, and we’re also consulting. And we are a social networking site, but we also do white labeling in case you want to use our technology to do your own social network.’ And you know what, it’s hard to do any one of those things, try doing four.”

Having your computer wake up with you or wake up in the middle of the night to do routine tasks is a handy trick. WakeupOnStandby makes it easy to schedule that wake up call.

失敗する時

Joost, a much-vaunted online video startup, today announced that it will offer a white-label video hosting platform, thus entering a crowded market littered with the carcasses of other failed video hosts. The company is also losing its famous chief executive, Mike Volpi, whom it’s replacing with Matt Zelesko, the current vice president of engineering. And it plans to cut a portion of its workforce — between about 70 of its remaining 90 employees, according to Advertising Age. It also shut down its office in the Netherlands.

Joost had an early mover advantage and then stumbled, in the end, it mostlyl boiled down to a lack of content.

Why did not Joost deliver?

Last night, I attended an inspiring talk by Nick Hanauer of Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners. The venue was Seattle University, and the topic was

—If everyone thinks it’s a great idea, it probably sucks. —If people understand it, you’re too late. —If people don’t like it and don’t understand it, it probably still sucks.

How to spot breakthrough ideas

As for social disruption, Hanauer gave a quick summary of what he meant: —If everyone thinks it’s a great idea, it probably sucks. —If people understand it, you’re too late. —If people don’t like it and don’t understand it, it probably still sucks. So entrepreneurship is a dangerous field, he said. “The difference between being an idiot and being a genius is very, very thin.” And keep in mind, he pointed out, “you can be very successful without being socially disruptive. Great fortunes have been made doing incremental things. Burger King, which came after McDonald’s, was not transformational, despite what they tell you…But they made a great fortune.”

Notes from a great presentation by Nick Hanauer, early investor in founder of aQuantitve, Amazon, Insitu (AUV) ... lots of insightful thoughts on quantifying disruptive technology, entrepreneurship, etc.

The key elements of a breakthrough idea, Hanauer said, are value creation and social disruption. “Value is difficult but possible to quantify—it’s the ratio of benefits to cost, divided by those of the alternatives,” he said. Benefits are things like a product’s durability, speed, and appeal

A collection of high-level tips for startup investor pitches, including Guy Kawasaki's 10 slides / in 20 minutes / with 30pt font rule.

How to Pitch to a VC or Angel

Girl in Your Shirt wears your company tee while showcasing your business through social media and demonstrates how you stand out.

girl in your shirt

If people use it, it’s valuable

it was fascinating to be in the building during Twitter’s conception and then to read all of the ways that people misunderstood those early days.

"In 2006, [Tony Stubblebine] was the director of engineering at Odeo, a podcasting startup notable for birthing a side project now known as Twitter."

I hate the pansies who whine that “it takes money to make money.” No it doesn’t! It takes a sense of mission. If you’re on a mission, you’ll find a way. When I didn’t have money to start my company, I called up J.Crew and asked if they’d take back the clothes I bought from them over the years and give me a refund. Believe it or not, they said, “sure.” That J.Crew refund check helped put me in business.

The chances are, you probably haven't heard of the name Andrew Warner. And if you have, all you will see ...

Why startup pitches fail

the stage of your business—for example, some businesses are just getting started with an idea, while others are printing money. Focus your pit

Pitches usually fail because they answer the wrong questions. The right questions depend on the stage of your business. post by Eric Ries, a founder of IMVU and an advisor to Kleiner Perkins.

"Felix Dennis, publishing tycoon, has written a guide to becoming a multi-millionaire. All you need is thick skin, cunning - and a work ethic"

Good quote: "If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly, and even catastrophically, you stand little chance of ever getting rich." Reminds me of this quote from Lazarus Long: "People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt." As a bit of a pod who sometimes finds it all too easy to "turn off" my human concerns, and an on-again-off-again workaholic who was literally ridiculed by my friends for my study and work habits, I am very inspired by what he has to say.

excerpt from publishing tycoon Felix Dennis's book about how to get rich

f you move into a new space, the market normally takes as long as you do to mature enough to become really profitable. Keep your team focused, be patient, create value, test, test, test, and you'll get there. If your instincts are as good as you think they are, then it will come... if you can stick around long enough. Invest today.

"There is a fallacy that startups need to be super-secretive and then, when they launch, move very fast to capture the market. This is rarely true. Most startups would do well to study compound interest rather than market share."

Compound interest is about gains that are reinvested back into the asset base so that the next gain will be higher. The interest earns interest. The table below shows a new Web business at the very beginning, with only 100 wisdom points (a made-up term). The business is learning at a reasonable rate, with 10% growth in its useful knowledge each month. And, as you can see, its monthly growth in real units is growing; this is the compound interest. You get the idea.

First-Mover Advantage Is About Compound Interest, Not Market Share

Interesting: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned; http://bit.ly/9mh00x

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned http://slidesha.re/cToICU

Viewing: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned http://bit.ly/duFZXu - a great presentation by founder/CEO @drewhouston

industrial zone is not a pretty place. You can’t rent a car, even if you wanted to. There is no public transportation. Pick-ups and drop-offs are pre-arranged with factories. The good news is that the factories love when I visit or, for that matter, when any Westerner visits. There’s a certain hospitality that can be found doing business in China that doesn’t exist to such a great extent in th

4hww

evolutionary theory put to work in optimising

SnapAds: Survival Of The Fittest Meets Madison Avenue

easy practical social marcom

In a post published earlier today, John Robb claims that as “there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree…this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade.

James Levy: Learning Is Not A Spectator Sport

"In a post published earlier today, John Robb claims that as “there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree…this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade."

John Robb claims that as “there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree…this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade.

fun stuff

In this new landscape, people who would never think to call themselves “entrepreneurs” are out there starting businesses, selling products, and turning profits.

It’s time to get over the idea that risk and reward are so intertwined in business. And maybe we need to come up with a better term than entrepreneur to describe this new group of people out there building businesses. Any suggestions?

I just finished a talk at Web 2.0 Expo titled From Zero to a Million Users with Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox. It's about what we wish we had known years ago when it comes to growing your user base from 1 to 1M users. We had a lot of fun with it. The slides are below! From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned View more presentations from Adam Smith.

Great stuff RT @SeanEllis @drewhouston & @asmith share keys to the kingdom for getting 1st 1m users for Dropbox & Xobni http://bit.ly/aPjMRi

scaling lessons?

web 2.0 start up challenges, dropbox and xobni

While reading through lots of code can give you an appreciation of what well-written code looks and feels like, the ability to create it is a skill that is developed from experience and frustration. Luckily, there are a number of excellent articles and books out there to help the aspiring code perfectionist. The following resources are ones that have helped me personally strive to write code worth looking at

ネットでひきこもりながら会社を設立する方法について。以下流れ ・定款作成 ・.co.jpドメインの取得 ・公告方法を官報にしつつ、財務諸表のみをWebページに載せて官報掲載代を節約する ・法務局にいく ・登記情報提供サービスで設立を確認する ・法務局に行って印鑑カードを受け取る。 ・e-Taxを通じた、税務署への届出 ・eLTAXを通じた、都税事務所への届出 ・銀行口座を作成（住信SBIネット銀行） ・FAX番号を取得する(D-FAX) ・会社ロゴ作成(Lancers) ・名刺を作る(SuperPrintで注文) ・会計ソフト(弥生会計)で仕訳 ・必要なお金の総額：264,571円(うちロゴデザイン5万円) ・法務局に２回行くだけで株式会社を設立可能

株式会社ｗｋｔｋ

The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed. The CEO’s salary sets a cap for everyone else. If it is set at a high level, you end up burning a whole lot more money. It aligns his interest with the equity holders. But [beyond that], it goes to whether the mission of the company is to build something new or just collect paychecks. In practice we have found that if you only ask one question, ask that.

In a long-ranging discussion today at TechCrunch50, investor Peter Thiel (PayPal, Facebook, Slide) gave his thoughts on what is the best predictor of startup success. At the Founder’s Fund, one of the most important factors he likes to look at before deciding to invest in a startup is how much the CEO is paying himself. (This is also a factor that one of his investments, YouNoodle, looks at to value private startups). Says Thiel: The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed. The CEO’s salary sets a cap for everyone else. If it is set at a high level, you end up burning a whole lot more money. It aligns his interest with the equity holders. But [beyond that], it goes to whether the mission of the company is to build something new or just collect paychecks. In practice we have found that if you only ask one question, ask that.

see title

Steve Huffman on Lessons Learned at Reddit By Keir Whitaker

Tweet Tweet Boom Boom A new generation of tech entrepreneurs in the city is trying to overthrow old media and build a better New York—with the help of their iPhones. Are they dreaming? Definitely. But in a good way

Dina Kaplan '93 mentioned in later part of the article

Mentions Dina Kaplan '93

looks like it's worth a skim

Go to a party for an “old” media company, and there can often seem to be a cloud of doom hanging over the proceedings. It can seem like half the guests have been laid off and the other half fear they still could be. The talk is of cutbacks and making do with less and paradigm shifts whose conclusions are, inevitably, the death of the industry.

Advice on why you should launch softly.

Too bad. You don’t need a big bang – slow evolution is what you want. Unless you absolutely must “open wide,” abandon the mass introduction strategy. Instead, launch softly.

Compared to finding the perfect business name, a business plan can almost seem easy. How do you pin down a name that sticks in minds, doesn't tread in copycat realms, and yet sounds respectable? ReadWriteWeb has a few suggestions.

Description des étapes du lancement de Mahalo Answers

Terrific post by Jason Calacanis on launching product

20090327 Online streaming music startups are in one very sorry place. On demand streaming rates range from .4 cents to 1 cent per stream - this is what the startups pay to the labels every time they play a song for a user. Add bandwidth and storage costs on top of that, which aren’t trivial for services that want to stream music quickly on demand. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from venture funds to startups to labels. Little of it makes its way to artists, and advertising revenues only cover a tiny portion of the fees.

"Online streaming music startups are in one very sorry place. On demand streaming rates range from .4 cents to 1 cent per stream - this is what the startups pay to the labels every time they play a song for a user. Add bandwidth and storage costs on top of that, which aren’t trivial for services that want to stream music quickly on demand. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from venture funds to startups to labels."

Online streaming music startups are in one very sorry place

This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here. Google the phrase

Do you have a unique service or product? Most entrepreneurs have a pocketful of ideas, many of them viable. But they suffer from the "kid in a candy store" dilemma, not knowing which to choose. The trick is choosing the one that really is a winner and having the discipline (see item #9) to ignore all the others.

good bullet points on the common challenges facing the freemium model.

YouSendIt

RT @igrigorik great read on freemium models / patterns for startups: http://tinyurl.com/d5a5xs [from http://twitter.com/nealrichter/statuses/1575106507]

Starting a business isn't as crazy and risky as they say - Blog -

Startups, small business, marketing, and useful geekery from someone who's been there: Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software

A great blog post advocating results and 'amount of energy expended' rather than hours put into, work.

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away. That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

an open source peer to peer bank, good coverage of their start

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away. That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

Almost immediately following Twitter coming back from a planned downtime this afternoon, co-founder and current Chairman Jack Dorsey sent out a tweet letting ...

May 8, 2009 | TechCrunch | by MG Siegler

What's Next: Twitter Inventor Launching His Next Project, Squirrel. http://bit.ly/d7DxX [from http://twitter.com/shawnroos/statuses/1761502136]

It’s a service that allows anyone with an iPhone to become a merchant. Just like the wireless credit card swipers you see at certain shops and restaurants, you can carry around your iPhone and take payments. Apparently, the idea is that this will allow any individual to take credit card payments on a mobile device, kind of like what PayPal does for the web.

Transaction function tied to iPhone - gets power from the swipe!

RT @TLW3: Nuts: Twitter Inventor About To Launch His Next Project, Code ... http://tinyurl.com/qnkfgs [from http://twitter.com/KeithDriscoll/statuses/1743053678]

1. Risk-averse design 2. Lack of cohesion 3. Quitting too early 4. Customer hitchhiking 5. Metrics doesn’t replace strategy

Decent A/B article that discusses the local/global maxima issue I've often talked about

a/b testing has shortcomings- be aware of them when doing product design.

need to read but the title seems interesting

Good warnings for A/B testing

An aspiring entrepreneur recently asked, “I want to start a startup, but have no ideas. What should I do?” Here are 12 suggestions based on my interviews with entrepreneurs here on Mixergy. What are your suggestions?

We've co-evolved with our tools for thousands of years," he says, explaining how ease of Kindle buying changes behavior. "Reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device....It's a myth that multi-purpose devices are always better.... I like my phone... I like my swiss army knife too, but I'm also happy to have a set of steak knives." "I get grumpy now when I have to read a physical book....The physical book has had a great 500 year run, but it's time to change." "If you're an incumbent in any industry, and rapid change is underway, you're uncomfortable, even if long term it's going to be good." "We've made many errors. People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure's going to be. Failure's not that expensive....The big cost that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission."

"At the end of the day, you don't end your strategy because other people don't understand it. Not if you have conviction." This and other quotes from Jeff Bezos, collected by Tim O'Reilly at Wired's 2009 Disruptive by Design conference.

Business wisdom from Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos is very quotable. Listeing to Steve Levy interview him at the Wired Disruptive by Design event in New York, I was furiously taking notes. Here are the quotes I managed to capture.

"There are a few prerequisites to inventing.... You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to think long term. You have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. If you can't do those three things, you need to limit yourself to sustaining innovation.... You typically don't get misunderstood for sustaining innovation."

notes on innovation and entrpreneurs

"There are a few prerequisites to inventing.... You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to think long term. You have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. If you can't do those three things, you need to limit yourself to sustaining innovation.... You typically don't get misunderstood for sustaining innovation." "At the end of the day, you don't end your strategy because other people don't understand it. Not if you have conviction." [via: http://snarkmarket.com/blog/snarkives/briefly_noted/how_to_invent/]

Bezos: "One of the differences between founder/entrepreneurs and financial managers is that founder/entrepreneurs are stubborn about the vision of the business, and keep working the details. The trick to being an entrepreneur is to know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible. The trick for me is to be stubborn about the big things."

"We can make a market or we can take share from a market."

That's the choice most of us make when we launch a product or service. We can make a market or we can take share from a market. "This is just like the Gillette razor, but cheaper." "This has a touch screen, too, but you can get it from Verizon." "I'm a shiatsu massage therapist, the only one on this block." Those are 'taking' statements. They break a larger market into smaller bits. Compare to: "This is a sugared cereal for adults." "Our software enables you to find data and trends that no one else can find." "By combining protein and chocolate, we've developed a new food that's both dessert and dinner." These are 'making' statements. Riskier, sure, but they stand for something, they don't just steal share. The Dummies guides made a market, the Idiot's guides took from that market. You need to be clear with yourself and your team about which one you're after, because they bring different costs, different benefits and different time frames.

That's the choice most of us make when we launch a product or service. We can make a market or we can take share from a market. "This is just like the Gillette razor, but cheaper." "This has a touch screen, too, but you can get it from Verizon." "I'm a shiatsu massage therapist, the only one on this block." Those are 'taking' statements. They break a larger market into smaller bits. Compare to: "This is a sugared cereal for adults." "Our software enables you to find data and trends that no one else can find." "By combining protein and chocolate, we've developed a new food that's both dessert and dinner." These are 'making' statements. Riskier, sure, but they stand for something, they don't just steal share. The Dummies guides made a market, the Idiot's guides took from that market. You need to be clear with yourself and your team about which one you're after, because they bring different costs, different benefits and different time frames.

making markets v. taking markets

Seth's Blog:

These are 'making' statements. Riskier, sure, but they stand for something, they don't just steal share. The Dummies guides made a market, the Idiot's guides took from that market.

This is a subject near and dear to entrepreneurs, maybe the dearest subject of them all. Founders start out with 100% of the company and every time they raise capital and/or issue stock and options to their management team, that number goes down.

Chances are you use at least two major social networks - 49 million people, for example, visited both MySpace and Facebook in October 2008 (Comscore, worldwide). Nearly 7 million people in the UK use both Bebo and Facebook. A lot of people maintain very different friend lists on LinkedIn than MySpace or Facebook. Etc. And when you add in niche social sites like YouTube, Flickr, etc., there’s even more overlap among users.

Chances are you use at least two major social networks - 49 million people, for example, visited both MySpace and Facebook in October ...

A common refrain for people thinking up business ideas is that all the good ideas have already been done. Finding an established competitor is not necessarily cause to quit on the spot. Here are six potential strategies on how you might go about taking on an entrenched competitor.

"Now, I understand the use of students from elite business schools as a proxy for "talent" in the business world. But as the economy experiences the most deep-seated changes in decades, maybe it's time to change our minds about what kinds of people are best-equipped to become business leaders. Is our fascination with the comings and goings of MBAs as obsolete as our lionization of investment bankers and hedge-fund managers? Is it time to look elsewhere for the "best and the brightest" of what business has to offer?"

Good article on entrepreneurship

Brings out a great distinction between focusing on the 'cause' vs. the 'effect' -- the latter being more akin to Design Thinking. Note also in the explanation of the latter -- the message in effect is 'embrace the heuristics'.

The more Sarasvathy explains the differences in the two styles of thinking, the more obvious it becomes which style matches the times. Causal reasoning is about how much you expect to gain; effectual reasoning is about how much you can afford to lose. Causal reasoning revolves around competitive analysis and zero-sum logic; effectual reasoning embraces networks and partnerships. Causal reasoning "urges the exploitation of pre-existing knowledge"; effectual reasoning stresses the inevitability of surprises and the leveraging of options.

"Her work revolves around one big question: What makes entrepreneurs "entrepreneurial?" Specifically, is there such as thing as "entrepreneurial thinking" — and does it differ in important ways from, say, how MBAs think about problems and seize opportunities?"

Thought-provoking.

"As the cost of starting a Web company decreases, thanks to cloud computing services and technology that entrepreneurs can rent instead of buy, many founders can finance a new company without the help of venture capitalists, using their savings, money from family and friends and credit card debt, Mr. Hendershott writes. More often, they are choosing to sell small, immature companies instead of taking the longer, riskier path of developing a business that could one day go public. That makes venture capital less relevant."

Interesting read for startups

Do Web Entrepreneurs Still Need Venture Capitalists? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com http://bit.ly/cvc1i [from http://twitter.com/robinklein/statuses/1825392377]

Analyses ways to make your Windows startup faster

Does your Windows machine take a long time to boot up? (Insert snarky “switch to Linux” joke here). Well a company has developed a remedy to improve Windows boot time, and it is called Soluto. The way the application works is simple. It installs, then it asks you to reboot and then it watches your boot time and tells you what is taking up the majority of that time. It allows you to pause the item (does not start up again until un-paused) or you can delay its startup. It will wait until the initial set of applications is loaded before attempting to start your delayed applications. This program works well for techies and entry level computer users alike. If you are an expert user you can take action on all your items and have a great list to work from on speeding up your boot up. A novice would be able to pause the items that they know they do not use or have already uninstalled. -makeuseof

experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks

We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success.

check this out. Cool infographic thing pdf.

"We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success."

"We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success.

“We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success.”

aplicaciones para web

With the multitude of web applications available today, it can be difficult choosing, let alone finding, an application that fits your needs and wants. There are so many fantastic apps available, many of which are bound to be beneficial for you and/or your business. From mind mapping, design and development to collaboration, project tracking and accounting; this roundup of 101 fantastic web apps for startups and businesses are sure to reduce operating costs and increase both productivity and efficiency.

From mind mapping, design and development to collaboration, project tracking and accounting; this roundup of 101 fantastic web apps for startups and businesses are sure to reduce operating costs and increase both productivity and efficiency.

With the multitude of web applications available today, it can be difficult choosing, let alone finding, an application that fits your needs and wants. There

Lessons learned from 13 failed software products

Software entrepreneur culture is full of stories of the products that succeeded. But what about the products that failed? We rarely hear much about them.

Lessons learned from 13 failed software products http://bit.ly/aUboh8 - (via Instapaper) http://tumblr.com/xgib2bvir

ＷＥＢで入力していくと起業アイデアを絞りこめるサービス

Visual worksheet for startups. Document and communicate your business model #startdo

This is the heart of the modern business plan. The only reason to launch a project is to change something, and I want to know what you're going to do and what impact it's going to have.

Seth makes a great case for a better, straight-forward business plan

divide the modern business plan into five sections: Truth Assertions Alternatives People Money

Business plan in bare essentials

An american venture capitalist's blog with information on technology business start ups

Need to read these again once a week.

Sie com artigos sobre empreendedorismo

Varios Artículos con conceptos interesantes sobre empresa

Questions to ask a prospective client for web application projects

zappos culture

"social experiments"

Tony Hsieh built his online shoe retailer into an e-commerce powerhouse. But with credit tightening and investors eyeing the exits, Hsieh was forced to ask: Was selling Zappos really the only way to save it?

Why I Sold Zappos Tony Hsieh built his online shoe retailer into an e-commerce powerhouse. But with credit tightening and investors eyeing the exits, Hsieh was forced to ask: Was selling Zappos really the only way to save it?

Check out this nice meaty post by @RossHudgens. So much good stuff here that I keep going back: http://bit.ly/bfnTCm

Paul Graham is most famous for heading up Y Combinator, a seed-stage startup funding firm, and also for Hacker News, a social news website revolving around computer hacking, startup companies, and as their submission guidelines state, “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”. Graham’s essays online are highly regarded for their insight and relevance – and his book, Hackers and Painters, is no different. To help inform the great insights from the book, I included the essay title and summary, as Graham offers in the contents. A few chapters had only one or two notes or none at all, because they were overly technical or not particularly relevant to a wider audience. I have included those at the end.

Great list of thoughts from Paul Graham: http://www.rosshudgens.com/thoughts-from-paul-graham/

Helpful.

Long post, but good read (headline says it all).

RT @lisawilliams: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen: http://bit.ly/9oaK1Y

Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Many of my friends have been in the same position, so here's my best advice, below.

RT @sivers: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen: http://sivers.org/how2hire

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more ** Editor's note: This is a guest post by Karol Gajda of RidiculouslyExtraordinary.com and How To Live Anywhere. If your goal is

How To Become a Millionaire In Three Years | Jason L. Baptiste http://bit.ly/apxllI

forget about the headline - these advices are simple and clever

A list of strategies an entrepreneur should employ. Some of them seem to contradict each other but worthy of occasional review.

1. Does the CEO know what to do? One should interpret this question as broadly as possible. Does the CEO know what to do in all matters all of the time? This includes matters of personnel, matters of financing, matters of product strategy, matters of goal sizing, matters of marketing. At a macro level, does the CEO set the right strategy for the company and know its implications in every detail of the company? I evaluate two distinct facets of knowing what to do: Strategy—At Andreessen Horowitz, we like to say that in good companies, the story and the strategy are the same thing. As a result, the proper output of all the strategic work is the story. Decision making—At the detailed level, the output of knowing what to do is the speed and quality of the CEO’s decisions.

The folks at Behance and Cool Hunting asked me to talk at their 99% Conference a couple months ago. The 99% conference is aimed at creative professionals and is focused on Edison's "99% perspiration." And in the spirit of how...

You probably should watch @avc talk about 10 ways to be your own boss: http://bit.ly/aEz2jV and follow him.

2) Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you don’t actually control.

product

Earlier this year, I had a chance to attend SxSW. One of the highlights of my trip was a startup dinner which included Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals. At the time, they had just come out with their new book "Rework". I had downloaded a copy to my Kindle, but hadn't had a chance to read it yet. Now I have. Twice. It's a great book. Lots of practical advice for entrepreneurs. I highly recommend it. My second time through, I decided to pull out some of my favorite parts. onstartups rework You're encouraged to share your favorite insight by using the convenient "tweet" links next to each one. 37 "Signals" From 37 Signals

Very, very smart way to get retweets back to a particular page. He excerpted chunks from "Rework" and added pre-made "Tweet" links next to it. Need to add some CTA on the page and you have a winner

HOW TO: Pick the Perfect Name for Your Startup

RT @openofficespace: RT @JasonSpector: Why did so many successful entrepreneurs & start-ups come out of PayPal? Answered by Insiders - h ...

RT @hackernewsbot: Why did so many successful startups come out of PayPal? Answered by Insiders... http://bit.ly/9uRk73

First comment is the best.

Job interviews are meant to be conversations. The interviewer asks some questions and the interviewee does the same. It’s never a good sign when an interviewee doesn’t have any questions. It shows a lack of interest. This is particularly true when interviewing for a startup job because there tend to be so many more unknowns at startups compared to more established, bigger organizations.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1442546

«What are the startup’s plans for the next 6-12 months? What are the key metrics for success in the next 6-12 months? What’s the competition like?»

Links to a several cloud-ish online business tools in here, and some of them look like pretty good ideas.

hiring people

BEFORE HIRING: 1. Hire late -- alleviate pain 2. Skip over the perfect catch if we don't have any open positions 3. Operate at the limits of your organization -- get more done with fewer resources 4. Smaller team keeps you focused -- focus on things you have to do 5. Need someone? Have you already tried to do the job yourself? HIRING: 1. Ignore resumes 2. Cover letters say it all (this job or any job? who can write?) 3. Always hire the better writer 4. We look for effort (custom website) 5. Ask questions. Ask why questions. Avoid How questions. 6. Test-drive people for a week, $1,500. 7. Never let geography get in the way.

I'd like to share a bit about how we go about hiring at 37signals. Hiring is something we rarely do -- we're intentionally small at 20 people -- but we've developed a method that has worked very well for us. It allows us to find the right people and keep them happy. In 11 years, only two people have left the company -- and one recently returned after working elsewhere for seven years. (Welcome back, Scott!)

"First, we hire late. We hire after it hurts. We hire to alleviate pain, not for pleasure. Who hires for pleasure? Any company that hires people before it needs them is hiring for pleasure. I've run into a lot of companies that invent positions for great people just so they don't get away. But hiring people when you don't have real work for them is insulting to them and hurtful to you. Great people want to work on things that matter. How do you know if you really need someone? A good rule of thumb is this: Have you already tried to do the job yourself? If you haven't done the job, you don't really understand the job. Without that fundamental understanding, it's hard to judge what constitutes a job well done. What we do look at are cover letters. Cover letters say it all. They immediately tell you if someone wants this job or just any job. And cover letters make something else very clear: They tell you who can and who can't write."

This post was originally part of my “Ask the Attorney” series which I am writing for VentureBeat (one of the most popular websites for entrepreneurs). Below is a longer, more comprehensive version — with ten mistakes, instead of six. Question My buddy and I are coding up a new site and we will be ready to launch the beta in about a month. We have a couple of angel investors who are interested, and we don’t want to screw anything up. What are the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen guys like us make? Answer

This post was originally part of my “Ask the Attorney” series which I am writing for VentureBeat (one of the most popular websites for entrepreneurs).  Below is a longer, more comprehensive version — with ten mistakes, instead of six.

A simpler bank that is easy to use. A bank that treats you with respect. No extraneous features. No hidden fees.

Neue Bank ???

via: http://ma.tt/2010/05/banksimple/

3. Solving the wrong problem. Location-based social networks have been around for years. Foursquare came along just a year ago and has seemingly surpassed its predecessors. The other companies built elaborate infrastructures: e.g they partnered with wireless carriers so that users’ locations could be tracked in the background without having to “check-in”. Foursquare built a relatively simple app that added some entertaining features like badges and mayorships. It turned out that requiring users to manually check in was not only easier to build but also appealing as users got more control over their privacy. Foursquare’s competitors were solving the wrong problem.

Many products can be built much more quickly and cheaply by settling for good technology plus a bunch of hacks – human editing, partnerships, using 3rd party software – versus creating a perfect technology from scratch. At my last company, SiteAdvisor, we made the decision up front to build a non-perfect system that did 99% of what a much more expensive, “perfect” technological solution would have done. The software wasn’t always pretty – to the annoyance of some of our engineers – but it worked.

Foursquare built a relatively simple app that added some entertaining features like badges and mayorships. It turned out that requiring users to manually check in was not only easier to build but also appealing as users got more control over their privacy. Foursquare’s competitors were solving the wrong problem.

Ask yourself: if you started over today, would you build the same product?  If not, consider significant changes to what you are building.

Pivoting cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog http://bit.ly/cRARcT

3. Solving the wrong problem. Location-based social networks have been around for years. Foursquare came along just a year ago and has seemingly surpassed its predecessors. The other companies built elaborate infrastructures: e.g they partnered with wireless carriers so that users’ locations could be tracked in the background without having to “check-in”. Foursquare built a relatively simple app that added some entertaining features like badges and mayorships. It turned out that requiring users to manually check in was not only easier to build but also appealing as users got more control over their privacy. Foursquare’s competitors were solving the wrong problem.

Many products can be built much more quickly and cheaply by settling for good technology plus a bunch of hacks – human editing, partnerships, using 3rd party software – versus creating a perfect technology from scratch. At my last company, SiteAdvisor, we made the decision up front to build a non-perfect system that did 99% of what a much more expensive, “perfect” technological solution would have done. The software wasn’t always pretty – to the annoyance of some of our engineers – but it worked.

Foursquare built a relatively simple app that added some entertaining features like badges and mayorships. It turned out that requiring users to manually check in was not only easier to build but also appealing as users got more control over their privacy. Foursquare’s competitors were solving the wrong problem.

Ask yourself: if you started over today, would you build the same product?  If not, consider significant changes to what you are building.

Pivoting cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog http://bit.ly/cRARcT

I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person. Interesting patterns emerged: Everyone makes the same classes of error. Those who avoided just one of those errors stood out

Un excelente conjunto de consejos para los emprendedores

"10 Inspiring TED Talks for Startups" ( http://bit.ly/bdCLet )

10 Inspiring TED Talks for Startups @ http://bit.ly/9nFvgo | via @karmona – zohar urian (zoharu) http://twitter.com/zoharu/statuses/18522921522

I've written up the following directions to help you get there efficiently. Don't do it all in one sitting because you want your mind to digest the concepts over time. I suggest doing it over the course one week, setting aside a half an hour each day to go through this stuff.

Great walk-through of term sheets for startups

Great resource page for all founders interested in dealterms

I've written up the following directions to help you get there efficiently. Don't do it all in one sitting because you want your mind to digest the concepts over time. I suggest doing it over the course one week, setting aside a half an hour each day to go through this stuff.

Great walk-through of term sheets for startups

Great resource page for all founders interested in dealterms

"Newspaper reporters are taught to write fractal articles ... We should approach programming projects in the same way."

J'ai déjà reconnu la valeur de commencer par la fin. Voici qu'un gourou des startups, à l'instar des méthodes dites agiles, suggère de commencer par le milieu !

vc suster

prawdziwe elementy przewagi konkurencyjnej

This is Part 2 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. What if someone copies your awesome business idea? About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may

prawdziwe elementy przewagi konkurencyjnej

This is Part 2 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. What if someone copies your awesome business idea? About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may