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16 Dec 09

Action Oriented Startup Founder

This is a great, and short, post on the value of being action oriented as a startup, founder, and entrepreneur. Very cool indeed. Plant a lot of seeds and see which ones will grow.

www.avc.com/...action-oriented.html - Preview

startup strategy hiring employees work business entrepreneurship action fredwilson

People ask me all the time about the traits I look for in entrepreneurs and action orientation is at the top of the list. I'd much rather back someone who makes 100 decisions a day and gets 51 of them right than someone who makes one decision a day and gets it right.
I'd much rather back someone who makes 100 decisions a day and gets 51 of them right than someone who makes one decision a day and gets it right
8 more annotations...
- the cost of making a bad decision is not nearly as great as the benefit of making a good one. So I like action oriented leaders.
- When you make a bad decision, you can always realize it was bad and change it. By being action oriented, you put a lot of things in motion and can evaluate what is working and what is not.
- You need to have a game plan for sure. But within that game plan, I believe it is better to try more things than less things. And I believe that perfect is the enemy of the good.
- a
  startup as the process of going down lots of dark alleys only to find
  that they are dead ends. Dick describes the art of a successful startup as
  figuring out they are dead ends quickly and trying another and another
  until you find the one paved with gold.
- You can think and debate about stuff all day long or you can try stuff out and see what works
- It's a messier way of doing business and some people have a hard time with mess.
- If you are "action oriented" in your hiring, you'll make more hires and more of them will not work out.
- Great entrepreneurs are hard to work for. They jerk you around, change things up, and are always pulling the rug out from under you. And often a company outgrows that leadership style and needs a calmer more organized leader.

28 Oct 09

Startup School: Hackers and Salesmen | ShopTalk Blog

a look at hackers vs salesmen and how different the two approaches are and how every techie needs to learn how to be an entrepreneur to sell what they built

shoptalkapp.com/...p-school:-hackers-and-salesmen - Preview

hackers entrepreneur entrepreneurship business smallbusiness sales salesmenship

Hackers value precision and accuracy. Great hackers have to be precise and accurate, because computers do what you write, not what you intend. Salesmen value confidence. To close a sale and get paid (which is, as we learned, the absolute greatest expression of love), customers have to be pretty convinced that you're right. That's not going to happen if you're not confident. Why should I believe you if you don't seem to believe yourself?
Jason Fried was the most conspicuous salesman of the bunch. He spoke almost entirely in absolutes. He raised his voice. He was defiant and confident. He paced around the stage to bolster his stage presence. And if that wasn't enough to convince you that he was right, he threw in a slew of curse words. It's hard to argue with that.

Paul Buchheit stood on the other end of the spectrum. One of his early slides literally said this:

Limited Life Experiences + Over-generalization = Advice
8 more annotations...
- He was relatively timid, yet funny and insightful. He looked at problems from multiple angles. He discounted his own opinion frequently. He offered options, but didn't make any demands.
- Technology entrepreneurs need to be half hacker and half salesman. When you're writing code you have to be intimately familiar with the limitations and weaknesses of your product. When you're selling, however, your product is suddenly limitless and indestructible.
- When you're working on strategies for your startup you need to consider multiple scenarios and outcomes. When you're talking to the press, you only discuss one possible outcome: unmitigated success.
- Since Startup School is attended mostly by hackers, I felt a little insulted by Jason Fried's lack of intellectual honesty.
- but I felt much more comfortable listening to Paul Buchheit's humble and honest approach.
- The guy was obviously drinking his own Kool Aid. I lost a lot of respect for him that day.
- for teaching this hacker how to become an entrepreneur.
- Speaking in absolutes is a sure way to discover someone doesn't know what they are talking about.

22 Aug 09

You Aren't Crazy, You're Just an Entrepreneur : The World : Idea Hub :: American Express OPEN Forum

Gives an overview of 4 stages of starting and running your own biz. I found the stages to be not quite right in terms of my journey thus far.

www.openforum.com/...st-an-entrepreneur-pamela-slim - Preview

entrepreneurship business smallbusiness stages growth risk reward

Once you get over the initial rush of your launch, certain that everything is going to go according to plan, you run into some snags.
describing the cycle of change experienced by new entrepreneurs
13 more annotations...
- Square One: Death and Rebirth
- choose to move from employee to entrepreneur
- Mantra: I don’t know what the hell is going on, and that’s okay.
- stay open to possibility.
- Square Two: Dreaming and Scheming
- begin to brainstorm a bunch of different business ideas and scenarios. The sky is the limit as you imagine yourself as a software genius, media tycoon, or rich inventor.
- Mantra: There are no rules, and that’s okay.
- Recommendation: Don’t edit your imagination. Run wild and think up new ideas for products and services.
- Square Three: The Hero’s Saga
- Description: You whittle down your big list of business ideas to one that appears to be viable. You launch the business. Everything goes wrong. People criticize you. You question your sanity.
  
  Mantra: This is much worse than I expected, and that’s okay
  
  Recommendation: Don’t get flustered. Expect that things will go wrong.
- Square Four: The Promised Land
- Description: When you get through the awful growing pains of Square Three, business will stabilize.
- Mantra: Everything is changing, and that’s okay.

20 Aug 09

Swift Kick Central: NACA Number one

Review of our first NACA conf and why them discouraging new ideas goes against us as entrepreneurs

blog.swiftkickonline.com/...naca_number_one.html - Preview

swiftkick blog kevinprentiss entrepreneurship naca conferences idea apca ambassadorprogram 10_06

"If you have a great idea for promotion, it is forbidden"
We are both entrepreneurs, we pride ourselves on our ability to come up with new ideas
2 more annotations...
- Sure some of them will be bad, some will be good and we find out which is which by trying things. NACA seems to actively discourage this approach
- I'm really excited to kick up the ambassador program with a flash mob at an APCA conference.

17 Aug 09

The Ideal First Round Term Sheet

A link to a "Standard" quickclose term sheet.

www.avc.com/...al-first-round-term-sheet.html - Preview

vc funding legal fredwilson startup entrepreneurship raisingmoney capital investment termsheet

Chris is a serial entrepreneur and I am a VC. And yet we agree on what the term sheet should say. That's progress.
Chris' favorite law firm, Gunderson,
4 more annotations...
- "quick closing".
- There are multiple benefits to doing it this way. First, it leads to a very fast close. Second, the legal costs are minimal, certainly less than $10k and they should be less than $5k. And third, it sets the company up well for future rounds of financing because there is nothing funky in the docs.
- We need to lower the time and cost of raising capital.
- We need to eliminate a lot of bad terms that have caused a lot of harm (tranched investments, mutiple liquidation preferences, super pro-ratas, etc, etc). We need to converge on a set of standard Series A terms that everyone uses.

22 Jul 09

270+ Tools for Running a Business Online - Mashable

A great list with LOTS of tools

mashable.com/...270-online-business-tools - Preview

businesstools tools onlinetools cooltool productivity entrepreneurship

03 Jul 09

OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN | A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs

A quick read with nice tips in classic Guy style

blogs.openforum.com/...-dozen-donts-for-entrepreneurs - Preview

Tips entrepreneurship startup business guykawasaki failures fail

05 Jun 09

Steve Blank

running a start up on Faith-Based versus Fact-Based Decision Making

steveblank.com - Preview

blog business entrepreneurship startup faithbased factbased decisionmaking faith

29 May 09

10 lessons from a failed startup » VentureBeat

Filled with lots of great quoted and tips on failed biz. Some specific to just their biz, but most good for all.

venturebeat.com/...-lessons-from-a-failed-startup - Preview

entrepreneurship startup tips howto postmordum failed advice business

11 May 09

MBAs vs. Entrepreneurs: Who Has the Right Stuff for Tough Times? - Bill Taylor - HarvardBusiness.org

A nice break down of the two minds of Causal reasoning vs. Effectual reasoning

blogs.harvardbusiness.org/..._vs_entrepreneurs_who_has.html - Preview

entrepreneurship MBA brain reasoning harvard mind

31 Mar 09

Google Ventures - Welcome

Google to start funding startups

www.google.com/ventures - Preview

google startup funding money entrepreneurship vc finance business

25 Mar 09

Win 10 Grand to Start Your Dream Business

Interivew with CyberGuy on WGN on how I won 10k through ideablob.com for Swift Kick and Red Rover

www.wgntv.com/landing_cyberguy - Preview

entrepreneurship contest Interview ideablob.com cyberguy wgn tomkrieglstein_inthenews swiftkick_inthenews redrover_inthenews

05 Mar 09

Get your next mentor by being slightly annoying | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

How to find mentors (A personal tale)

blog.penelopetrunk.com/...tor-by-being-slightly-annoying - Preview

entrepreneurship business teaching mentor mentorship

23 Dec 08

Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success | Video on TED.com

Why do people succeed? Is it because they’re smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

www.ted.com/...hn_s_8_secrets_of_success.html - Preview

video entrepreneurship business inspiration success tedtalks passion TED