I’m not negative about entrepreneurship. I am not naive to the downside of working for a large company. I am definitely not naive to the potential upside of starting your own business. I mostly hang out with entrepreneurs. I closely follow the blogs of several entrepreneurs/investors. I’ve read pretty much every well-known book about entrepreneurship [...]
Categories: Startups
1.) Find your passion. Or at least an industry you’re genuinely interested in. If you’re not sure, you need to put in time and try out new things. Research an industry in detail, interview people in the space, maybe even work for your future competitor. Make sure you enjoy being around the types of people [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: entrepreneurship
You’ve probably already read Chris Anderson’s new article The Economics of Giving it Away. A nice summary was put also put together by Dharmesh Shah at OnStartups. I generally agree with the direction that Chris Anderson sees things going. The marginal cost of a web service is getting smaller. The freemium business model makes [...]
Tagged: Business Model, Chris Anderson, Economics, Free, Profitable, Startups, Sustainable
I liked the book Tribes by Seth Godin. It’s short and sweet. A lot of books these days are so long – as if the author had a target word count and was obligated to surround the few key insights with endless examples and explanations. Seth has a way of getting right to the point. [...]
Categories: Startups
“Mass customization has taken off in the computer and automotive industry. Why not clothing?” First of all, in a certain sense, it has. From a consumer point of view, outfits are extremely customizable. When we put together outfits we mix and match different articles of clothing in various combination’s to suit our needs for the [...]
Categories: mass-customization
Tagged: clothing, custom, custom dress shirt, customization, mass-customization, smart customization
What drives your company’s product development? That is, in the day-day decisions when you’re considering trade-offs and shifting priorities – what drives your analysis? In pure technology companies and research, product development should be driven by technology. When I was an engineer developing consumer satellite modems every decision was based on technology. We only considered [...]
Categories: Design
Tagged: Design, Technology
The writing is on the wall. No startups will receive angel or series A funding before March 2009. I know it’s not what we (entrepreneurs) want to hear. We’re optimists. We can visualize that term sheet coming next week. We can each personally justify why our specific venture is more attractive than any of the [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: Financial Crisis, Funding, Investors, Series A, Startup
Does the paradox of choice doom mass customization? A search on the above phrase shows that a lot of marketers believe mass customization is a doomed concept with the headlines: Mass Customization Maybe Offers Too Many Choices, Spoiled for Choice: Consumer Confusion in Internet Based Mass Customization, The Mass Customization Paradox, and When Less is [...]
Categories: Internet,mass-customization
Tagged: , mass-customization, Paradox of Choice
I’ve been talking with several people working on internet businesses recently, and it’s always the same story: If we build a website that does (insert whatever perceived problem they are solving), then we can make (X dollars) every time a customer uses our wonderful service. What they fail to think through is the cost of [...]
Tagged: Conversion Rate, Customer Acquisition Cost, Pay per click
There is some interesting research coming out of MIT (professor Glen Urban) that I think will eventually be relevant to behavioral ad targeting. The research recognizes that different people, in different contexts have different cognitive styles. Cognitive styles can be measured across several different dimensions. Some examples include: impulsive (makes decisions quickly) vs. deliberative (explores [...]
Tagged: Cognitive Style, Conversion Rate, Glan Urban, Internet Marketing, Targeted Advertising, Website design