An entrepreneur describes his idea and then asks “Do you think people would pay for it?”. It’s practically implied in the question that “people” is a single homogeneous entity. The answer they are looking for is “yes – people would pay for that”, or “no – people won’t pay for that”. The entrepreneur might ask [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: Startup
Everyone pays attention to the direction things are going, but as an entrepreneur you need to pay very close attention to how fast they are moving.
Your startup has a shorter runway than any company you’ve ever worked for.
Maybe you are getting new leads – but how many per week? Maybe your revenue is growing – [...]
Categories: Startups
Sometimes I lose focus and start to feel like I’m not getting anything done. This frustration usually leads to the following dialogue:
What do I want?
The next business goal or objective.
How do I think I can get there?
Take a step back and look at the original business plan.
Why am I not already there?
What is preventing [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: focus, leadership, productivity, Startup
It’s a really, really tough question that I can’t hope to answer in a short essay. Nonetheless, something I get asked about and think about a lot – so here goes.
Research
You need to know who the competitors are, what their products look like, who the customers are, what their buying processes are, what the [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: business, entrepreneurship, Startup
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 [...]
Categories: Internet, Startups
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
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 others [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: Financial Crisis, Funding, Investors, Series A, Startup
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 getting [...]
Categories: Internet, Startups
Tagged: Conversion Rate, Customer Acquisition Cost, Pay per click