Auren Hoffman posted his slides pdf from a recent SD Forum talk on the value of "soft assets" (knowledge, connections, etc).Its good stuff for anyone in business -- especially if youre young.
Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital wrote a very interesting post about monetizing consumer internet services with a subscription model. He maintains that going from free to even one cent is such a large step, that most services should remain free and look for advertisers to subsidize their costs and...
I was talking to a journalist today about entrepreneurship. I told him my theory that the myth of creativity is that it all happens in one, giant "Eureka!" moment.You know the image: The idea comes to mind and you freeze. Its brilliance strikes you. Its going to change the world!...
Dick "da wizard" Costolo, CEO of FeedBurner, has a great post up contrasting two schools of thought around hiring:Briefly, the "No False Positives" school of hiring says that bad hires are worse than no hire because bad employees infect the company with all sorts of issues. Better to march on...
"The San Francisco coffeehouse is the new Palo Alto garage," declares Kevin Burton, 30, who runs his Internet startup Tailrank without renting offices. "Its where all the innovation is happening." - San Francisco Chronicle article on "third places" become the new office.Alex Soojung-Kim Pang from the Institute for the Future...
How do web 2.0 / consumer web app-ish type companies generate buzz for their free product or service online? Online promotions? Email blasts? Pray to be TechCrunched?Ive seen an increasing number of companies do all this and one thing more: hire low-cost "evangelists" to sit at a computer all day...
Just announced Skype Prime allows you to charge a caller for speaking with you. All calls start out as free and then go to a paid basis when and if the caller agrees to the rate you want to charge. Rates can be either on a time basis...
Ive posted before about why its a shame our obsession with "consistency" prevents people from changing their mind. The John Kerry flip-flop saga illuminated this obsession. Daniel Gross has a piece on Slate about U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney and how his corporate success taught him that changing your views...
A friend mentioned Herzbergs theory of motivation to me today. Herzberg says there are two kinds of motivational concerns: true motivators and hygiene factors:Herzberg (1959) constructed a two-dimensional paradigm of factors affecting peoples attitudes about work. He concluded that such factors as company policy, supervision, interpersonal relations, working conditions,...
Ive launched a new project: Business Rules of Thumb -- its a public wiki to track useful rules of thumb from negotiation to marketing to presentations to PR. Please contribute rules of thumb to the wiki! The password is: "thumb".Some of the content is taken with permission from Seth Godins...
Marci Alboher has written a great new book that came out yesterday called One Person / Multiple Careers. She sent me an early copy and after reading it I spoke with her on the phone.The premise is this: From lawyer/chefs to police officer/personal trainers to mom/CEOs, more and more people...
Brad Feld has a great post a week ago titled, Dont Be Casual, in which he talks about a company in his portfolio that did a "casual" presentation to a VC firm, only to realize that the companys idea of casual didnt match the VC firms. In the end,...
I’m OpenID enabled. Check out the Wikipedia OpenID article for a great overview. The high points include:When you post on a blog using OpenID, the blogger’s site asks your OpenID provider to log you in; when your provider verifies you, you are guaranteed a unique identity without maintaining an account...
Jason Mendelson recalls this quote: "I love backing first time CEOs because they don’t know what they cant do and never limit themselves."Reminds me of a conversation I had with Auren Hoffman a couple weeks ago. We theorized the best time to start a company was around age 27. On...
The topic of co-founders (how to find them, what skill-set they should have, how many you need, etc.) is a popular one amongst startups. It’s popular for good reason, it’s important.I’ve given the topic of how many founders are needed for startups some thought. My personal opinion is...
I have never seen a board of advisors work after the initial few meetings. Im sure there are cases where they are managed well and it works out, but for the most part, my experience is that any initial engagement and excitement wanes and the value diminishes fairly quickly....
Throughout the building of Emerging Demographics, my advisory board has played an instrumental role in helping me mitigate my inexperience. An advisory board, if constructed properly, can be the main difference between a successful company and a “learning experience.” This is especially true for young entrepreneurs who need to rely...
The "me too" label has been applied to a past when a company enters a crowded market of highly visible competitors. Examples abound, such as the remote storage category, RSS readers, online calendars, personal website creators, etc. Each of these categories at one time or another was pursued...
Over the past year Ive thought a lot about personal finance. Heres what I concluded: a) Money is not the main driver in what I do. b) If given the choice between being rich versus not being rich, Id rather be rich. c) If there are easy things I...
Many of my friends have heard me use the phrase, "God bless the Internet" when it comes to the incredible variety of free and useful services available today.One of the services that Ive been digging the most recently is Jott. (Disclosure: I am not an investor in Jott. I am...
