Unexpected Startup Lesson #1: Quitting the day job
May 09, 2010
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3 minutes
This post is the first of a series on “unexpected lessons” learned through my experience as co-founder and CEO of Snapvine, a venture-backed mobile social networking service founded in 2005 and acquired by WhitePages in June of 2008.
In the years just…
If you want to ship, cut, cut, cut!
April 17, 2010
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2 minutes
I’m helping a startup founder who is outsourcing the development of a project. Tensions are running high on both sides as the project slips. The CEO is getting about two updates a week, mostly just “it’s ready to test now, the bugs…
3 Things I’ve Learned To Recruit Great Hackers
April 09, 2010
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1 minute
1) “try before you buy” –> enlist contractors that aren’t tied to agencies so you can retain the option to hire full time.
2) “lots of coffees” –> do the leg work of meeting interesting people even if they aren’t looking. Nothing…
How much traffic do you get from being on the front page of Hacker News?
March 20, 2010
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2 minutes
Last week’s post “Sell Ice Cream, Not Cream and Ice ” received 30X the traffic that I my blog posts normally receive.
Normally I get about 50 to 100 visits per post, but this time my post was voted onto the front…
Sell Ice Cream, Not Cream and Ice
March 12, 2010
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2 minutes
Doing a startup? Think carefully about the differences between technology , product and business.
The startup world is full of incredibly smart people who design new applications that “change the world” but lack a clear business model (product, but no business). It’s…
Avoid This Startup Mistake: Losing Customer Focus
February 20, 2010
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2 minutes
In 2006 when we launched Snapvine’s first viral widget and phone app for teens, it went viral overnight. We were overwhelmed with success within 3 weeks: our servers were swamped with signups - 1 million of them within the first 7 weeks.…
Crucial first hire: the "do-it-all office admin"
December 16, 2009
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5 minutes
Back in June of 2006 after having closed a small series A, it was time to move out of our spare rooms, get some basic startup office space and hire a couple of employees so we could move fast and get on…
The positive follow-up to complaints, failures and ideas.
November 09, 2009
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1 minute
Complaints can be annoying, but when paired with solution ideas are valuable. Failure by itself is a negative but when it comes with honest learning is the foundation of innovation. Ideas by themselves can be worthless but when accompanied by follow-through can…
FiReGlobal West Notes
October 20, 2009
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3 minutes
Last week I attended FiReGlobal West as a guest speaker on a CTO Challenge Panel discussing how technology can help increase civic engagement at all levels of government.
Here are a few rough notes I took (and my opinions interwoven) throughout the…
Competition. Am I screwed?
September 29, 2009
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2 minutes
I’m advising a first time web entrepreneur on a new service. This week he discovered a directly competitive service that is much further along and already launched. He wrote me asking “am i screwed?”
Here’s my response:
The answer to your question…
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