February 2012
1 post
A Note For VC's On Engaging With Founders
Venture Capitalists collectively are much more versed in their craft than I will ever be and I suspect know well what works and what doesn’t. However as a founder, I wanted to share some feedback on the process of engaging with us as entrepreneurs.
“We wanted to learn a little more about your business and form a relationship now, should a need arise in the future”
This sums up...
November 2011
1 post
“Work hard. Cry less. And realize you’re part of history.”
– Mike Arrington (via adaugelli)
July 2011
1 post
Facebook hasn't "won" social, it's done a...
I’ve read a few posts recently proposing that Facebook has “won” at social. They’ve certainly done an amazing job with much of what we call social networking.
What’s missing, and why Twitter and Google+ will continue to do very well, is the discovery aspect. For 95% of us, Facebook is a place where we connect with people we already know, work with, or have some other...
May 2011
1 post
December 2010
1 post
Where the best ideas come from
Your mileage may vary, but I’ve found that the best business ideas come disproportionately from two activities; reading (long form) and on your way into, and out of sleep.
I specify long-form reading because it gives your brain a chance to shake loose the relatively narrow focus of your daily activities. Reading blogs, tweets, articles, etc. is great for education, but to really get the...
November 2010
2 posts
Scrappy is good. Efficient is better!
Everyone knows you need the right tools to do the job well. You can demolish a wall with a spoon but unless you’re trying to kill time, get a sledge hammer. Or, if your time is worth more than $25/hr, hire someone else to do it and get it off your plate completely.
This can be applied to nearly all facets of your startup - some you are probably overlooking. Being scrappy is great....
Re: Biz School
“If you send an idiot to a motivational seminar, you get a highly motivated idiot”
I don’t remember the source of the quote, but it’s stuck.
The same goes for technical schools, undergrad, biz school, etc.
Greatness is in the composition of the person and is only augmented by education. I have brilliant employees who didn’t finish college, and brilliant...
October 2010
2 posts
How to get truly useful customer feedback
Something that worked well for us, may work for you.
After our public launch (post private beta), I sent our first 500 users a personal email asking for their thoughts, was the software meeting expectations, things they liked, didn’t like, were confused by, etc.
These were personal emails from me, to them (only). They weren’t automated in any fashion.
The results were amazing. I...
The Danger Of "Lean"
“Half of these opinions won’t apply to a majority of you.”
If every lecture, self help book and Lean startup talk began with the statement above, I wouldn’t be writing this post. But they don’t.
Like any sales or self-help book, lecture or op-ed piece - the Lean Startup mindset has a lot of valuable lessons; when assessed against your situation and applied where it...
September 2010
3 posts
“For many new businesses, forgoing profitability in favor of growth is the right...”
Top 35 UX Blogs (via @Marshallk) →
“For every hour you spend building new features, expect to spend 2 hours...”
– Me
July 2010
7 posts
If I were an investor...
(I’m not), here’s what I would look for in a startup:
Must Haves;
BOTH Technical and Business-minded founders/team. By technical I mean the person who’s building it. By business-minded I mean someone who can sell it, drum up strategic deals and has a phenomenal sense of product.
A prototype (at least). If you couldn’t find anyone to help you get the idea off the ground...
“You can dedicate resources to social media and engage conversation, or you can...”
– Me
Segmented Social Graphs (Why Google *could* win)
Just read a great article/presentation related to the challenges of unsegmented social graphs (linked/embedded below)
The case used in the presentation to illustrate the problem was a swim teacher with young students who was also connected to gay friends and often commented on their pictures on Facebook - unknowingly exposing her students to photos from wild nights out from her friends.
The more...
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Ways in which Apple wins...
When a company can claim the following, I will bet on their stock hitting $500
Hottest phone on the planet
Hottest laptops on the planet
Hottest tablet computer on the planet
Slickest consumer OS available
People lined up for blocks rather than waiting for the UPS truck
Stranglehold on digital music
The most visionary product team our industry has seen
Apple has become a juggernaut...
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June 2010
5 posts
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“If I asked the people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”
– Henry Ford
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The Reality of Social Media ROI
Here’s the truth people seem to be dancing around: Measuring Social Media ROI is f-ing hard.
Unless you transact all of your business online, or track every sale at the register, you’re not going to get accurate ROI numbers for social media. You can ask for magic software all you want, but unless you’re ready to devote serious time and resources, no brilliant programmers are...
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9 Apps That Make Product Development Easier
Over the past few years we’ve constantly been looking for tools to help us be faster and more efficient. It takes a while sometimes to determine if a tool will really fit into our processes, these ones have all made the cut.
In no particular order, I consider these my must-have tools;
xMind: All of my ideas and product development processes start in xMind. It’s a simple, powerful and...
Favorite Finds/Happenings of the week...
Added Tessa Auza (@sproutsupport) to the Sprout Social Team! One of our first fanatical users is now helping our other users. Really excited to have her on board!
Discovered Pattern Tap - an awesome website for design inspiration.
Our friend Ryan Graves (@ryangraves) had his first big @UberCab weekend! Great startup disrupting the transportation business.
Discovered Dropbox. Not sure how I...
May 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Excellent Presentation on User Adoption
From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned
View more presentations from Adam Smith.
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“In software development, are you crushing the final 10%? It’s the...”
– Seth’s Blog
March 2010
1 post
