The Series A Crunch: One More Reason to Bootstrap and Skip Venture Capital
I’ve talked a lot about bootstrapping on this blog–I am a total convert, and I’m enjoying every minute of bootstrapping my own company. There are many reasons for my enthusiasm. Investors these days are going to make you take most of the bootstrap journey before giving you a dime being one of the biggest. You’ve [...]
M&A The HP Way – Why the Autonomy deal was doomed, and what can’t be done to save HP
The latest debacle at Hewlett-Packard involving the allegations of accounting wrong-doing at Autonomy make for a particularly sticky wicket for CEO Meg Whitman. While there have been some attempts to blame her predecessor, Léo Apotheker, for the decision to buy Autonomy, it’s impossible for Whitman to avoid taking ultimate responsibility for the deal. And when [...]
The Upside Foundation – Give back a little while you are busy taking over the world
One thing that has really been exciting for me in the last 3 months has been the Salesforce Foundation. When Marc Benioff founded Salesforce he committed 1 percent of stock, 1 percent of employee time and 1 percent of licenses to charity. It’s an incredibly small amount of equity and resources but it has had [...]
Gartner Gamification Report Offers Good and Not-So-Good Points
The headline from yesterday really caught my eye: “Gartner Says by 2014, 80 Percent of Current Gamified Applications Will Fail to Meet Business Objectives Primarily Due to Poor Design”. It immediately brought me back to that old chestnut from CRM’s salad days half of CRM implementations would fail. It’s not that the prediction is wrong [...]
IT basics: Cost optimization for small and medium business
IT must always remember to focus on core elements of service delivery and project execution. To gain respect from the business, maintain a high level of operational excellence within IT.
Gliffy: bootstrapped in San Francisco
It’s rumored that a Web entrepreneur only has to walk down the street in downtown San Francisco to attract VC funding these days. That’s probably an exaggeration, but even so, you can’t help but admire the grit of Gliffy’s co-founders, Chris Kohlhardt and Clint Dickson (pictured in their new office, below). They’ve chosen to bootstrap [...]
