Too Many Would-Be Entrepreneurs Are Thinking About Their Ideas, Companies, and Investors All Wrong
As so often happens, the serendipitous intersection of one too many notes from the same chord in a short time have prompted me to post. In this case, I am seeing a lot of evidence that would-be entrepreneurs just don’t think about their ideas, their companies, or investors as they should. Case in point: I [...]
Charging for Your Product is About 2000 Times More Effective than Relying on Ad Revenue
I was reading Gabriel Weinberg’s piece on the depressing math behind consumer-facing apps. He’s talking about conversion rates for folks to actually use such apps and I got to thinking about the additional conversion rate of an ad-based revenue model since he refers to the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. Just for grins, I [...]
A Solo Bootstrapping Odyssey: 2012 Was The Year I Quit My Day Job
For those who like Bootstrapping Case Studies, here is mine. 2012 was the year I moved on from a Day Job and started doing my Bootstrapped Company CNCCookbook full-time. I’m not the first to do so, and certainly not the last, but I thought I’d provide a historical background and then some data on CNCCookbook in 2012 [...]
Converting Content-Audience Fit to Product Traction
Jason Lemkin has a new post out about gaining traction after your product ships. He says it’s hard, much harder than building the 1.0 product which was already hard, and he makes some concrete suggestions on how to go about gaining traction: – Finish hiring your core team. Presumably you’ve left the sales and marketing [...]
The Very First Thing a Founding Team Needs to Do: Achieve Content-Audience Fit
A lot of entrepreneurs, when faced with the question, “What’s the most important thing to do first?”, would answer, “Build a product.” Big mistake. The most important thing to do first is to find an audience. It may be that building a product is an integral part of growing your audience, but you’re not ready to [...]
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 [...]
Entrepreneurship and Leadership is About Eliminating “They”
Something to think about for Bosses, Boards, and Workers: “They” don’t think we ought to be in that market. “They” won’t give us the budget for that program. “They” insist we focus the next release on mobile and have it out by Christmas. “They” believe we have to focus on attacking the competition. “They” are [...]
The Unsustainability of Hyper Growth VC Startups
B2C Internet plays are all about fashion trends and I’m not an arbiter of fashion. I can’t tell you whether this is the right time to make millions using sock puppets to sell pet food. I can tell you how to solve a hard problem that has valuable ROI in the Enterprise. I prefer the latter as a way to maximize the value of my career investment portfolio.
How to Position a VC Startup for Acquisition: You Can’t
How do you position and maneuver your VC-funded startup for acquisition? The short answer is, “You can’t.” The VC’s didn’t sign up for an acquisition. They are seeking a billion dollar revenue opportunity because that’s what it takes to move the needle on their portfolio. If they are willing to talk about an acquisition at all, [...]
There’s a Revolution in Desktop Manufacturing Underway
My day job involves running a company that makes Manufacturing Software called CNCCookbook. It’s a bootstrapped company that I built from scratch–software, marketing, content–the whole ball of wax. It’s been great fun and is starting to pay the bills as well. I’ll be telling the full story of what I’ve learned over time, but right [...]
