Hopefully, like me, you're here because you're interested in startups -- more specifically, software startups.
Published: Jul 12, 2010
Imagine you’re having some big, high falutin’ meeting. Perhaps it’s a board meeting. Or, if you don’t have a board, perhaps it’s a management team meeting.
Or, if you don’t have a team, perhaps it’s just you talking to yourself at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. Whatever mechanism it is you have to talk about important issues and make decisions, imagine that meeting. Are you imagining it? Good.
Now, imagine that same meeting with one important change: One of your smart, savvy, customers is at the table.
Original post
Published: Jun 21, 2010
I’m a big fan of Eric Ries and the lean startup movement that he’s championing at Startup Lessons Learned. I think many of the fundamentals behind the lean startup are things you likely have been practicing for a while. But, seeing it articulated so well and establishing a common vocabularly for us to talk about it is immensely valuable.
One of the key parts of the lean startup is the concept of a “minimally viable product”. The MVP is a product that has the minimum set of features needed to learn what the market wants. The idea behind the MVP is to spend as little energy is possible figuring out whether what you’re building is something people want.
In this article, I’d like to look at what happens after you’ve built the minimally viable product for your market.
Original post
Published: Jun 09, 2010
The following is a guest post from Mike Volpe, the VP of Marketing at HubSpot, who has helped grow our marketing software company from a handful of customers to nearly 3,000 customers over the past 3 years. You can find more of his thoughts through the HubSpot Blog, on Twitter, and his personal blog.
I was recently asked to speak about "startup marketing" at Atlassian Starter Day in San Francisco. I have spoken about marketing at over 50 conferences, but never specifically about marketing at startups. I decided to try to have a little fun and talk about some of the learnings from our experiences at HubSpot according to the alphabet.
Original post
Published: Jun 07, 2010
Earlier this year, I had a chance to attend SxSW. One of the highlights of my trip was a startup dinner which included Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals. At the time, they had just come out with their new book "Rework". I had downloaded a copy to my Kindle, but hadn't had a chance to read it yet. Now I have. Twice. It's a great book. Lots of practical advice for entrepreneurs. I highly recommend it. My second time through, I decided to pull out some of my favorite parts.
Original post
Published: May 19, 2010
I've run three startups, and every time it felt more like stumbling around in the dark than confidently striding along a path. Most everyone I meet feels the same way.It's worse the first time around of course. You read blogs and books, you take other business founders out to lunch, and you join entrepreneur support groups (I mean, meet-ups).But still. There's like 1,000 things to do, none of which you've ever done before or even seen before, and certainly nothing any school has prepared you for. What about all that stuff?Bob Walsh, author of several startup how-to books and the Micro-ISV blog and podcast, has all the answers at StartupToDo -- a combination web application, guidebook, and community for startup founders. And better still, here at OnStartups we're giving away 10 scholarships, so you get all this love without paying a cent! Even if you don't get the scholarship, however, check it out.Here's how StartupToDo works.First, there's already 50 guides walking through every
Original post
Published: May 10, 2010
I’m just wrapping up several weeks of attending conferences across both coasts. Of the ones I have been to recently, the Nantucket Conference has been my favorite. A great group of people and a small enough gathering that you can actually get to know many/most of them. My thanks to Scott Kirsner who organizes the conference and was kind enough to invite me to speak this year.
One of the sessions at the conference was an interview with Paul English, founder and CTO of Kayak. The interview was conducted by Larry Bohn of General Catalyst (Larry also happens to be an investor in my startup, HubSpot and sits on our board of directors). In case you are one of the few people that hasn’t heard of Kayak yet, it’s the most popular travel search site on the web (and one of the top 1,000 most popular sites on the web). Kayak is great Boston-area success story. One quick point on that: In Dec 2007, with just 39 employees, Kayak raised $230 million (at a much higher than that valu
Original post
Published: May 03, 2010
I’m writing this article on a flight from Boston to San Francisco. In a weird, serendepitous twist of fate, I happen to be sitting right next to Tim O’Reilly on the flight. So yes, I really did get to have dinner with Tim O’Reilly at 27,000 feet.
For those readers that are used to pithy, pointed, helpful articles along the lines of “Startup Marketing: Tips From The Trenches”, this may not be the article for you. This is going to be more of a stream of consciousness thing where I make an (undoubtedly ineffective) attempt to capture some of the things I’ve learned from being on the road the past few weeks at various events and gatherings and having the undeserved opportunity to talk to some really smart people.
Original post
Published: Apr 29, 2010
The following is a guest post from Jeff Bussgang. Jeff is a serial entrepreneur and currently a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, a Boston-area early-stage venture capital firm. Jeff is also the author of the recently released book “Mastering The VC Game”.
One of the hardest things about venture-backed start-ups is achieving alignment. When there is alignment between entrepreneurs and VCs, all collective energies are directed towards the magic of building an amazing, world-beating start-up from scratch. When the entrepreneur and VC are out of alignment, the likelihood of success plummets and self-inflicting wounds, rather than market- or competition-related issues, tend to dominate the agenda.
Original post
Published: Apr 19, 2010
If you have time to read one document on the topic of startup culture, you should read through the NetFlix “culture deck”.
If you have time for two, read through the NetFlix deck twice — it’s that good. It is so good, in fact, that I’m surprised when I come across entrepreneurs that haven’t seen the deck yet. These are people that read all sorts of great material on the web to help their startups.
Original post
Published: Apr 01, 2010
I’ve been following Y Combinator for several years and have a (sometimes grudging) admiration for them. The “grudging” comes from the fact that they abandoned Boston and are now exclusively running their program in the Bay area.
Given YC’s success, several organizations in the past have tried to replicate or improve on Y Combinator’s revolutionary micro-funding model for startups. Most of these have not really accomplished the objective. The reasons for their failure have been varied, but the primary one was that unlike Y Combinator, they aren’t revolutionary.
Original post
Published: Mar 25, 2010
I am writing this on the plane trip back to Boston from SXSW in Austin, Texas. This was my first time down to the conference that’s been referred to as “Spring Break for Geeks”. I’ve been meaning to go for the last couple of years, but have always had some conflict. This year, I was invited as a speaker to talk about my new book, “Inbound Marketing”, so I went.
Original post
Published: Mar 22, 2010
Pixily just changed its name to OfficeDrop – this is the story of how we went about making the change.
There comes a time for a lot of companies when they decide that it’s time for a new name. Google was once Back Rub, Nissan - Datsun, and Pepsi Cola used to be Brad’s Drink.
Original post
Published: Mar 01, 2010
I’ve been in the software startup business for a long time. One thing I have found interesting is that amongst first-time software entrepreneurs, certain “patterns” of applications kept recurring. Time and time again, entrepreneurs are tempted by one of these application categories. Not that it’s always a bad thing — I just found it curious.
Original post
Published: Feb 22, 2010
I’m going to start with a story — which includes a confession.
When I started my first company, I didn’t start with a grand mission. The idea behind the business wasn’t transformational. It wasn’t going to change the world. Historians weren’t going to write about it after I was dead. And all of that was OK. Even though there was no grand mission — I was solving a problem and meeting a market need that I cared about. Wait, let me clarify that a bit. I cared in the sense that if I didn’t solve it, I was restless. I couldn’t let it go.
Original post
Published: Feb 18, 2010
The following is a guest post from Andy Singleton, the founder of Assemba. Assembla provides online workspaces for distributed software teams, and helps many startups build their products.
Any given innovation is much more likely to fail than to succeed. Innovation as a whole may even be unprofitable for the innovators.
Original post
Published: Feb 08, 2010
As the market improves, my guess is that many of you will likely be thinking about raising funding for your company. With my latest startup, I’m now a venture-backed startup founder (I’ve raised $33 million in three rounds of capital for my marketing software company). So, I’ve got some direct experience with the process. Several of the companies I’m an angel investor in or otherwise involved with have also been in the fund-raising process. So, along the way, I’ve learned a few things, and I’d like to share them with you.
Original post
Published: Jan 26, 2010
Interviewing developers is easy.
OK, not easy. You have to generate resumes, you have to sift through the deluge of candidates, you have to pound your network continuously, you have to develop a phone-screen, you have to schedule interviews, you have to ask them questions and get them to write code and be fair.
But still, you're a great developer and you've worked with enough other developers that you can tell pretty quickly whether someone else is also a great developer. Do they say the right things? Do they make reasonable mistakes? Do they solve easy problems quickly? Do they give up? You can figure that out.
Original post
Published: Jan 08, 2010
This article is a bit out of the ordinary. But, it's a Friday so I'm hoping you'll cut me some slack.
For some reason, I like wordsmithing and trying to make phrases smaller (but still have some meaning). So, late at night, I tried to come up with some of my best startup advice and see if I could reduce it down to exactly three words (which is why I call them "triplets"). One thing led to another, and I became obsessed with it. So, then I made 47 before I had to make myself stop. And, to ensure that you didn't take this too seriously, I included a photo of some puppies. You will now find the article irresistible and will share it with the entire world.
Original post
Published: Dec 21, 2009
You can't throw a stone in the blogosphere without hitting someone arguing in favor of releasing software as early as possible. The idea is that it's best to push new software onto potential customers before it would be traditionally considered "ready."
Original post
