July 2009
8 posts
“I have a “Rule of Time in Startups”: How much time does a...”
– Jason Cohen, Sacrifice your health for your startup, from his A Smart Bear blog.
Dean: I don’t completely buy his main premise… but then, we’re not successful yet!
June 2009
15 posts
"We do it for you"
One enthusiastic visitor to the Genlighten booth today suggested we need a new sign… a big one to go behind the booth that says simply “We do it for you!”
I’ve shied away from that use case so far… the person who is really stuck and tired of being stuck and just wants someone to helicopter them beyond the research obstacle they’re facing.
I see that as the...
“Most of the people involved never intended to be entrepreneurs, it just sort of...”
– from Entrepreneurship Is Not Sexy on Rob May’s Coconut Headsets blog
Perserverance. Well at least that’s one successful startup founder trait I’ve got.
Genlighten Working Dinner at Gillson Park
Cyndy and I wanted to test some crucial fixes our CTO just implemented and brainstorm around some UI/UX design changes we’ve been pondering. We ordered takeout Chinese food and headed down to Gillson Park in Wilmette along the lakeshore. We found a nice table, fired up the MiFi 2200 and took turns ordering lookups and mock-fulfilling them. Kept it up until the mosquitoes got too annoying.
Don’t wait for perfection—launch and learn →
I’ve struggled with this the whole way and it’s coming to a head now. I find myself wanting to tweak things that are about appearance more than usability… and hold off letting customers in until I’m done tweaking. Got to stop that and move on.
“As recently as one year ago, everyone worked hard at making sure their brand was...”
– via Ryan Carson, Don’t Let Your Baby Die — How to Use Social Capital to Market Your Web App
“Microcopy is extremely contextual…that’s why it’s so valuable. It answers a very...”
– From Joshua Porter, Writing Microcopy, on his Bokardo blog
“If your goal is to have a huge company and sell $100,000,000 of software per...”
– from Jason Cohen, Too small to fail: How startups can grow in recessions, on the “a smart bear” blog.
Right now, I’d be thrilled making $100,000/year, believe me.
“If your company has VC investors, they will reduce the probabilities of an exit...”
– Exits with VC and Angel Investors (via rafer)
Dean’s take: Exactly. 1-5x return for angels, here we come.
“At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative. There is no certainty...”
– from Steve Blank’s blog post today entitled Faith-Based versus Fact-Based Decision Making.
“I think that founders stock before a venture financing should be subject to the...”
– From Yokum Taku’s Startup Company Lawyer blog.
Spent some time today trying to get various legal and accounting issues taken care of before we start letting people try out our private beta.
“Ask PG: YC Founders over 30 yrs old
46 points by dannyr 7 hours ago | 33...”
– From a post on Hacker News by user dannyr. PG stands for Paul Graham. YC stands for Y Combinator, Paul Graham’s entrepreneurial ‘not-an-incubator’ venture program for early-stage startups.
I’m about to turn 49, and I plan to apply to Y Combinator early next year. Though our...
