10 Tips for Entrepreneurs

June 3, 2010

Over the next two weeks, I am posting ten tips for entrepreneurs.   These are battle tested, practical, experience-based tips rather than hypothetical or ephemeral.   Comments, alternative viewpoints, and disagreements are welcome!

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Choose the right company brand name, retire rich

May 26, 2010

That’s silly of course.  It’s not that easy.  But many entrepreneurs have a hard time coming up with a company name.  Fortunately there’s a strategic approach that will yield good results.
If you choose the name right, you have given yourself a huge leg up on the competition.   And I would argue you write your ticket [...]

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Funding a Company with a Strong Value Proposition, a Guide for VCs

May 20, 2010

In my last post I took the position that venture capitalists need to give more weight to a company’s customer value proposition than the strength of the management team.  Admittedly it can be difficult and time consuming to determine a strong value proposition that real customers will spend real money on.  A value proposition must [...]

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Value Prop vs. Executive Team. A common VC mistake.

May 18, 2010

When a venture capitalist, angel investor, or hedge fund is looking at investing in a company, there are a host of criteria to consider.  Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?  What is the size of the market?  What is the product?  Who will buy it?  What is the exit strategy?
Often times, the [...]

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How to Strategize

May 11, 2010

The most essential task for an entrepreneur or business strategist is to plan the Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy.   A GTM strategy defined by Larry Friedman is:
“A game plan for reaching and serving the right customers, in the right markets, through the right channels, with the right products and the right value proposition.” (Italic emphasis his)
That’s [...]

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Startup Ecosystems

April 9, 2010

If you are a startup entrepreneur, there is nothing more important than figuring out the startup ecosystems that can help you succeed.  I have found there are two categories of ecosystem that are the most important to explore and integrate with.
1) Local startup ecosystem. Your local ecosystem is simply the people that live in your [...]

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How is ZipRealty still in business?

March 12, 2010

How is ZipRealty still in business?
In my opinion, ZipRealty is an enigma.  They went public in 2004 and their current CEO, Patrick Lashinsky, took the helm in 2007.  The company has rarely turned a yearly profit (only two years in its eleven year history based on my count) and in the most recent quarter, ZipRealty [...]

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Larger than life

February 11, 2010

NPR had a good story on the broadcast this morning about Charlie Wilson.   The former congressman died yesterday at age 76.  He was depicted in the 2007 movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” starring Tom Hanks. 
What strikes me most about Charlie Wilson’s story is that his friends describe him as “larger than life”.  I wouldn’t necessarily [...]

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Marketing for startups – know thy customer

February 2, 2010

I’ve had several people recently ask for marketing advice for their startup venture. One of the things I typically want to figure out before we even get started is who the target customer is.  I ask  “who is going to buy what, and how much will they pay?”
It’s a three part question and [...]

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Hands-on SEO

January 29, 2010

Its surprising how many SEO consultants don’t have real hands-on experience with SEO. There seems to be a lot of “hand waving”, but not “hands-on”. I gave a presentation at Tech Ranch Austin today about how to do SEO on the cheap, from an entrepreneur’s perspective. If you want to know [...]

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