Archive for February 2008

Your job as CEO/founder is to make the organizational objectives and goals for your startup clear, concise, and measurable.  I am reminded by Jack Palance’s character as the wise and crusty old cowboy in the movie City Slickers telling Billy Crystal to figure out what his "one thing" is in his life.  In business, you…

Marcelo Calbucci founder and CTO of Sampa in Seattle just published his lit of influential entrepreneur bloggers in Seattle.  To my surprise, he acknowledged this blog.  Thank you for the recognition and I promise to stay committed to helping entrepreneurs.

I have nothing against PR firms.  I have worked with some fantastic firms in the past.  At Expedia, I had a great experience with Edelman.  When you have the budget and the time, PR firms can be a solid tactic.  However, in startup mode, I have felt that the best salesperson is always the CEO. …

One thing that consistently dislodges my logic chip is when I get feedback from individuals that do not know what they are talking about.  Nothing chaps my hide more than to listen to blowhards from big companies (or VCs) talking about entrepreneurship.  I am not talking about one of those successful entrepreneurs that scaled a…

A lot of newbie startup founders ask my opinion about how many employees do they need in that hard phase between product inception to pre-profitability.  More specifically, most of the questions are always focused on product development teams.  My answer is inevitably,  smaller than you think.  Sure, there are lots of examples where there are…

This little snippet from MediaWeek reminded me of debate that continues to happen.  Advertisers are still too click focused.  I just had this debate recently with an advertiser.  We debated how important optimizing your campaign for just straight click-thrus.  The majority of Internet users don’t click on ads.  The MediaWeek has a great quote from a…

A friend sent me this NPR clip about how a high % of entrepreneurs have dyslexia.  The research study showed that 35% of US entreprenerus are dyslexic accoreding to the London’s Cass School Business.  It is a very fasncinating interview.  My Mom told me after college that I was diagnosed as midly dyslexic when I…

Are you stressed out as an entrepreneur?  My guess is that you are.  You are the few, the brave, and sometimes the most anxiety ridden business people on the planet.  Its not easy forging a new product and/or business.  Serial entrepreneur and friend, Kelly Smith, just presented to the Northwest Entrepreneur Forum and has compiled…

A newly minted CEO friend of mine recently asked me how to run effective meetings, organize staff communication, communicated effectively to employees, etc.,etc.  Much is written on this topic from larger, more established firms, but, startups pose some difficult and different challenges.  Because startups are small and are growing quickly (hopefully);  the CEO is constantly…

Local Seattle journalist, John Cook, recently blogged about whether Seattle is the next Silicon Valley?  With Washington being the 4th largest state in the US in terms of venture capital invested, I’d say that our time has come.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the Valley recently.  The companies that I talk to and…