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How Contagion Can Help You Forecast Sales
Can we talk about beauty in numbers? Amidst all the nervousness about forecasting new products, does it not make sense, and add elegance too, to talk about the classic s-curve we see in nature? So many...
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The Joy of Startups, Revisited
Getting really into a new startup, when it goes well, is exciting like a clear mountain morning, like a warm spring rain, like falling in love. Cheesy? Sure. But I’m doing it again, and loving it. I’m...
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True Story: Begin With a Job at a Startup, Then Start Your Own
The title of this post is taken from Martin Zwilling’s Begin With a Job at a Startup, Then Start Your Own on the Gust blog. In that post, Martin starts with this: For those of you who want to get in on...
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Pricing is Magic. Stranger Every Day
Pricing is magic. There are no good algorithms. No best practices. Grab a theory — competitive pricing, value-based pricing, scientific wild-assed guess pricing, you name it — and stick with it. If it...
View ArticleKey to the Pitch: Make Me Care
Never underestimate the business value of the good story. Business planning is telling stories and making them happen. Startups make stories come true. In this delightful TED talk storyteller...
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The Myth of Persistence Can Ruin Your Life
Kudos to Barbara Taylor for Reaching Your Limit as a Business Owner on the NYTimes blog, a thoughtful reminder about a huge problem: The myth of persistence in business ownership. Given the wrong...
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7 Steps to Practical Business Stories
Remember, stories aren’t just stories. They’re truth and promise and relationships established. They’re vital to business. There’s more truth in stories than in all the statistics ever published....
View ArticleMarketing Messages? Simplify and Repeat
Watch this video. It’s just 90 seconds, and it’s a great reminder. It needs no further introduction. In case you don’t see it, click here for the source at Stanford’s scorner video collection for...
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The Best Business Success Factor is Value
Keys to entrepreneurial success? We talk about passion, persistence, ideas, funding, planning, sales, product-market fit, and all of that. Do what you love, we say. My opinion changes according to...
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Sticky Questions on Startup Ownership and Buy-Sell
I received this interesting detailed question from the ask me form on my website. I’ve decided to answer it here. I think my answer might be useful for others with similar questions. I’m putting the...
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Highest Paid CEOs in Charity
The infographic here about the highest paid CEOs in non-profits seems useful to me for two reasons. First, many people seem uncomfortable with non-profit organizations, serving higher social goals,...
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The Fitness App That’s Working for Me
Combine ease of use, and real science, by a real expert: It’s a fitness app I’ve been using on my iPhone, MiFitLife, which is the first one of these I’ve used that actually works for me. It’s based on...
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Required Reading on Business Owners Making Critical Mistakes
For a good time take a look at the answers to this question on Quora: What are some classic examples of a founder letting his or her ego get in the way of making the right decision for a company? Now...
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The Broken Spreadsheet That Birthed a Business
I thoroughly enjoyed doing this Mixergy Interview, published this week, about how I bootstrapped Palo Alto Software from zero to about $10 million annual revenues: It started one morning at 2 a.m.,...
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Do Big Tech Companies Become Too Big Not to Fail?
I caught this one yesterday on Medium: Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast. It’s by Dare Obasanjo on Hacker Daily (great title, by the way). It’s a well-thought-out discussion of how Google and...
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How did Tim Berry grow Palo Alto software?
I was amused to check in with Quora this morning and find somebody had asked me to answer “How Did Tim Berry Grow Palo Alto Software?” Obviously that’s a question dear to my heart. So here’s what I...
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My Dumb MBA Mistake
I’ve made a lot of mistakes. You can’t build a business from scratch without making mistakes. It’s an entire category on this blog, more than 150 posts. This dumb MBA mistake wasn’t my worst, but it’s...
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State Supreme Court Decides in Favor of Nasty Reviews
The Oregon Supreme Court just reaffirmed the legal protection of nasty reviews as free speech. Which reminds me of the ongoing opportunity and problem of reviews. Amazon.com reviews, Yelp reviews,...
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Headlines: Naked, Vicious, Brutal, and So Forth
That’s me there in the UPI office in Mexico City in 1972 I was 26 years old. Married, already a father, but still, so young, and so full of illusions. I still thought – although I was starting to...
View ArticleThis is Your Brain on Stories
“The people we are coupled to [meaning talking to, sharing a story with] define who we are. And our desire to be coupled to another brain is something very basic that starts at a very young age. “...
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