Last week while I was vacationing Stephen Fleming alerted the world to a new article by Steve Blank entitled "One Hand Clapping – Entrepreneurship in Ann Arbor, Michigan." It's an article that Steve wrote about a few days he spent in the home town of the champions of the West. I suspect that if some […]
Continue reading →So I was having a chat with a VC the other day and he said something quite simple and obvious. To parapharse: "Sales is everything in the early stage. I really wish that we saw more aggressive CEOs that had what it takes to close deals." Yep. All too often entrepreneurs take a build it […]
Continue reading →The continual self consternation of the Atlanta startup community borders on amusing. Dozens of well intentioned people associating and coming up with solutions to what supposedly ails starting a technology company in the South. The solution is really quite simple and straightforward. Atlanta needs more people with FU money. FU money removes a lot of annoyances […]
Continue reading →Depending on who you ask Rachel Sequoia gives either the greatest or worst pre-launch startup pitch ever. Either way you have to listen to her. It’s an engaging pitch for a ridiculous concept And yes it’s been revealed as a prank.
Continue reading →Last week the Kauffman Foundation released its annual Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. This study is a leading indicatior of new business creation across the United States. The headline was "jobless entrepreneurship" but underneath that were some interesting facts. Perhaps the most interesting of these was that Georgia, along with Nevada, had the highest entrepreneurial rate […]
Continue reading →As a pretty big football fan one of the highlights for me of SEVC was Thomas Dimitroff's luncheon keynote speech. The focus of his talk was on the importance of team, which I thought to be most a propos, as a good cohesive team is important to success on both the gridiron and in the startup […]
Continue reading →This morning I was invited to Morris, Manning & Martin's Atlanta Technology Breakfast. This little event was slipstreaming off of SEVC. The agenda was 20 companies giving three minute pitches to a room full of local and out of town VCs, one who happened to be sitting next to me. While the presenting companies were […]
Continue reading →They’re just not that into you emerged online as an alternative title to the “They Aren’t Funding You” article. Before Dave Wright dropped the bomb that he was heading to Boulder (a wise choice by the way) he was having a nice focused talk on how SolidFire raised $11 million with no product, customers, or […]
Continue reading →On Monday the White House announced the Startup America Partnership. Startup America is a White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout America. Below is a nice video of Austan Goolsbee the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers explaining the program. About the only criticism I have about the program is the expression […]
Continue reading →Jeff McConnell pointed me to a great article by Mark Suster entitled On Leadership, Teams, Success, & Happiness last night. Well down in it he writes this: I meet entrepreneurs all the time who tell me one of the following things: “I’ve had trouble raising money. Investors want to see more traction. This frustrates me. […]
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