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Working in Public Is Hard
The ability to work in public is probably in the Top 5 challenges I’ve had to face in the last several years. I’m not talking about going to Starbucks with a laptop and working for several hours while people watch you work. I’m referring to building something new and working on it in such a…
Read More6 Steps for Implementing Marketing Monday
Are you a technical entrepreneur or a developer who likes the idea of building your own software company? If so, chances are good that you enjoy writing software but hate the idea of marketing. It’s not your fault. Like sales, marketing carries connotations of being a sleaze-infested cesspool of rotten people and you probably don’t want…
Read MoreHitting the Reset Button
Ahhh, the first week of the new year. It’s the time we get to hit the reset button on the previous year, forgetting all of the commitments and lies we told ourselves a year ago. Many of us will excitedly proclaim “This year will be different! I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to get…
Read MoreWhat assumptions are you making that are holding you back?
Entrepreneurship often feels like a sliding scale between science and complete guesswork. It’s preferable to be absolutely sure of the result of every action you’re taking. Unfortunately that’s impossible. It would take too long to be sure of every result and it’s not worth testing every possible action. Therefore, we make a lot of assumptions when…
Read MoreYour corporate software career will make you a bad entrepreneur
If there’s one thing to be said for a corporate software developer career, it’s that it’s a cushy job. I know this because I’ve had a few of them in my time and done consulting work with a number of corporate software developers. Don’t get me wrong, you still have deadlines to meet and work…
Read MoreThe Death of Moon River Consulting
There are generally two reasons why a business ceases to exist. Either it went out of business or it was acquired by another business. In most cases, the founder would rather it be acquired rather than shuttered because at least that way you can say that you had a “successful exit”. I’m in the former…
Read MoreLosers Have Goals, Winners Have Systems
I blatantly stole this line from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. So if you can get past my thievery, I think we’ll be ok for the rest of the day. My philosophy is that losers have goals and winners have systems. – Scott Adams One of the most common mistakes I see entrepreneurs make time…
Read MoreThe Biggest Threat to Your Bootstrapped Business
When you’re building a new business, there are a lot of things that can go wrong at any given point in time. Only a small subset of these problems have the potential to completely destroy your business, bringing it to a total halt. Most of these are obvious. Problems with cofounders Running out of cash…
Read MoreMy Preemptive Strike at Google
I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had to consider whether or not I wanted to host my own solution or use a cloud provider of some kind. When I was first getting started as an entrepreneur, there simply weren’t choices to be had. You hosted your own solution, or you didn’t…
Read MoreFinding Your Entrepreneurial Calling
When building a business or a product for a business, you have to pay attention to a lot of different things. A short, but hardly comprehensive list of questions comes to mind: Are you solving a problem? Will people pay for that solution? Is it easy to reach the market? Are there no competitors or…
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