I love startups. I love the chaos. I love the insane hours. I love the energy. I love the types of people who are attracted to work on high-risk ideas with long odds. I love the culture that evolves around them. I love it all. I have spent my career hopping from one startup to [ Read More ]
As my year-end consumption of ‘top ten lists‘ continues, I came across one on Chicago Now called “The Top 10 Small Business Trends of the Decade” by Barry Moltz. In the list he mentions several things that have all dovetailed together to define the changing nature of work — most centered around the pros and [ Read More ]
Tim Berry has a recent post on MyVenturePad that is highly worth reading. He takes issue with a VentureBeat post that essentially recommends to entrepreneurs that they sacrifice their life until they get their business successfully built. Tim hits the nail on the head right out of the gate: the absurdity of that recommendation is [ Read More ]
As a content strategist one of the things I spend a great deal of time discussing with entrepreneurs is SEO. As I’ve written here before, my first goal in any SEO discussion with someone is to help educate them on what SEO is and isn’t, and what it really can do versus what it really [ Read More ]
One of my favorite things about the information economy is the extent to which a highly commoditized, social web lowers the barrier to entry for prospective entrepreneurs. While some of us elect to dive into owning our own business head-first with little or no safety net, that’s not the best way for some people. Many [ Read More ]
In a recent blog post, author Scott Ginsberg recently asked Have You Executed These Ten Essentials of Entrepreneurial Excellence? He then listed off the ten things he highlights as essential for entrepreneurs to be truly successful: Prestige requires pandemonium Confidence requires congruency Fame requires flexibility Success requires surrender. Creativity requires curiosity Originality requires murder Serendipity [ Read More ]
CNN recently reported that researchers from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs, and say they have identified five skills that drive innovation: Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields. Questioning: Innovators [ Read More ]
One of my favorite parts of the end of any year are the ‘year in review’ and/or ‘next year’s prediction’ lists. And when it’s a year that ends in a “0,” the lists are usually longer, more interesting and cover a longer window. So, too, already with this year. As we head into 2010, we [ Read More ]
One of the reasons that I have always loved being in the web business is because things constantly change. When I first got online in 1993, we used bulletin board systems and monochrome monitors. When I got my first tech job in 1996, everything was about corporate Windows networks and preparing for Y2K (remember that?). [ Read More ]
For some families, business is just part of the package. As someone who grew up in a family-owned business, one of the reasons I ducked-and-weaved every time my husband used to bring up the idea of us owning our own business was because I saw a lot of headache (and heartache) as a result of [ Read More ]
Entrepreneur-turned-VC, Mark Suster, recently posted an article on his blog, Both Sides of the Table, highlighting what he considers to be the essential qualities of entrepreneurship. At the heart of his post is a very, very simple philosophy: entrepreneurs just do it. For some people, this is easy. Moving ahead, pulling the trigger, motivating people [ Read More ]
In the world of tech startups there is a common phenomenon: developer entrepreneurs who can write great apps, build slick sites and develop cool technology… but who forget that the work of finding and acquiring a paying customer is a whole separate discipline. It’s what we often refer to as The Field of Dreams problem. [ Read More ]