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Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Testing and launching a web app: What every startup needs to know
Several of the companies I’ve worked with in the last year have gone through a software launch. While I usually focus on the business side of startups, and this post is more like something from Bitcurrent or Watchingwebsites, it’s pertinent to any web startup that needs to test and launch a successful product. There are ten distinct stages of defining, testing, and launching a web application. Each stage has some tools you can use, involves different people, and focuses on different kinds of data collection. If you go through these stages in the wrong order, you’ll waste time and money. Do them in the right order—using some of the tools we’ve found here to help you along the way—and you’ll be much more likely to launch the right product at the right time and make it easy for your customers to access you.
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View CommentsWednesday, October 8th, 2008
The three kinds of CEO
in: Startups
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that there are three kinds of CEO. If you run a startup, you’re one of these three. And there lie your strengths and weaknesses. The good news is that by recognizing yourself, you can capitalize on your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. The bad news is that many leaders don’t realize which of the three they are until it’s too late. So today, it’s time to meet the product CEO, the sales CEO, and the finance CEO. And to decide which one you are.
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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
The opposite of startup: Observations from a remarkable week in New York
in: Anticipate, Create, Funding, Startups
I was in New York for an historic week. While in the city for three conferences and a weekend of R&R, I saw firsthand some of the changes that are happening to the financial markets. It’s no hyperbole to say that the past few days will shape the next century for much of the Western world, and they are the result of a free-market experiment gone horribly wrong. Normally, I try to keep this blog focused on startups. But I wanted to share some of what I saw while there; I believe it holds some important lessons for entrepreneurs as well as a few guidelines for how to run your businesses in the coming drought. On my arrival last week, I walked past Lehman Brothers mid-meltdown. Town cars were parked three deep, and suited executives with confidence-inspiring grey hair fled the guarded doors into the safe embrace of stretch Lincolns.
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Jumping the sticker shark
in: Communicate, Standing out, Startups
Notebook stickers are the badge of pride of many a Web 2.0 denizen. It’s unlikely that an IBM Thinkpad will be festooned with colorful logoes and strange sayings, but head to any campus and you’ll see that the back of a Mac is the new car bumper. Stickers do more than profess your technical leanings. They’re a labor of love. And that love comes from having to work for them. In some cases, companies only hand out their stickers at special events. Or they make commemorative ones. There are blogs (like Stickergiant) devoted to Sticky Love. And some sites sell them if you weren’t able to attend their event, usually through self-publishing sites like Cafepress. Once, stickers had street cred. But now, scruffy-haired basement entrepreneurs toting the requisite messenger bag troll from booth to booth, trying to grab a sticker without having to sit through a sales pitch. Still, there’s some effort involved. A while back, Startup Schwag realized there was a currency in the stickers and T-shirts that are a kind of by-product of startup culture, and started sending out grab bags of stuff. The startup gets visibility; the subscriber gets momentary thought leadership; and Startup Schwag nets a cool $15. Don’t get me wrong — I grabbed one of them. But it’s more to hide the fact that I have a cheap Acer, rather than a glowing Mac. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Maybe I’ll go find some blog bumper stickers to make me feel better.
But it’s definitely hitting mainstream. At Web2Expo in mid-May, Yahoo was giving out placemats of stickers, rather than individual ones. Have they jumped the shark? Certainly, this is the challenge of Big Internet — how does one maintain the allure of secrecy, of being “in”, while still achieving the economies of scale that investors anticipated. To me, this sticker placemat is a metaphor for many of the challenges Yahoo faces.