When planning a new company, many entrepreneurs think of these three milestones, if applicable:
1. Get funding
2. Get a patent
3. Become profitable
Make no mistake, they’re all good milestones to reach. But in and of themselves, they’re not enough.
“Whoa there, Numbers Boy, the whole point of starting a business is to become profitable. That’s when you [...]
There are few things worse in business than waiting, waiting, waiting on a contract that should be a formality, but that drags on for weeks, and sometimes months or even years. Good relationships can sour, conditions can change, your key contact can leave the other company, or momentum can simply be lost. For want of [...]
Every now and then, along comes a new thingamajig. Actually, “thingamajig” is such a great word, but it’s just so dang encarcassed with old school analogness. We need a new digital equivalent for it – how about “pixemabit.” One part pixel, a dash of data, and a soupcon of “e.”
So my new favorite pixemabit is [...]
In my experience, entrepreneurs do startups according to their overall personality.
If someone is a perfectionist, then their product or service will almost certainly be in the same vein. This doesn’t mean that the offering itself it will be of high quality, but that the processes and means of delivery will be well-thought out. Think McDonalds. [...]
When I worked in the home office of a large insurance company out of college, they would tell the salesman to always obey “The Three Foot Rule.” Anyone within three feet of wherever a salesperson found himself was a prospect. Pure and simple. A stranger (there are no strangers for long!), your friend, heck, your [...]
I loves me some Apple.
The iPod and iPhone are honest to goodness game changers.
The iPod was the main course to Napster’s appetizer in the last meal for the traditional music industry business as a whole. Similar in spirit to the genesis of United Artists – it was a transformational, and legal, way to unbundle cool [...]
Venture Hacks has a good article on how to pick a co-founder. As you may see in another post, the best co-founder in my opinion is nobody. But if you do absolutely need a co-founder, go check out the entry, a few tips from which I’ve included here:
Three co-founders is too many
Think of Wozniak & [...]
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in which Calvin asks Susie if she’ll give him a nickel for eating a worm. When she quickly says yes, Calvin realizes that he could have gotten more, and asks for a dime. Susie says no. Calvin complains “Man, you’d think that a guy eating a worm could get [...]
Let’s take a quick quiz on copyrights.
Question 1
You write a rhyming recipe book, indicate your copyright with ©, and register it with the Copyright Office. Someone then clearly takes one of your recipes and puts them in their own recipe book.
Has your copyright been infringed?
Answer
No. Copyrights, and patents and trademarks, for that matter, don’t protect [...]
A trademark is one of the most important things any company can own, and yet many people with new businesses know next to nothing about them.
Here’s what I’ve learned for my part, some of it painfully, but thankfully not fatally.
Trademarks are for phrases, names, and logos. The most important thing to trademark is usually your [...]
