People’s Software Company

We slipped. Well, we didn’t slip, our release date did. And we were bummed, big time(at least I was). In my perfect vision, we’d already be out in the market for a week or so, iterate, release, iterate–and head toward the end of techstars with lots of feedback from users. Only, we hit [...]

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Greg Sterling’s got a good post today on how he appreciated entrepreneurs who want to build viable businesses, not just built to flip products; Some of what Greg says:
” Stepping back, it strikes me that there’s something quite “dysfunctional” going on in the way that many entrepreneurs and funders think about building online businesses. Historically [...]

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A start-up I respect and admire posted this–is there any start-up that wouldn’t want all these qualities in their tech and product managements senior team members?
“Today we kick off a search for that perfect engineering leader to come join (redacted) for the next set of challenges. The right person will champion our engineering ethos, [...]

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Since we’re in the deep middle of trying to get a product out the door, define our core purpose and value, and get the business partners, go to market plan and so on all ready to go, a post by a VC I admire about a company he’s committed to has to catch my eye.
And [...]

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Experience is a hard teacher

Originally uploaded by lisa.williams

Tell me about it!
You have a startup, or children, or buy a house, or a marriage, or get fired, or have to fire someone: we all have to act all the time in the absence of the the information we’d need to understand whether we’re [...]

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Session at TechStars with Howard Diamond, Tom Higley and David Hose and David Cohen on angel investors and what start-up founders should know. Live-blogging the bullet points: What gets you to invest?
Tom: Needs to feel a prospect of success, confident on team, return on investment, needs to believe in the entrepreneurs, the market space, the [...]

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So the whole team went to BlogHer in San Francisco.
In some ways it was a HUGE distraction, especially for three women who are trying to ship their beta. In other ways, it was a great testing ground, both personally and professionally–We got to connect with hundreds of other women, participate (and lead) a session on [...]

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On this day in 1969, humankind first set foot on the moon. It’s a good thing to reflect upon on those days when the challenges of a startup seem insurmountable; and us, the entrepreneurs a bunch of chumps for trying something so crazy.
Remember: we are from the species that went to the stars.
Makes your startup [...]

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I’ve run all sorts of businesses, and led teams and started all sorts of things and made them go live, but I’m learning interesting lessons about being a start-up co-founder and CEO. On one hand, the role is what you’d expect–have the rolodex, do the sales and biz dev, be strategic and focus on both [...]

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I’m at BlogHer, and there’s a panel on Introverts and Blogging. My modest suggestion to my fellow introverts:

Don’t change a thing.
Up on the wall in my office, I have a bunch of quotes I wrote with a sharpie on masking tape and stuck to the wall. One is from Gandhi, and [...]

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