Archive for the ‘Startups’ Category

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Add logs, pour fuel (VC money), light match (beta release day)

7, Jul 2010

I often bump into entrepreneurs while they’re in the midst of fundraising. I usually ask “why are you raising money?” and what I often hear is, “because we are running out of money” or “in order to quit my job and so I can hire 3 people” or something like that. The [...]

Unexpected Startup Lesson #3: Why You Can’t Read a VC

10, Jun 2010

This post is the third of a series on “unexpected lessons” learned through my experience as co-founder and CEO of Snapvine, a venture-backed mobile social networking service founded in 2005 and acquired by WhitePages in June of 2008.
When I set out raising our first round of financing, I was excited to [...]

Unexpected Startup Lesson #2: Channel your Inner VC to Understand Startup Valuations

27, May 2010

This post is the second of a series on “unexpected lessons” learned through my experience as co-founder and CEO of Snapvine, a venture-backed mobile social networking service founded in 2005 and acquired by WhitePages in June of 2008.
Snapvine was my first experience being in the driver’s seat of the fund-raising process, [...]

Unexpected Startup Lesson #1: Quitting the day job

10, May 2010

This post is the first of a series on  “unexpected lessons” learned through my experience as co-founder and CEO of Snapvine, a venture-backed mobile social networking service founded in 2005 and acquired by WhitePages in June of 2008.
In the years just prior to starting Snapvine, I racked up 2 years of debt attending the MIT [...]

If you want to ship, cut, cut, cut!

17, Apr 2010

I’m helping a startup founder who is outsourcing the development of a project. Tensions are running high on both sides as the project slips. The CEO is getting about two updates a week, mostly just “it’s ready to test now, the bugs are 80% fixed” and there’s no regular meeting. During the course [...]

3 Things I’ve Learned To Recruit Great Hackers

9, Apr 2010

1) “try before you buy” –> enlist contractors that aren’t tied to agencies so you can retain the option to hire full time.
2) “lots of coffees” –> do the leg work of meeting interesting people even if they aren’t looking. Nothing beats getting the word out and generating excitement. Great [...]

How much traffic do you get from being on the front page of Hacker News?

21, Mar 2010

Last week’s post “Sell Ice Cream, Not Cream and Ice” received 30X the traffic that I my blog posts normally receive.
Normally I get about 50 to 100 visits per post, but this time my post was voted onto the front page of Hacker News and ended up getting 2,530 visits over a three day period.

Here’s [...]

5 Tips for Conducting Successful Board Meetings

8, Mar 2010

I’m heading up to Vancouver tomorrow for the inaugural board meeting of a startup I recently invested in. It will be the entrepreneur’s first ever board meeting.   It made me think about what I’ve learned about conducting good board meetings.
1) Bring an informed point of view
Startups can be thought of as [...]

Avoid This Startup Mistake: Losing Customer Focus

20, Feb 2010

In 2006 when we launched Snapvine’s first viral widget and phone app for teens, it went viral overnight. We were overwhelmed with success within 3 weeks: our servers were swamped with signups – 1 million of them within the first 7 weeks. This was one of those “good problems to have” — so “good” in [...]

Crucial first hire: the "do-it-all office admin"

16, Dec 2009

Back in June of 2006 after having closed a small series A, it was time to move out of our spare rooms, get some basic startup office space and hire a couple of employees so we could move fast and get on with our mission.
One of the best decisions we made at the time was [...]


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