Posts Tagged ‘Startups’

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 [...]

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 [...]


top