Archive for March, 2009
March 31st, 2009
Partially inspired by Bootstrappers Breakfasts (according to Jesse Stay’s “Participate in the First Community Barn Raising for Modern Entrepreneurs” but closer in format to Startup2Startup, Stirr, or Techdirt Greenhouse (see also Greenhouse wiki as well to get a flavor), LaunchUp held their first event in Orem Utah (and on the Internet). The entire meeting was recorded on video with a synchronous chat session also archived, see Launchup 1.
Here are some related posts.
- www.launchup.org
- Launchup #1 in the Books
- What is Launchup?
- time and experience is more valuable than money
- serving and helping others is greatly needed right now
- the world, and especially America, have real (and real big) problems
- entrepreneurs are the world’s problem solvers
- technology is the key to unlock solutions to real big problems
- entrepreneurs need help, no matter how experienced or successful
- everyone has skills or experience that could benefit the entrepreneurship community
- the ‘ecosystem of entrepreneurship’ (entrepreneurs, investors, universities, advisors, service providers, organizations) that currently exists can be leveraged by some new community focused ideas
- http://staynalive.com/
- http://www.jeremyhanks.com/2009/03/19/launchup/
March 30th, 2009
We experienced a flood of new attendees which puts particular stress on our First Friday site, the back room at Hobees in Palo Alto, which can only really hold about 15 people if we want everyone to be able to sit at one table and have a common conversation. To avoid being turned away please RSVP if you plan to attend a First Friday in Palo Alto Bootstrapper Breakfast.
To help us better manage the Palo Alto location–which can only really support 15 attendees–and to avoid being turned away, we ask that you register for Palo Alto breakfasts on the Bootstrapper Breakfast RSVP.
March 21st, 2009
We will be using http://twitter.com/bootstrappers to send reminders for each breakfast.
March 19th, 2009
Here are a couple of upcoming events that you will not want to miss!
If you are currently looking for a co-founder please sign up to be notified for the “Speed Dating for Cofounders” event below.
- March 19 “Leveraging Your Referral Network to Grow Your Business”
A Bay Area Business Growth Meetup, this briefing includes a referral exercise to help you make the most of your existing network and present a model for how business owners can leverage customer referrals to drive more business. You will leave with a list of folks to contact for more referrals.
- March 27 Bootstrappers Breakfast 9AM Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View
Join other entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast!
- March 31 Getting More Customers - A 90 day Plan in Palo Alto
Highly rated SKMurphy workshop. This is not a sales pitch but a real working session that impacts attendees’ business. We will cover a variety of proven marketing techniques for growing your business: attendees select one or two and develop a plan to implement them in their business in the next 90 days.
- April 3 Bootstrappers Breakfast 7:30AM Hobees in Palo Alto
Adam Bossy will lead a discussion about “The Paradox of Self-Education” Please RSVP: this will fill up.
- April 10 Bootstrappers Breakfast 7:30AM Omega Cafe in Milpitas
Join other entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast!
- April 17 Peer Review for Websites at Plug & Play Tech Center Sunnyvale
- Looking for feedback on your website?
- Want to improve your website?
- Three fellow CEOs will present their websites, join our roundtable and provide feedback. more info
- April 21 Bootstrappers Breakfast 7:30AM Coco’s in Sunnyvale
Join other entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast!
- April 24 Bootstrappers Breakfast 9AM Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View
Join other entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast!
Speed Dating for Co-Founders We have gotten a number of requests to help entrepreneurs find partners/co-founders and are putting an event together to help them. More info Sign up here to be notified.
March 17th, 2009
I mentioned Bill Joos this morning, he is a great coach for sales, investor presentations, and product positioning–all questions that come up either as you are trying to gain a foothold in a market or have developed a business that now can benefit from outside investment for revenue acceleration. I followed up with an individual E-mail to the person who had asked, but I realize I should share these pointers to some of Bill’s better articles, blog posts, etc..
His firm–Go To Market Consulting–has a website at http://www.gotomarketconsulting.com/ that currently resolves to his great but short-lived blog that I hope he picks up again at some point: “Bill Joos’ Tips from the Trenches”
Here are three other very useful articles:
- Perfect Positioning, a Morning with Bill Joos by Pablo Bertorello
Covers Bill Joos formula for positioning a high tech product (improved/expanded from Geoffrey Moore’s outline in Crossing the Chasm)
- Perfecting Your Pitch by John Hoult Wed Dec 19, 2007 in Fast Company offers a excellent overview of Joos’ positioning and presentation methodology
- Bill used to work at Garage.com and they still have a version of his “Perfecting Your Pitch” [PDF Version] which outlines his 12 slide model for an investment pitch.
March 11th, 2009
Attendees of Bootstrappers Breakfast qualify for O’Reilly User Group discounts. This means you can save 25% on an O’Reilly Master class by signing up at http://training.oreilly.com, please contact us for special offer code.
Update March 23: please contact us for a special offer code to register at $199.00 per class. Everyone in the class receives $100 worth of O’Reilly books.
JavaScript: The Good Parts
- Instructor: Douglas Crockford, author of “JavaScript: The Good Parts,” (O’Reilly Media)
- Description: Like most languages, JavaScript contains both good and bad parts. The bad parts keep it from becoming an elegant, lightweight, and highly expressive language. In this class, you’ll discover good JavaScript you can use to create truly extensible code. Crockford is a regular speaker at conferences on advanced JavaScript topics.
- Register: http://training.oreilly.com/javascript
Leading and Managing Breakthrough Projects
- Instructor: Scott Berkun, author of “The Myths of Innovation” (O’Reilly Media)
- Description offers valuable insights from the past as well as challenging in-class exercises to help you develop the leadership skills and knowledge you need to manage innovative people and projects.
- Register: http://training.oreilly.com/projectmanagement
Creating High Performance Web Sites
- Instructor: Steve Souders, author of the bestselling O’Reilly book, “High Performance Web Sites” (O’Reilly Media)
- Description While working at Google and Yahoo!, Steve Souders developed rules that cut up to 25% off response time for page requests. In this class, Souders explains those rules and shows you how to improve the performance of your existing web pages.
- Register: http://training.oreilly.com/highperformancesites
Notes:
- When: All workshops are 9am-5pm, Mar. 30
- Where: Mission Bay Conference Center, (UCSF) 1675 Owens St. San Francisco, CA 94143
- Cost: $600 ($400 with discount by March 15)
- If you register by March 15 and you will get an extra $50 off.
- All class attendees will receive $100 worth of O’Reilly books.
March 9th, 2009
MB Deans to Speak At Bootstrapper’s Breakfast Friday, March 13
Bootstrapper’s Breakfast offers a discussion on Building and Enhancing Linkedin profiles. Join the discussion on Friday, March 13, 2009 at Omega Restaurant (90 S. Park Victoria Dr. Milpitas, CA 95035). Our featured guest is MB Deans managing partner of Douglas Partners (http://douglas-partners.com/).
On-line profiles are integral to today’s way to doing business and staying connected with colleagues, friends and family. Don’t miss out on MB’s informative and practical advice. Signup for the March 13 at Calendar of Events
An effective profile is important because:
- Prospects/potential partners will check it either before they contact you or as they are doing more background checking on your company.
- The testimonials that are posted there have authenticated authorship and should also be posted on your website.
- It’s a convenient mechanism for reconnecting with old co-workers and other folks you have had prior shared success with.
Douglas Partners offers hands-on workshops for those looking at job and career changes. MB’s informative and practical advice on self-promotion, network building and rekindling relationships is useful to entrepreneurs as well. MB blogs at “Working for a Living“and is a frequent speaker on career planning and on-line networks in Silicon Valley.
MB has 20 years experience as a consultant and entrepreneur, having founded and helped build several successful firms mainly in high tech and management consulting. She is currently CEO and Managing Partner of Douglas Partners, a HR consulting firm focused on career transition issues faced by working professionals. MB has an MS in Computer Science from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a BS in Biochemistry from Rutgers College.
MB’s blog “Working for a Living” that has an interesting “Turn Off Your TV” set of posts:
- Turn Off Your TV & Increase Your Focus
If you’re one of the growing number of people feeling the pinch of this recession we’re in, turn off the TV. There’s little good news and much of what the pundits are talking about is incomprehensible to normal human beings. The problems are too big and complex, and they are oversimplified in the effort to explain.
- Turn Off Your TV & Good Stuff Happens More Than You Think
One particularly bad stretch a couple of years ago when everything seemed to be falling apart, I started keeping a weekly list of everything that went right…pull them out and re-read them and you discover that aren’t all that bad, and more good stuff happens than bad.
- Turn Off Your TV & Find Your Passion
Dreams are wonderful things–I have big plans and goals for my own future–but unless they translate into projects, tasks and accomplishments they mean nothing. I’m not saying dreams are bad; I am saying you need to convert them into concrete, achievable goals and then act to achieve those goals.
March 5th, 2009
Looking for feedback on your website?
Looking for ways to improve your website?
SKMurphy will host an upcoming Peer Review Event for Websites. Three fellow CEOs will present their website while the roundtable will provide feedback. This event is open to all. There are two ways to participate:
Websites may be public or private beta, but we will send out the URL to all attendees in advance.
When: Friday April 17, 2009 11:30 AM -1PM (Lunch Included)
Where: Plug & Play Tech Center 440 N Wolfe Rd Sunnyvale, California 94085
Costs (includes lunch):
- Presenter $66 (Discount if you attend previous Peer Reviews as a reviewer, we will credit up to 2 sessions)
- Roundtable Reviewer: Early Registration $22 Before April 8, $30 until event.
March 1st, 2009
Getting More Customers - A 90-day Plan
Tuesday, March 31, 2008 8:15 AM - 1:00 PM (Lunch Included)
Pacific Business Center 2225 East Bayshore Road Palo Alto CA 94303 650-320-7600
Click here to Register: https://www.123signup.com/register?id=zbmdv
We will cover a variety of proven marketing techniques for growing your business: attendees will select one or two that fit their style and develop a plan to implement them in their business in the next 90 days. As a part of your workshop registration, we will also follow up via e-mail and brief phone calls at two weeks, four weeks, 8 weeks, and 13 weeks to help you track your progress. You will leave with a one page action plan, a workbook, and 90 days of access to a private workspace with the workshop materials to enable you to execute one or two marketing strategies to bring your business more customers.
Cost (Lunch Included):
- Early registration: $76
- After March 14 $98 and free online workspace
- After March 28 $145 and online workspace $28
Click here to Register: https://www.123signup.com/register?id=zbmdv
“This workshop provided great material to bounce off of. SKMurphy created a fertile space for me to think about my business and plan a concrete step forward. Thank you.”
Paul Konasewich, President at Connect Leadership
About the Workshop Leaders
Sean Murphy has taken an entrepreneurial approach to life since he could drive. He has served as an advisor to dozens of startups, helping them explore new options and bring their businesses to new levels. His firm, SKMurphy, Inc., focuses on early customers and early revenue for software startups, helping engineers to understand business development. Prior to SKMurphy, Sean worked in a variety of areas including software engineering, engineering management, application engineering, business development, product marketing and customer support. He has worked for Cisco Systems, 3Com, AMD, MMC Networks, Escalade and VLSI Technology. Sean holds a BS in Mathematical Sciences and an MS in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University.
Steve Moore has over 25 years experience in the RF/wireless industry including roles in design engineering, product management, applications, marketing and sales. He has worked for both large companies (Watkins-Johnson, Trimble Navigation, Symbol Technologies and Micro Linear) as well as for small start-ups (Wireless Access, SiRF Technology and Telencomm). He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley and a MS in Management from Santa Clara University. Steve has spoken on practical aspects of RF/wireless integration strategies at numerous conferences worldwide and has 6 published articles.
Agenda:
- 8:15 AM Breakfast & Registration
- 8:30 AM Workshop begins
- 12:30 PM Lunch & De-brief
Seating is Limited.
For more information contact: Theresa 408-252-9676 events@skmurphy.com