Bootstrappers Breakfasts Expands To Satisfy Growing Demand For Serious Conversations Among Entrepreneurs

Add comment December 31st, 2009

The following is a press release going out tomorrow to announce our expansion to San Diego and Minneapolis in 2010. I have added links to help provide background.

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Bootstrappers Breakfast (www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com) fosters early morning discussions among entrepreneurs at local restaurants. The focus is on technology businesses whose next stage of growth is based on internal cash flow and organic profits. Entrepreneurs who like to “eat problems for breakfast” bring business issues and challenges to discuss with peers.

Bootstrappers Breakfast was started informally in 2003 by Sean Murphy, CEO of SKMurphy, Inc., and formally met at Coco’s in the heart of Silicon Valley in 2005. Since that time, they have grown to multiple locations in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

The year 2010 brings additional Bootstrapper Breakfasts in San Diego, CA and Minneapolis, MN.

After attending Silicon Valley networking meetings for more than a decade, Murphy became disenchanted with the extreme emphasis on venture capital and fund raising. He wanted to create a place for entrepreneurs to discuss their real challenges like time management, finding partners, attracting customers, payroll issues, human resources–issues that entrepreneurs may not normally talk about in other networking meetings.

The meeting format is based on Lee Felsenstein’s moderation techniques for the Home Brew Computer Club and Doug Engelbart’s model for a bootstrapping a network improvement community.

Why the name Bootstrapper?

Bootstrapping is a technique for starting a computer system from scratch in a self-sustaining process. When applied to startups it indicates a business that relies on customer revenue to fuel growth without relying on a large amount of initial investment to get started. Doug Engelbart applied the term to methodologies for improving the improvement process in a firm or system.

The key objective for the group is to enable entrepreneurs to help each other improve their own businesses. Murphy explained some of the ways that attendees have benefited from the breakfast meetings: “you can get feedback on your startup or your idea for your startup from other entrepreneurs, meet potential co-founders or partners, or have a serious conversation about other aspects of bootstrapping a technology startup.”

About Bootstrappers Breakfasts®

Bootstrappers Breakfasts  are meetings for founders of early stage startups. It is a chance to compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. These breakfasts were designed for entrepreneurs to share ideas and leverage thoughts with other professionals who are serious about growing their business. Information about dates, times, and locations of the Bootstrappers Breakfast may be found at http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/.

About SKMurphy

SKMurphy, Inc. (www.skmurphy.com) offers workshops and consulting services that focus on early customers and early revenue for high-tech startups. The firm’s clients have offerings in electronic design automation, artificial intelligence, web-enabled collaboration, proteomics, text analytics, legal services automation, and medical services workflow.

Insights from Craig Newmark on Scaling Craigslist

Add comment December 15th, 2009

Craig Newmark was interviewed on “How Craigslist Spread” on October 30 by Dan Zarella and he had some observations that we have incorporated into our planning for 2010.

Craig: Any­one should seriously engage with their community about what they’re doing, including serious customer service. That means using email, Face­book, Twit­ter, any place where peo­ple in your community might hang out. Get feed­back, and then, do something about it.

Dan: Do you remem­ber any “tipping point” in the site’s history when the amount of people talking about it or using it seemed to take off?

Craig: Never any­thing that I’d con­sider a tipping point. Our his­tory is slow, con­tin­u­ous growth. In the race between tortoise and hare, well, we’re the slow guy.

We welcome any feedback or suggestions.

Project Assessment / After Action Models

1 comment December 8th, 2009

After you have hit a project milestone or added a new customer it can be useful to do a “after action” (also called post mortem or post project assessment). Here are a couple of quick formats for a short meeting with the team, some are more appropriate for larger group settings.

Start / Stop / Continue also known as “Good, Bad, Ugly”

• Good/Continue: What went well, what was successful that we should build on.
• Bad/Stop: What do we need to phase out, what is no longer useful as a practice or an approach.
• Start/Ugly: what do we need to fix or change.

Military “After Action” Model

• What was the plan? What was supposed to happen?
• What actually happened?
• Why were there differences? What was the root cause?
• What positive differences can we exploit.
• What shortcomings do we need to address. What is the corrective action that will be put in place.

Singapore Military 2-5-1 model (hat tip to Robert Swanwick for “2-5-1 Storytelling” who credits Lt Col Karuna Ramanathan)

• Introduction: 2 items
  1. Who you are
  2. Summary of your experience
• 5 fingers
  1. Little finger – what parts of the effort did not get enough attention
  2. Ring finger – What relationships were formed, what you learned about relationship building
  3. Middle finger – what you disliked, what/who made you frustrated
  4. Pointer finger – what you would do better next time around, what you want to tell those who were “in charge” about what they could do better
  5. Thumb (up) – what went well.  What was good.
• 1 – the most important takeaway from the effort