Add comment May 26th, 2010
We are expecting a full-house tomorrow at Dublin’s first Bootstrapper’s Breakfast meeting tomorrow. Sign up now if you can join us.
Hope to see you tomorrow, 7:30-9am at Athens Burger Restaurant.
6999 Dublin Boulevard Dublin CA 94568
(925) 803-8135
Add comment May 24th, 2010
Cash flow management and taking into account assets and resources is a challenge for all businesses. Rick Kadet of The Brenner Group, Inc will be our guest at the Bootstrapppers Breakfast meeting, Tuesday, June 15 to discuss Effective Cash Flow Financial Strategies for early stage entrepreneurs. Rick will provide a short 3-5 minute introduction to set the stage for our round the table discussion.
Rick is Vice President and Senior CFO Management Consultant with The Brenner Group, Inc., where, since 1998, he has engaged with over 60 valley firms as part-time CFO or financial advisor. Rick works with client firms on executive staff level financial management, financial reporting to boards of directors, financial and business planning, raising venture and debt capital, facilities, business infrastructure, business systems and risk management.
Prior experience to The Brenner Group includes CFO and operational positions at Versant Corporation, a data base software firm for whom Rick managed its 1996 IPO; InfoSpan Corporation, an information management software firm where he was acting CEO for one year, Cadre Technologies, Inc. a software tools company and Sarama Industries, an electrical products manufacturer. Rick began his career with General Electric Company, and graduated from GE’s three-year Financial Management Training Program. Rick is a graduate of Arizona State University.
Bootstrappers Breakfast meetings bring together leading edge entrepreneurs are serious about growing their business. Compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. Have some questions ready and join us for the lively discussion. Share your ideas and leverage thoughts with other professionals.
Add comment May 23rd, 2010
Adrian Perez is doing some independent research on what makes for effective entrepreneurial partnerships. He will be joining the conversation this Friday in Mountain View at Red Rock and will share a little bit about his research. He e-mailed me the following description:
Partner compatibility is a foundational part of weathering hardship and making sure a startup discovers and embraces opportunity. If you’re exactly like your partner, you may share a common language, but also have the same blind spots. And if you are too different, you risk constant misunderstanding. Adrian Perez is conducting research into the relationships between character strengths in partnerships. Using the VIA Survey of Character Strengths (available here: http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx ), I am collecting entrepreneurial partnership data to test a hypothetical matching algorithm suggested by the initial work on his research.
More on the study and how it works can be found here: http://www.dropby.com/ElGrande/strengths.html
I took the VIA Survey of Character Strengths a few years ago and found it offered some useful insights into my personal style and effectiveness. Whether or not you want to take part in Mr. Perez’s study it’s free and worth the hour or so of your time it will take to fill it out accurately. Adrian will take part in the conversation on Friday, if you are interested in learning more please either drop by the breakfast or contact him directly.
Add comment May 22nd, 2010
“A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn’t let them get her down.”
Beverly Sills
Optimists (and optimistic bootstrappers)
“Twelve Characteristics of Tough-Minded Optimists” from Alan Loy McGinnis’ “The Power of Optimism“
Add comment May 19th, 2010
One of our fellow Bootstrappers, Mandeep Singh Dhillon, co-founder and CEO of Togetherville Inc, (Togetherville.com) launches his social network for children to the public. Katherine Boehret wrote about them in “A Social Network to Grow On,” reporting that after operating as a private beta with 800 test users for six months, the site went public on May 18, 2010.
“The site provides a social-networking environment that kids can enjoy and that parents will feel comfortable managing. It is designed to function as a safe, kid-centric social network. The site guides kids ages 6 through 10 on how to communicate online with others, using canned responses and parental participation. Togetherville links into Facebook so parents who use the popular social-networking site can have a say in who their children are connecting with and can even interact with their kids online.”
Larry Magid covered them in his “Magid on Tech” column “New Social Site Designed for Children” noting some well thought out features:
Like Facebook — and unlike virtual worlds like Club Penguin — children are identified by their real names and real pictures, but the only people they can interact with are other children who have been pre-approved by their parents.
It’s a totally different model than anything I’ve seen before, and after a preview and several conversations with founder Mandeep Dhillon, I’m very impressed with what they are trying to do.
The idea behind Togetherville is to create online “neighborhoods” similar to real-life neighborhoods where children interact with each other and adults they know.
Only a parent can set up a child’s Togetherville account and link the child to other children and trusted adults such as grandparents and other family members.
Children can interact with other Togetherville members but only by selecting prescreened “quips,” text comments approved by Togetherville staff.
That greatly reduces the chances of cyber-bullying and abusive behavior and eliminates any opportunity for a child to reveal personal information such as their home address.
Kevin Makice calledTogetherville a “Digital Training Ground for Young Geeks” noting that:
Fully compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Togetherville is intended for kids who are too young for Facebook, officially, but have parents immersed in that culture. The 6- to 10-year-olds are invited to engage with their real-world friends, play games, watch videos, and create art. Grownups act as the gateways for new contacts, assuming the responsibility for inviting other families to join each child’s online neighborhood. Experiencing online networking together, grownups can guide their kids through the age-appropriate content in an ad-free environment.
Mandeep attended the Palo Alto Bootstrappers Breakfast in December of 2008 while he was still bootstrapping. We asked him today about his journey since then and for any advice for fellow bootstrappers. He said:
When we started Togetherville, we had passion, and no money. For more than two years I passed up opportunities to do other things because I believed that building a better online experience for my kids was worth it. If you have the passion, you can cross a lot of barriers. We were not going to be deterred, and ultimately, passion is required to produce a product that has real impact.
Add comment May 14th, 2010
I came across this answer by Gypsy Rogers to the question “What is a Bootstrappers Breakfast?” from a public LiveJournal entry in March and really liked it.
It is a group of entrepreneurs who come together once a month to discuss ways to cut costs and push their businesses forward without trying to get venture capital but also without hurting your business by being too much of a cheap skate.
Add comment May 6th, 2010
I came across a recent post by Griffin Caprio on “Being Your Own Angel Investor” at that addressed an issue that comes up at many breakfasts. Here is the core of Griffin’s approach but go ahead and read the whole thing:
“So, if I bootstrapped, but didn’t fund myself with personal money, what did I do? Simple: Consulting. Unsexy consulting. I’m thinking long term and, in my mind, spending a year or so consulting to fill my business coffers simply made sense. I wasn’t trying to strike quickly or catch the wave of any given fad. I wanted to build a business that endures. To do that, I needed a stable cash runway similar, to an angel investment, that would give me the freedom to build the kinds of products I wanted to build. So that’s what I went out and got for myself. However, instead of talking to an angel and trying to acquire an funding in exchange for some debt or a piece of my (non valuable) company, I’ve spent the first 12 months of 1530s existence scooping up any and all consulting gigs I could get my hands on.”
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