Author Archive
February 1st, 2011
Prepare Your Own Provisional Patent Application for Software Entrepreneurs
Workshop Feb-24-2011 in San Francisco
This workshop addresses the basics of patenting and how to prepare and file your own provisional patent application. Attendees will learn how the basics of patent law, how to use patents to protect an invention, and the minimum requirements for filing a provisional patent application.
A hands-on approach to preparing the written description and drawings will be used. Guidance on the proper way to file a provisional patent application will also be included. A syllabus is here:
The instructor, Mr. Pete Tormey, is an experienced patent attorney who has founded 7 start-up companies. He provides unique insight as both an attorney and an entrepreneur.
Date/Time: February 24, 2011 from 8:30 AM to 12 noon.
Location: 201 Spear St Suite 1100, San Francisco, CA
Cost: $149 ($124 with discount code “Bootstrapper”)
Register: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1270968501
More Info: info@YourOwnPatent.com
The topics to be covered include (from http://yourownpatent.com/yourownpatent/patent/Syllabus.aspx )
- Types of intellectual property
- Legal strategies
- Using provisional applications
- Requirement for Provisional Applications
- Written requirements
- System disclosure
- Broadening language
- Example phraseology
- Level of detail required
- Drawings
- Functional diagrams
- Flow charts
- Level of detail for drawings
- Writing the application
- Putting it together
- Filing requirements
- How to file
- Using “Patent Pending”
January 29th, 2011
We have seen a number of teams form or add co-founders as a result of discussions at or introductions from a conversation at a Bootstrappers Breakfast. The small group setting (8-16 folks around a table) doesn’t put introverts at as much of a disadvantage as having to speak to a group of 30-100 does. One facilitated conversation means that everyone gets a chance to be heard and to contribute, and the networking takes place after the event when everyone has some context from the prior discussion to be able to start a conversation.
While our primary purpose is to help entrepreneurs compare notes on common challenges related to organic growth, we have seen that these same discussions also foster a number of co-founder discussions and introductions. If you attend a breakfast in Silicon Valley we will allow you to post a brief (100-150 words) description of your startup and what you are looking for in a co-founder to our newsletter that is sent out to about 800 bootstrappers. There are a number of events in Silicon Valley that support co-founder matching in different ways: each has a different format that has its own strengths and weaknesses:
There is an even longer list of on-line only sites but I haven’t personally heard of much success from that approach. I think it’s because there is something about a face to face conversation–it communicates an order of magnitude more information that’s private and directed–that makes it hard to replicate on-line. See also last year’s “Round Up Of Co-Founding Events“
December 26th, 2010
We have the last three Bootstrapper Breakfasts® of 2010 this week:
- Mon-Dec-27 Mountain View (Holiday) 9am register
- Wed-Dec-29 Chicago 7:30am register
- Thu-Dec-30 Sunnyvale (Holiday) 9am register
December 7th, 2010
Matt Bauer, Founder of Pedal Brain LLC, will give a brief presentation regarding his experiences in financing and building Pedal Brain at the Thu-Dec-16 breakfast in Minneapolis.
Pedal Brain is an iPod and iPhone ANT+ accessory that manages your training log and acts as a coaching platform. Second, it’s a complete training log. Third, it’s a coaching platform. Every time you ride your performance data is uploaded in realtime to the web where coaches, teammates and friends can see it–if you allow them to. You don’t have to do a post workout data upload or print out your workouts before heading out–they are always available on your iPhone or iPod.
Join us 7:30am Thursday December 16, 2010 at Maria’s Cafe on 1113 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55404 for what should prove a very interesting conversation.
November 14th, 2010
We have three Bootstrapper Breakfasts this week in Silicon Valley: the Dublin/Pleasanton breakfast was re-scheduled a week earlier to avoid falling on Thanksgiving.
This is also our first San Francisco Breakfast in a new location: Sandbox Suites at 567 Sutter near Union Square.
- Tue-Nov-16-20 Sunnyvale 7:30am register
- Thu-Nov-18-2010 Dublin/Pleasanton 7:30am register
- Fri-Nov-19-2010 San Francisco (Sandbox Suites 567 Sutter) 8am register
There is also a Minneapolis Bootstrapper Breakfast on Thu-Nov-18 at 7:30am
November 11th, 2010
Edward Tufte is the author of four beautiful and insightful books on presenting information:
He will be personally teaching a one day course three times in San Francisco and once in San Jose in December, that addresses the following topics:
- fundamental strategies of analytical design
- evaluating evidence used in presentations
- statistical data: tables, graphics, and semi-graphics
- business, scientific, research, and financial presentations
- complexity and clarity
- effective presentations: on paper and in person
- interface design
- use of PowerPoint, video, overheads, and handouts
- multi-media, internet, and websites
- credibility of presentations
- animation and scientific visualizations
- many practical examples
Fee for the one-day course is $380 per person. This fee includes all four books, Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Beautiful Evidence.
Dates and Locations
- ?San Jose Holiday Inn December 6, 201o register
- San Francisc, Westin on Market Street
I took the course about a decade ago before he had written “Beautiful Evidence” and found it to be extremely useful. The books are great references as well.
October 24th, 2010
Marcelo Lopez e-mailed this follow up to our earlier “International Entrepreneurs Attend Silicon Valley Bootstrapper Breakfast” post:
UruIT Global IT Services and Arkanosoft are very similar.
We started 3 years ago with the goal of providing IT Services from a convenient nearshore location in Uruguay, mainly for IT and non IT companies in USA and Latin America. We started from zero with just a few contacts at Microsoft from our previous working experience. We engaged with MS to start with the first few projects in Uruguay.
Soon we decided to expand to Uruguay and other markets, investing in sales. We organized a few business trips to Chile, looking for local partners. We partnered with a few and started getting more projects. We did the same with Brazil, then Ecuador, Panama, etc. There were challenges to grow and execute all the new projects. At this point we have 60 FTE in staff and we are opening our branch offices in Brasil and Chile.
We focus in application development and outsourcing on top of MS technologies: SharePoint, .NET, Biztalk, CRM, etc. We currently have customers in USA, UK, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Uruguay and Argentina.
As we did with Latin America countries, we are doing a joint venture now, to expand our business in USA. This is to minimize the investment but also to take advantage of our joint capabilities.
Hope it helps as a quick intro to our companies.
Regards,
Marcelo
October 16th, 2010
With a provocative title “Saving Innovation” (print version) author Dan Haugen (see also danhaugen.com) asks “Can a DIY culture of meet-ups, competitions, and unconferences spark more start-ups in Minnesota?” He profiles
Some excerpts:
At Minnebar’s “unconferences,” there are no attendees or speakers, only participants. An unconference is to a conference what Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Instead of flying in authors or executives, Minnebar taps the knowledge of the crowd. Anyone can volunteer his or her expertise, and everyone collaborates ahead of time on line and votes to decide what makes the agenda. Sessions flow like conversations rather than lectures.
Part of the reason that this works is small session size that allows for conversation. Once there are more than 35-40 people in the room it’s very difficult for the meeting not to become a lecture interspersed with questions. The economics of a traditional conference tend to push for sessions larger than this, hosted by “big names” to draw a large crowd. Peer to peer events have to take place in less expensive locations: their economics are fundamentally different.
The availability of social media and other online tools is an enabling factor, bringing the cost of organizing and promoting events down to almost nothing. But these groups and programs still take time and energy to pull together. Edwards says coordinating Minnebar is “like planning a big wedding every half year.”
Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” talks about what happens when you can assume that everyone in your team, group, or network has access to a new medium (e.g. e-mail, twitter, LinkedIn). It changes the group forming characteristics and lowers the cost of coordination significantly. For example, if you look at the original Homebrew Computer Club signup they had to rely on postal mail, telephone, flyers, and a pre-existing network of relationships.
Whether it’s Minnebar letting the audience lead sessions or TechdotMN soliciting a blog post from a local entrepreneur, the ethic in many of these groups is based on participants learning from each other, often in an informal setting. You’re more likely to find these gatherings in a neighborhood pub than a hotel conference room.
I think entrepreneurs benefit greatly from joining self-improvement groups to compare notes and gain a perspective on their current challenges. It’s true for public speaking, weight loss, running, managing addiction, and managing chronic conditions like diabetes. All of these benefit from a community of practice approach.
Kevin Spreng, the key volunteer who brought the Bootstrapper Breakfast to Minneapolis, is also quoted:
Kevin Spreng, a corporate finance attorney at Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi, started a local chapter of the national group Bootstrappers Breakfast out of similar concerns about entrepreneurial vitality in the state. The monthly meetings are for entrepreneurs who are trying to forgo the traditional path of seeking angel and venture capital investors. That’s a skill Spreng passionately believes entrepreneurs need to learn.
“I personally believe, despite my desires, that the venture capital industry is declining,” he says, “which means that venture capital is going to be less available to early-stage companies, and as that happens, either we’re going to start losing new businesses, or we’re going to need to find another way to help people build them.”
And the Bootstrappers Breakfast is profiled on page 6 of the article.
Bootstrappers Breakfast
What It Is: Monthly meet-up for entrepreneurs seeking alternatives to angel and venture funding
Founded: 2010 [In Minneapolis]
Founder: Kevin Spreng, partner, Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi
Motivation: Spreng says, “My personal mission in this space is to help create a new ecosystem that supports and encourages the growth and financing of companies in a new way.”
How It’s Supporting Innovation: Entrepreneurs compare experiences, find partners, and help each other brainstorm and work through strategies for growing a company, often without the benefit of significant angel or venture capital. The discussions have typically attracted between 5 and 20 people, mostly Web and software entrepreneurs. “There’s a core group that shows up, and then every month we have three or four new people,” Spreng says. “I’m very happy with the participation.”
Web Site: meetup.com/bootstrappers-breakfast-minneapolis/
October 8th, 2010
Reprinted with permission from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055934 another great post by George Grellas.
Lawyers can be and often are invaluable advisors to startups.
On the other hand, bum lawyering can come in all shapes and sizes. Some examples to watch out for:
1. Insecure (and particularly green) lawyers who are so bound to doing things by the book that no hint of common sense can be found in their advice or in their actions. They will tell you all you ever wanted to know about what the “tax law says” or what “judges do” but they have no idea how to give you custom advice that is practical for your situation. They will tell you they need to “look it up” only to bill you for many hours of research time that you had no idea you would be expected to pay for.
2. Arrogant lawyers who have become so imbued with a sense of their own self-importance that they actually presume to become actual decision-makers for their corporate clients (yes, this does happen, much to the chagrin of the clients involved). This is the point noted in the title of this post. I would say most principals will no longer put up with such nonsense but it still happens where lawyers with dominant personalities deal with deferential-type clients, sometimes from cultures where extreme deference can be common (e.g., Japanese clients).
3. Tin-ear lawyers who have no sense for a deal. This differs from #1 above in that the lawyers are secure in their abilities, as opposed to green young lawyers, yet they are so rigid on how something must be done that they effectively impede (or, in extreme cases, destroy) the deal they are supposed to be facilitating. This is the type of lawyering that tries to impose a 50-page contract upon a deal when a short and simple contract would do. Why? Because it “covers all the risks.” Of course, most of these risks have no practical significance for the size or scope of the deal, and the contract itself, being unduly complex, causes the parties to run up large costs and to incur significant delays, all to the detriment of the parties involved.
4. Disputatious lawyers who have an insatiable need to “win” at every turn even when this is off-putting and alienating to all concerned. Some principals think this is a good thing, to have a lawyer who concedes nothing in doing a deal. In reality, this tends to be a disaster, either killing the deal or causing the other side to close with such a bitter sense about it that future harmony between the parties is not possible.
I love my profession, and love what I do in practicing law, but the abuses and shortcomings in this field are enough to make one scream.
September 9th, 2010
Liz Ainsworth of Life By Design is a frequent attendee at our Milpitas breakfast. When she told us last month that she had lined up more than a dozen speaking assignments this year we asked what as the secret of her success. She answered “Facebook and other social media” so we asked her to share lessons learned this month.
Liz will share tips and tricks to:
- Build your optimum fan base quickly and effectively
- Promote your business
- Keep your Facebook presence current.
- Advertise your events to target audiences
- Be strategic with minimum use of time.
Liz has been teaching, training and coaching for twenty-six years and is passionate about inspiring others to make good choices.
Postscript Friday morning: It was a very inspiring talk. Liz has been attending the breakfasts in Milpitas for a couple of year’s now and it’s been very interesting to watch her grow her business. Her willingness to take risks and her commitment to authentic self-improvement are inspiring. I really value her perspective and gumption.
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