Inside Scoop

How do you explain what your business does?
If you have a long-running business in an established industry sector, that’s not a hard question. Thousands of different types of businesses are understood by most people, as we interact with them and/or their products every day. “We manufacture car parts” or “we operate a chain of convenience [...]

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Photo: Michael “Mike” L. Baird, bairdphotos.com via Flickr
If you have a startup, you’ll be working long hours. That entails a few sacrifices: you simply won’t have time to do most of the other things you enjoy. (For me, that means missing many social engagements, a few hair appointments, and a lot of sci fi [...]

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…is to be a as fantastic a presenter as Tara Hunt.
I read her blog sometimes, but I didn’t actually know that she’s a great presenter too ’til I stumbled across this slideshow last night:

| View | Upload your own

It’s the best use of PowerPoint-style slides I’ve ever seen.
It tells the story well all by [...]

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Photo: Mike9Alive
Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek has a devoted following among the alpha geeks I know. The mix of productivity tips, how-to-buck-the-system bravado and sensible business advice — not to mention his cool ‘jobs’, e.g. travel and martial arts — make it the current geek bible.
But if you follow the rules exactly, you’re guaranteed [...]

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Photo: Tara Hunt via Flickr
If you listen to any two entrepreneurs talking for more than a few minutes, chances are you’ll hear the words “have you read…?” or “I’ve just finished reading…”. That’s because business is tough, and who doesn’t want to believe that The Answer lies between the covers of that shiny new volume [...]

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Photo: justinsomnia
If you have a startup, you probably know how statistically unlikely it is that any new business will succeed but thought, “I’ve done things that are just as statistically unlikely. I can do this”. That means you’re probably way above average in some form of smartness. (Not necessarily IQ; there are different kinds of [...]

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Photo: Cory Doctorow via Flickr
A few years ago, I knew a girl whose personal motto was:
If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em
The logic behind this is that anybody who doesn’t instantly recognize your brilliance is an idiot, so you should show off your superior intellect by confusing them with all the obscure stuff you know [...]

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Image: Edwin Malet
In my previous startup lesson, I talked about people you should fire ASAP. To boil it down, you should only fire people who have one of these three hard-to-fix problems:

Terrible teamwork skills
Slow or unwilling learner
Low commitment to the startup

These are the only three reasons I would send somebody on their way; for almost [...]

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If you thought it was tough to find out that your best-ever idea is currently worthless, get over it. There are tougher things in life, especially if you’ve chosen an entrepreneurial life.
For example, today’s lesson: you have to hire fast, and fire even faster. (Thanks to Jeff Clavier and Rob Hayes for the clever wording, [...]

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There’s a quandary that almost every startup founder faces: to get money we have to build something, but to build something we need money. There are two ways to get around it:

Do it all yourself
Find people who’ll do it for little or no money

For most startups, #1 isn’t an option (you need a team to [...]

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