Founders Gary Swart and Stephen Pieraldi presided over the Venture Capital and Seed Financing Workshop at GigaOM’s recent Structure 08 conference . This week, the pair sat down with Found|READ to share additional lessons from their careers in fundraising. Swart is CEO of oDesk, a staffing […] Read more »
At GigaOM’s recent Structure 08 event, Meebo co-founder and engineering chief, Sandy Jen, joined a panel to talk about scaling your computing infrastructure for explosive growth. Jen also spoke with Found|READ, this time to offer founders tips on how to overcome what she calls the internal […] Read more »
GigaOM’s Structure 08 event offered a terrific opportunity to survey the changing landscape of computing infrastructure. But as with all technology shifts, innovation won’t just belong to the big established players like VMWare, Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems, Salesforce.com and NetSuite. With that in mind, Found|READ asked […] Read more »
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Just like with golf, technology is as much about ensuring that your bad hits are recoverable as it is ensuring that you make great ones. Here are 10 common mistakes made during platform development — and the ones we believe are the most important to avoid. Read more »
Before he became a founder, Ian Shea spent eight years at DVR maker (and TiVo predecessor) ReplayTV. During that time, the company went through — among other things — a massive restructuring, layoffs, bankruptcy and a turnaround before finally being bought by DirectTV for an undisclosed […] Read more »
During a break at GigaOM’s Structure 08 conference this week, Found|READ sat down with VMware co-founder and chief scientist, Dr. Mendel Rosenblum. Dr. Rosenblum developed VMware’s virtualization software while working on a supercomputer research project with his graduate students at Stanford University, where he remains an […] Read more »
Liz Gannes who edits our NewTeeVee site skipped the company dinner to attend an event where Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube was going to reveal the entire story of YouTube. She caught the entire event on tape, and has the full report, a must see NTV […] Read more »
We recently spoke with Paul Saffo, the technology forecaster best known for his associations with the The Institute for the Future (which he left earlier this year) and The Long Now Foundation, whose mission is to replace society’s ‘”faster/cheaper mindset” with “slower/better thinking.” Saffo also teaches […] Read more »
What’s in a company name? Plenty. It’s your first opportunity to brand yourself. Get it right and you’ll stand out as clever, useful, and memorable to potential users and investors — even if your product isn’t any good. But get it wrong and you’ll flame out […] Read more »
Greg Linden was one of the key developers behind Amazon’s recommendations system, which recommends books, movies, and other products to Amazon customers based on their purchase history. He subsequently went to Stanford and picked up an MBA, and in January 2004, he launched a startup named […] Read more »
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If you’re bootstrapping your startup, offshoring your web development is a great way to save money. But it’s also fraught with risk. Working with remote contractors makes it far harder to manage project development and communicate ideas. Taking proper steps to protect yourself is crucial. I’ve […] Read more »
We hear often that speed is a virtue in the startup trade. Mike Cassidy thinks speed is the highest virtue, in fact. (Check out his presentation, Speeding Up All Parts of a Startup, which we found via Venture Hacks earlier this week.) As luck would have […] Read more »
We’ve written recently about how to preserve your equity when fundraising. This week we spoke with serial entrepreneur Chris Michel, who explained why founders should not be afraid to give additional equity disbursements — out of their personal stakes! — to reward senior staffers. That’s what […] Read more »
People talk about “selling” technology products all the time, but they usually mean licensing them. Licensing is actually the most common way that technology companies generate revenue. A “sale” occurs when ownership of the product changes hands completely. A “license” is when some portion of ownership […] Read more »
Last October, Found|READ lunched with serial entrepreneur and Lookery cofounder Scott Rafer, who gloomily predicted the technology industry was “no more than five months away from the next bust.” Pessimistic, even for the opinionated Rafer, but then he knows a thing or two about successes (MyBlogLog), […] Read more »
I recently had dinner with a friend of mine, a physician-turned-businessperson-turned-founder. We were discussing the virtues of transferable skills, and I asked him what management tools he brings to entrepreneurship from his earlier career in medicine. He pondered a bit before confessing that radiology skills don’t, […] Read more »
I work as an attorney to a lot of company founders, and I know from experience that when the time comes to negotiate a round of funding, entrepreneurs often find themselves at a disadvantage. Much of it has to do with language. There is an array […] Read more »
In 1999, half a dozen venture capitalists turned me down for financing because the business plan for my company, BlueTie, put me in direct competition with Microsoft. There simply was no point, they said; between its desktop monopoly, ranks of talent and outsized bank account, Microsoft […] Read more »
VCs might dismiss small startups as “lifestyle companies,” since with only small investments needed they’re often too small for big VC firms to work with. But for the entrepreneurs themselves, it’s a way to keep control and avoid dilution. And there may be another reason not to take money, particularly if you’re targeting other small-businesses as customers: Personality. Read more »
Jim Barnett is co-founder and CEO of Turn, a three-year-old online advertising firm that uses an eBay-like auction to improve the way advertisers are matched to web publishers. Previously, Jim was president of AltaVista, and later, of Overture’s search division, which Yahoo bought for $1.6 billion […] Read more »
Networking has always been a high art in business. Just ask Susan Roane, my mentor and author of the seminal tome, “How to Work a Room.” (I know a handful of VCs and startup kings on Sand Hill Road who have her book tucked into a […] Read more »
Editor’s Note: This post is the second in a three-part series authored by Xobni’s VP of engineering, Gabor Cselle. Read a longer version (co-written with Marie C. Baca ) on Cselle’s blog starting Monday. I run product development at Xobni, maker of an email application that […] Read more »
There are a lot of different words that can be used to describe the venture capital community and its relationship with entrepreneurs. Many of them, however, cannot be printed. For example, I once heard a VC say to an entrepreneur: “It would be easier to build […] Read more »
In my years covering technology, I’ve gotten more than my fair share of pitches related to the latest consumer Internet startup. Thanks to this I’ve been able to witness what amounts to be a near-familiar life cycle for these companies. Not every company hits every step, […] Read more »
I’m one of the co-founders of two-year-old startup Marketo, a marketing automation company serving B2B companies. I’m also VP of marketing, meaning I’m under constant pressure to take Marketo’s own messaging to new heights. After all, if we can’t market ourselves like a world-class company — […] Read more »
Editor’s note: For the sake of accuracy, we have replaced the edited questions and answers with their unedited version (save for some minor stylistic changes). We sincerely apologize for any confusion. This week Found|READ interviews software entrepreneur Paul Graham, co-founder of the influential startup incubator, Y […] Read more »
Dear FoundRead readers, after nearly 12 months, the time has come to take a hard look at the progress of this blog. The results have been mixed, and as such, it’s time to make some changes. First the good news: The concept (and the premise) on […] Read more »
HubPages is an online publishing ecosystem where authors submit useful, informative articles on topics they know and love, and then earn royalties for their contributions through Google AdSense, eBay Partner Network or Amazon Associates. Our site grew quickly after we launched in August 2006, as word […] Read more »
I spent yesterday afternoon in an hours-long strategy session with some former Y Combinator grads. The team is in the final week of preparing their startup for its Beta launch, and they were having difficulty yesterday deciding what the ultimate hierarchy of the pre-launch tasks should […] Read more »
This is the age of Celebrity 2.0. If you have more that 200 Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Yelp friends, you’re a celeb, too! After watching too many big shots ‘step in it’ again and again this week (first at Y Combinator’s Startup School, and I’m sure Web2.0 […] Read more »
Editor’s Note: our readers are familiar now with contributor Ben Yoskovitz’s work. (His company, Standout Jobs was just named one of Canada’s hottest startups. Congratulations, Ben!) This week, on his Instigator Blog, Ben offers a great treatise on how founders can leverage data collecting to make […] Read more »
I went to Y Combinator’s Startup School on Saturday (that’s YC-founder Paul Graham, in case you don’t know) even though most people in Silicon Valley see the material there as “too basic.” My goal is to perpetually learn and apply and to learn as much from […] Read more »
A market collapse, a cash crunch, and an IPO. I experienced it all in 2001. Now that another (even broader) recession is upon us, I offer my hard-earned lessons for “weathering through” uncertain economic times. (I write often about such topics my blog,Market Mine.) Back in […] Read more »
I have spent the last fifteen years starting and running two startups. Currently, I am “on a break” to finish my book, “Survival Guide for Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs” and to experiment with an online community for open source and commercial network tools. I often find myself participating […] Read more »
This week The McKinsey Quaterly asks: what does stimulating the creativity of animators have in common with developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs? Apparently, a lot. In Innovation lessons from Pixar, McKinsey writes: Brad Bird makes his living fostering creativity. Academy Award-winning director (The Incredibles […] Read more »
VC Fred Wilson was interviewed by a reporter on Monday, on the topic of what makes an entrepreneur, and entrepreneur. Read his post, but these 3 exchanges in the Q&A make for a nice Thought for The Day: Q: What is entrepreneurship? A: It’s the art […] Read more »
Today we offer the latest edition in Larry Chiang’s long-running series on “Things They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School,” which he is turning into a book. (A list of Larry’s earlier posts is below.) This month’s installment is about how to build good credit […] Read more »
Finding and retaining talent — true talent — is damn hard in a startup. Some bosses, whether consciously or subconsciously, want sycophantic workers. They would never tell you that, even with a few drinks in them at a bar, but their private, even autocratic styles, determine […] Read more »
Editor’s Note: If you do, consider these four tips from contributor Ben Yoskovitz over at the Instigator Blog. Ben’s full post, The Challenge of Staying Focused in a Startup, was originally published on on April 8. Startups need to be laser-focused on what they’re trying to […] Read more »
Editor’s Note: Regular contributor Steve Nielsen, sent us his 9 tips for how to use your brand effectively. Steve is also the founder of PartnerUp, an online community that matches founders to cofounders. Please read Steve’s post in its original format at The StartUp Blog. We […] Read more »
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