strategy

Viral growth for a web startup is great — as is getting to 15 million users in a year — but it is possible to grow a profitable business slowly and see it ramp up after a few years, as I learned from uShip’s founder. Read More »

5 Tips for Maintaining Vision in the Day-to-Day

Editor’s Note: Ben Yoskovitz is one of our favorite contributors. Today he offers a nice post at his Instigator Blog about vision, and how to keep “the big picture” in focus while struggling through the minutiae of “moving the ball forward” on a daily basis. Ben’s… Read More »

Update: for another lesson on the imperative of customer support, spend a few minutes studying Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s decision this week to close hundreds of stores nationwide for 3 hours in order to retrain Baristas in good customer service. The Wall Street Journal: Starbucks… Read More »

“This is the position you want to be in … you like being down 4 points at the end of the game and you gotta to score a touchdown to win. If your down 3 points you might settle for a field goal [so] you’re not… Read More »

Bobby Fischer, the child-prodigy chess master who, at 29, became world champion and a Cold War icon after he dethroned the Soviet Union’s grand master, Boris Spassky in 1972 — a feat never before, or since, achieved by an American player– has died. He was 64.… Read More »

McKinsey blasted us again yesterday, this time with its foreboding “Special Collection: Coping with a downturn.” Every day the signs of our coming recession grow clearer, so it’s time to start rationing and stockpiling — or diversifying, depending on your business type. Only you can make… Read More »

I read a nice story in Crain’s Small Business today about Scott and Mitch Silver, and their marketing firm Printable Promotions, in Chicago. The piece outlines why the Silver brothers abandoned managing “activities” through their org chart hierarchy, in favor of a flat, employee-empowered strategy that they’ve… Read More »

More Must Reads

Which trend is for you in ‘08?

Raghav ‘Rags’ Gupta, a partner at Brightcove, and a Gigaom contributor, put up a thoughtful post Sunday called 5 Trends & Themes for the Year Ahead. Rags moves beyond a few super-exposed stories (clean tech and the 700 megahertz wireless auction), and he phrases his trends… Read More »

Plan B: Why ‘What Got Us Here, Can’t Take Us There.’

Earlier in the week we posted about Marshall Goldmsith’s so-called Success Delusion. Today we read a interesting post by one of Inc. magazine’s bloggers named Greg Wittstock, founder and CEO of Aquascape.Greg, who has been writing for Inc. under the blog Pondemonium since November, explains… Read More »

Roadmap to ‘Getting Luck on Your Side’

Often we hear entrepreneurs say “I’d rather be lucky than smart.” Of course! That’d be easier! The truth is it’s not enough to be smart. Luck is an irrevocably part of the Success Equation, no matter how many cycles we spin — on this and in other… Read More »

Microblogging: A Case Study in Market Verticalization

In a recent interview with Found|READ, VC Ray Rothrock of Venrock made a startling admission: “Venture Capital is really all about pattern recognition. We look for patterns it the market, patterns in entrepreneurs, cultural patterns at the startups pitching us.” Pattern recognition is important for… Read More »

Angling for BIG competitors? Aim Low. Be Quaint.

Our colleage and Earth2Tech editor, Katie Fehrenbacher, published a nice interview last week with, Steve Fambro, founder of 5-year-old electric car maker Aptera. Cleantech is a crowded space — growing more so by the day — and Carlsbad, Calif.-based Aptera, with just 15 employees and apparently… Read More »

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