Entrepreneurship
Lessons From a Failed Startup: Create Administration Tools Early
The lessons learned from the failure of my company are going to be in no particular order, so I decided to start with one that I’m already applying to my next project - creating admin tools as early as possible.
With FeedCraft, we took the approach of getting the application launched as quickly as possible with [...]
Popularity: 1% [?]
The formula for building web applications
I read this article on Mashable (via Fred Wilson’s tweet) and had to post this quote on building web applications:
Determine a basic need -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up.
It sounds simple, but it’s not; determining a basic human need, like the need to share photos [...]
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Identifying your passions for success
I woke up on my birthday this past Saturday morning and thought about the day ahead. What did I want to do today?
I think it says a lot about where your passions lie, when on a day you can legitimately do most anything you want (a birthday and a Saturday), on how you plan your [...]
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Lessons From a Failed Startup: The Overview
Many say you learn more from your failures than your successes. I believe this to be absolutely true in business as well as most other aspects of life. And you can also learn quite a bit from the stories of failures from others.
So, as promised when I announced that my company was shutting down, [...]
Popularity: 11% [?]
The advantages of being a student entrepreneur
The other day I had the opportunity to have coffee with a student entrepreneur from Virginia Tech. This is the second such meeting in a month and I hope it’s a sign of future trends. Over the past two semesters, I’ve met with three entrepreneurs, all at the end stages of their undergraduate education, and [...]
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Colorado trip and the startup community in Boulder
As I mentioned in my last post, I recently spent ten days in Colorado both looking for a place to live and attending a few events. It was an exhausting trip, but we made a lot of progress on all fronts. Unfortunately, I was sick immediately following my return and have been playing catch up [...]
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Closing EvolvePoint and FeedCraft
Last month I announced to all our FeedCraft customers that EvolvePoint would be shutting down the service. I’ll be writing more about why I think the product did not become as successful as planned; but regardless of the reasons, the economic realities made the decision inevitable.
I founded EvolvePoint in 2004 initially performing management and IT [...]
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Pricing web applications and services
One of the toughest marketing issues for any business, let alone a company providing web services, is pricing. I recently found a link on Brian Oberkirch’s blog to On Pricing, a site describing itself as “an ongoing discussion of web app pricing strategies.”
Using Tumblr, a popular tumblelog service (I use Tumblr as well here), On [...]
Popularity: 11% [?]
Entrepreneur Resource List
Andy Forbes has compiled (and regularly updates) a great list of entrepreneur resources (PDF). The list is geared towards the Washington DC region, but there is a wealth of information here that goes beyond the area. The list has been generated with input from the community, specifically from the Netpreneur mailing list (another great resource). Disclaimer: EvolvePoint is listed.
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Project Time Tracking Tools
Om Malik has a post on project time tracking over at the Web Worker Daily blog. His post is only a question to the readers regarding what they use for time tracking their various projects, but the comments are filled with great suggestions including:
Web:
FreshBooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/)
Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/)
Tick (http://www.tickspot.com)
SlimTimer (http://www.slimtimer.com) [...]
Popularity: 11% [?]
