AvatarNoah Parsons

Noah Parsons

Before joining Palo Alto Software, Noah Parsons was an early Internet marketing and product expert in the Silicon Valley. He joined Yahoo! in 1996 as one of its first 101 employees and become Producer of the Yahoo! Employment property as part of the Yahoo! Classifieds team before leaving to serve as Director of Production at Epinions.com. He is a graduate of Princeton University. Noah devotes most of his free time to his three young sons. In the winter you'll find him giving them lessons on the ski slopes, and in summer they're usually involved in a variety of outdoor pursuits. Noah is currently the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan.

Recent Articles Published by Noah Parsons

planning

An Inside Look at the Best Way to Build a Sales Forecast

Sales forecasting is a great way to kick off your business planning, and it gives you a solid starting point for the rest of your financial forecast. Here's how to forecast your sales, and how we did it for our new project, Outpost. Read more »

starting

How We Designed Our New Logo (Plus, a Creative Brief Template)

You don't need to have a graphic designer on your team to create a logo for your new business. Here's how we designed the logo for our new product, Outpost. Read more »

starting

Struggling to Name Your Product? Here’s How We Did It

It's hard to force creativity—so we created a process. Here's how we named our new product, Outpost, and the method we used to choose the right name. Read more »

starting

How We’re Building and Launching a New Product, Step-by-Step

Ever wondered what actually goes into launching a new product? We’ve decided to give you a peek behind the curtain and share with you how we’re doing things. Read more »

planning

How to Create an Elevator Speech (With Examples)

A great elevator speech can spark interest in your business and hopefully lead to a deeper conversation—and maybe even a partnership or funding opportunity. Read more »

planning

The History of Lean Planning

The traditional business plan simply didn't fit the needs of modern, fast-moving companies. It was time to bring a scientific approach to business planning—and so Lean Planning was born. Read more »

planning

Going Beyond the Napkin: How Do You Know If Your Idea Is Any Good?

How do you know if your business idea is a good one? Is it worth pursuing now, or does it need to be refined and improved—or maybe forgotten about entirely? Here's how to find out. Read more »

planning

How to Format a Business Plan

The format of your business plan will help you achieve your goals, so it’s important to think about the plan’s structure as you build it. Read more »

planning

Easy Tips and Tricks to Help You Complete Your Business Plan

We've learned a few things that can make the business planning process much easier and faster. Here’s our list of tips, tricks, and resources. Read more »

managing

20 Marketing Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Try

Here’s a list of marketing tools that we've had hands-on experience with and are comfortable recommending to other entrepreneurs. Read more »

funding

11 Angel Investor Blogs You Should Be Reading

In the business world, angel investors are sometimes equated with actual angels, sent to help us fund what could not otherwise be funded. These guardian angels of innovation are responsible for bringing many new ideas to life. The thing is, many of us—most notably those seeking investment—don’t know a lot about what angel investors are... Read more »

funding

17 Venture Capital Blogs You Should Be Reading

Whether or not you’re raising money for your business, getting advice from venture capitalists can be invaluable. But, getting in the doors of a Sand Hill Road VC in Silicon Valley can be an incredibly difficult undertaking. Fortunately, many of the top VCs share their thoughts on their blogs and are full of advice for... Read more »

starting

How Do You Know If You Have a Good Idea for a Business?

This article is part of our Business Startup Guide, a curated list of our articles that will get you up and running in no time! How do you know if you have a good idea for a business? One of my biggest challenges at Palo Alto Software is figuring out which ideas to pursue and... Read more »

managing

Our Favorite Black Friday Deals for Your Small Business

We all know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great days to pick up deals and get your holiday shopping done. But, what about your small business? It needs a few holiday gifts to get it ready for the New Year. Here are 10 of our favorite deals that will help boost your business... Read more »

managing

The 5 Metrics You Need to Track for Your Subscription (SaaS) Business to Succeed

This article is part of our SaaS Business Startup Guide—a curated list of articles to help you plan, start, and grow your SaaS business! Subscription and software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses are everywhere these days. From the predictable to the downright weird, you can seemingly subscribe to anything. Subscription businesses are hot because of their recurring revenue model.... Read more »

planning

Why Even Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Need a Business Plan

Silicon Valley is a crazy place. I’ve lived and worked there, first through the late 90s and the dot-com bubble while I worked at Yahoo!, and then again helping to start a company that eventually got bought by eBay. As the dot-com bubble was bursting, I left to work in the U.K. and founded a... Read more »

starting

Why One Business Failed (and How to Ensure Yours Won’t)

Despite having the key ingredients required for success, a new local restaurant failed. Here are the lessons that would have helped save this business, that can also help you as you search for success. Read more »

managing

The 6 Most Important Web Metrics to Track for Your Business Website

Web analytics and metrics can be overwhelming. The key to avoid drowning in the sea of numbers is to start with six key metrics for measuring how your website is doing. Read more »

planning

A new way to develop and present your business model

Here at Palo Alto Software, we’ve added a major new feature to our business planning app, LivePlan, that I think you’re going to love. It’s called the LivePlan Pitch and we’re really excited about it. But, before I dive into what our new feature does, let me give you a little context. The mythology of... Read more »

managing

Why Competition is a Good Thing

Talking to small businesses and entrepreneurs writing business plans, I find that business owners often wish that they had no competition. Businesses usually are thinking that with no competition, the entire market for their product or service will be theirs. I don’t think that is the case – especially for newstartups that have truly innovative... Read more »