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

managing

How to Write Great Copy for Your Website

You don’t know what’s going to work on your website. What copy is going to work. What layout is going to work. What colors are going to work. Is it going to be better to put a product image at the top of the page or the bottom? Should it be on the left or... Read more »

Authors

About our Authors: Tim Berry Founder and President of Palo Alto Software and a renowned planning expert. He is listed in the index of “Fire in the Valley”, by Swaine and Freiberger, the history of the personal computer industry. Tim’s days are filled with writing at his blog  Planning, Startups, Stories and contributing regularly to... Read more »

planning

Nervous About Writing Your Business Plan?

If the thought of putting pen to paper makes your knees weak, know that your plan is less about perfect prose and more about the bottom line. Tim Berry addresses the fear that many have: that a business plan must be a massive document. Read on to discover the truth about business planning and that... Read more »

$235,000 Business Plan Competition at The University of Texas at Tyler

The $200,000 Grand Prize is designed to foster a drive for excellence in the competition. Students involved in the competition will gain access to networks of successful entrepreneurs, lenders and investors, and have the opportunity to learn greater team-building and business planning skills. The contest will also help student teams gain media exposure for their... Read more »

planning

Ownership Shares and Your Business Plan

by Tim Berry Most business plans, particularly start-up business plans, need to deal with shares at several key points. Shares are shares in ownership. This is why we talk about shares of stock, and we buy and sell shares on the stock market. Now, the simplest one-person business has no need for shares because nobody... Read more »

starting

5 Deadly Startup Mistakes

The following article from CNN Money highlights 5 mistakes often made by small business start-ups.  While all 5 points are valid, of particular interest is #5: Loosing Focus. “Every business should have a vision of what they will be when they grow up. And the more focused the vision, the greater the chances that the... Read more »

Free Accounting Software

To counter Microsoft’s free offering of small business accounting software, Intuit now has a free version of their Simple Start accounting package. While not nearly as full-featured as Microsoft’s offering, it’s a great way to get out of Excel or manual book keeping and into a proper accounting package. Read more »

planning

Developing a Successful Business Plan: Part 6

In part 6 of our series, Tim Berry discusses forecasting. Tim will teach you how to forecast sales, estimate costs, and how to produce an accurate profit & loss forecast. At the end of the day, forecasting is more of an art than a science and Tim will show you how to get the job... Read more »

starting

Is Business Ownership Right For You?

Tim Berry recently spoke with Scott Brown about starting a business, why you should and shouldn’t, and why you need a business plan. Listen to the interview here or download for listening later. Download the interview (30mb MP3 file) Read more »

Wharton Business Plan Competition

The WBPC is a comprehensive, 7-month platform to help entrepreneurs and their teams launch their new business ideas. The WBPC is structured in three phases to help teams develop their plans in both a collaborative and competitive environment. The WBPC’s entrepreneurship workshops feature entrepreneurship experts including Wharton entrepreneurship professors and Wharton graduates who have started... Read more »

How not to search for venture capital

Spotted this weekend in the business classifieds. Sorry for the bad camera phone pic. Read more »

Third Annual $10,000 Boomer Business Plan Competition

Link: seniors : Third Annual $10,000 Boomer Business Plan Competition [TheMatureMarket.co.uk]. Are you developing innovative products and services for the 45 market? The baby boomer market represents over $2 trillion in annual spending power! The first of 76 million baby boomers turns 60 in January 2006 and by the year 2030 there will be 71.5... Read more »

planning

Business Plans Gone Wild

Tim has some nice quotes over at Forbes.com about some of the pitfalls of crafting a business plan. Specifically, Tim focuses on how to not use business plan software. Read more »

funding

More borrowing

I guess it’s a day to talk about borrowing. Here’s another startup that’s formalizing the marketplace for person-to-person borrowing and lending. If you need funds to get your business going, this could be a place to look. Link: Prosper Read more »

Peltier Business Plan Competition

Link: East Texas Weekly Community Newspaper. Students from all colleges and universities are invited to participate for a grand prize of $25,000 in the 2006 Peltier Business Plan Competition offered by The University of Texas at Tyler College of Business and Technology Read more »

managing

Winning Shelf Space In a Competitive Market

Good article over at StartupJournal with an entrepreneurial story about Vitamin Water. Interesting insight into what it takes to get retail shelf space when you’re just starting out. It turns out that it’s just guts and perseverance… If you’re an entrepreneur, you already have that. Read more »

Venture Capital Investment Level Static in 2005

E-Commerce News: Business : Venture Capital Investment Level Static in 2005. The pace of venture capital investment remained unchanged during 2005 as the financiers of new business ideas continued to tread carefully, hoping to avoid the missteps that led to the dot-com bust. While VCs may be acting cautiously, it would be interesting to factor... Read more »

managing

You still want meetings. Here’s how to make them useful. – Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Great post over at Signal vs. Noise about making meetings useful. Especially in small businesses (where you don’t have the luxury of lots of employees, middle managers, etc, etc) making meetings useful is critical. Otherwise they become an increadible time waster and reduce productivity significantly. That said, I’ve worked in plenty of big businesses that... Read more »

Entries sought for $100K business plan competition

Link: Entries sought for $100K business plan competition Beginning Tuesday, applications will be accepted for the $100,000 Business Plan Competition to be conducted at the sixth annual Summit in Tech Valley. The summit is scheduled for April 26 at The Desmond Hotel & Conference Center in Colonie, NY. Read more »

$50k Business Plan Contest Announced

Link: DesMoinesRegister.com. Venture capitalist John Pappajohn will launch an Iowa Business Plan Competition this week that will award a total of $50,000 later this year to three start-up businesses with the best business plans. Read more »