Culture

John Doerr on Mercenary Versus Missionary

Here is one of the world’s most successful and best known venture capitalists, John Doerr, with about three minutes on the difference between mercenaries and missionaries, and why that matters.   And, in case the video isn’t showing, here’s the link.

By Tim Berry

Sort of back in college

I just returned from attending Tim Berry’s BA 410: New Business Planning class at the University of Oregon. My reasoning for attending his class was two-fold. One: I manage our Academic Channel and instructors often ask me if and how our software can be used in the classroom. I generally reply with something like, “The...

By Kristen Langham

Fuel Your Idea Machine

I’ve used this blog on occasion to remind you and me that life is about life, not startups. Business is what we do, not who we are. That’s important. Life is short. I really like to recommend Guy Kawasaki’s “Being a Mensch” chapter in The Art of the Start. And I like what I read...

By Tim Berry

And now you know the rest of the story

Some of you might remember the post I wrote a few days ago about how our car was broken into and all our things stolen. While we haven’t exactly caught him, I have been able to exact my own brand of revenge. Let me tell you about a little program called  LogMeIn. LogMeIn is a...

By Bplans

Breaking the lock: How strong is your password?

Last weekend, on the last day of a very nice long weekend out of town, our car was broken into and all of our belongings were stolen. Laptops, ipods, clothes, new purchases from the weekend, the car radio … everything. To say it kind of bummed out the weekend is putting it mildly. When we...

By Bplans

The biggest and the best

When I came on board at Palo Alto Software, I really had no concept of business plan competitions. But since managing academic competitions was one of my responsibilities, I quickly learned all about them and was amazed at the myriad of competitions out there. From the first-ever Twitter Business Plan Contest where you have to...

By Kristen Langham

wasting capital energy

we are wasting buzz-illions of calories, ergs, joules, watts, amperes, volts, newtons. as they say in the uk, i have a capital idea. here’s how can we cut this waste and save this precious energy. expunge all the capital letters.  cease case-sensitive usage.  yank those shift and caps lock keys out of our keyboards.  by...

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Hockey Wisdom

As a small business owner it is easy to get discouraged on those days when you are questioning a big decision you made. A lot of times it comes down to a gut feel and a leap of faith.  For the times that you might end up on the wrong side of a decision, keep...

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