January 2011
17 posts
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Starting my own office hours
I recently had a chance to meet Nate Westheimer. Nate’s a busy guy, so I consider myself lucky (the meeting was arranged for me).
But there are tons of other awesome people out there - particularly in the NYC startup community - and it’s not always easy to schedule good 1 on 1 time.
Well Nate has now fixed that with Ohours.
It’s a simple app for scheduling a block of time...
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(void* dan): Idea, Inc. →
danspinosa:
I had an idea, but Reece blogged about it first. Fortunately, ironically, the idea is that you shouldn’t own your ideas. When you own an idea it’s a part of you, and you will defend it like you defend yourself. That’s bad.
For the best ideas to live, beat out lesser ones, and get tested…
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When there is nothing left to burn...
“When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.”
I love this line.
I’m a pretty optimistic person - by nature, all entrepreneurs must be - but even I’m not immune to a low point now and then. We’ve all been there… development is slow, customer traction is non-existent and investors? You’ve heard “No” more times than a...
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Null's Idea
We’ve been doing a ton of brainstorming as a team lately - whether on product ideas, feature sets or marketing strategies, we love letting ideas flow.
A natural tendency when brainstorming is to label a given idea with the name of whomever said it. ex: “Reece’s idea.”
The problem with that tactic is that it personalizes the idea and naturally creates possession and/or...
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Repetitions
Last night this morning at 3AM, Joe and I wrapped up a whiteboard session on the HomeField user experience with our new startup friends Quinten and Andres. With the help of Andres, we distilled the functional experience of each of our user types down to 3 (disciplined) steps [probably more on this topic later].
Quinten was with us earlier in the week when we were whiteboarding some crazy ideas...
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"Relationship building is a cumulative process"
Yesterday I was very fortunate to see Howard Morgan, Howard Lindzon and Roger Ehrenberg give insightful tips to a room full of hungry entrepreneurs.
The key takeaway - “relationship building is a cumulative process.”
All three agreed that their best deals are always with great people that they’d built a relationship with prior to making an investment decision.
I think a lot of...
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The Kinetic Energy of Startup People
I’ve been pretty busy lately - work, travel for work, moving to a new apartment, meetings, maybe a few beers with buddies, too - and I really felt like it was going to catch up with me yesterday after we moved into our new office and I settled down at my desk or sat in a long meeting .
But to my surprise, I have been entirely energized without stop and I think I figured it out…
...
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“The key thing to remember about me is that I’m still a student. I’m still in...”
– I read this quote from Steve Jobs among many others in this article.
I think Steve is absolutely right here. It’s very easy to get hung up on your past successes/failures/residual self image.
The greatest artists, or creators, rather, are never afraid to make changes. In startups, the term...
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NYCEDC Startup Exchange: My 2 Cents
In early December, I attended the NYCEDC Startup Exchange - a networking event/party/whatchamacallit at the IAC building.
I don’t know how I got on the invite list, but the email said my boy Fred would be there and I assumed there’d be some free food for this starving founder, so I planned to attend.
The event itself was… “eh” and according to this NYConvergence...
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Peripheral Vision by Sea Pinks
Blown away by this...
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“We’ve made the world better… but we still want a better world.”
– Say what you will about Nike, but their Nike Better World campaign is pretty well done, and hopefully, comes from the heart.
Even tiny changes at big companies can have tremendous impacts on our world.
Go for it Nike. Make this place a better world.
P.S. - Especially relevant for anyone who...
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“If you’re looking for a career change, trying to get a startup idea going,...”
– Charlie (via brycedotvc)
Absolute gold from Charlie.