Posts for "Startup"

This weekend I've been thinking about integrity - specifically the importance of surrounding yourself with people of high integrity, and striving to achieve integrity in all your personal / professional relationships. I'd like to share a story from my past that has always inspired me. Since I did not ask permission

This morning I took a journey back through my blog, reflecting on my three year journey in founding CloudHealth Technologies. It's hard to believe how quickly the time has passed from working out of the entrepreneur space at NBVP to having a fast growing company in downtown Boston. Here is

Just like we have founders of a business, we also have founding customers. These are customers who took a chance on you at the earliest stages when there was very little to take a chance on. While they may have paid for your product in those early days, they more

It's official: venture capital investing in New England is at a 10+ year high. The latest study from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows venture capitalists invested just over $5 billion in New England startups in 2014, with 93% of the funds going into Massachusetts. This puts us at a little more than 10%

I just returned from a week in Silicon Valley in which more than a few people wanted to talk about the looming tech crash. The discussion has been going on for more than a year now, with a line of thinking that goes like this: the rapid growth in investment

A former colleague recently sent me a couple copies of Peter Thiel’s Zero to One with the instructions: “Read and pass on.” As a voracious reader of startup non-fiction, I would’ve eventually read the book by the former [co-founder of PayPal](Peter Gregory from Silicon Valley). But since

I like to think that if software development had Ten Commandments, the first would be: Thou shalt not build something that doesn’t matter. There is no more profound waste of talent and effort than to have engineers build software that doesn’t get used by customers, or add-value elsewhere

There are many ingredients that go into building a company: hard work, emotional fortitude, agility, willingness to take risks, fanatical commitment to driving customer value, ability to execute in the face of ambiguity, and more. But there is one ingredient that often gets overlooked: an ability to will something to

A little more than 26 hours after it had started, the votes were tallied and the winners announced. The prizes for the winners ranged from Bose headphones to dinner at a local restaurant to stock options. Steve took home our top prize for his work on internal customer reporting, which

A year ago this month, we officially closed venture investment for my startup. Some days it feels like that milestone was a few months ago, and other days it feels like a few years. But with my one year anniversary post-funding, I thought I’d take a moment and reflect

My startup had been acquired for less than five months when I took my first corporate compliance course. For those of you not familiar with compliance courses, it's a ritual many large enterprises subject their employees to in order to manage corporate risk around legal, ethical and/or culture issues.

My last year at a Fortune 100 tech company, I did a fair amount of technical due diligence in support of M&A activities. In this role, I would fly into a company for a couple days to assess the value / risks of their product, technology, people and process.

I feel the need to let loose the topic that has been on my mind this month. Warning: it has nothing to do with cloud computing or the Boston technology scene. In November 2012, I was just starting to hit my stride with a new startup idea. I’d been

Over my years in startups, I’ve found the single hardest role to fill with a quality candidate is product management. Ask any industry professional to name the best software developers they have worked with, and they will have at least a few names to share. But ask the same

Once upon a time there was a venture investor named Goldilocks. One day while lost in the woods, Goldilocks came upon a house inhabited by three startups. Since she had a new fund and a pressing need to put capital to work, she decided to let herself in. The first

Welcome to my venture investor thought experiment, where we transport you back in time for an opportunity to invest in three startups. Your goal: decide whether you would have made these investments. Like all VCs, you are looking for the Perfect Deal: a company that will IPO within four years.

Last summer I reread Lean Startup in search of advice on how to run a lean experiment for a B2B business. In rereading, I realized the book’s near exclusive focus on consumer startups (e.g. IMVU, Zappos, Dropbox, Grockit). Unfortunately stories of A-B testing on consumer websites was of

For the last couple months I’ve been researching a business opportunity using a Lean Startup process. If it’s true that we learn best from our mistakes, I’ve done some really solid learning over the last several weeks. ;) I had previously posted 9 Tips To Improving Your Lean

When I changed from being a startup executive to an EIR at a venture capital firm, I didn’t realize how ill equipped I was for my most important task: market validation. I had a general idea of where where I wanted to start a business, and some good direct

A decade of freemium business models and cloud computing have reduced the cost of starting a new business to all-time lows. It seems like a lifetime ago that new startups had to spend exorbitant fees with hardware manufacturers, service providers, and design firms to get their businesses off the ground.

This week is the one-year anniversary of my return to high tech startups. I’d spent the three previous years managing SaaS engineering teams for Dell, where I met some great people, learned some valuable skills, and longed to get back to the “real world.” To commemorate, I thought I’

Over lunch a former colleague and I were debating whether specific Boston startups were delivering sustaining or disruptive innovation. The question seemed interesting since the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation could be one of life or death for existing market leaders, and a strategic or fire sale for acquired

We all know startups go through ups and downs over their lifetimes, each producing a different perception of success from inside the company. There are the heady days of formation where the vision is fresh and anything is possible, the long march to a first product ship, and then the

]I thought I’d commemorate my last week at Dell with tips for startup executives in integrating into an acquiring company. SilverBack Technologies was my third startup to be acquired. This list is the result of experiences of myself and former colleagues, generalized to apply to any large acquirer. #1:

]The Massachusetts economy, supported by strong health and high technology industries, has been recovering faster than the overall U.S. economy. The October jobless rate (8.1%) fell to its lowest level in over a year - a full 1.5% below the national average - and the state has