New business: Bill Shaw and Articulation LLC

I've added a listing for Bill Shaw and Articulation LLC to the Businesses section of the EntEng.com web site.

 

Articulation LLC offers the TempTell temperature monitor and data logger, the TempTell Reflower Prototype SMT Reflow Oven Controller, with other products under development.  Bill has also written a paper on surface mount prototype assembly.

 

-- Jack Krupansky

Is your web site or blog or business a noun or a verb?

Here is more wisdom from marketing guru Seth Godin in a post entitled "Nouns and verbs":

People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that are happening, that change. They care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel.

Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes.

Is your website a noun or a verb?

I would extend that thinking to blogs and even businesses.

 

-- Jack Krupansky

FindLaw advice for independent contractors and the self-employed

Business and technology attorney (and blogger or blawger) Anthony Cerminaro posts a link to advice on the FindLaw web site for independent contractors and the self-employed.  The topics include:

• Independent Contractors: Overview
• Independent Contractor FAQ
• Pros and Cons of the Independent Contractor's Life
• Disputes: When Clients Won't Pay
• Self-Employment Taxes Q&A

-- Jack Krupansky

MIT Inventor's Handbook

The Lemelson-MIT Program has published an Inventor's Handbook:

This handbook was created by the Lemelson-MIT Program to address the independent inventor's and aspiring entrepreneur's most frequently asked questions regarding United States patents. We hope that this handbook will provide some helpful information on the patenting and commercialization processes.

I found it via a link on Anthony Cerminaro's blog, which I found via a link on Jeff Nolan's blog.

 

-- Jack Krupansky

Top ten tips for corporate naming

The Strange Brand blog has a post on corporate naming entitled "Top ten tips for corporate naming."  Take a look at their list of "personal guidelines on how to dodge the most common naming landmines", which ends with:

10. Find Examples to Emulate

Search out examples of great, evocative, powerful, memorable, witty names, and keep a list of them handy. They’ll give you avenues for finding new names, and a familiarity that will help you spot the right name when you see it.

-- Jack Krupansky

Changing the game

Marketing guru Seth Godin has a new post entitled "Playing by (and losing by) the rules" that urges us to:

... Change the rules.

Newcomers and underdogs can only benefit when the rules change. The safe thing to do feels risky, because it involves playing by a fundamentally different set of assumptions. But in fact, dramatically changing the game is the safest thing you can do (if you want to grow).

It sounds so simple, but where do you start?

-- Jack Krupansky

Do patents matter?

There's an interesting post over on the Seeing Both Sides blog entitled "Patents Don't matter."  My opinion is simply that it all depends, and the critical thing is your capacity to continuously innovate and to do so at a fairly rapid pace.  What is true is that most people would rather not have to deal with the hassles of patent issues.  In some domains they may be essential, but in others they probably are irrelevant, useless, and counter-productive.

 

-- Jack Krupansky

Race for the top

Marketing guru Seth Godin has a nice post entitled "Race for the top, race to the bottom" which stresses how desirable it is to work with people and vendors that are actually "racing for the top" rather than focusing on cost-cutting in a race to the bottom. I can't think of a better tactic for attracting customers than racing for the top. As he says:

So, I think I understand what happens when you win the race to the top. You end up with a healthy, motivated workforce that's focused on adding art and joy to your products. You end up with profits and market share and a community that's glad you're there.

What happens, though, when you win the race to the bottom?

-- Jack Krupansky

Update: April 14 Breakfast Networking Meeting of the 128 Innovation Capital Group: Financing eCommerce Ventures: New Approaches to Online Recruiting

[This is a revision of the topic title for the previous announcement of this meeting.]

If you're in the Boston area, the regular breakfast networking meetings of the 128 Innovation Capital Group are well worth considering. Coming up [Thursday]:

4th Breakfast Networking Meeting of the 128 Innovation Capital Group

Date: April 14, 2005
Time: 7:15 AM
Place: Best Western Hotel, Totten Pond Rd., Waltham

Another program in our continuing series of "Both Sides of the Coin" where you hear from both the Investor and the Entrepreneur about how the deal was done.

TIMOTHY ROWE, Founder and CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center and Venture Partner, DFJ New England Fund

HANS GIESKES, Founder of H3 and former President, Monster.com

Topic: "Financing eCommerce Ventures: New Approaches to Online Recruiting"

Tim is the founding investor in H3 and serves on its board. H3 is an early-stage software company, currently in stealth mode, focused on a brand new, patent-pending, important way to leverage the Web and personal networks for online recruiting.

Click to go to their sign-up page, or visit their web site.

-- Jack Krupansky

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

The Brand Autopsy blog mentions an interesting book by Steven Pressfield entitled "The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles". This booked will supposedly "help you finish what you started by inspiring you to overcome the self-sabotaging power of Resistance." They quote Pressfield as writing:

The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

The idea there is that if you point yourself towards those points of greatest resistance and overcome that resistance, then you will be doing yourself the greatest good.

I haven't read the book myself, but it does sound both interesting and relevant to the works of any entrepreneur.

Check out the Amazon listing for the book (and I do get a cut of the revenue you you do buy through this click):

-- Jack Krupansky

It's how you make them feel

I saw this great quote on the Fast Company blog in a post entitled "Leading Ideas: It's Not Your Words":

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." -- Carl W. Buehner (1898-1974) Mormon leader, businessman and author

This is well worth considering, whether you are making a formal presentation or simply meeting someone who might turn into a future customer or partner.

The rest of that post is worth reading as well.

-- Jack Krupansky

VentureWiki - a wiki site on the venture capital community for entrepreneurs

I ran across a Wiki site called VentureWiki that is dedicated to the venture capital community. Their mission:

VentureWiki is a work in progress - please help build it! Our vision is to be a resource for entrepreneurs to capitalize on the collective experience, opinions, and judgement of the venture capital community.

I haven't really explored it much, yet.

-- Jack Krupansky

Find the "always" and do the opposite, do the "never"

Here's an interesting post by marketing guru Seth Godin entitled "What's the always?".  He tells us:

Figure what the always is. Then do something else.

Toothpaste always comes in a squeezable tube.
Business travelers always use a travel agent.
Politicians always have their staff screen their calls.

Figure out what the always is, then do exactly the opposite. Do the never.

This is of course a clever ruse to once again con us into thinking outside the box.  Maybe this time it will work.  The advice to "do something else" has a lot of appeal.

-- Jack Krupansky

April 14 Breakfast Networking Meeting of the 128 Innovation Capital Group: New Approaches to Online Recruiting – What Comes after the Job Boards?

If you're in the Boston area, the regular breakfast networking meetings of the 128 Innovation Capital Group are well worth considering. Coming up:

4th Breakfast Networking Meeting of the 128 Innovation Capital Group

Date: April 14, 2005
Time: 7:15 AM
Place: Best Western Hotel, Totten Pond Rd., Waltham

TIMOTHY ROWE, Founder and CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center and Venture Partner, DFJ New England Fund

HANS GIESKES, Founder of H3 and former President, Monster.com

Topic: "New Approaches to Online Recruiting – What Comes after the Job Boards?"

Tim is the founding investor in H3 and serves on its board. H3 is an early-stage software company, currently in stealth mode, focused on a brand new, patent-pending, important way to leverage the Web and personal networks for online recruiting.

Click to go to their sign-up page, or visit their web site.

-- Jack Krupansky

Ten Commandments for presentations to venture capitalists

Allen Morgan of venture capital firm Mayfield has written a set of ten commandments for how to properly pitch your venture to venture capitalists. I actually ran across the list summarized in a post by Jeff Clavier. His summary is as follows:

1. Do your homework, and contact the right person
2. Be on time
3. Tease, don't overwhelm
4. Know your audience
5. Create the "Aha" early
6. Explain the idea by analogy to, or contrast with, older ideas
7. Go with 13 or less slides
8. Know what you don't know -- and admit it
9. Be like Goldilocks, when it comes to competition
10. Control the meeting -- but be smart about it

Even if you're not going the VC route, these are still good ideas.

One point I would add is that you need to listen very carefully to what the VC audience has to say and their non-verbal clues as well. They may not explicitly tell you what they think for any number of reasons, so you'll need to very quickly pick up on all of their subtle cues if you want to succeed and establlish a working relationship with them.

-- Jack Krupansky

Software as a Service

The Venture Chronicles blog has the beginning of a discussion of "Software as a Service - Part 1".  There are certainly a lot of software businesses chattering about the topic as if it were their salvation.  How's this for a bottom line:

Let's agree on one thing: just like client/server meant different things to different vendors in the mid 1990's, software-as-a-service has many definitions that the market will sort out in time and that there is no right or no wrong definitions at this time.

-- Jack Krupansky

Want to start the Next Google?

I ran across a post with the intriguing headline "Want to start the Next Google?" You can read that post yourself, but what occurred to me is how important it is to deeply understand what you want your new venture to feel like. Sure, some businesses may be focused on venture capital and the [over-]exalted IPO and others intended on selling out to Microsoft or another "big" company, but where exactly do you see your venture going? A lot of ventures simply fail or languish, but given your druthers, what is it you really want out of your business?

Are you really focused on the money? Is it the prestige? Is it the power? Maybe is it the perks? Are you simply trying to avoid the mad-house rat-race of a "big", impersonal company? Or maybe do you actually have a "mission", a "vision" of delivering something of value to society far beyond any product or service that some existing company might offer? Or maybe you're simply interesting in providing your employees with a productive, stimulating, but healthy work environment.

It's really an open-ended question, but well worth considering.

-- Jack Krupansky

Entrepreneurship curriculum and the entrepreneurial mindset

There's an interesting description of an "Entrepreneurship Curriculum" on the Arizon State University Entrepreneurial Programs Office web site. Take a look at their list of characteristics for the "entrepreneurial mindset". Each of has strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes we need to step back and take a look at our own "net balance" and assess what actions we should pursue to enhance the balance of our mindset.

-- Jack Krupansky