Thursday, August 26, 2010Diane Hessan - President and CEO, Communispace
1. Hire Passionate People. It is really difficult to teach people to have your values: to have high standards, to be collaborative or willing to take risks or be obsessive about customers, or the like. We hire people who we have passion for what we do, and who can model our values. We can always teach...
Wednesday, August 25, 2010Niraj Shah - CEO, CSN Stores
1. Focus on customers. a. Always keep the lens on customers – what they want, what can be improved, what makes their experience with your company satisfying, rewarding and something they intend to repeat, etc. It is really easy to get distracted and focus on your competitors, on your...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010Gail Goodman - CEO, Constant Contact
1. Make sure everyone in the company knows your customers’ needs and challenges. Everyone. To make the customer the center of your business universe, you need to bring them into sharp focus for everyone in the organization. Identify personas. Tell stories. Send around case studies. Host an open house...
Monday, August 23, 2010David Cancel - Founder and CEO, Performable
How do you know if your startup is solving a critical problem? You can survey your users, conduct user interviews, and run a/b testing experiments to try to get your answer. No matter what method you use, parsing out reality is really hard, especially for entrepreneurs (see Reality Distortion Field...
Friday, August 20, 2010Furqan Nazeeri - CEO and Founder, Virid.us
They teach everything else. Why, in business alone, you can get a masters or PhD in marketing (sales' evil cousin), finance, human resources and entrepreneurship (which isn't even a business function, but rather a business practice). In fact, for every head of a business function in a company (VP of whatever), there is...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010Richard Banfield - CEO, Fresh Tilled Soil
In the second of our series on Boston entrepreneurs we interview Jason Henrichs, COO and co-founder of PerkStreet Financial, a Highland Capital funded startup. Richard: You’re one of those few entrepreneurs that has also sat on the other side of the funding table. In fact you’ve switched from entrepreneur to VC...
Monday, August 16, 2010Doug Levin - CEO, Ayeah Games
From August 15th to August 18th, 1969 – forty-one years ago today – “Woodstock” was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near the town of Bethel, New York. The original poster billed Woodstock as a “Music and Art Fair”. It was the largest music festival held to date, with approximately 500,000 people...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010Richard Banfield - CEO, Fresh Tilled Soil
This is the first in a series of interviews with some amazing entrepreneurs in the Boston area. These folks have been selected because they are not just building a business but giving back to the entrepreneurial community in some way. They might be sharing their hard-won experiences on a blog, funding startups...
Monday, August 2, 2010Monika Desai - Founder and CEO, Open Runway
As an entrepreneur launching my first startup, I rarely think about the fact that I am a woman but it’s hard not to notice when I am usually one of just a handful of women in the room at most of the entrepreneurial events I go to. Take for instance, WebInno. It always seems like 80% of the attendees...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010Bettina Hein - Founder and CEO, Pixability
I like to boast that I’ve never had a real job. I started my first startup right after graduate school and have done nothing but startups for 10 years. Has it been exhilarating? Yes. Has it been non-stop fun? No. Has it been incredibly rewarding? Yes. But what has enabled me to last 10 years? Acting like...
