Business Model Analysis, Part 2: Platforms and Network Effects This post is part of a series on business model analysis for entrepreneurs. The first post in the series presents a comprehensive list of issues entrepreneurs should consider when designing a business model...

Disruptive Strategy Every growth company wants a disruptive strategy. But just what is a disruptive growth strategy? And why are good enough solutions like Google Docs so dangerous to market leaders like...

Business Model Analysis, Part 1: Key Questions Business model analysis is central to the lean startup approach developed by Eric Ries, Steve Blank, and others. When entrepreneurs “run lean,” they formulate hypotheses about major...

Must watch videos from MassChallenge Bootcamp MassChallenge recently kicked off their startup competition and they wrapped up their Bootcamp last week. One of the great things...

Healthcare is the new "gold rush" Interesting article from the AMA summarizing the highlights of a recent PWC healthcare study from June 2011. The title of the article is quite catchy, although as I...

Inc.com's 30 Under 30 Boston Honorees Inc. Magazine recently announced their 2011 30 Under 30 list. Congrats to this years honorees from Boston...

Octane - Interviews with Boston Entrepreneurs! As the 4th of July weekend is here, we thought it would be a great time to provide links to all the great Q&A sessions we've had with several Boston based entrepreneurs...

The Evolution of Angels into VC’s We’ve been witnessing an institutionalizing of angel investing in recent years. For the most part, it’s good. There continues to be a gap in the market for stage appropriate...

The History of Android Back in 2003, Android was a startup that was on a mission to build something innovative... with an original business model for building a platform for carriers that...

How can I help you? Apptegic is a Boston-based company. I was motivated to write this blog post after running into many friends from the Boston Innovation community at the MITX Innovation Awards...

5 Things that Predict Success in Software Companies I got a question from Jeff Guass on LinkedIn that I thought I’d share with you…Firas: You folks publish quite a few lists in all of your labs postings. How about a list from...

Failure is just experience on the way to success Failure gets a bad rap. It is actually an important element of success. When I speak at conferences...

Octane: Philip Beauregard - CEO, Objective Logistics

We are excited to have Philip Beauregard as our guest on Octane! Philip is the CEO & Co-Founder of Objective Logistics in New Bedford, MA. Objective Logistics is an angel...

LinkedIn: The Series A Fundraising Story LinkedIn went public last week. As a shareholder I'm obviously pleased with the investor reception LinkedIn has received, but more importantly it's a great milestone for...

First Look: Fundraise.com Journalists love hooks. An interesting angle turns yet another story about a new startup into something palatable in a sea of press release style announcements that start...

Interview to Venture: Episode 1, CampusLIVE This week, I took a break from the written word and videotaped myself interviewing Boris Revsin, CEO and co-founder of one of Highland’s newest portfolio companies: CampusLIVE...

The Key Business Metrics That Really Matter When startup and expan­sion stage com­pa­nies are court­ing ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists and seek­ing invest­ments, it’s easy for them to get caught up in mind-numbing met­rics that show...

Four tests for if you have a good startup idea Everyone has a few ideas for a startup company. But how do you know if this is the one big idea you should do? There are...

When Seeking Inspiration - Operate in Short Sprints I met with a few entrepreneurs recently who left interesting companies to pursue their own ideas. In both cases, they wanted to experiment with a number of different concepts...

Top 3 Signs that Health Tech is Hot Now There has been a tremendous amount of activity and interest in health and technology recently...

Brainstorming for New Startup Ideas: A Framework to Spur Creative Thinking If you are a serial entrepreneur starting to look for an idea for your next startup, you are likely to want a way to stimulate your brain to come up with as many good ideas...

First Look: Springpad Though this column may be called First Look, this post is far from it. Way back in November of 2008, I wrote about a startup in Charlestown called Springpad. From that...

Why Product Metabolism Is Every Startup’s First KPI Since I joined Atlas last April, Jeff and I have done a weekly call with Brian Norgard and Dan Gould at Namesake. It’s been remarkable (and humbling) to watch this...

Digital Media Trends and Future M with Debi Kleiman, President, MITX We interviewed Debi Kleiman, President, MITX (Massachusetts Innovation Technology Exchange) to get her thoughts on digital media, MITX and Future M and to hear what she...

Founder Dialogues featuring Andy Palmer - Parallel Founder (Video) Eric Paley held the latest Founder Dialogues event at the Microsoft NERD Center on March 21st. This time, he interviewed an amazing...

Paying It Forward - A Video Interview with Matt Lauzon by Rob Go I had the pleasures of sitting down with Matt Lauzon last week to talk about the lessons he’s learned as...

How to Create a Killer MassChallenge Application The following post was written by Andy Cook, cofounder of Rentabilities and MassChallenge 2010 $50,000 winner. Having been through the MassChallenge before, Andy...

Trying to Stay Sane at Mobile Madness! The Xconomists are one of the most talented and connected bunch around. The second annual Mobile Madness event did not disappoint the over 300 attendees who showed up. I was...

Highlights from MassTLC's Mobile Cluster Seminar: Mobile Devices and Platforms If you’ve hung around Kendall Square at all in the last several years you’ve undoubtedly heard more than one entrepreneur invoke the spirit of Thomas Edison and Nicolai...

Start-ups? We need more finish-ups Over the past few weeks I have seen over 300 start-ups at Stanford Startup Labs, Launch Conference, DEMO, and SXSW...