Rise of the Mincubator We’ve moved – just down the street, not far from our previous hosts (LocaModa) on Sidney. We are now at 84 Hamilton St, still in Central Sq (which is absolutely fabo-licious...

Octane: Ralph Folz - CEO, WordStream We are excited to have Ralph Folz as our guest this week on Octane! Ralph was the founder of Molecular, a venture backed internet consulting firm that he launched in the...

Building a Sustainable Side Project Note: Since I’m still developing the idea I’m writing about, I don’t specifically mention the project I’m working on. My goal is to share insights and the process I went through with this...

Lessons Learned after a Startup Acquisition Really excited to post that EditMe, the startup I’ve been working on, has been been acquired. You can read all about it on our blog. For this post, I wanted to write...

Core Peer Groups: How I Found a Co-Founder, Built a Prototype, and Raised $5M in Less Than 4 Weeks The $5M Keg - In 2007 I was 23 years old, working full time as a product manager at ZoomInfo while moonlighting on a number of entrepreneurial side projects. I had previously...

Octane: Gil Zimmermann - CEO & Co-Founder, Aprigo Today, we have our first Octane segment of the new year and we are excited to have Gil Zimmermann as our guest! Gil is the CEO & Co-Founder of Aprigo in Waltham. Aprigo is a VC backed cloud...

Top 5 Hiring Tips for Startups Building a great team is crucial to ensuring the success and sustainability of any startup venture. But, there are potential pitfalls to consider, and there’s little room...

Walking Away From Liquidity With big tech companies awash in cash, nearly every analyst out there is predicting that the M&A market will heat up in 2011. At a (pre-blizzard) conference I attended...

Compensating Your First Sales Leader I have been spending a bit of time on Quora to answer questions asked by early stage software entrepreneurs… all part of my role as an early stage software investor who...

Make Time Work For You When I talk to my friends and colleagues about the problems they face, most say that time is their toughest enemy. Like other issues CTOs face, time can be managed...

How much seed capital should you raise I was asked this question yesterday by a founder. I hear this question all the time so I thought I would write down my thoughts. The short answer is you should raise a...

Some things I learned about venture capital in 2010... For the past couple of years I wrote end of year notes as predictions in the cleantech space for the next year. (cleantech predictions for 2010). But this year...

SaaS Economics – Part 1: The SaaS Cash Flow Trough This post provides SaaS entrepreneurs with an Excel spreadsheet model and graphs that show the cash flow trough that happens to SaaS, or other subscription/recurring revenue...

15 essential elements of an agile marketer Over the last few years, I have noticed a division in the types of marketing people I meet. Some colleagues have referred to this as data driven vs. marcom/branding types...

The @Dharmesh Test: 16 Questions For Better SaaS Companies The Dharmesh Test is a quick, simple set of yes/no questions to gauge the likelihood of long-term success of a SaaS (Software as a Service) company. It is inspired by...

Top 10 Blog Posts for 2010 It is that time time of year for "best of" and "top" lists for 2010, so we thought it would be fun...

What’s Next? The Aftermath of Startup Failure. Shutting down my startup has left me needing to fill three voids: goals, money, and credibility. I’m fortunate to have steady consulting work, a simple lifestyle with...

Accelerate Your Startup (part III): Spend to Scale the Business In my two previous blog posts, I’ve discussed the first two of three key phases in a startup life cycle: finding a product/market fit, then determining a repeatable...

Marketing: The Blimp Test “I need you to find out something for me,” I asked my office manager in a way that caused her to look at me with suspicious eyes. “Sure, what is it?” she replied, knowing full well that this was...

Lessons Learned from Shutting Down My Second Startup Two years ago, when I wrote a post-mortem for News Armada, I was an overly-ambitious first-time entrepreneur, chasing dreams of venture funding and changing the...

Acquisition Tips for the Startup Executive 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...

Octane: Jason Henrichs - COO & Co-Founder, PerkStreet Financial We are excited to have Jason Henrichs as our guest on Octane this week. Jason plays a very active role in the Boston tech community. He is the COO & Co-Founder of an online consumer financial services startup...

Founder Dialogues featuring Diane Hessan of Communispace (Video) On October 27th, Eric Paley held his latest Founder Dialogues event! This time, in his usual sit-down...

Octane: Mark Watkins - CEO and Co-Founder, Goby Looking for something to do this holiday weekend??? Then...check this out! This week, we are very excited to have Mark Watkins as our guest on Octane! Mark is the CEO and co-founder of Goby...

Engineers are tribal A few months ago, I had the privilege of sitting down with the CEO of a well-known technology company. He had just exited to a strategic for a large amount of money...

Mr. CEO: Would you hire yourself? In this post, I am specifically addressing founding CEOs who are in the midst of their first expansion stage experience (growing the company from $2-5 million in...

Due diligence for the entrepreneur The question I’m most frequently asked (and most frequently ask myself) is how to validate and size business opportunities. Is a particular start-up or concept...

George Bell - MIT Startup Bootcamp (video)

Fun fact that I learned from watching this video... along with many other accomplishments... George Bell started Shark Week on the Discovery Channel...

The 11 Harsh Realities Of Being An Entrepreneur There's always talk about the end game in the form of an acquisition, funding announcement, or eventual flame out. Hollywood has even made a movie about the founding...

5 Lessons Learned - My First Week in VC Checking in now that it’s been a little over a week since I started as an associate here at Flybridge Capital Partners. Is it everything I expected and hoped for? Yes...