I recently had coffee with a friend and former colleague whom I met working at Google. We’ll call him Jake. Jake now works in education, at a premier music and arts school outside...

We’ve been developing Smarterer for the better part of a year now, quietly building a platform that uses crowd-sourced questions to validate peoples’ social and professional skills.  Like many...

At NextView Ventures, we have a number of companies in our portfolio which are “marketplace” businesses, where buyers and sellers meet to exchange a good...

Welcome to the latest installment of Octane, our Q&A series with local entrepreneurs.  Today, we have Joe Cronin, the President & Founder...

Five years ago this week, I was part of a small team (me, Sean, Devin and Gerard) that launched MyPunchbowl.com (now Punchbowl.com). The site...

Checking references is a normal part of the hiring process.  Although they are meaningful, it is unlikely that a candidate is going to give you a set of references that don’t speak...

Last week I had a conversation with an entrepreneur who was confused about option pricing, and no matter how many times I tried to explain it, he never seemed to get his head around...

One of the most clichéd interview questions is “what are your strengths and weaknesses.”  Most of us have heard it so many times that we’ve prepared for it extensively.  Often we...

Raising from angels has historically been much different than raising from VCs. Angels have tended to be as inexperienced in early stage tech investing as the entrepreneur who’s raising...

I was really inspired to write this post by this recently published great article about 7 bad habits of executives. That got me thinking about the bad habits that sales people can sometimes...

At the onset of 2012, many start-up executives around the world are sticking their copy of Lean Start-Up on the shelf, leaning back, and bemoaning the fact that they have a new...

Here's a nice little treat to kick-off the New Year!  Our Octane series is back!!!  Our guest today is Josh Feast, the Founder & CEO of Cogito Health in Charlestown. Cogito is pioneering...

As a tech startup, you'll need all the help you can get to attract software engineers and web development talent. You need to somehow differentiate yourself from all the other companies...

As we wind down 2011, I thought it would be helpful to highlight some of top blog posts from the year.  So, in no particular order...

Once in a while, someone who wants to get into entrepreneurship will ask me what I think they should do.  As I've said in a past blog post, I like these types of questions better than...

“He’s a star. Thank god he’s on the team”.  “He’s not scaling, it’s time to find a replacement”.  I’ve heard that line from too many CEOs about someone on their management...

Not usually the first thing you think of when starting a company, but where you want to end up impacts everything you do.  I sit on the board of ChatThreads, where we are in...

Always lots of ideas from entrepreneurs, angels, vcs about how best to raise Seed & Early Stage capital.  ‘Tis the season for end-of-year lists.  So, if good enough for “Top 10 NFL...

If you you think you want to be a CEO, what should you do?  I was talking to a former CEO who had a very successful exit almost two years ago. This a good friend who I have known...

I don’t blog a lot about the inner workings of Backupify but our recent launch of Snapshot for Google Apps has been very successful, and it seemed like a good time to use this example...

You know when you meet someone and at first you don’t really hit it off so well…you don’t seem to have much in common? And then, all of a sudden, you hit on a topic...

I had a meeting this week with a friend of a friend who was interested in getting into the Venture Capital Business.  I have a few of these meetings every year...

Wayfair is easily one of the greatest success stories in the Boston area over the past ten...

One of the most memorable lines in film history comes from “Field of Dreams.”  Shoeless Joe Jackson, a baseball legend from the early 1900’s, convinces an Iowa farm owner named...

Best practices for inside sales managers. An interview with Mark Roberge, VP of Sales at HubSpot, discussing how he blends science and process with the art of selling. HubSpot is a SaaS...

There’re a lot of marketplace businesses being started out there - I probably see 2 a week these days.  Given the interest in the space I thought I’d share some high level thoughts...

What does entrepreneurship mean to you?  To Angus, entrepreneurship means... "it's like a pair of eyeglasses, except instead of seeing the world as it is, when you have the eyeglasses on...

When they are asked about the defensibility of their businesses, I regularly hear entrepreneurs cite “first-mover advantage” as the basis on which they will compete and defend their margins. It has come...

If you work in the search marketing industry, you may have found yourself having a conversation somewhat like this one (the same conversation I have every time I tell a...