Engineers aren't from Mars Recruiting is hard. Finding the best talent is never easy—especially when it comes to finding a rockstar engineer. But could it be that companies simply don’t understand what engineers want? As an...

Five takeaways from folding a startup A couple of months ago, after lots of introspection and sleepless nights, we decided to put Grinnit on a permanent hiatus. We thought the best way to seek closure would be to share our story...

Lessons from the Lean Startup Challenge I started using lean before joining the Lean Startup Challenge so I wasn’t expecting to learn too much from the competition, but, even so, I learned more about my startup in the first...

How to Hire a Good Marketer (for Startups) It’s the question I hear second-most often, right after “How do I hire a good developer?”. Marketing is one of those skills a startup can’t do without, and realistically, probably shouldn’t...

Business Model Analysis, Part 5: Virality 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 (available as a downloadable PDF) entrepreneurs...

What will the fall of 2011 look like for entrepreneurs? It is that time of the year again — the dog days of August when I wax poetic about the prospects for start-up companies in the coming months. This post is a follow-on to my Summer time...

What milestones are needed to raise a Series A? For entrepreneurs seeking to build big companies on a rapid trajectory, raising larger scale venture capital rounds is likely a necessity at some point after the initial seed funding...

False Market Signals How do you figure out if there’s a market for your product? This is one of the hardest questions to answer and arguably, the most important. When we started Handshake.com in 1999...

Business Model Analysis, Part 4: Racing for Scale 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 (available as a downloadable PDF) entrepreneurs...

Recruiting as a Strategic Weapon Many people talk about the importance of recruiting in building a startup. What most people mean by that is that attracting and retaining key talent is incredibly valuable. Here at RunKeeper...

Interview to Venture: Episode 2, Bit9

Last time on interview to venture, I sat down with Boris Revsin, co-founder & CEO of CampusLIVE. Boris is a first-time CEO in his 20′s and is building a consumer internet company that is...

Forget Shrinking Markets – How About Expanding Them? One of the powerful elements of the internet is the amazing efficiency through which commerce, advertising, and information flow can be facilitated. As a result, many successful...

Business Model Analysis, Part 3: Switching Costs 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 (available as a downloadable PDF) entrepreneurs...

The blue pill or red pill: Start-up life or an MBA? I’m a movie guy. In one of my favorite movies, The Matrix, there is a famous scene as many know where Keenu Reeves’ character Neo is offered a choice between a blue pill and a red pill by Laurence Fishburne’s...

Founder Dialogues featuring Andy Ory of Acme Packet (Video) In the past, Boston has never been good at celebrating the many, many great success stories in our backyard. Maybe we're too humble? However, over the past couple of years, the tide has turned...

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...

When to reach for the stars As anyone who follow the start-up world knows, valuations for high potential young companies as of late have been trending upward (how's that for an understatement) and are fairly divorced from underlying...

Leaving money on the table I spend a lot of my time recruiting the best people I can find to join our portfolio companies. These days one subject comes up frequently - namely, “leaving money on the table." Some of the..

Five Tips for Non-Toxic Networking People tell me I am a power networker. I don’t see myself that way at all. I secretly prefer a book to a conference, any day. However, when at a business event I make the most...

The 5 Stages of Enterprise Cloud Adoption (a.k.a. Grief) Early last year I met with a notable Boston entrepreneur, fresh off the acquisition of his startup by a Fortune 100 company. Over a coffee in Cambridge we geeked out over cloud...

The Most Expensive Keywords in Google AdWords (And How to Target Them in Your Search Campaigns) On the heels of Google’s blow-out Q2 2011 earnings announcement last week, we wanted to find out what keywords demand the highest costs per click and are most competitive...

Why You Should Eliminate Titles at Start-ups There has been a recent dialog around a theme I'll call "hacking the corporation" - creating novel approaches to building young companies, particularly when they are in their formative...

Leadership at the Expansion Stage: Dos and Don’ts Please do not read this as a pedantic piece of presumptuous exhortations that are typically seen in “leadership” and “self-improvement” articles and books. I do not presume to...

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...

How To Communicate With Investors. Tips For New CEOs Andy Swan, one of my angel investors, asked if I would publish some of my investor emails. I’m not ready to do that, but I do think investor communication is important and difficult...

The 5 Things You Need to Have Before Evaluating your Sales Team So perhaps you are curious given all this talk about sales force evaluations? We do mention it a lot and it is the foundation of everything we do. In the right situation a Sales...

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...

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...

Giving Due Diligence Calls Their Due One of the most boring things to do in any business decision is making reference calls. Usually you’ve already made a selection of whatever type (hiring a new employee...

The One “Process” Every Startup Should Have Most young entrepreneurs (including myself) have an allergic reaction to anything with the word “process” in it. So before you break out in hives and curl up in ball with cold...