A few weeks ago John Prendergast (founder/CEO of Blueleaf) and I gave a presentation on outsourcing at the Boston Founder Institute. The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). We tried to provide a framework for startups to think about [...]
I feel like I’m in that scene from The Jerk where Steve Martin sees his name in the phone book and exclaims, “I’m somebody!” I’m published (sorta)! A couple of years ago I wrote this post on the science and art of negotiating a term sheet, which turned out to be a fairly popular post. [...]
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 a graduate [...]
Is it me, or does Julian Assange look like one of the Matrix albino twins minus the dreads? In any case, I think he’s a data hitman and I’m a fan. Transparency is a great antiseptic to flawed process and bad actions.
Back in April, I attended Eric Paley’s first “Founder Dialogues“. It’s a really interesting format for discussing entrepreneurship…basically Eric gets in front of a crowd and has a modern day equivalent of a fireside chat about entrepreneurship along with another veteran entrepreneur. I have to say that Tim Healy, co-founder and CEO of EnerNOC (NASDAQ: [...]
I’ve mentioned this survey several times in the past, but this time I bring news of the 2010 survey opening to participants. This year the survey covers six countries (Canada, China, India, Israel, UK and US) in two industries (technology and life sciences). Each year, over 1,000 companies complete the survey, making it the largest [...]
I love stuff like this. Today a friend sent me this 7 minute video that is truly amazing…once you start watching I dare you to stop! I didn’t fact check it, but several reports on the web place this video in San Francisco just a few days before the 1906 earthquake. It was filmed from [...]
This past weekend, I was a judge at the HBS student business plan contest and had a great time. Apparently there are 12 semifinalists (listed below). The finals judging is later this month. Birchbox ChickRx CleverBootz eight1six EverTrue FashionStake Friends For Sport OsComp Palliative Care of America RelayRides SIRTAP Therapeutics (watch the video to see [...]
Last year I wrote a post about WSGR’s new term sheet generator and how that was part of an overall trend to “open source” the legal industry. Open source is the wrong term though; instead is probably better to say automate since LegalZoom and others are doing the same thing but commercially. I think this is great for end users both personal and professional, but I think it is going to seriously erode legal industry revenue in the long term. It’s silly to pay by the hour to have the same documents generated over and over.
Because it's that season (bonus season, not holiday season) I've been getting questions about executive compensation from friends. But today I got an interesting question the answer I wanted to share here. The question was something along the lines of, "Well, I know the on-target bonus numbers I want to recommend, but how should I [...]