July, 2011

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Turning the Camera on Chris Dixon

Both Sides of the Table

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. He’s thoughtful about markets, investors, products and is always very well reasoned in his arguments. I’ve also found him to not be dogmatic either. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not.

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Live in the problem, not in the solution: How customer development has gone awry

This is going to be BIG.

I'm not a lean startup zealot, but there are obviously lots of aspects of it that can lead to a ton of insights about your business. Talking to customers is, of course, a good thing. I'd never argue against it. I have seen, however, the customer development process wind up looking like a street corner salesman selling watches out of the inside of his coat.

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Pick your pricing niche carefully. Defend it.

Berkonomics

There are five major classes or niches a company should examine and make its own in calculating positioning in the marketplace. They are: Price. Quality. Service. Innovation. Elegance. Companies that compete on price rarely compete against others who emphasize service or quality. Internet resellers have a better chance to combine price and quality than those with much more fixed overhead occupying a bricks-and-mortar physical presence in the community.

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The advantage of no funding

Derek Sivers

Having no funding was a huge advantage for me. A year after I started CD Baby, the dot-com boom happened. Anyone with a little hot air and a vague plan was given millions of dollars by investors. It was ridiculous. Most business owners I knew would tell you about their businesses by talking about their second round of funding, their fancy encrypted replicated load-balancing database server, their twenty-person development team, their nice midtown office with a pool table, and their weekly promot

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From Curiosity to Competitive Edge: How Mid-Market CEOs Are Using AI to Scale Smarter

Speaker: Lee Andrews, Founder at LJA New Media & Tony Karrer, Founder and CTO at Aggregage

This session will walk you through how one CEO used generative AI, workflow automation, and sales personalization to transform an entire security company—then built the Zero to Strategy framework that other mid-market leaders are now using to unlock 3.5x ROI. As a business executive, you’ll learn how to assess AI opportunities in your business, drive adoption across teams, and overcome internal resource constraints—without hiring a single data scientist.

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Reflections of America this July 4th

Both Sides of the Table

July 4th. The funniest experience I ever had on July 4th (US Independence Day) was in 1999. That was the year I spent July 4th in Tokyo, where I was living for 6 months. I had been living in Europe since the start of 1995, most recently in London. I have always had a strong affinity for Japanese culture, perhaps because I grew up in Northern California.

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More Trending

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Twitter Delivers You 4x More Traffic Than You Think. Here’s Why …

Both Sides of the Table

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch (this version is slightly different). Most web publishers measure where their traffic is coming from using an analytics package such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Core Metrics. These were good packages in the pre social media world at helping figure out who was driving your traffic. Today they’re wrong.

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Twitter, Jobs, Democracy & The US Elections

Both Sides of the Table

I recently wrote a post about the open nature of Twitter and why I’m long on its future. I know it’s easier to write “horse race&# stories about who’s signing up more users, raising more funding or who’s “hot&# lately. But something more nuanced is at hand that is worth debating – is the future of the Internet & global communications more open or more closed?

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Version 0.9. What Do You Think?

Both Sides of the Table

I’m excited to announce that we silently launched our new website last week. Like a startup we took a very “version 0.9” approach. What I would love to do with this post is tell you our goals and solicit reactions for what you like and what you don’t like. What you’d like to see added, removed or changed. What text resonates? What do you think of the design elements?

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You make your perfect world

Derek Sivers

I started CD Baby focused on the importance of making a dream-come-true perfect world for musicians. Along the way I learned the importance of making my business a dream come true for myself, too. Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator. Some people want to be billionaires with thousands of employees.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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Why I’m Doubling Down on the Twitter Ecosystem

Both Sides of the Table

Today I’m announcing that GRP Partners is doubling down on the Twitter ecosystem by investing in DataSift , a company who provides a real-time data platform and tools to third-party developers and corporations. Our goal is to make the enormous volume of real-time information more manageable for the 99% of companies that lack the infrastructure to process these volumes in real time.

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School of Self Promotion for Awesome People who Don't Self Promote

This is going to be BIG.

Do you have friends that have really top notch experience, are thoughtful about their industry, and whip smart? Are they about a billion times more insightful than your average tech blogger? Does it kill you that more people don't know them? Unfortunately, if you look at the people who actively self-promote, it's a pretty adversely selected pool versus the pool of people who don't bother.

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Branding and social spaces: Why Google+ misses the mark

This is going to be BIG.

Imagine that one day, Facebook decides to put all its engineering effort into creating the best spreadsheet program you've ever seen--ten times more powerful than Microsoft Excel and way simpler to control and navigate. Can you imagine trying to convince people around the office to use Facebook Spreadsheets? There's no way you could convince anyone that you were actually doing real work because of the Facebook branding.

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Tips On Defining The Size of a Market for a Startup Business

This is going to be BIG.

It’s important to properly measure the size the market in which you hope to compete. Without this information, it’s very difficult to raise funds, understand how much you can/should spend on product development and marketing, evaluate the success of your marketing efforts, etc. In the following video, I offer five suggestions that can help you define the size of a market for a startup business.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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Love and Startups: What I learned from my best friend's wedding

This is going to be BIG.

This past weekend, I attended the wedding of a guy I played t-ball with in the summer of 1985. That fall, we were seated across from each other in first grade. A year ago, I went with him to pick up the ring and two days ago, I was in his wedding party. Their relationship and the event made me think a lot about partnership and building something special--topics that are top of mind in my day to day job as a venture investor.

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One Book Every Entrepreneur and VC Should Own

Both Sides of the Table

This article originally ran on TechCrunch. tl;dr version: If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. read it. live it. When I first started as a startup CEO in 1999 there were no guides on raising venture capital. There were no explanations for all of the confusing details outlined in a term sheet. Drag along rights?

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Who can build the marketing machine?

This is going to be BIG.

This is just a theory, but it feels to me that there's a talent gap in the marketing space--or a few of them. To begin with, there seems to be a serious shortage of customer acquisition experts--particularly given how hot subscription services have gotten. Fab.com (First Round portfolio company) just announced a new round of funding and that they reached 350,000 subscribers.

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Be a team player, but strive to be the best

This is going to be BIG.

I always liked Heath Bell--thought the Mets shouldn't have gotten rid of him. He once avoided arbitration because he said he didn't want to have to wear a suit and a tie. Today, he showed what a great mindset he had that struck a good balance between being a team guy, but also being a standout all at once. "ESPN reports that Padres closer Heath Bell told reporters in Arizona, where he will pitch for the National League in the All-Star game, that he would be willing to serve as a setup reliever f

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How Top Tech CFOs Solve Annual Planning’s Biggest Challenges

Gearing up for 2025 annual planning? Our latest eBook from the Operators Guild is your ultimate guide. Discover real-world solutions and best practices shared by top CFOs, drawn directly from discussions within OG’s vibrant online community. Learn from senior executives at high-growth tech startups as they outline financial planning strategies, align CEO and board goals, and coordinate budgets across departments.

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Plan for your ‘every three million dollar crisis.’

Berkonomics

Here is a phenomenon I discovered over time when dealing with many small start-ups in their early revenue period. A very predictable series of rotating crises seemed to befall most every one of these young companies. These became so predictable that I could accurately label them as occurring about every $3 million in gross profit (or revenue for service companies).

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Why buy IT? Why buy MINE? Why buy NOW?

Berkonomics

What a powerful set of three questions. These are so succinct, so well defined, so precise that everyone in sales and everyone involved in marketing must be able to answer these three questions without pause, and convincingly. Turning these into statements instead of questions provides a framework for the sales presentation from the highest levels of collateral materials and marketing support, to the salesperson on the front line.

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Where there’s mystery, there’s margin.

Berkonomics

Here’s a phrase I created in the early 1980’s to describe what I clearly saw as the last chance to make high margins on the sale of computer hardware to businesses. In the day of the mainframe and then the minicomputer, margins for manufacturers exceeded 35% and dealers were granted a 35% margin as well. Even with the usual discount of 10%, the margins on hardware were high, especially when applied to prices that exceeded $30,000 per sale. .

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The most successful email I ever wrote

Derek Sivers

When you make a business, you’re making a little world where you control the laws. It doesn’t matter how things are done everywhere else. In your little world, you can make it like it should be. When I first built CD Baby in 1998, every order resulted in an automated email that let the customer know when the CD was actually shipped. At first this note was just the normal “Your order has shipped today.

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Your Fractional Finance and Accounting Team

Mighty Financial specializes in supporting the financial aspirations of small businesses and entrepreneurs. With our comprehensive bookkeeping and precise accounting expertise with decades of experience across diverse financial roles, our team offers tailor-made services ranging from essential bookkeeping to strategic fractional CFO support, catered specifically to the unique challenges of technology companies, startups, and SMEs.

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Little things make all the difference

Derek Sivers

If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff. Here are some things that made a huge difference on the CD Baby website: Because we shipped FedEx at 5 p.m. each day, customers would often call and ask, “What time is it there? Do I still have time to get it sent today?

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If it’s not a hit, switch

Derek Sivers

For the first time in my life, I had made something that people really wanted. Before that, I had spent twelve years trying to promote my various projects. Trying every marketing approach. Networking, pitching, pushing. It always felt like an uphill battle, trying to open locked or slamming doors. I made progress, but only with massive effort. But now.

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Make it anything you want

Derek Sivers

After your business has been up and running a while, you’ll hit an interesting crossroads. Everyone assumes that as the owner of the company, you’ll be the traditional CEO, having fancy lunches with other high-powered CEOs and doing all the big business deals. But what if you don’t like doing that? What if what you love the most is the solitude of the craft?

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Delegate, but don’t abdicate

Derek Sivers

Delegation doesn’t come naturally to any of us. But I was trying really hard to be good at it. I knew how important it was to get into the delegation mindset. I was trying to empower my employees — to let them know they could make decisions on their own, without me. When they asked, “How should we organize all the rooms in the new office?” I said, “Any way you want to do it is fine.”.

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.