Father’s Day for Entrepreneurs
My Grandfather opened one of the first Electronic and Telephone companies in Southwestern Washington in 1908 in his hometown of Camas. The Company did phone line and equipment installation. That was the era when phones had no buttons – just a heavy earpiece, microphone and lever to tap to get an operator. He sold the
Read MoreDefining The ‘Best Possible Outcome’ For Startups
This Article was originally posted at the Huffington Post June 10, 2013. By Dave Parker, VP of Product at UP Global Every startup founder I’ve met starts with a huge dream of some kind. Some want to change the world, others want a huge exit and a red Ferrari. But understanding how your startup might change the world
Read MoreWhat Elon Musk Can Teach Us About Time, Risk, and Commitment
By Dave Parker, VP of Product at UP Global – This is a repost of an article that was posted originally on the Huffington Post. Time. It’s one of the dimensions of a entrepreneur’s journey that’s difficult to forecast. Yet, it’s the dimension that every critic fails to acknowledge when armchair quarterbacking a startup’s success and failure –
Read MoreA/B Testing Example
I had a chance to speak at the Tampa Bay Tech Forum last night at The Wave in downtown Tampa. Thanks to Heather Kenyon, Kimberly Wander and the team at TBTF, as well as Mike O’Donnel for invite and the attendees for a fun event. One of the items I talked about was how to
Read MoreWhen Inbound Marketing Doesn’t Work
Don’t get me wrong, I love inbound marketing. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are awesome marketing tools. But this specific tool won’t work for every type or stage of business. I hear too many startup companies talk about Growth Hacking and Virality as if it’s an app they can deploy after
Read MoreThinking About The Mobile Apps Biz – Read This
If you’re thinking about building a mobile smart phone app for consumers or for business you should review this deck by Henry Blodget. You can answer a number of your business model questions about platform and monetization strategy. Some of the conclusions: Mobile monetization lags behind for a number of reasons – intrusiveness and small
Read MoreIs your Startup Hot or Not? (Session Slides)
Thanks for coming to last nights session with Michelle Goldberg, Bill Bryant and Andy Liu. The following are the slides from the session. The application deadline for the Founder Institute Seattle is March 17. Apply online at www.fi.co/apply/135 Hot or not session from Dave Parker
Read MoreWhen Incremental Change Isn’t Enough
I was meeting with a company last week that had completed the build of their product, launched and was getting great customer feedback – just not the use case that they had expected. The good news: they have validated the idea. The bad news: it wasn’t what the original customer nor was the current front
Read MoreIdeation Bootcamp – Week 4 – Joanna Lord
We wrapped up the NWEN Founder Institute Seattle first ever four-week Ideation Bootcamp. Special thanks to Joanna Lord @JoannaLord from SEOMoz for her presentation last night on Communicating your idea – without getting lost in the details. Her slide and video here. Here’s Joanna’s slides and Video Week 4 ideation bootcamp communicating ideas lord from
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