tag: business

Your company may not be in the software business, but eventually, a software company will be in your business. — Naval on Twitter

Few corporate speak expressions annoy me in as much as these 2 words: 😬 “The business” This is a pet peeve of mine, for sure. But beyond that, it’s important we stop covering decision makers behind “The Business” curtain. There is no such entity called “The Business” in companies. “The Business” isn’t a job function or role or group of people. “The Business” is everyone in the company. So what is happening in reality, behind “The Business” curtain?...

Ideas of online services where to outsource some of the most mundane tasks.

Does Your Name Suck? – Eat My Words | Eat My Words The SMILE & SCRATCH test: SMILE if your name has these 5 winning qualities: Suggestive – evokes a positive brand experience Meaningful – your customers “get it” Imagery – visually evocative to aid in memory Legs – lends itself to a theme for extended mileage Emotional – resonates with your audience SCRATCH it if it has any of these 7 deal breakers:...

Steve Jobs: A Few Memories—Stephen Wolfram Blog About Steve Jobs’ theory on naming stuff: I asked Steve why he thought it was good, and he told me his theory for a name was to start from the generic term for something, then romanticize it . His favorite example at the time was Sony’s Trinitron. Well, it went back and forth for a while. But in the end I agreed that, yes, Mathematica was a good name....

The philosophy of great customer service | Derek Sivers (Actually, I prefer the term “client care”, since “client” implies a relationship, instead of “customer”, which is transactional. But I’ll use the normal term instead of confusing things by using mine.) You can afford to be generous The customer is more important than the company Customer service is a profit center Every interaction is your moment to shine Lose every fight Rebelliously right the wrongs of the world

Everybody’s reachable. (by Gary Vaynerchuk ) Interesting left field concept of each business becoming it’s own media company focused on a collateral subject area their target audience is interested in, and not directly about their core business. You’re in the " media business , legal services" … I’m in the " media business , agency/wine" … ( Source: https://www.youtube.com/ )

Inspiration is perishable… Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date. Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson (via REWORK: The new business book from 37signals. ) If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now. You can’t put it on a shelf and wait two months to get around to it. You can’t just say you’ll do it later. Later, you won’t be pumped up about it anymore....

Mobile is the next computing platform Benedict Evans (via Whatsapp and $19bn ) … and it is several times larger than the desktop internet.

How to Create a Business that Prints Money | Forever Jobless Step 1: How can you create something of value in a market better than what’s out there? Step 2: When you do that, how can you reach your potential audience? If you can answer “yes” to both, do you have something you think you’ll enjoy, and can make an amount of money that may be interesting to you? Cool. Jump in....

Very interesting round up of all the simple math needed to run a services business selling “hours”. (via My New Startup is Wasting $35,550/month | Forever Jobless )

Ideas are just a multiplier of execution | Derek Sivers To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. AWFUL IDEA = -1 WEAK IDEA = 1 SO-SO IDEA = 5 GOOD IDEA = 10 GREAT IDEA = 15 BRILLIANT IDEA = 20 NO EXECUTION = $1 WEAK EXECUTION = $1000 SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000 GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000 GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000...

WORDOID – Creative Naming Service Wordoids are made-up words. They look nice and feel great. They are good for naming things. And more…

Part 1: Why Microsoft’s reorganization is a bad idea Part 2: The uncanny valley of a functional organization Part 3: Services, Not Devices is the best way forward for Microsoft (via stratēchery by Ben Thompson )

Dan Shapiro » Shark Tank: The 3 worst startup mistakes made on TV’s best reality show Negotiate Here’s the simple rule. If someone makes you an offer, it’s because they’re interested. If they’re interested, you should negotiate. Not accept; negotiate. Know what you want (…) have a limited array of tricks up their sleeve, and you should have considered all of them before setting foot in that room. Stake size Controlling interest Number of Sharks investors A royalty Help Contingencies Don’t ever leave the room...

Seth’s Blog: Naming a business First, (…) The LESS it has to do with your category, the better. Second, please pick a real english word, or a string of them. (…) Third, be sure it’s easy to spell AND pronounce. (…) Fourth, don’t obsess about getting a short web name. (…)

Thoughts And Articles On Pricing | Software Indie Nice roundup of articles of software pricing.

Camels and Rubber Duckies – Joel on Software The answer is really complicated. I’m going to start with a little economic theory, then I’m going to tear the theory to bits, and when I’m finished, you’ll know a lot more about pricing and you still won’t know how much to charge for your software, but that’s just the nature of pricing.

Customer Self Service Achieving significant revenue at a low price point naturally entails driving complexity and cost out of the purchase to clear the floodgates for high volume. **Transactional Sales ** As price increases, customers become less willing to part with their cash without at least knowing there are actual trustworthy human beings behind your website URL. **Enterprise Sales ** While most SaaS startups gravitate toward transactional sales or customer self-service, some SaaS startups have products that provide so much value per customer and are so complex to buy that their natural starting point is traditional enterprise sales....

Chuck Blakeman / Why Our Favorite Questions Keep Us On The Treadmill If you only ask the first four questions, you are likely to only make enough money to pay your mortgage. If you ask the last two, “when” and “why”, every time you ask the others, you are likely to build a business a real that makes money when you’re not around. Get off the treadmill. Ask when and why all the time....