business

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....

Eliminate an old activity before you add a new one. Greg McKeown (in The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Harvard Business Review ) This simple rule ensures that you don’t add an activity that is less valuable than something you are already doing.

Instead of asking, “How much do I value this item?” we should ask “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?” Greg McKeown (in The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Harvard Business Review ) … and the same goes for career opportunities, business projects, etc.