In this month’s edition of Vanity Fair Bruce Feirstein suggests that ‘Everything old is new again’ and provides the following historical analysis. What did he miss? Valpak Coupons + Internet Explorer = Groupon Scrapbooking x iPhone = Pinterest The Sears Catalog + A mouse = Amazon The Rotary Club x Fiber-Optic Cable = LinkedIn Pearle [...]
Boulder Startup Week
Each May the startup community in Boulder hosts a 5-day event called Boulder Startup Week in an effort to showcase the unique startup culture found in this tiny Colorado city. This year I was invited to attend and spent the last three days taking in all that Boulder could offer. It was an amazing experience [...]
My Next Big Thing. . .
Lots of you are asking about what I am up to these days so I thought I would give you a little update. Since January I have been working on a new startup called HAUL. Initially, spending all of my free time learning all I could about the market and attempting to formulate a plan [...]
Stop listening to what they are saying. . .
Recently I had an epiphany that has changed the way I deal with almost every person in my life and I wanted to share it with you. My question for you? The next time you are involved in some sort of interpersonal conflict – with a spouse, friend, client or employee – what would happen [...]
Startup Mistakes: Building Everything Yourself
One of the biggest challenges startups face is deciding what is core to their business. For example, at ShopSavvy we spent a LOT of time developing technology around barcode scanning. We assumed that developing and owning our own intellectual property would make our company more attractive to potential acquirers or investors. Turns out this assumption [...]
Startup Mistakes: Starving your Startup
The biggest mistake we made at ShopSavvy was waiting three years to raise outside capital. Instead, my partner and I invested more than $2 million dollars in cash and services into the company over the first three years – a lot of money for us – but using our own money might have cost us [...]
Startups: The Family Business
This morning I learned that AutoSeis, the company that my father and little sister founded three years ago, will be awarded the 2013 Hart’s E&P Award for Engineering Innovation next month. The Hart award was established in 1971 and honors the world’s best new technologies and techniques for finding, drilling and producing oil and gas [...]
Startup Mistakes: The ShopSavvy Story
Back in 2008 when we started ShopSavvy we had no idea what sort of opportunity we had in our grasp. That was almost five years ago and while our progress has been impressive – our technology has been downloaded by more than 100 million people across the globe – I can’t help thinking about the [...]
Dallas is accelerating, AGAIN!
Last week I had the opportunity to have lunch with Kraettli Epperson and Dave Matthews to discuss VentureSpur – a new startup accelerator coming to Dallas. Started in Oklahoma City last year, VentureSpur is expanding their 12-week startup acceleration program to Dallas. They are now accepting applications – deadline for applications is May 17th – [...]
Quit Building Mobile Apps NOW!
…unless they include these three things: 1. an inherent mechanism for user growth 2. an inherent mechanism for user retention 3. measurement and analytics So often I meet promising young entrepreneurs who are building equally promising mobile applications that are missing all three components. When I press them on why they are NOT including these [...]
