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 [...]
My Foursquare Experiment
Since Foursquare’s launch at SXSW back in 2009 I have successfully avoided using the application – at least until a few weeks ago. We are working on a project that necessitated my use of the app and I decided to double down for two weeks and use the app prolifically. Here are my stats: 194 [...]
The Birth of the Dallas Startup Eco-System
Have you ever wondered what it would take to build a startup ecosystem in your community? You might be surprised at how easy it is to build a robust community of entrepreneurs in a relatively short period of time. My story covers the years between 2005 and 2012: Several months ago I met Derek Holt, [...]
The StartupMuse is on hiatus. . .
When I started this blog back in 2007 I was excited about the prospect of sharing my experiences as an entrepreneur. I wrote posts once or twice a day. Fast forward to 2012 and the reality is that I simply don’t have the time to write about entrepreneurship because I am actively involved with my [...]
Turning 40 Update. . .
As I am fond of saying, I turned 39 a year ago – i.e. I am now 40. Back in August I wrote about turning 40 and unknowingly set about changing my life. You can have all of the success in the world, but if you don’t have your health you really don’t have anything. [...]
