Viewing profile — tom

I just engaged a local class company who’s Yelp reviews were atrocious. The reason was, 3 of the 4 were reviews of the guy’s driving, not his skills at changing a windshield. I wen…

$9 isn't the new black, variable pricing is. Happy to spend (and write off) more to learn some new stuff and support projects like this. I'd love to see a blog post about the prici…

I hope this signals the end of folks walking on egg shells around Arrington. He's no longer a "newsman". He's no longer going to make or break every startup that ends up on AOLCrun…

While not the case in this instance, it is completely normal for raising a round to take six months. The "check that day" folks are very, very, very outside the norm. Fundraising i…

This is a great example of 2 keys to success for startupts. 1. Hustle. Many people told Alex no before he got that first check, but he kept at it. Hit this milestone, get these sal…

Boomerang rocks. It's the simple functionality that I've wanted in my inbox for YEARS. I get a cubic butt-load of email and the problem with it, is it's all on the schedule of some…

We've been users of Mogotest since they first launched their beta. Amazing time saver (especially if you dev on a Mac). I run automated tests across three sites as well as on deman…

Hiring? Does that imply a salary? Cause yeah, we don't have that quite yet, but we're working on it. What do we have? Small, fast, potential insane team going after the temporary s…

I think this is an interesting concept, but man, making a mentorship match is HARD. You have to really hit it off with the person, on more of a personal level than anything at firs…

Do you know how many of these have been awarded in the last six months - especially with the stimulus package? Seriously, this is intractable. Find folks who are doing work that in…

What you're describing is the life I left to start my latest co. I worked at a big research university having not had bio since college .. years ago. The key is to find ways you ca…

Also, just because you have no chance of winning, doesn't mean you can't have a very large impact on the outcome of the game ... Here's a hint, don't sink your wife - even if she t…

Holy cow that's a big ask at the end of the Michael Prichard pitch, but man, best of the bunch. He told us what the problem was. He personalized. Why HE had to solve it. He ate his…

It's a shame it was edited though. As it's hard to really get a feel for the flow due to the weird cuts. Of course, it might have been too long without it. :) What was really succe…

You're drawing conclusions where they don't exist. The "startup life", the life of a startup founder is in fact, hard. Building a product is hard. Building a company is hard. Build…

Interestingly enough, many of the folks I met remarked that they had 1. mentors who helped them get their first, second, nth company off the ground deal with problems, and just pla…

While I don't agree, I'll admit that you may be right, but this is impossible to know. But why make all the same mistakes? Why have to figure it all out on your own? Why reinvent e…

It's not news, or hacking, but something that's as important to the success of a startup - the startup life. It's an acknowledgment, or maybe an admission that doing this is hard, …

I didn't take that from this article. The key question was : “Is getting an office space going to help grow my business?”. Sure seems like David's saying that if you never answer a…

We love Unfuddle! Not too complicated, no too simple. Pleasantly integrated.

My in-laws gave me Monopoly: the .com Edition when I started at my first startup. We get a game going about once a year. The best part is that the denominations are HUGE. That's a …

You can show it - you should always have access to your app, whether locally on your pres machine or remotely via the hosts internet, but never, never, leave the presentation demo …

Screencasts are just plain smart when you have your demo, your single shot, your company, on the line. Don't count on the internet working anywhere (especially not a VC's conferenc…

NDA's just aren't going to happen. And you're going to expose yourself as a noob if you ask for one. No VC (at least here in the US) will sign one. If you really have something tha…

Required reading: askthevc.com the middle column, scroll down a bit for the categories list. A goldmine. Jason and Brad have done a huge service to the community with this site.