Most micro-ISVs have a single founder who works in his spare time until there is enough revenue to quit. While safe, that violates several of Paul Graham's 18 mistakes that kill startups. I'm almost done reading Founders at Work, which reinforces his points; many of the founders warn…
I wrote about a proposed change in the accredited investor definition a few days ago. From talking with Steve Murchie at the Keiretsu Forum, I learned that, ...there is an even more progressive measure in Congress with bi-partisan support that would give a 25% tax…
We're developing an Excel Add-in and we are trying to figure out the size of the market. I asked the BoS forum about this, and several people pointed out that the Excel user base is not a relevant number. Adrian said it best, Selling software is about…
The SEC is considering changing the accredited investor definition from $1M including your primary residence to $2.5M excluding your residence. Most of the protests center around excluding investors from higher risk/higher rewards opportunities. It will also reduce the pool of eligible Angel investors, which hurts startups that need…
http://tools.google.com/gapminder displays the changes in per capita GDP and life expectancy across countries over the last 20 years. Having just read And the Band Played On, watching the life expectancy in South Africa fall is especially tragic. The default income scale is logarithmic, changing it to…
Adwords is a periennial topic over at BoS, this thread has some good info, including a link to 10 Steps to improve your Adwords campaign.We've been playing with a number of SEO tools, the best we've found is SEO Toolset.We are working with CTEK to…
Last week, the Micro-ISV show interviewed Dave Collins about using Adwords. I don't like podcasts, but the transcript is now available, and it is a great read.The first step in SEO should be selecting the keywords that the campaign will target. WordTracker ranks keywords using…
Ignoring my advice from a few weeks ago, we have been working really hard on our software, but got a late start on the website and haven't started on search engine optimization. So this week is all about SEO:The basics of setting up your website…
Paul Graham is one of the wise old men of the ISV community. His article on 18 mistakes that kill startups is fascinating.Many applications have a trial period after which you must purchase, others are feature limited from the start, but the limited version can…
Guy Kawasaki has an interesting list of stupid ways to slow down adoption of your product. For social networking software, forcing users to re-type all their contact's emails is a big mistake (#8 on his list). Many startups spend months creating a product in isolation, then…