Successful software exists to solve a problem; be it boredom or too much stuff. One way to drive traffic to your site and improve your search engine ranking is to write a helpful guide to solving the problem without your software. It is important that you…
We're having performance and mail server problems with our shared hosting plan from UltimaHosts, so this discussion of mail problems on shared servers was very interesting. Our problems are with performance, rather than being blacklisted, but the consensus of not doing real work on shared…
Thinking about getting business cards printed? Once you have a nice logo, check out these opinions about where to get your cards. VistaPrint gets slammed. When ordering, it is a good idea to have the back matte, as many people like to make a few notes on a…
New entrepreneurs are often paranoid that someone is going to steal their idea. With time and experience, most come to around to Howard Aiken's point of view, "Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down…
TechStars is a Boulder, Colorado based clone of Y Combinator. They are doing their first round of companies this summer. They provide $5k/founder, plus office space, servers, classes and some pretty serious contacts. They take 5% of the company. They have received 175 applications so…
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…