Uneven Negotiating

August 15, 2014

I was in a meeting today to squabble with a construction company over the price of our new office build-out. When I entered the meeting, I thought we were there to discuss elements of the build-out that I understood. But the discussion shifted. I realized that I was in an uneven negotiating situation. I have never […]

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Opportunity Costs Required for a Successful Open Source Mode

August 13, 2014

As I have written before, we are preparing to open source our primary product. Open sourcing a product requires technical work to refactor and expose a clean interface so that the code is manageable by non-ArrayFire employees. The difficulty is that we have paying clients. It is hard to allocate resources to work on an […]

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BATNA for Startups

August 11, 2014

Try to build a company you would never sell. — David Cancel (@dcancel) August 16, 2014 BATNA is the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. People naturally formulate these in negotiations so they are not really interesting. I have two thoughts to share though: 1) Early in our startup, our goal was a quick sale. […]

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Corporate Processes for Startups

August 10, 2014

As a startup grows, you will find that different people in the organization will have different opinions on how much process should be introduced into the startup. Some people will want to have a written and defined process for every activity the startup performs, even when there are less than 10 people in the startup. […]

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Thoughts on Recessions

August 9, 2014

I’ve seen many people talking about another recession. Some think the cycle is coming around again for that. Others are saying that a recession is not coming because recessions do not come when people expect them to come. In any case, what can startups do about it? Nothing! Startups have no capacity to deal with […]

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Visit Customers on the Road

August 8, 2014

One of my favorite things to do is to visit random customers at their offices while I travel. ArrayFire is used all over the world, so I can just look in our salesforce.com leads and contacts list to find people by geography. Then a few days before I go to a location, I see what […]

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Making Moves To Grow Is Risky

August 7, 2014

As revenue grows, the risk reduces for a startup. More accurately though, the risk shifts to more controllable or predictable things. One of the biggest types of risk that come on later on involves decisions to invest in growth. Investing in growth means bringing on board more people in the hope they build the business […]

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Business Cards

August 6, 2014

Speaking of ego yesterday… check out this funny video about business cards! What do you put on your business cards?  

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Beware of Early Paperwork Laziness

August 4, 2014

Some of the biggest startup headaches I’ve seen are when startups mess up their early legal docs. You do not need an expensive lawyer to get started. Avoid legal fees by all means. You do need to have paperwork that clearly delineates who owns what and what happens when someone departs voluntarily or involuntarily. Last […]

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Sometimes Ignorance Is Bliss In Startups

August 3, 2014

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. — Mark Twain — Jared Spool (@jmspool) July 31, 2014 When we first started our company, we were students with little to lose and that special (and artificial) academic feeling of insulation and invincibility. We launched into company building without experience, knowledge, money, or […]

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