by Behzad on Uncategorized

Brainstorming

Tom Kelley’s “The Ten Faces of Innovation”

  1. Go for quantity; throw in 100 ideas, and pick best 5
  2. Encourage wild idea and expect the unexpected
  3. Be visual; write on a draft paper and find new relationships, just as in drawing
  4. Defer judgments; hear all the 100 ideas and then criticize
  5. One conversation at a time
 
by Behzad on Uncategorized

Secrets of Success in 8 Words, 3 Minutes!

 
by Hazem on Marketing, Uncategorized

Start-ups vs. Established Businesses

(Established) Businesses are all about 3 fundamental things:

  1. Production (be it building hardware, software or whatever),
  2. Operations (i.e. administration, human resources, management) and
  3. Marketing and Sales

Money is made in ONLY step 3 (Marketing and Sales). Operations is ONLY about moving (effectively and efficiently) from Stage 1 (production) to Stage 3 (Marketing and sales).

Start-ups are also quite similar but different in ONE key aspect from established businesses:

  1. Production,
  2. Operations, and
  3. Learning & Discovery (of customers & market)

The customers are unknown in start-ups and as Steve Blank in “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” asserts the emphasis for start-ups in early phases MUST be on Learning & Discovery (of your market, your customers, what problems they TRULY value and so on).

Only after a start-up has truly figured this one out, does it transit to Marketing and Sales.

Hazem Awad

www.hazemawad.com

 
by Behzad on Organization, Uncategorized

Competitiveness

Question: how to keep competitiveness besides a core patentable technology?

  • Management team (I keep coming back to this one)
  • Access to big customers
  • Access to certain distribution channels
  • Corporate culture and company’s vision are most difficult to replicate
 
by Behzad on Mantra, Marketing

MBA or MFA?

The question is which one helps you better in entrepreneurship, an MBA or MFA?

  • The market for beauties never dies out.
  • Whatever you make, make it beautiful!
  • “Entrepreneurship is about making a meaning, not money“, Guy Kawasaki, watched on IEEE TV
  • Never lose the big picture (to make life easier and more beautiful) — need to train your right brain!
 
by Hazem on Uncategorized

Want to make a successful startup?

Doing a startup is a process and the process for success is well known. There are still many, many uncertainties and challenges and that is why startups are so exciting. 

  1. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid_1.html
  2. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid_2.html
  3. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-1.html
  4. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html
  5. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-3.html
  6. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/the-pmarca-guid.html
  7. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/why-a-startups-.html
  8. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/the-pmarca-guid.html
    http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/the-pmarca-gu-1.html

 Hazem Awad, www.hazemawad.com

 
by Behzad on Business Plan

What About Business Plan!

How to write a business plan, I asked Aydin, founder of chide.it and here is what he said:

“
1) it makes you write on paper what you are going to do to make lots of money.
2) it shows investors how you plan on making lots of money.
…
but, at the end of the day, look at your plan from a 3rd party perspective and ask yourself, would I loan this business 10k as an angel investor? If your answer is yes, then you’re in good shape”
simple and to the point!
 
by Behzad on Mantra, Uncategorized

Reliability

This one really stuck with me:

“Even the very best intentions can never take the place of being dependable, punctual, reliable and credible”

Your Attitude Is Showing by Sharon Lund O”Neil, 2006