Startup Whisperer Blog
2010 Technology Predictions
Now that I've posted my results for 2009. Here are my predictions for 2010. Apple will have another hit with the Apple Tablet (iTablet) – get ready for the cage match between the iTablet and the Amazon Kindle. The Applet Tablet wont be a revolution and certainly wont have the same type of unit distribution…
Startup Whisperer 2009 Prediction Results
Its that time to reflect on the past year and to think about the future. Last year I posted some predictions. I'll run through them and give my own personal view of how well I did. Please comment if you disagree with my self-grade. I'll be grading myself with a bucolic rating system of: "nailed…
Tips For A Successful M&A Transaction
One of my favorite TV shows growing up was the A-Team. I loved it when Hannibal Smith (played by George Peppard) would exclaim after a successful mission, "I love it when a plan comes together." If you are a startup CEO or a larger company leader, you should take the same approach to planning merger…
Mpire Signs Two Large Ad Agencies
Congrats to the Mpire team. They announced two large ad agency deals today: WPP and GroupM's Mediacom. You can read a brief interview from Kirby Winfield here. The Mpire team is building some extremely important technology around campaign optimization and verification. I know what's going on behind the scenes in terms of large brands adopting…
10 Tips For Startup Operating Planning
Its New Years’ resolution time. For those of us building businesses, its also time to build your budget and operating plan for next year. I personally think that it is a major mistake if you and your company have not gone through this exercise. The components of your operating plan can vary greatly based on…
You Look Marvelous: Balsamiq Is Great For Product Mockups
Over the years it seems like I've gotten lazy about writing product requirements and product mock-ups. Perhaps, its the issue that I am farthest away from being a product guy than any point in my career. After bemoaning my plight of not wanting to spend the time mocking up a new product interface, a product…
Top Ten Startup Pitches
My high school track-and-field coach would show us Steve Prefontaine footage before races. As an adult, I watch presentations from CEOs that I admired before I would do large group presentations. A little Steve Jobs goes a long way in the CEO inspiration department. I always thought that it would be great to compile a…
Are You The Master Of Your Own Domain?
There has been some interesting controversy in the local search space. I have been opinionated about local search and if you are interested you can check out a couple of my posts here and here. Seattle-based startup, HelpHive, recently altered their service based on some strong opinions from local business owners. The gist of the…
New Tech Rally?
I caught the swine flu which has taken me out of commission. I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle after a long rest. Waking up to see a flurry of M&A activity as well as large financings. In the last couple of days we had EA buy Playfish for $400M, Google buying AdMob for…
Is Facebook’s Open Graph A Master Stroke?
The recent Facebook announcements were extremely interesting to me. I continue to see a familiar pattern around relying too heavily on one platform. From a developers standpoint, its hard to build a business if you don't own the very ground that you are building on. I have blogged about this topic before and I still…
Are Seattle Entrepreneurs Wimps?
I have not been keeping up with my blog posts. I started a new job a couple of months ago and that has eaten up all of my spare hours when I am not maximizing my time with my family. I've spent my career jumping between startups and big companies. I seem to alternate between these…
Interested In Social Gaming?
We're doing some very cool things over here at RealGames. In particular, we're growing out social gaming group. There are a bunch of jobs available, including: Producer Art Director Sr. SDET Software Development Engineer (Flash) Software Dev Engineer (Java) Sr. Software Dev Engineer (Java) Check them out here.
