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Learning from an Early Flop
The BagPack, sold at HandsFreeGroceries.com, has been on sale for just about a year this month. It’s time to take stock, figuratively speaking, but also literally. I just withdrew BagPack inventory from Amazon’s distribution center. It’s not that I want to stop selling it, it’s just that I need to avoid Amazon’s long-term inventory charge. […]
What’s the difference between business and self-employment? Is what I’m doing a business or a job?
I found myself asking this question this morning. Here’s what I told myself. The key difference must be whether future revenue is directly the result of future labor. If I can earn $100 next week only by working on my business that week, then I’m self-employed. But if I can reasonably expect to get that $100 regardless of how hard I […]
The Digital Gentrification of Facebook and the Internet
One of my concerns the last month has been a change Facebook made to their algorithm. They’re basically making it impossible to reach fans of business pages without paying to promote posts or get likes. They call it “declining organic reach.” If you decide to pay for likes, the results may surprise you. I wrote in December […]
Angel Investors in Boston
ArtistBomb, Inc. has not pitched in front of any investor or group of angel investors in Boston. We’ve had plenty of practice, and plenty of one-on-one conversations with mentors and gatekeepers. Their questions and comments have surprised me. These folks aren’t what I thought. The Investor Spectrum At the far “conservative” end you have Ben […]
How I’m Spending My Time: Update
Back in September I wrote a short piece about how I was spending my time. Since it’s about six months later I thought I’d update the graph. These are 40 day moving averages. When I think about where my financial future lies, I think it’s mostly ArtistBomb and partly MassLandlords.net. The way I spend my […]
The Ugly Truth Behind Paying for Facebook Likes on a Facebook Business Page
The Experiment I recently tested paying for Facebook likes on a Facebook business page. It seemed like a low-effort way to build a channel for future marketing messages. Start with some good page content, put in some money, and watch it grow. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have expected so much. Let me show you […]
Ghostbusters: The Perfect Startup Business
A couple weekends ago I decided to go back to the 80’s and re-watch the original Ghostbusters movie (1984). When you revisit something you knew as a kid, you pick up on things you never saw before. With this movie, I saw the perfect startup business. As with any startup, it begins with an idea. […]
Small Business Challenges I Didn’t Expect
Everyone knows “when you start a company, it’s hard work.” But so far there have been a few small business challenges that I didn’t expect because they’re so lame, no one ever talks about them. Allow me. Small Business Challenge #1: Business Bank Account Some time ago I called a bank that was recommended to […]
Does it Matter How Founders Split Startup Equity?
Ask the question, “How should founders split startup equity?” and you will most likely receive a hand-wavy answer. Some offer blanket statements like, “The programmer should get at least 30%.” Others offer calculators or other arbitrary measures. These answers have never satisfied me. Before I offer a more rigorous approach, I’d like to play Devil’s Advocate […]
Time Management and GTD During My “Search”
I’d like to share some interesting time management data I’ve collected over the last nine months. When I first left Terrafugia, in October 2012, I started what my McKinsey friend called “search.” That’s when your full time job becomes finding your next full time job. I was busy with “search” the very first day off […]
