Somewhere along the line, ending one’s workday before 8:00 p.m. became a source of shame and sign of laziness — or at least that’s what many of us have tricked ourselves into believing. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is familiar with the funny, uncertain feeling that comes with checking out soon after…

It often takes decades to build the sort of companies that the best executives and entrepreneurs hope to create. It can take so long that by the time this value is finally created, many short-term investors will have long since jettisoned their positions. In the last couple of decades, no company…

April 17, 2012 Pricing in reverse: use a product’s price to figure out what you need to build. wrong: build something and then figure out how much you can charge. right: choose your desired price, the

0 Flares 0 Flares All humans require challenge. When we were cavemen we had to fight every day just to live…so it’s no surprise that monotonous tasks make us unhappy. Where’s the thrill of the chase? Where’s the struggle to survive? Where’s the saber-toothed tiger attack? Support can often be like…

April 25, 2012 A startup founder’s hourly rate i’m going to teach a course for first-time startup entrepreneurs called stop fucking around and get back to work. — Paul Stamatiou (@Stammy) April 23, 2012 Here is an awesome interview on Mixergy , and I like a ton of them on there. This one is Jason…

As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship. Thiel lost that one. So instead of being a…

7 Flares 7 Flares This is part of our ongoing series on scaling customer service, based on our Customer Service Scaling Timeline . This month we’re covering Stage Four . Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with interns. I’ve met some supremely motivated and talented interns. But a disturbing…

9 Flares 9 Flares The longstanding stereotype about Community Managers is that they sneak out of the room at the moment people start talking about “metrics” or “ROI”. Community Managers are focused on doing the qualitative – limiting frustration and increasing happiness in the community. Creating…

5 Flares 5 Flares Making customers happy is valuable. But your time is also valuable. Startups need every minute they can get to try to succeed. So why the hell are we still wasting time responding to the same damn questions? You know how this goes. Someone emails you asking about pricing plans, or…

Sales rep compensation plans are super important and super challenging. There’s a necessary element of incenting the right behavior while keeping things straightforward and easy to understand. Too often companies make the compensation plan a tome with a corresponding Excel file required for some…

OnStartups Building Startup Sales Teams: Tips For Founders Posted by Dharmesh Shah on August 3, 2009 in sales First off, just to be clear, I’ve never been a sales person. I’ve never even played a sales person on TV. All the points below have been pulled from startup sales teams that I think work…

Show me the money! Nothing is ever exactly as it seems in the business of technology and that certainly applies to AOL’s recent patent auction, won by Microsoft with a bid of $1.056 billion. This event wasn’t really an auction and had little to do with patents, yet it probably marks the peak of the…

I have been asked many times to provide some more gritty details on how I became Mr. Money Mustache at such an early age. Commenters and email writers have asked me to provide Salaries and Savings amounts through the years, as well as describe any windfalls or unusual maneuvers that made it all…

5 Flares 5 Flares Making customers happy is valuable. But your time is also valuable. Startups need every minute they can get to try to succeed. So why the hell are we still wasting time responding to the same damn questions? You know how this goes. Someone emails you asking about pricing plans, or…

Last week, I was invited to join 3,000 delegates to what turned out to be the largest entrepreneurship conference in the world. The Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2012 took place in Liverpool, UK (a few words about Liverpool in a moment) and its speakers and panels were selected in order to…

Everybody Wants Their Pound of Flesh (Negotiating with Buyers) I recently wrote a post about negotiating with suppliers called “ The End of the Mexican Road .” The post talked about how to find the lowest acceptable price & terms in a deal through testing. In the post I made clear that I believe…

Most real startups don’t grow like this: Instead, most successful startups grow like this: Those initial loops are unsuccessful attempts to create a product people want to use. The problem is those loops can take months and/or millions of dollars to get through, and many startups never get there.…

This article is for parents, teachers, counselors, small business owners, managers, or anyone else who interacts with others and has some influence over them. If this is you – then you are a leader. Having influence over people isn’t just about being in a formal position of authority. This is part…

America’s Intel and Britain’s ARM have long dominated different bits of the global chip market. Now each is attacking the other’s stronghold LAS VEGAS is a city of fast bucks, fast food and fast marriages. It could also be the place where a long war was declared. On January 10th Paul Otellini, the…

It’s not easy to live up to your fullest potential. There are so many obstacles that can get in the way: bosses that don’t appreciate what you have to offer, tedious projects that take up too much of your time, economies where job opportunities are scarce, the difficulty of juggling career, family,…