Damir Perge's Blog: Entrepreneur Insights from the Trenches, page 10

Startup Execution: When Doing Nothing Adds to Something

Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is better than doing something. Just keeping busy doesn’t make you more productive.I've always disliked the busy job of generating business reports. "Document reporting" is something I was personally famous for not doing. When I worked for someone else, they learned quickly the best way to see my reports was to look at the sales closed. My mentality has always been simple—if you want to understand my personal throughput, simply observe the output. Even when...

Startup Founder Revulsion

It was a sunny afternoon in Dallas, and I was sitting on the busy patio of one of my favorite Tex-Mex restaurants. The cool breeze made me feel like I was back in Silicon Valley. I was having a business lunch with an extremely beautiful girl; the sun rays reflected on her gorgeous eyes and contagious smile. My first thought was, “Lucky for her, I’m off the market.”

Somehow we got on the subject of personal relationships – specifically relationship revulsion. She told me emphatically, “If you l...

Startup Bottleneck: The Vice President of the Sales Prevention Department

Lately, the importance of finding bottlenecks in any business process has become an obsession with me. The reason is simple. When you remove major bottlenecks in any part of your business process that delivers value to your customers, you increase the speed of your business in delivering value. In today’s digital world, speed of execution is of the utmost importance in any business strategy—if you want to win the war for market dominance.

There are process bottlenecks and there are psychologic...

Entreprenetics: Learn About Startup Confidence from Chelsea's Juan Mata

The psychology of the entrepreneur mind is critical to any business—especially a startup. Startup businesses operate more on visions than any tangible assets. You know it as much as I do— your startup's fuel is psychological. The key psychological elements are passion, belief and confidence to turn ideas into reality.

I was briefly watching today's Manchester United vs. Chelsea game while doing some startup work. Scoreless in the second half, Man U’s right forward, Antonio Valencia, had an inc...

Startup Pareto Mentality: The Minimization of Effort with Maximization of Results

There is something magical about Pareto’s Law, the 20-80 rule. In simple terms, 20% of your variables (or your effort) generate 80% of your results (your goals). The same principle applies to the overall efforts of your startup, revenue generation coming from your products or services—and even the employees working for you.

There are simply some activities that generate the highest amount of return, whatever the return intended. The critical part is to find out which 20% of your efforts can br...

Startup Rhythm: How Using Lionel Messi Dribbling Principles of Slowing Down Increases Startup Speed

If you've ever played sports seriously, you understand the power of rhythm. When I played soccer, my trademark was in the art of dribbling. One fundamental of dribbling is to develop a rhythm when the ball is at your feet. The Brazilians of old, such as Pele and Garrincha, were the masters of bringing rhythm to their dribbling style.

Today's top rhythm player is Lionel Messi—the best football (soccer) player in the world. Barcelona lost to Bayern Munich recently because Messi was out with an i...

Entreprenetics: When Parking Magic Turns into Chair Magic

Some months ago, I wrote about the mystical power of parking magicand how it can be applied to entrepreneurship. It also works extremely well in getting a seat at a very busy bar. Here's my text to my girlfriend and business partner, Jana Arnold.

Part 1:The Problem—I can't get a damn seat at my favorite restaurant.

Part 2:The Solution—I transform parking magic into chair magic.

Now back to finishing my cup of Starbucks espresso. Tell me your thoughts by commenting below.

© 2013 entrepreneurdex

Mor...

Businessnatomy: How Military Strategy Plays Out in a Business Model for Samsung Against Apple

First class or not, it’s a long flight to Hong Kong. I’ve flown from the U.S. to Africa, Europe and South America—but the flight heading east to Hong Kong is grueling. After 14 hours, or what seemed like an eternity, I landed in Hong Kong. I took a train to my hotel and was immediately impressed by the organization and cleanliness of the mass transit system. I was welcomed into Hong Kong with a text message from my 19-year-old daughter.

“Hi, dad. What’s Hong Kong like?” I texted back quickly,...

The Infinite Startup Rechargeable Battery

In nature, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Otherwise you violated the first law of thermodynamics. In the world of startups, the opposite is true. Energy can be created or destroyed, and most importantly, amplified.

I returned late on a Friday from a week-long trip of raising capital. Vince Lombardi’s famous saying, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all,” is so very true. When you’re raising capital for your startup, you have to be mentally and physically fit. As fit as I was in both of the...

Startup Juice: The NewsCred Variety

As an investor, one thing I look for in any startup is whether the entire team is drinking the same startup juice—from founders to employees to even interns. I don't say, “Drinking the same Kool-Aid,” because there are negative connotations surrounding that particular phrase.

Drinking startup juice is case dependent because each startup has its own culture. There are different varieties ofjuices in the beverage market, and there are infinite varieties of startup juice.

The basic, common key ing...