Damir Perge's Blog: Entrepreneur Insights from the Trenches, page 8

Smartness Spectrum: The Invisible Smarter

If you study and analyze the natural progression of technologies, you can see a simple trend: objects of any kind are getting smaller, faster, and simpler. I still recall the first time I used a computer as a teenager—like it was yesterday. I was at my uncle’s office in Austin. Nobody was around the office so I decided to power up IBM’s desktop computer (1981) with MS-DOS[1] (5.25") disk. It was such an intimidating experience for me. I felt stupid. I couldn’t figure out how to use the damn c...

Entreprenetics: Inspired By The Impossible

The fundamental foundation behind the psychology of the entrepreneur mind is simple—believe in the impossible. Let those four words sink into your conscious and subconscious. You can believe in the impossible if you allow your entrepreneur brain to become inspired by the impossible.

Let your innovative mind embrace it, accept it and own it. You can do this because you are the captain, director and master of your brain.

Your innovative neurons (and all the billions of highly clustered linkages b...

Businessnatomy: The Problem with the Free(ad)mium Business Model

(Source: Damir Perge picture of Ivan Perge, © 2013 entrepreneurdex)

If you've ever worked in Silicon Valley, you quickly learn the power of the freemium business model. This is what I call the primary "West Coast Business Model." The freemium business model mentality has been enormously successful for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

The Silicon Valley Product Mantra is to build a great product, hit market liquidity in terms of having a high number of eyeballs as quickly as you can—and then com...

The Amplification of Startup Speed

When it comes to startups, speed is critical. If you’re a startup yourself, I don’t have to remind you that you are likely to be under-resourced and disadvantaged. You probably feel the entrepreneur pressure to get out into the marketplace and start getting startup traction. If you’re already in the marketplace, you’re focused on engaging the audience and keeping them. Hopefully, you’re figuring out how to reach startup liquidity by making them pay you for your services sooner than later. The...

Startup Dyslexia: Dyslexic Members in Your Startup Team = Competitive Advantage

When it comes to building a startup team, incorporating diversity within your startup can provide an incredible advantage. Diversity of intellectual capital built into the power of swarm intelligence can help solve any problem, especially any startup problem you may face in the future.

I recently wrote about the power of startup team diversity and pointed out that in today’s digital era, experience and age can become a huge advantage. In fact, no matter how cool your startup, even if it is com...

Entreprenetics: Sleep and Let Things Play Out

When you enter unexpected startup situations that can cause significant changes and direction in your startup outcome, the natural thing to do is to push really hard for the answers and results.

If someone (or something) is causing you startup headaches, the logical thing to do is to address it immediately. In these types of business scenarios, you’re letting emotion possibly cloud your entrepreneur judgment.

The best thing you can do for your entrepreneur mind is to sleep on it and let things...

The Fundamentals of Startup Speed: Stop All Distractions

When you manage your startup, you need to focus on increasing your speed at every point in the business process. Remember, the market odds are stacked against you due to the physics behind the power law. Imagine your startup is a dolphin swimming through an ocean infested with sharks. Just like the dolphin, you must think quickly, act quicker and execute even faster.

In order to increase speed in your startup, look for pockets of slowness in all parts of your startup process. In business-lingo...

Entreprenetics: Startup Stress Ball for the Capital Raising Process

When I lived in Silicon Valley, before I raised my first $100 million venture capital fund—I’m not going to deny it to you—it was very stressful. Whether you’re raising capital for a venture fund or your startup, the process can become gruesome. It is especially gruesome when you’re doing something revolutionary. In my case, I was raising my VC fund based on the principles of complexity science. I was turned down repeatedly in the beginning because most people didn’t get it at the time.

I was...

Entreprenetics: The Pitfalls of a Startup Knee-Jerk Reaction

On one of the three startups we are accelerating into the marketplace, I made a knee-jerk reaction and changed a key component of the startup’s business strategy. Needless to say, the rest of the team wasn't excited about this strategic change but I did an incredibly damn good job selling them on the change. So they followed along with some huffing and puffing.

One night, (three days later) while attempting to relax by taking a hot shower, it hit me hard -- this business strategy change was a...

Startupmentals: The Art of Startup Hiring and Firing

There is a consensus among many entrepreneurs when it comes to startup hiring practices: Hire slowly and fire quickly. I am not sure this is good enough if you want to increase the speed of your startup. When you’re a startup, unless the startup already has a “halo effect1” surrounding it, you don’t have the luxury of hiring slowly and firing quickly. With market odds against you, thanks to the physics of the power law2, you have to move as quickly as the wind.

From my perspective, you should...