secret

Startup Secret No. 20: Easy money, it ain't

"It's harder than you think."

--Multiple sources

At one of the CES events last week, I asked Vladimir Tetelbaum of Swivl for a Startup Secret. "It's harder than you think," he said, about launching a company. "But it's also a lot more fun."

OK, good tip. I was hoping for something a bit more specific, but I can dig it.

Later that evening, I found myself talking with Matt Rogers, the founder of Nest. Got any good secrets? I asked. "Yeah," he said to me, with a sidelong glance. &… Read more

Going dark means crazy day for anti-SOPA site owners

With sites like Reddit, BoingBoing, PostSecret, and I Can Has Cheezburger blacked out today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, you might think this would be a peaceful, relaxed Wednesday for the people who run them. You'd be wrong.

All across the Internet, sites like those and many others stood up to register their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. But for some of those who have gotten the most attention for their activism, today has actually been crazier than usual, despite not having to constantly update their publications all day.

"Today … Read more

Startup Secret No. 19: Shift your own gears

"Scalability is overrated."

--Tony Emerson, SEO Analyst, SpareFoot

How do you say, "Screw you" in Silicon Valley? Ask, "Does it scale?"

It's one of those obnoxious conversation killers that entrepreneurs get all the time. The appropriate answer, I think, is this: "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks so much for asking!"

Of course it scales. Or maybe it doesn't, because it's not supposed to. Or, as Tony from SpareFoot adds, maybe scaling--that is, finding a way to automate the technology, or lower the resources required, for incremental … Read more

Startup Secret No. 18: Stealth is nonsense

"If the only thing protecting your startup is a secret, you need a new idea."

--Brian Wong, CEO, Kiip

At an extremely loud CES party (ours), the extremely energetic CEO of the game monetization company Kiip lectured me on how openness leads to happiness. The more you talk about your startup, Brian says, the more you learn. You get people who love it and want to help. You get questions you haven't considered. You get people who hate your idea -- and you learn from those discussions.

What you don't get is somebody who hears your … Read more

Startup Secret No. 17: Chase storms

"Attach yourself to a tornado."

--Aaron Levie, CEO, Box

I'm impressed with Box and with its founder, Aaron Levie. His company has managed to find traction in a murderous commodity space: online storage. Box did it by focusing on the enterprise market, which is smart, but also unusual for a company run by such a young guy. Aaron is 27 and started Box when he was 20. Usually, I think, the whippersnappers build products for other kids. Think Jobs and Zuckerberg. (Gates was an anomaly).

Aaron is aggressive beyond even what I see in most startup founders. … Read more

Startup Secret No. 16: That cush job will kill you

"Big companies are riskier than small companies."

--Laura Yecies, CEO of SugarSync

Unlike most of the small tech company CEOs I interview, Laura does not come from a family of entrepreneurs. She told me that, growing up, she learned to "misperceive risk" in business. She believed, as I think many people do, "that smaller companies are inherently riskier than big companies."

Over time, she has come to understand that she was dead wrong, at least from the perspective of modern career management. "In small companies you know better what's going on," … Read more

Startup Secret No. 15: Early money

"Don't be afraid of raising money."

--Chris Reid, co-founder of Sortable

One piece of advice I hear frequently from entrepreneurs is this: "Don't take money before you need to." Especially if your company is pre-revenue, taking money early means that investors will be placing big bets on you, and they often compensate for that by insisting on onerous terms. You could be left owning very little of the company you're founding.

But Chris Reid of Sortable has a different opinion. "Don't worry about raising early," he told me after I … Read more

Apple loses bid to seal already public OS information

A federal judge has denied Apple's effort to seal information related to its copyright infringement case against Psystar, ruling that information already publicly available on the Internet and in print is no longer protectable.

Apple had attempted to seal documents containing information about its Mac OS X operating system and computer products as a trade secret, presumably to keep others from modifying Apple's OS to run on unauthorized hardware. Apple argued that because it was not the source of the information that the trade secret protection still existed.

However, U.S. Federal District Judge William Alsup disagreed in … Read more

Startup Secret No. 14: The class you need to take

"Learn finance."

--Rafat Ali, founder of paidContent. Currently founder of Skift, a travel intelligence startup

Rafat Ali started his influential site about digital media in 2002. He took funding from Greycroft in 2006, sold the company to Guardian Media in 2008, and left Guardian in 2010. He's working on another startup now. (Side note: Guardian recently put paidContent on the block.)

I got this tip by asking him for something that came from his experience moving his company from idea to his own departure. He added:

"These days it is trendy to tell people to learn … Read more

PostSecret shuts down iPhone app due to abusive posts

PostSecret, the popular blog and new-media project that's long given people a place to share their deepest, darkest thoughts, today announced it has shut down its young iPhone app due to malicious postings.

PostSecret founder Frank Warren, who receives hundreds of postcards and letters from strangers every week and posts about 20 of them on his blog on Sundays, said he's "pained" by the close of the PostSecret app, which launched in September. But its demise is due in part to its success.

"Although today--the first day after the death of the app--is painful, it … Read more