wmougayar

Thanks.

Good points, and I agree mostly during the early startup stages, but when you start to reach 25-30+ people and over, then people & company management can make a difference.

Actually, "successful" isn't a good criteria. Any entrepreneur who is on their way to success, or trying to be successful should be counted.

The lessons on the path to success are many, and they are varied.

Good momentum in Boston startup tech, for sure.

Re: "Market to your users. Getting attention from people who won’t buy your product is a waste of time and money."

That statement is misleading. It's not an "or" situation. You need to market to both your existing users and your prospects (users or customers). You can't just rely on viral and word of mouth for growth. Yup, good marketing is not easy- you need to figure out your segmentation and reach your prospects cleverly.

Actually, being "differentiated" is what's needed, not being different. There is a difference :) sorry for the pun.

Differentiated means that your statement is very defensible, and the competition cannot copy it or it will backfire on them. Differentiated means very unique to you, and it creates a position in the minds of your prospects that lodges you there and keeps you there.

For e.g., "“a16z enables entrepreneurs to utilize expertise from Operating Partners who specialize in business development, technical talent, executive talent, market intelligence, marketing and brand building” is a differentiated statement, but "Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to the best new technology companies" is not.

I wrote a long post on Positioning: The Battle for Your Startup- that explains a modern version of Positioning, http://startupmanagement.org/2013/04/18/positioning-the-batt...

I'd love to hear from the HN community on this topic. Thanks.

Let's hope that Facebook is experimenting with this, such that the end-result is not 80% ads. Facebook pages are starting to get noisy. I'm trying http://www.pinvolve.co/ and it removes all ads from your FB pages.

Think of these acquisitions as a warm-up for bigger things to come. Let's see what these lucky entrepreneurs do with their money inside Canada. 

What's more shameful is that RIM didn't produce millionaire entrepreneurs that went on and created new companies.  That could have happened and should have happened, but it hasn't happened. 

@fakegrimlock is as genuine as can be. His advice is golden and right on. Just accept him and his persona as they are.

That makes a lot of sense. We need more responses like that.

The key point of this article is that when you make decisions that are meant to optimize profits and lower costs, you're mortgaging your future. The money quote is that companies forget about the knowledge that's lost forever which prevents companies from further innovations in the future. But the argument can be made that companies can re-use the savings and re-invest in innovation. Look at Apple: they manufacture where it's cheap (China), but they keep design and innovation in the US.

This definitely sucks for Canada. The Telco's and the antiquated regulation that protects them are big gatekeepers to progress and innovation. How do we break out of this deadlock?

Another useful thing: Stick to deadlines. Otherwise, there is a tendency to take as much time as time is available. Don't assume that time is infinite. Give yourself short deadlines all day long and you'll get a lot more things done.

True, but they had an enormous amount of funding early on that allowed them to do that. So the lesson for the lean startup is to know when to get the big investment type of funding that allows you to think big, think long-term and go for the jugular as he said.