Brian Pontarelli is the founder of Boulder based Inversoft. The company makes profanity filtering services which can be accessed via an web based API or installed on-site and referenced as a database. The purpose, of course, is to allow the prevention or filtering of profanity or other “bad words” in user generated content. We of …
Manual automation is one of my favorite little tricks. The fact that it’s an oxymoron makes it even better. Some of the smartest startups I know use the trick of manual automation on a regular basis. So what is it? In our context, manual automation is something which is automated from the customers point of …
Many companies that I work with get nice warm introductions to potential investors, partners, or customers. Sometimes these come from someone who is highly respected by the target of the introduction. Often, this grants immediate and (as of yet) unearned loyalty to the company. And it makes the meeting happen. From the entrepreneurs perspective, this …
Social networking. It’s all the rave these days thanks to major players such as MySpace, Facebook and BeBo. Social networks have traditionally been associated with computer-savvy teens and young adults sharing photos with their friends, embedding music on their profiles and writing notes to their mini-blogs. Now, companies are vying for more than just young, …
When we first started ZOLL Data Systems (then called Pinpoint Technologies), we had several customers who hated us. I’m talking hated. They wanted to sue us. Burn us at the stake. Kill our dogs. I mean hate. The reasons were of course various, and at the time we couldn’t understand how it could be true. …
The nice robots over at Lijit keep telling me that you want to know more about “compensation” (I presume in the context of startups). As of right now, your search on this blog has been fruitless. Ok, so now you get to have a search result for your efforts. I’m sure this has made you …