This image is scary. To be honest, it is not clear where the numbers come from, so take it with a grain of salt.
This was reblogged multiple times, check out this explanation.
This image is scary. To be honest, it is not clear where the numbers come from, so take it with a grain of salt.
This was reblogged multiple times, check out this explanation.
One of the key tasks for starting a business is validating the idea - a task that is, unfortunately, often neglected. Therefore, Validation is a key ingredient of Sramana Mitra's EJ Methodology. Sramana even provides support for validation in the form of a list of "Clarify your story" questions. I was still struggling on how to engage potential customers in validation.
I found support in this Seth Godin post regarding business plans. It didn't look like much, but when I tried to restate my ideas in terms of Truths and Assertions, I realized that the Assertions were a great starting point for validation.
I have always been suspicious towards social networks. Still, I have a profile on most networks. It usually points people towards a place that I control myself (my web presence and my email).
Yesterday, I got a notification by Xing that they deactivated my account. After some probing, they finally tell me why (because I have two accounts there). Fine, delete the older one. Except... that they delete the wrong one. Answer from Xing: "Sorry, can't be undone!"
Whatever. Just another warning to everybody to be careful on how deeply you are willing to invest into a platform that you don't control.
This is not the first unpleasant encounter I had with Xing, I will probably keep the (barely connected) profile there, until they decide to delete that one too.
Sramana Mitra certainly things big when she resolved to help one Million entrepreneurs to reach annual revenues of at least one Million US Dollars.
"I have come to conclude that the most vulnerable phase in an
entrepreneur's life is the pre-$1 million revenue stage. This is where
numerous ventures fail. Once the $1 million revenue milestone is
crossed, it's easier for entrepreneurs to find additional customers,
manage working capital and access funding, whether it is credit or
equity."
Way to go, Sramana! This is a great answer to the financial crisis of today. If we want our wealth to be sustainable, we have to create it.
"A FEW times a year, Charlemagne has the luck to teach students at a European management school in Paris. It is an enlightening experience (for your columnist, at least). One popular question has been why some European Union policies are so contentious in places like France, notably the commitment to an internal market based on “free and undistorted competition”. After a while, the penny dropped. If you play word association, it turns out that for many in a Parisian classroom, the polar opposite of “competition” is “solidarity”: ie, the useful rigour imposed by competition is overshadowed by the pain caused as society divides into winners and losers. For Anglo-Saxon liberals, the instinctive opposite of “competition” is “monopoly”: ie, the pain of competition is justified by a quest for fairness, even before getting to arguments about efficiency and companies’ long-term fitness."
I had a few issues getting Rodin 1.1 to work properly after Updating Ubuntu to 9.10. The main issue is the HTML-Viewer that Eclipse uses. It wraps Firefox/xulrunner in an SWT-Control. Unfortunately, Firefox 3.5 (xulrunner 1.9.1) is incompatible with Eclipse 3.4, on which Rodin is based.
To work around this problem, you need to install xulrunner 1.9.0. I installed it locally at ~/opt/xulrunner-1.9.0.15
Next, you need to edit your rodin.ini (in the Rodin installation directory) and add the following line:
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=~/opt/xulrunner-1.9.0.15
That's it! This also works for running Eclipse 3.4 (in that case, you have to edit eclipse.ini).
Good luck!
Great video that puts today's achievements and our expectations into perspective:
For my own reference:
Ich war ganz schön erstaunt, als ich die Mitgliederentwicklung der Piratenpartei bei Wikipedia entdeckte - Seit Mai geht es steil nach oben. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, ob die Piraten es über die 5%-Hürde schaffen werden. Ich halte das für unwahrscheinlich, aber nicht unmöglich. In manchen (allerdings nicht statistisch aussagekräftigen) Umfragen haben die Piraten bis zu 30% - allerdings verschwinden sie bei der ARD-Umfragen unter "Sonstige".Die Implikation des überschreiten der 5%-Hürde wäre enorm: Mit den jetzigen Spielern gibt es wenige harmonische Koalitionen. Die große Koalition ist nicht harmonisch, rot-grün sehr unwahrscheinlich, und selbst schwarz-gelb hat nur mäßige Chancen. Aber was wäre, wenn die Piraten es schaffen würden. Da nach eigenen Aussagen "Die Ziele der Piratenpartei eng begrenzt" sind, wäre durchaus eine harmonische Dreierkoalition denkbar. Es würde auf jeden Fall ganz neue Möglichkeiten eröffnen.