A lot of advice given to people (and, to some extent, to companies) amounts to “just be yourself”, or “just be comfortable with who you are instead of trying to change”. This advice is well intentioned, fundamentally, and yet I think it’s not all that helpful. How can I
This article was originally posted on swombat.com in December 2010. This question pops up regularly on Hacker News. What will kill Facebook? Before that, it was "What will kill Google?" There was no Hacker News before that, but if there had been, it would have been "
"Teal" is a hot topic these days. I wouldn't go as far as to say that everyone wants to be Teal, but it's definitely something on a lot of people's minds. Frédéric Laloux's excellent book, Reinventing Organisations, has inspired many
This was originally posted on swombat.com in April 2011. Learning how to pitch an idea effectively is an enormously useful skill that they never really teach you at university or at school. It's the kind of thing you learn from personal experience. There are many articles providing
This was originally posted on swombat.com in March 2011. On my first startup, I made the mistake of not talking to customers at all until launch day. As a result, the product sucked - it was not fit for any market. And because it was unfocused, it was impossible
This article was originally published on swombat.com in February 2011. Yesterday, I attended an IP Review Event organised by the Intellectual Property Office in the UK. The focus was a review of "Intellectual Property" and how it impacted entrepreneurs. About 30 startup founders were represented in the
