Being Mindful in your Startup
I’ve been reading over the past few days Eric Ries’ highly anticipated book, “The Lean Startup“. It’s a very good read so far (I’m only about a 1/3 of the way through it) – and I will probably write more about it in the future. But one thing that jumped to my mind while reading [...]
Continue Reading →Startup Authenticity – Avoid the Bullshit!
One of my pet peeves is the level of utter bullshit that comes out of so many people’s yappers. Politicians are probably the worst when it comes to fork-tongued doublespeak gobbledygook; but it certainly extends beyond that to many in both professional and sometimes even personal lives. And yes, many businesses suffer from the same. [...]
Continue Reading →Startup Productivity: Are you the Hare or the Tortoise?
I read an interesting blog post this morning by Brad Feld on his personal blog, Feld Thoughts (A fantastic blog, by the way, and highly recommended reading to all tech startups). The thesis in the post was around “Slowing Down To Speed Up“. In a few brief words, the post had to do with burnout [...]
Continue Reading →Comparing All The New Payment Methods – NFC, Mobile Wallet, Self Checkout, and More
Not a day goes by without hearing about a new type of payment technology that is making the rounds. We think it’s incredibly exciting to be a part of this enormous shift in thinking where how consumers pay is literally limited to your own imagination. From a phone tap, to ultrasound, to paying from fifty [...]
Continue Reading →Mobile Payments – The Next Step in the Consumer Revolution
The consumer revolution has been raging for a long time, and the interactions between business and consumers is at yet another tipping point right now. One of the last bastions is the world of payments, where consumers in physical establishments still have to yield control to the retailer. The struggle has been a long time [...]
Continue Reading →Building High Quality Mobile Apps that are Easy to Use
As of this post, the Apple App Store has over 500,000 apps and the Android Market has close to 300,000. That’s a lot of apps! But what does that really mean? Secretly, I have always wondered why this was an advertising pitch for Apple and Google. Is 200,000 apps any better than 100,000 apps? When [...]
Continue Reading →Google’s Mobile Wallet and NFC – an Evolution, Not a Revolution
Yesterday’s news was dominated with the announcement by Google of their new Mobile Wallet solution, powered by NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. The intent of Google Wallet is to replace your credit card with an NFC chip that can be “tapped” on a compatible payment system to record your payment. While not the first company [...]
Continue Reading →Being a Startup in Boston is Friggen Awesome
One of the things I feel very fortunate about is to be located in Massachusetts. OK, so TotalTab isn’t quite in Boston, but it’s not that far. Definitely commuting distance! When I first came to Massachusetts in 1999 to start my freshman year of college, I remember being immediately drawn by the city, for reasons [...]
Continue Reading →Startup Accelerators and Older Founders
When Ryan and I first started working on TotalTab back in March, I remember first learning about the concept of a startup accelerator. I had heard about YCombinator before (I think from Inc. magazine several years earlier), but never really understood exactly what they did or how they worked. As we started building out our [...]
Continue Reading →Moving from Idea to Execution
As I have spent the last eight weeks with Ryan working on TotalTab, I’ve felt a renewed sense of energy and purpose in my life. There is something so liberating about moving from idea towards execution, even if there is a lot of uncertainty about the bumps in the road that we will (undoubtedly) hit. I suppose [...]
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