I am happy to announce the availability of BERKONOMICS in book channels worldwide, including the eBook edition from Amazon. Purchase either for yourself or for an entrepreneur, board member or executive of a growing business. This book and workbook contain all the material from the BERKONOMICS emails and blogs and much more.

                  You can take “everything changes” as a rule, not an exception.  You’ll recognize the truism, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy” first stated by German Field Marshall von Moltke in the 19 th century.  This variant of the “battle plan” truism is important to internalize. 

     So you have a great new product or service that you and your associates love.  Early adopters should climb all over each other for a look.  But what have you done to test the concept against the realities of the marketplace?   Have you developed a prototype, alternate pricing schemes, even a PowerPoint mockup to show to potential buyers? 

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else.                 I have stated previously that I love absolutes – statements with no wiggle room for gray-area responses.  Well, here is one of those, and it deals with market research first and foremost.                  Let me tell you a short story at my own expense.  In 1994, (I know a long time ago), I invested over

This statement could be considered controversial.  We have previously made the case that professional investors demand more in the form of restrictive covenants and lower valuations.  Now we explore the other side of that coin.  Professional investors usually bring “smart money” to the table, defined as money that comes along with good advice and great relationships

One of the topics that came up in my post Mobile Internet Apple Facebook was around open vs. closed platforms. This issue comes up at the start of almost every new startup company in a variety of forms. I’m constantly struggling with trying to figure out the best way to pull together solutions, especially with how fast things move.

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. In many cases, I can break it down into: Customer Acquisition Cost – how will you reach prospects, how will you convert them and how

I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. I was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question. I also found this interesting graphic of the changing needs around the CTO role in different

For some reason over the past week, I've been asked by three different people I know about job opportunities that might fit them. Since, I've given them the same advice, I thought it was worth putting in my blog. I personally believe that the best way to hire, find partners, and find a job is through a network.

I just had an all-too common conversation with the founder of a startup who had spent more than a year working with a software development company who had produced a mess. The mess really comes from a developer who was willing to get started on a product that was not fully thought out. I always take a very different approach in early conversations. If I’m being asked to do startup software development, I’m going