ITNorthWest Voice

This is a blog for all the technology entrepreneurs based in the North West of Ireland - musings about our business, companies, interests, trends and any other random thing that hits us.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Decker Marketing: What a Project / Product Manager Does

Decker Marketing: What a Project / Product Manager Does

Will Price: Lessons from Ballmer

Will Price: Lessons from Ballmer

Infectious Greed: Google's Enterprise Strategy: Business as Loss Leader?

Infectious Greed: Google's Enterprise Strategy: Business as Loss Leader?: "Who would have thought that selling software into enterprises could one day become a loss-leader for a technology company's consumer strategy?"

Friday, May 27, 2005

Niall Kennedy's Weblog: Incentives and small, fast moving companies

Niall Kennedy's Weblog: Incentives and small, fast moving companies Some interesting points from Niall......

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

How I made It: Jonathan Hill, the founder and managing director of Infacta - Business - Times Online

How I made It: Jonathan Hill, the founder and managing director of Infacta - Business - Times Online Jonathan (CEO - Infacta) is one of the founding members of the ITNorthWest Group

Read/Write Web: Bringing Web 2.0 to The People

Read/Write Web: Bringing Web 2.0 to The People Thanks Richard for the link Good overview in the presentation on Web1.0, Web2.0, etc

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Amazon.com: Books: Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story

Amazon.com: Books: Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story Great book you only have to read the list of endorsments - a who's who of VC, corporate world.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Tech start-up scene poised for revival - page 2 | CNET News.com

Tech start-up scene poised for revival - page 2 | CNET News.com

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Software Only: Ballmer on Stage, at the annual Microsoft VC Summit

Software Only: Ballmer on Stage, at the annual Microsoft VC Summit Great insight into Microsoft's strategy in working with VC's, and how they track the map to their core business areas

Friday, May 13, 2005

BeyondVC: Fundraising is a distraction

BeyondVC: Fundraising is a distraction

Capital Hacks: Bootstrapping a Viral Startup

Capital Hacks: Bootstrapping a Viral Startup Great piece on how web2.0/internet2.0 ventures evolve......

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Rapid Application Development

From the creators of Basecamp and BackPack.... some great insights into the design/development cycle. All the Backpacks that weren't - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) I know companies that have corridors full of "print outs" of screen mockups/etc ..... so that people can review/comment/etc....

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Finding a Home

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Finding a Home Interesting thoughts on virtual vs central startup structure

Andrew Lark: Net-Enabled Bootstrapping

Andrew Lark: Net-Enabled Bootstrapping Some great applications listed... we use quite a few of them already.

Concrete Covina: Everything-Assured Capital

Concrete Covina: Everything-Assured Capital The opposite of Venture capital......

Monday, May 09, 2005

Bnoopy: Keeping Innovation Alive - The Hackathon

Bnoopy: Keeping Innovation Alive - The Hackathon Scheduled already.....

Licensable IP from Microsoft driving VC funding

Chase Market Velocity: Licensable IP from Microsoft driving VC funding An interesting move by Microsoft.... potential opportunities for Irish entrepreneurs ??

Tech bosses just keep on blogging

Tech bosses just keep on blogging from the Sunday Business Post A bit disappointed not to see some Irish business bloggers listed.....

Sunday, May 08, 2005

What the “long tail” means for the economics of e-commerce

Economist.com article on the "Long Tail" See also this previous post on this blog - "Serve millions of markets of dozens instead of dozens of markets of millions"

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Red Herring Blog: Notes From the Startup Front

Red Herring Blog: Notes From the Startup Front "The problem is that pricing for a loss at the beginning of the life of a business often leads to a permanently unprofitable operation. If what you have to offer doesn’t earn a profit at the outset, it’s unlikely to in the future, when you’ll be facing price pressure from competition (or from customers who almost always want more for less) and the realities of delivering a new invention to the marketplace strain your budgets."

Friday, May 06, 2005

Chase Market Velocity: Level the playing field with blogs

Chase Market Velocity: Level the playing field with blogs I couldn't agree more..... blogging is a great marketing tool.

Paul Graham business tips

Niall Kennedy's Weblog: Paul Graham business tips Quote "With most big companies you could hand over your source code and your business plan and they still would not be a threat to you." Thanks Niall for the coverage.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

€irePreneur: Entrepreneurs must learn to handle 'No'

€irePreneur: Entrepreneurs must learn to handle 'No'

"consumer enterprise" applications

From a thoughtful piece from Ken Norton, who has left Yahoo for Jotspot. "When I sat down with Joe to talk about JotSpot, I was a bit skeptical of serving the enterprise. I'd sworn off enterprise software, and really wanted to keep building consumer Internet products. What I realized is that Joe and Graham feel the same way, and that JotSpot is decidedly not an enterprise company. My epiphany was recognizing that I don't hate products that are used in a corporate setting. I just hate products that aren't built for users. The vast majority of enterprise products are built for the people who are going to purchase, administer, configure, deploy, and provision them. And these products are often despised by the people who ultimately do try to use them (duh). No wonder a large percentage of enterprise software efforts go up in smoke. The enterprise software market is broken for this reason. Companies like Salesforce.com have recently demonstrated that you can build products for users and sell them in the enterprise the way you sell services to consumers. Geoff Yang, a JotSpot investor, calls it the "consumer enterprise." It's the same thing we set out to do at Grand Central five years ago - and what the company is still doing - although we were a bit early. The people who feel the pain of enterprise software are the ones who will buy Jot's product, and they're the ones who will use it. And since it's web-based, it has far more in common with the consumer Internet products I've built than with the clunky enterprise software applications it's destined to replace. That was a really thrilling concept for me."

Monday, May 02, 2005

Word of Mouth

Some good tips "10 Questions to Develop Word of Mouth"