Bplans.com Palo Alto Software
 
 

From the category archives:

Business Stories

All Good Beards Must Come to an End

by Tim Berry on February 20, 2009

in Business Stories

I guess this means I’m still an entrepreneur at heart. I promised the team that when Email Center Pro reached its first major milestone, I’d shave off my beard. And that happened today — both the milestone and the beard….

{ 4 comments }

Design came to mean a lot to me in business when the lack of it nearly killed my business in 1993. The Palo Alto Software of those days had only me and two other employees. We got into retail with…

{ 0 comments }

And the Lawyer Just Smiled

by Tim Berry on September 12, 2008

in Business Stories

We struggled with formulas. How much would this business be worth in one circumstance or another? We tried to imagine all the ramifications. There was a lot of Excel work. We were working on a contract with marketing vendors. It…

{ 2 comments }

This is so cool: writing in Escape From Cubicle Nation yesterday, Pamela Slim suggests that social good is a natural extension of entrepreneurship. This reminds me, happily, of the dreams of the late 1960s, when a lot of us –…

{ 2 comments }

The original skit was on Saturday Night Live, Season 1 Episode 5. Dan Ackroyd was the husband, Gilda Radner the wife, and Chevy Chase the announcer. It’s become a bit of a Silicon Valley icon, standing for something: Wife: New…

{ 1 comment }

How to Lose a Job Before the Interview

by Tim Berry on September 5, 2008

in Business Stories

Story time. Stanley Bing understands how to tell a story. It just rolls right up to the punchline. This one, How to lose a job before the interview, was on The Bing Blog last week. It’s about a guy who…

{ 0 comments }

I was reminded of Adam Osborne (1939-2003) yesterday. If you’re old enough to have been hooked on computers in 1981, you’ll remember the Osborne 1 — Adam’s flagship product — as the first true portable, squat and ugly, but priced…

{ 3 comments }

We Don’t Want Your Revenue

by Tim Berry on August 27, 2008

in Business Stories, True Stories

We sat in a beautiful conference room, about the fifth floor, in the San Francisco financial district. Our host, a dot-com company that will remain nameless, had the entire floor of a large office building. The conference room had a…

{ 0 comments }

I’m happy today to not be the author of Marketing Plan Pro. Why? Because the author of the new version is John Jantsch, marketing guru, the man who built Duct Tape Marketing. Getting John on board was a big deal…

{ 1 comment }

I picked up an interesting comment the other day: The customer might always be right, but the client isn’t. Intriguing thought. It came from a bright young woman who’s done a lot of PR work. She has a very good…

{ 1 comment }