How to Raise Successful Kids Without Overparenting

By Tim Berry

My video this week is somewhat like a compliment to my post yesterday, 5 tips on raising children as entrepreneurs. This is a TED talk from last November, Julie Lythcott-Haims: How to raise successful kids — without over-parenting. Here’s how TED summarizes: With passion and wry humor, the former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford makes the... Read More »

5 Tips for Raising Children as Entrepreneurs

By Tim Berry

I’m an entrepreneur, founder of Palo Alto Software. My wife and I are parents of five grown-up children, all involved with startups (Curious? check out Palo Alto Software, Rebelmouse, Octane AI and HavePresence.) Does this just “happen” by osmosis, or did my wife and I do something specific to raising children as entrepreneurs? Was it... Read More »

Venn Diagram Entrepreneurship and Meaning

The Natural Intersection of Entrepreneurship and Meaning

By Tim Berry

Thanks to typeform.com for the fascinating image featured here about the intersection of entrepreneurship and meaning. It comes from an interview with Laurence McCahill of The Happy Startup School. Normal people care about meaning This matches my belief that making meaning or changing the world or having a reason why matters to people. And it matters... Read More »

Do You Suffer from Distraction Sickness

By Tim Berry

Does this seem familiar to you:  I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Andrew Sullivan That’s from Andrew Sullivan:... Read More »

MBA and tech startups

Does an MBA Help in Running a High-Tech Business?

By Tim Berry

Question (on Quora): Does an MBA help in starting up and running a technology-based business? My Answer on MBA for High Tech I have an MBA degree and I bootstrapped a software company past $10M annual sales and was a co-founder of another software company that went public in less than four years. And the... Read More »

Business for Life not Life for Business

By Tim Berry

We talk about work-life balance, in general terms, but here’s one simple thought that should always be there in the background: Your business exists to make your life better. Not vice-versa. Don’t sacrifice your life to make your business better. I got a lot of play on Twitter recently with this simple idea. And this post... Read More »

Future Shock Top 10 Backwards Look

By Tim Berry

Ah yes, the good old days. How quickly time passes. And I can’t help occasionally browsing through technology looking back. My youngest daughter is in her late twenties now. She can barely remember life before cellphones, and can’t remember life before personal computers or VCRs, because both of those were born before she was. I was... Read More »

Build Yourself a Compatible Goals Filter

By Tim Berry

Suggestion: on any kind of business relationship, take a step back, open your eyes, and look for compatible goals. For example, one variety of hell is a startup with founders and investors having different goals. Differences on how to achieve goals are hard enough. You can talk out those differences. But when investors want one... Read More »