Fraud

Horror Story of Small Business Fraud

By Tim Berry

If you’re a business owner, and especially if you’re in the expert business, you should know this small business fraud story. It involves a very sophisticated scheme, including a fraudulent cashier’s check, and a very well faked charity, that would have fooled me. This could happen to me or to you Melinda Emerson, a good... Read More »

Video: Scott Cook: Savor Surprises in Business

By Tim Berry

Nice short video of Scott Cook giving a great example of how surprises come up in business. My Friday video for this week, from Stanford eCorner. He talks about discovering the value of doing simple bookkeeping for people who aren’t accountants and don’t care about debits and credits. As he tells how Intuit discovered the... Read More »

Headlines: Naked, Vicious, Brutal, and So Forth

By Tim Berry

I was 26 years old. Married, already a father, but still, so young, and so full of illusions. I still thought – although I was starting to wonder – journalism could be about changing the world for the better. And not at all ready to accept the truth as Matt Kenny presented it to me... Read More »

Business Plan Toolkit

How did Tim Berry grow Palo Alto software?

By Tim Berry

I was amused to check in with Quora this morning and find somebody had asked me to answer “How Did Tim Berry Grow Palo Alto Software?” Obviously that’s a question dear to my heart. So here’s what I answered, which seems fitting for this blog today. Not spending money we didn’t have Slowly, carefully, bolstered... Read More »

True Story: Steve Balmer Drops Out

By Tim Berry

“What? Steve Balmer dropped out? He’s not coming back?” “Nope. He did his summer job at a software startup in Washington, and he’s staying there and quitting here.” So went the gossip in September of 1980 as the Stanford MBA class of 1981 finished up the summer vacation and started the second of the two-year... Read More »

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Fear

By Tim Berry

Whether you’re making a speech before thousands of people in an auditorium or just two people in the small conference room, there are professionals who proclaim confidence is key. Stay poised – be bold – win your audience with self-confidence. I’ve noticed a much different pattern with myself, though, when public speaking. It came up... Read More »

Tim Berry mixergy interview

The Broken Spreadsheet That Birthed a Business

By Tim Berry

I thoroughly enjoyed doing this Mixergy Interview, published this week, about how I bootstrapped Palo Alto Software from zero to about $10 million annual revenues: It started one morning at 2 a.m., when I had to deliver a finished set of financials the next morning. It was 2 a.m. and I was tired and done with... Read More »

True Story: Social Media Morality Tale

By Tim Berry

The Chronicle of Higher reported last week on this news item on a social media director getting caught lying about her resume and exposed via social media: … social-media director quit her post on Monday after it was alleged that she had lied about graduating from college on her résumé—an assertion that, ironically, first bubbled up... Read More »