The Holy Trinity of Answer Sites for Startups

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Ty Danco

Dharmesh Shah, entrepreneur (at HubSpot), angel investor and startup guru, was kind enough to let me put a post on his blog “On Startups”. The piece is entitled “Entrepreneurs: What to do if you don’t have an idea“, which follows up on my last post on establishing credibility.  Dharmesh’s book, Inbound Marketing, along with Steve Blank’s excellent website, were two principal inspirations to start this blog.

OnStartups has good articles relating to angel investing, but where it shines is its advice for entrepreneurs. I especially like the very practical “Answers” section. It, along with searches on Quora and Venture Hacks, should answer virtually any general question related to startups, be it legal, strategic, or practical.

Angels, who by and large are former entrepreneurs, are always getting questions from entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs. Regardless of the starting expertise of the questioner, I almost always send them to Startup Land’s Holy Trinity of Knowledge–OnStartups, Quora, and VentureHacks.

Filed under: Angel, startup, Web Favorites | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Blocking and Tackling vs. The Spread Offense

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Ty Danco

blocking tackling

Football fans will recognize the title as talking about the difference between fundamentals and creative razzle dazzle. Both styles, properly mastered, win games. Which brings me to my two new favorite reads.

Bill Payne’s blog discusses the fundamentals of angel investing, with the wisdom gained from a grind-it-out veteran. In contrast, Tom Eisenmann’s HBS class blog “Launching Tech Ventures,” frequently dazzles,  scoring often based on the surprise factor. I’ve already noted my admiration for Professor Eisenmann’s posting of the readings for his class, and I’m dutifully working my way through the homework. (more…)

Filed under: Angel, Boston, startup, Web Favorites | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Top 4, err, 5, make that 7 Web Analytics sites? Help!

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Ty Danco

website analytics chart

I need to do a post (or one of these days just update the Topics Page) on Web Analytics and Social Media.  More importantly, I have to learn more about these things myself, so for now I’m just going to quickly pass along this great link here by @Avinash.

Avinash is my favorite read to date,  including lots of beginner guides as well as more advanced stuff I haven’t tackled yet. This website already links to posts with Dave McClure on his pirate analytics, Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot,  and David Cancel of Performable, but I’ll need to include others, like Hiten Shah‘s Kissmetrics, Compete.com, and the big freebie, Google Analytics.  And of course, almost all of these guys are interviewed somewhere on Mixergy.

I’m guessing I can do a better job of crowdsourcing this via this post and a question on Quora. If you post some suggestions below, I’ll check them out and try to repost in a month or two after digesting the answers. Thanks–this is super relevant for several of my angel investments. And this old dog needs several new tricks.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Web Favorites | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The Most-Read VC Blogs: Thanks to Larry Cheng of Volition Capital

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Ty Danco

While I’ve listed my favorite blogs (see the Authors tab, as well as the blogrolls on the right hand side), the hard-working folks at Volition Capital just did this amazing blogpost.  For those of you who don’t click through, I’m blatantly copying their text and links.  Again, for the original, you can go here.

The Global VC Blog Directory (Q410 Avg. Monthly Uniques)

  1. Paul Graham (@paulg), YCombinator, Essays (97,227)
  2. Fred Wilson (@fredwilson), Union Square Ventures, A VC (81,483)
  3. Mark Suster (@msuster), GRP Partners, Both Sides of the Table (53,655)
  4. Brad Feld (@bradfeld), Foundry Group, Feld Thoughts (38,821)
  5. Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Founder Collective, cdixon.org (20,988)
  6. David Skok (@bostonvc), Matrix Partners, For Entrepreneurs (14,173)
  7. Charlie O’Donnell (@ceonyc), First Round Capital, This is Going to be Big (13,970)
  8. Larry Cheng (@larryvc), Volition Capital, Thinking About Thinking (13,215)
  9. Dave McClure (@davemcclure), 500 Startups, Master of 500 Hats (11,127)
  10. Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), Andreesen Horowitz, Ben’s Blog (10,686) (more…)

Filed under: VC, Web Favorites | 2 Comments »

Being Selfish and Giving Back at the Same Time

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Ty Danco

I’m writing this strictly for me. For my benefit, to dig deeper, to be able to explain myself, to vent, and to try to improve my investing. And to help spread some ideas on how to improve Vermont’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.  But consider it open source for my fellow entrepreneurs and angels.  Everything I find useful, I’ll be posting, with the goal of making this site a giant curated library. Feel free to make suggestions, because this is a work in progress, and I know I’m missing a lot of useful material on building and investing in startups. I’m going to borrow liberally from some of the masters, and hopefully I’ll attribute whenever possible. But thanks to the folks I enjoy reading most: Steve Blank, Mark Suster, Dave McClure, Dharmesh Shah, Paul Graham, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Bijan Sabet, Rob Go, Eric Ries, Sim Simeonov;  as well as those whose podcasts help so much: Tina Seelig of Stanford, Mark Suster again, Jason Calacanis, Frank Peters, Andrew Warner. Not to mention the serious academics (like Clayton Christensen), writers (like Scott Kirsner, Wade Roush, Dan Primack), and the people who do so much to stir the pot, like Gregg Fairbrothers and Fred Wainwright at Tuck, the incredible crowd in Boston ESPECIALLY John Harthorne and Akhil Nigam at MassChallenge, and most importantly, those New England angels like Michael Mark of Walnut Ventures and Reg Gignoux and Ken Merritt of North Country Angels who continue to teach me a lot.

Filed under: Angel, Boston, MassChallenge, Web Favorites | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

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