A roundup of events in Silicon Valley for bootstrappers in May 2017; this month at the Bootstrappers Breakfast meetings we are focused on what habits to nurture and what to extinguish for success.
Silicon Valley Roundup for May 2017
Reminder: May is Habits Month at the Bootstrappers Breakfast
This month we are focusing on “Habits: what to nurture and what to extinguish for success.” In addition to our regular roundtables in Sunnyvale Tue-May-16 at 7:30am and Mountain View Fri-May-26 at 9am we are going to have a discussion on habits
- what habits do you feel have contributed to your success,
- what habits are holding you back you would like to extinguish,
- what habits would you like to develop or strengthen.
To help kickstart your thinking I want to recommend James Clear’s Transform Your Habits (available at no charge at http://jamesclear.com/habits.)
Brent Beshore: 5 Habits to Cultivate that Enable Success
- Be willing to grind, for a long time. Success NEVER comes overnight and most people don’t have the patience necessary. Grass is almost never actually greener.
- Be humble. You’re clearly intelligent and you’ll learn a ton quickly. Don’t confuse that initial burst of knowledge for anything close to mastery.
- Be kind. Business is often referred to as a “full contact sport.” It doesn’t have to be, and you’ll be a lot happier if you sidestep that game.
- Learn continually. Wake up every day and get a little bit better. Knowledge compounds.
- Take notes–in all meetings, about your thoughts, about what you admire and despise, about things you would change. They’ll be gold.
Brent Beshore in an email to a college senior asking for advice.
May 23 we are collaborating with the Silicon Valley Cofounder Academy on another “Will Work for Equity” networking event at Hacker Dojo
Our Fri-June-2 Breakfast in Palo Alto will address “How Bootstrappers Manage the Work/Work Balance In Their Startup” Strategies for allocating you time between revenue generation, lead generation, and product development. As bootstrappers we need to allocate our time to a number of distinct activities with the three most important being billable work, lead generation, and product development.
- Billable work generates revenue today.
- Lead generation, whether it’s by what you say, what you write, what others say about you, or getting found when and where prospects are looking, replenishes your pipeline of future business.
- Developing new products and services lays the groundwork for future growth.
Some recent briefings by entrepreneurs at Silicon Valley Bootstrapper Breakfasts
- April 7 Brian Putt on Using the Value of Information to Manage Uncertainty
- Feb-24 Josh Anderson on Bootstrapping FreeDNS
- Feb-21 Liz Fraley on Bootstrapping an Expertise-Enabled Startup
If you are interested in being a featured speaker at a future Bootstrapper Breakfast where you can share lesson learned in bootstrapping your startup, please contact me.
Warm Regards
Sean Murphy www.skmurphy.com 408-252-9676