“This Web Site and the book The Language of Small Business are the result of many years of difficult and thorough searching for answers to everyday problems of the small business person. Numerous books and articles exist concerning the theory of business and the practical application of business principles, but no other single glossary or dictionary exists that defines the terms as a ready reference for the small business person. To our knowledge, this Web Site is the first Web Site dedicated solely to the definitions of small business terms.”

“Here are the titles of the 5 most recent posts of 32 business-oriented blogs, as of April 12, 2005 from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM. NOTE: This is NOT a list of ‘the best business blogs in the blogosphere, according to Steve Streight aka Vaspers the Grate.’ Some maybe aren’t so good at all. This is rather just a quickly selected list of business and marketing blogs I know of and slapped together for this experiment.”

“Keith Ferrazzi needs two PalmPilots to keep track of all his contacts, people like Bill Clinton and Michael Milken. But there’s far more to cracking the inner circle of the power elite than just taking names.”

“One interesting thing about starting a company today versus a few years ago: Lots of cool web apps are now available that you can more or less run you company on. Among the apps we’re currently using, or trying out, at Odeo are…”

“The Gillette Company came to market in 2004 with a new razor, the M3 Power… the product blew away the competition just as effectively. Weeks after its May 2004 introduction, the M3 Power was the top-selling razor in the United States, and helped Gillette, one of the consumer products industry’s consistently great innovators, to a whopping 26 percent rise in second-quarter profits. Gillette told investors in late July that sales of razor blades, oral care products, and batteries were up, too. It seemed like good times were rolling. But the stock market responded by shaving Gillette’s stock price by more than 5 percent. Why?”

“This summer, as an experiment, some friends and I are giving seed funding to a bunch of new startups. It’s an experiment because we’re prepared to fund younger founders than most investors would. That’s why we’re doing it during the summer– so even college students can participate… The deadline has now passed, and we’re sifting through 227 applications. We expected to divide them into two categories, promising and unpromising. But we quickly saw that we needed a third: promising people with unpromising ideas.”

“My colleague and occasional co-conspirator Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, spoke last night at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, a presentation intriguingly titled ‘Business and Sustainability: Risk, Fiduciary Responsibility, and the Laws of Nature.’ As would be expected of Gil, one of the true pioneers in this field, it was a cogent articulation of the state of the art, for both better and worse, of sustainability in the private sector.”

“People tend toward inflated self-assessments, which is one of many reasons to break down corporate fiefdoms and rotate jobs regularly, former Microsoft chief operating officer says.”

“How do you launch a successful high-tech business? If you ask the typical MBA, they’ll give the same answer. Write a comprehensive in-depth business plan, take it to investors to secure a healthy initial round of funding, recruit the heaviest heavyweights you can, and start the PR machine cranking. But, of course, they’d be completely wrong.”

“The pursuit of the truth has brought us to many strange and wonderful places, some of which were in the presence of persons considered divine because they are gurus. Around such people constellate clouds of occluding ideology about self-realization, despite the efforts of the guru, or because of them. We’ve compiled a list of the ten top occluding ideas people hold about their gurus or gurus in general, for your perusal…”

“If you blog, there are no guarantees you’ll attract a readership of thousands. But at least a few readers will find your blog, and they may be the people you’d least want or expect. These include potential or current employers, coworkers, and professional colleagues; your neighbors; your spouse or partner; your family; and anyone else curious enough to type your name, email address or screen name into Google or Feedster and click a few links. The point is that anyone can eventually find your blog if your real identity is tied to it in some way. And there may be consequences. Family members may be shocked or upset when they read your uncensored thoughts. A potential boss may think twice about hiring you. But these concerns shouldn’t stop you from writing. Instead, they should inspire you to keep your blog private, or accessible only to certain trusted people.”

“As in physics, so in finance: shockwaves keep appearing long after an explosion. Five years after the crash in technology shares, its residual effects remain in the area of venture capital. One sign is the huge amount of new money being committed to American venturefunds by investors who feel they missed, or hope to resurrect, the terrific returns of the late 1990s. Another aspect is that some of the money raised during the boom is only now being invested. The result is that start-ups are seeing a fast influx of financing, which is pushing up valuations.”

“Y Combinator is a new kind of venture firm that specializes in funding very early stage startups. We help startups through what is for many the hardest step, from idea to company. We’re not a venture capital fund. VC investments are larger, come later in the life of a startup, are much harder to get, and come with more strings attached. We provide the seed funding that gets you to the stage where you’re ready to approach VCs.”

“I was talking to a friend of a friend who works at a company that does not yet promote employee blogging a la blogs.sun.com. This conversation made me wonder — if you work for a company that doesn’t yet encourage employee blogging, and you’re wondering about whether you should influence your company to start blogging, where do you go from there?

“After reading my new blog, a number of Nelson employees have told me they intend to start their own blog. Several have written to me, asking how to get started. So, rather than continuing to repeat myself, I will outline the process here. It’s actually easier than you may think.”