In previous posts I discussed why serial entrepreneurs should upgrade to parallelism, and how startup founders might band together to create a startup cooperative. It is this thinking that is shaping our new company, Scale Front. In addition to adopting Lean, we want to develop many ideas in parallel. We are calling this approach “The Lean Portfolio”. Much as The [...]
The Lean Portfolio
Posted: 5th May 2012 by Sean Blanchfield in EnterpriseTags: enterprise, entrepreneurship, lean-startup, parallel-entrepreneur, portfolio
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This isn’t a critique of the Lean Startup. I don’t have the guts to do that. No, this is just an attempt to put the Lean Startup back in its box, from which it is has been inadvertently liberated. Don’t get me wrong – I believe that Eric Ries and friends have given entrepreneurialism a [...]
Incubate or Accelerate?
Posted: 16th February 2012 by Sean Blanchfield in Enterprise, Ireland, TechTags: accelerator, dublin, enterprise, startup bootcamp, startups
I once found myself standing upon a small wooden platform at a great height above the ground, willing myself to trust the harness I was attached to, and step into the void. I was attempting the zip line on an adventure weekend, which is an exhilarating and wholely unnatural activity involving pulleys and wires. As [...]
The Startup Cooperative
Posted: 29th December 2011 by Sean Blanchfield in Enterprise, Ireland, TechTags: parallel-entrepreneur, startup, startup-coop
In my last post I talked about our new approach to developing startup ideas: doing lots of them in parallel. It was my most visited article to date, and the feedback was that many entrepreneurs are already doing the same thing, deliberately or otherwise. I now want to talk about solving the big problem we [...]
The Parallel Entrepreneur
Posted: 23rd October 2011 by Sean Blanchfield in Enterprise, Ireland, TechTags: startup lean parallel-entrepreneur
My first shot at business was early in college, making simple websites for small companies. It was the first step on a career of company creation. Many years later I’m proud of never having had a real job, and prouder of the startups that turned into real businesses. Over the last year, I’ve begun to [...]
Over the last week the remote for my Boxee Box started going a bit weird. I thought that the battery was probably dying, so replaced it, but it still wasn’t working right. After some frustrated experimentation I discovered that I could make it work by pressing hard on the battery compartment cover while using it. [...]
I often find myself struggling to communicate to non-geeks just how complicated software engineering is, probably because there’s no familiar lines of work that are any way comparable. I feel compelled to educate the world about this because: Bespoke software is mission critical to most modern businesses, but they haven’t yet acknowledged it Most modern [...]
The Dangers of Excessive Effectiveness
Posted: 16th July 2011 by Sean Blanchfield in Enterprise, LifeTags: gtd work effectiveness
My last post, on effectiveness and efficiency via the technology of Transformers, was sufficiently well received that I thought I should offer up a sequel, in way of warning. The flipside of continuously striving for maximum effectiveness at work is that its hard to leave it in work and not bring it home with you. [...]
The Energon Methodology
Posted: 13th July 2011 by Sean Blanchfield in Enterprise, LifeTags: gtd work effectiveness
Several years ago, during DemonWare’s initial growth spurt, I was a very stressed out guy. I had difficulty keeping track of the company’s commitments, of meetings, conference calls, trips and conferences, not to mention the regular work of handling 100+ emails per day and managing product development. I had difficulty sleeping, and probably wasn’t much [...]
Front Square in the Irish Times
Posted: 24th June 2011 by Sean Blanchfield in Enterprise, IrelandTags: enterprise press
Our new startup, Front Square, was covered in the Irish Times today. The first of many articles, we hope The article is online here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/innovation/2011/0624/1224299201718.html.