Do the right things and do things right – Bill Shepard

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Bill Sheppard of the COO forum was my guest on The Free COO podcast on March 8, 2009. Bill is a seasoned executive and entrepreneur who has created an organization dedicated to the support and growth of COOs. His company the COO Forum has chapters across the US and is growing at a great clip.

In the interview, Bill talks about his highly successful career and how he is now devoting his time to helping entrepreneurs and C-level executives reach their goals.

Hear advice such as a CEO’s role is to guide a company to do the right thing and a COO’s role is to help a company do things right.

The Free COO airs Thursdays at 4:00 pm Pacific Time on Spreaker.com

Interview with Own Point of Sale CEO Verdi Ergun

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Verdi Ergun is a serial entrepreneur, founder of Punch Group and formerly CEO of Own Point of Sale. Click on the player below to hear our interview and follow the path of Verdi from an undergraduate entrepreneur at the University of Michigan to founding Own which, at the time, was set on changing the face of retail point of sale.

The FreeCOO airs Thursdays at 4:00pm Pacific Time only on Spreaker.com

Interview with Ian Lopuch of PPCIan.com

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If you need to use the internet to market your business, and who doesn’t, then this episode of the Free COO is a “must listen to”. Our guest is Ian Lopuch of PPCIan.com. Ian discusses SEM or, Search Engine Marketing, including Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization (PPC and SEO).

Ian discusses the career opportunities for SEM specialists and his outstanding rise to becoming a top SEO specialist and Director of Search Engine Marketing for a multi-million dollar public company.

Be sure to join me each Thursday at 4:00pm Pacific Time for The Free COO live on Spreaker. Also be sure to check out our Facebook Fan Page and join the Free COO community.

The Free COO, now available as a podcast on iTunes, is the #1 business program on Spreaker!

Interview with MindtheBridge.org business plan winners

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On Thursday February 9, 2012, Nicola Allieta of MindTheBridge.org was a guest and spoke about the organization and its mission to bridge the gap between startup companies in Italy and the resources available to startups in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nicola introduced us to the founders of two of the winners of MindTheBridge’s 2011 Business Plan Competition. First was Luca Rossenttini of D-Orbit. D-Orbit, as the name implies, is developing technology to safely remove debris from space. Next was Francesca Cavallo of Timbuktu Labs. Timbuktu is creating the next generation of editorial products that connect kids and grown-ups.

RC Williams, Francesco Baschieri and I also discussed the operational implications of various choices of structuring a business either as a corporation, LLC or sole proprietorship.

You can hear a replay of the program here.

The Free COO program airs live on Thursdays at 4:00pm on Spreaker.

Facebook IPO filing dispels first mover advantage myth, again

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In the summer of 2011, a panel of distinguished VC’s was convened for a typical Silicon Valley morning symposium on the state of funding for startups. In early 2011, it seemed like every entrepreneur was pitching an idea or shifting their startup’s strategy to offer a Groupon-like service. In their opening remarks, each VC quipped to the audience of aspiring entrepreneurs, “don’t bring me another coupon deal”. Were they acting in a manner any less herd-like than the entrepreneurs? No.

The VC’s were really saying, “If your company is not the first to market with an idea, we’re not interested”, the conventional “first mover advantage” theory. Read more…

The Free COO Podcast Now on Spreaker

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I have launched a live broadcast of The Free COO on Spreaker. Each show we’ll offer advice for building and growing your startup business; plus we’ll have guest COOs, entrepreneurs and other people who will share their advice and experiences with you.

You can listen to the Premier show here:

Follow our show on Spreaker, Facebook or @thefreecoo to receive notification when the show goes live. We’ll typically broadcast on Thursday afternoon around 4:00 pm Pacific time (+/-).

You can join the discussion in real-time by sending emails to thefreecoo@spreaker.com or send a Skype connection request to thefreecoo. On Skype you can text message your question and then we’ll call out to you when we’re ready to take callers.

I welcome your feedback on the show both positive and negative. Your comments and suggestions will make the show better since, this is a new endeavor for me. Send me your recommendations for guest COOs or other interesting people and we’ll do our best to book them on future shows. If you have access to people who might be of interest to you and our audience, please send an introductory email to me and the other person and we’ll be sure to give you a shout-out on the show for making it happen.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you and speaking with you on Spreaker.

Using search engine optimization for generating new customers

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Driving new customers to a company by the internet requires a three-pronged approach of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and affiliates. Of the three approaches, SEO can be the most cost effective means of generating a sustainable long-term flow of new customers for any business.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the art of creating content on the internet that, when indexed by search engines, will show up at or near the top of the results page for a given search keyword or phrase. To show up near the top of a results page the content needs to be rich in relevant keywords, readable by search engine robots and referred to by links from external websites. Read more…

Escrow Services – Insurance for Intellectual Property Transactions

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Software, Web Services, Data Services and Fabless Semiconductor ventures are all examples of attractive opportunities for entrepreneurs. They all have low capital requirements for launching because the primary asset is IP or Intellectual Property. True, there is often someone’s personal savings, angel funds or perhaps even VC money needed to launch a company, but for startup companies producing IP it’s largely the human capital of dedicated and smart entrepreneurs that is the largest input factor.

Once your product is ready for market, the challenge of selling even the best IP can often be more difficult than creating it in the first place, particularly if your target customer is a medium to large enterprise. The sales cycle for enterprise B2B software or to get a fabless semiconductor design embedded in a larger SOC or System On a Chip, can be at least six months and often more than one year. Even after your product passes all the technical due diligence, it turns out that one of the main reasons a sale falls through is that it’s difficult for a startup company to convince the decision maker of a large enterprise that your company is viable enough to warrant a strategic relationship. Read more…