Tim Berry
Tim Berry is co-founder of Have Presence, founder and Chairman of Palo Alto Software, founder of bplans.com, and a co-founder of Borland International. He is author of books and software including LivePlan and Business Plan Pro, The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, and Lean Business Planning, published by Motivational Press in 2015. He has a Stanford MBA degree and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. He taught starting a business at the University of Oregon for 11 years.
Latest
State Supreme Court Decides in Favor of Nasty Reviews
The Oregon Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the legal protection of nasty reviews as free speech. Which reminds me of the ongoing opportunity and problem of reviews. Amazon.com reviews, Yelp reviews, Google, TripAdvisor, and all of them…
How to Do Due Diligence on Investors
This is my Quora answer to “How do I perform due diligence on investors?” Choose an Investor Like You Would a Spouse I’m so glad you asked this question, because it’s really important and vastly…
Self-Assessment: Will Your Startup Get Angel Investment?
Is your startup a good candidate for angel investment? If you can’t answer “yes” to the four questions here, then it probably isn’t. Angel investors are as hard to predict as any other group of…
Creativity and Clutter: Friends or Enemies?
Does clutter affect creativity? I can give you quotes that say it does, and research that says it doesn’t. There’s lots of anecdotal evidence for either side. What do you think? My own experience goes…
How to Forecast Sales and Profits Without Just Guessing
Yes, it’s—my title here—a real question, and I get it a lot: how to forecast sales and profits without just guessing. It’s a good question too, because it leads to a better understanding of how…
Displacement Principle in Startups and Small Business
It’s really pretty simple. Intuitive. I didn’t learn about it in business school; I learned about it while building and running a real business. I decided to call it the displacement principle. Displacement Principle: In the real…
3 Things You Need to Remember About Profits
Are you a small business owner? Are you looking to start your own business? The politicians can misunderstand profits, and so can the general public, but you’d better not. Profits are good, not bad; but…
The Lean Business Plan for Small Business Owners
“What? No, I don’t have a business plan. I’m not a startup.” Too bad so many small business owners think that way. A good lean business plan for small business owners ought to be a…
11 Key Elements of a Good Business Plan
Somebody asked me what the key elements of a good business plan were, and I’m glad they did—it’s one of my favorite topics. It gives me a chance to review and revise another of the…
10 Most Common Business Plan Mistakes, Updated for 2016
Over the weekend, a Quora user asked me to list common mistakes that people make when developing a business plan. I’ve done that post from time to time, and it seemed like a good time…