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
Business for Life Not Life for Business
We talk about work-life balance, in general terms, but here’s one simple thought that should always be there in the background: Your business exists to make your life better. Not vice-versa. Don’t sacrifice your life to…
Paradox of Product Persistence
Paradox: On one hand, to keep a business healthy you have to be able to cut mediocre products. On the other hand, some successful products require sticking to them for a long time, stubbornly, to…
10 Clues That You Aren’t a Leader
I really know what makes you a leader. I’ve seen dozens of quotes and hundreds of articles, and I took a course on leadership in business school. But leadership depends so much on context and…
10 Myths vs. Reality on Business Plans and Startup Investment
I gather from a stream of emails I’ve received that there are a lot of misconceptions on the relationship between a business plan and getting seed money and/or angel investment. So here’s a list of…
Elevator Speech Part 4: Delivery
So in my last three posts, I’ve written about a simple one-minute business description that every business owner should know, which I’m calling “the elevator speech” because that’s what they call it in a formal…
Elevator Speech Part 3: What You Offer
So you’re rounding the corner now on the elevator speech, which I say is something all business owners should be able to do. You’ve done the market story, which was part 1, and the why you,…
Elevator Speech Part 2: Why You?
In my post Elevator Speech Part 1: the Market Story I suggested that all business owners should be able to describe their businesses well in a single measured minute. The formal elevator speech is a reference…
Elevator Speech Part 1: The Market Story
Can you describe your business in 60 seconds? In grad-level venture contests, and in startup groups and the startup eco-system, they call it “the elevator speech.” It’s a formal event in many business plan competitions,…
Lean Business Plan: Form Follows Function
Your lean business plan is no more than what you need to run your business. In the beginning, it might be as simple as an elevator speech. Be able to talk through those key points: the…
Which Comes First: Plan or Pitch?
It’s not exactly the same as the chicken or the egg, but it has some similarities. I get this question a lot lately, so I decided to take it here to my blog. Don’t pitch a…