Lessons from forty years of entrepreneurship
The recurring failures — over-planning, mispriced trust, hiring for the company you wish you had — and what actually correlates with surviving the second year.
Bruce T. Dugan
Abstract thinker · Linear process · Forty-four years of building things
- The Feature · Innovation
Something is about to start paying your invoices for you
Visa is piloting agents that complete approved supplier invoice payments through portals built to require a human. The control questions are worth settling now, while it is still a pilot.
Latest commentary
What I’m discussing this week
Straight from the commentary feed — the newest piece up top, the four behind it below. Everything here is filed under a subject, and every subject has a guide.
The Verge stopped measuring its team on page views. That is the interesting part.
The Verge traded generalists for specialists and gave its audience team individual growth targets instead of page views. The staffing change matters more than the Google story around it.
A new place to advertise just opened. That is not the same as a reason to go there.
ChatGPT Ads now runs in 89 countries with self-serve buying. Before you add a channel, two numbers decide whether you will learn anything from the test.
Your website probably needed a patch last week. Here is how to check.
A critical PHP flaw was patched on October 21, and several governments pulled public services offline as a precaution. How to find out which PHP version your site runs, and…
Google is testing a button that answers the question in the feed. Again.
On September 20, Search Engine Land reported that Google is testing a feature called “Dive deeper” inside Google Discover. Tap it, and you get an AI-written overview of the topic…
About
“Earning money unto itself is not a success. That is just the reward for a job well done.”
Entrepreneur, author and commentator. I started in freight, where a package either arrives or it doesn’t — no narrative survives a missed delivery. Four decades on, across music, film, publishing and technology, it has been the same job in different clothing: take something chaotic, find the line through it, run the line.
Five industries, one method
1982
Worldway Freight Systems
New Jersey
First company at 23. Just-in-time LTL ground freight for DuPont, Sumitomo and Couristan Carpets, flatbed for Morgan Stanley’s commodity division, and fifteen trucks off the New Jersey piers.
1994
TransCom, then labels and film
Freight · music · film
A 28-city same-day network serving American Express and the New York Fed — then record labels that reached Billboard, a feature film and a documentary that aired on BRAVO.
1999
Digital eats broadcast
Jupiter roundtable
At a Jupiter Communications CEO roundtable, argued against the assembled experts that traditional and digital media would converge into one delivery layer. Netflix spent the next decade proving it.
2005
Building offshore
Buenos Aires
Incorporated Inicia Incorporated and co-founded I2MEDIALAB with Mario Delfino, then served as CEO of publicly traded companies — the operating years behind the advisory work.
2012
Incognito Worldwide
Bangalore · Wilmington
A digital agency named Startup of the Year in 2014, now a subsidiary of Inicia Incorporated, still running entirely on referral.
Reference · Guides
Start with a guide
Each guide is a hub: the evergreen material on one subject, arranged in order, with the latest commentary on that subject collected at the foot of the page. If you want the argument, read the commentary. If you want the method, start here.
Building a referral-based company
What changes when every client arrives through someone who vouched for you: how you price, who you turn down, and why one bad delivery costs more than a bad quarter.
SEO, AEO and GEO in one blueprint
Search, answer engines and generative results are three audiences reading the same page. The blueprint that stops treating them as three separate budgets.
Books
Book 1A playbook written from the operator’s side of the table.
Breaking Boundaries opens the Business Marketing Series — the methods behind two decades of client work, written for the person who has to defend the budget rather than the person who gets to spend it. Positioning, blueprint, channel selection, and measurement that survives a board meeting.
Also in the Business Marketing Series
Consulting
Where I can help
Engagements start with an operational audit, not a proposal. If the audit says you don’t need me, that is the deliverable — and it has happened more than once.
01
Growth-structure audit
What your company actually does, versus what the org chart claims — and what is holding the ceiling down.
02Startup structure & launch
Incorporation, process mapping and a marketing roadmap — turning an intention into something that can take money.
03Systems & stack selection
The software you will still be using in five years, and the integration work between.
04Visibility & AI adoption
Being found by the people looking for you, and where AI changes the work rather than decorating it.
Book a free consultation
How an engagement runs
Typical first engagement: a two-week audit, a written findings memo, and a decision about whether there is more work to do.
Media & recognition
On the cover, and inside
Top 5 Inspiring CEOs to Watch
Bruce Dugan: the CEO with an extraordinary journey
Bruce T. Dugan: a devoted technopreneur
Startup of the Year
Outsource Evangelists
Written about in Prime Insights · The Fame · Insights Success
Written for Entrepreneur Magazine · CEO Hangout · Thoughts of a CEO
One argument a week, and the reasoning behind it.
No roundups, no “5 tips”, no recycled LinkedIn posts. One piece, the thinking that produced it, and what I got wrong last time.
Commentary · Frameworks · Book updates · Speaking dates
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