Archive for 2012

The past 30 days

Flawed opinions

You will, at some point, take the code your technical co-founder produced and show it to another developer who will declare the work sub-standard and terrible.

A peer review of code, with an opinion of how good or bad the code is, let’s us understand where the flaws are.

But it can be just that, an opinion, you don’t always want to follow it.

ABR

Always.

Be.

Raising.

(Money that is).

Market all the types

What type of marketing should you do for your start-up?

All of the types.

But there are some types that just won’t be effective.

Unfortunately, you won’t know what those are until you try them.

Follow Your Poisson

Complaining about the state of the start-up ecosystem, the (somewhat) funding craziness and billion dollar unicorns is akin to doing a stand-up routine about airline food.

Age of Acquarius? More like the Age of Unicorns. Amirite?

And what about those investors?

Trusted Technology

Never trust a Chief Technology Officer that gets confused by their smart phone.

A hunger for risk

Taking a risk and launching a startup isn’t gambling.

Quitting your job and living on your credit cards for a year whilst you thrash around trying to find a startup idea that will work, with no business skills, no sales, no customers and no product or service to offer.

That’s gambling.

I take risks every day.

In fact, your reading a risk right now.

I started this blog with no idea where it would go.

Or even if anybody would pay attention to it.

Yet here you are.

Readily consuming the risk I took.

Minute-by-minute

It might take 10,000 hours to get good at something (as popularized by Malcom Gladwell), but I have found it is a lot easier to get really good at something, at putting in your 10,000 hours when you make a habit out racking up the time necessary.

10,000 hours may sound like a nice round number, but you’ll never put in the 10,000 hours required until you put in the first minute.

And another minute.

And another minute.

Investment vehicles

I used to play fast and loose with my small seed investments in my younger days.

Post-video game studio crash days I am a little more discerning.

My wife refuses to let me invest in more companies per year than the number of non-profits she works with.

Or maybe it is the other way around and I don’t let her work with more non-profits than investments I am willing to make in start-ups.

 

Good to not great

The difference between a good company and a good business is…

As companies grow larger – they become better at business.

They become a “good business.”

But almost all of them lose that essential something that turns them from a “good company” to an “average company.”

Developers love documentation

You will ask your technical co-founder for a quick fix to a problem, and then in six months time you will ask why such a poorly implemented technical decision was made by your technical co-founder.

And that’s okay, because it will be your first real lesson about technical debt.

And your first real lesson about documenting your decision process.

 

Refusal rights

The problem with being an EIR (entrepreneur-in-residence) is the right of first refusal.

What happens when the VC fund that kept you as their EIR says “yes”?

You can’t exactly shop around for better terms for your hot start-up idea.

And what happens should the VC fund say “no?”

Now you have the opposite problem, the stigma that the VCs didn’t think your idea had merit.

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