When you have a marketing team that doesn’t want to get their hands dirty with product development decisions, what you really have is an advertising team that wants to sell product after it has been developed.

I meet few entrepreneurs who can simply get started.

I meet fewer entrepreneurs who can simply keep going.

I meet far fewer entrepreneurs who never stop.

“Describe yourself in one word.” said the VC.

“Relentlessly resourceful.” I replied.

“That’s two words.” countered the VC.

“Rule breaker.” I quipped.

“Understood. But also, still two words.”

“Disruptive influencer.” I added.

“Still two words.”

“Salesman.” I smiled.

“Finally. And why do you think you’re a salesman?”

“Because I just gave you four answers to one dumb question and you listened to all of them.”

The successful (and not so successful) entrepreneurs who reflect on their journey are the entrepreneurs that we need the most.

Sat at breakfast with a group of friends (who are now angel investors and haven’t worked an office job in over a decade).

The bill arrives, and I kind of owed everyone a lunch in one form or another, so as I pick up the bill I quip “I guess I’m getting this seeing as I’m the only one at the table that is employed with an actual paying job.”

Oh how we laughed…

The hard part of being an entrepreneur isn’t thinking up lots of neat ideas to build.

The hard part is just focusing on one neat idea that can be built.

I communicate (a lot) and a I cook (a lot).

I am a firm believer that most email communication should be made like a finely crafted chef’s knife. Sharp, short and to the fucking point.

I was giving a talk at a conference about go to market strategies for entrepreneurs.

“We’re afraid of announcing too soon and giving the competition an edge.” interrupted the entrepreneur during my presentation.

“You’re afraid of giving your competition an edge?” I scoffed. “You want to know who your competition is? Your competition is the fucking back button. Nobody gives a shit about your product, least of all your non-existent competition. If you’re afraid of giving your competition an edge if you announce too early then you don’t have a product that is worth a damn.”

Make a note of this: I should always ensure I eat before engaging with a room full of people.

We realise that competition for software developers in the Bay Area is intense, so as part of our on-boarding process, and to save time, we like to go through both the welcome kit and the termination package at the same time.

Company policies are written over-reactions to one-off situations and occurrences whose likelihood of the problem ever happening again are so ridiculously slim that it boggles the mind anybody would have even thought to write out such a policy in the first place.

Somebody wore casual clothes around the office and it wasn’t Friday?

You don’t need a written policy for acceptable dress-code.

You just need to talk to the person.

Go on. Give it a go. Try being human for once.

Engineers of all stripes – software developers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, even civil engineers – are inherently optimistic.

They have to be, because I have yet to ever meet an engineer that didn’t believe that there was a workable a solution.

And also a solution that is better than the workable solution someone else came up with.

Encouraging software developers to learn how to design is a valuable skill even if they will never be designers.

The software developer that learns design may never be a great designer, but by being able to understand the elements of design, being able to understand how a design (the form) changes the features (the function) is critically important.

And it also lets the software developer understand the process the designer has to go through to make something.

I don’t have a gym membership.

I am quite happy to go for a walk or “work out” at my treadmill desk.

“I’d never use a gym and so I don’t see the point of a gym” is an opinion. “

“I’d never use a gym, but I can see how it would appeal to others” is not an opinion.

The first engenders a viewpoint that assumes because “I don’t like it” then nobody will like it, and therefore whatever the product or service is, will ultimately fail.

The second is an entirely different viewpoint.

One where you can listen to the feedback.

Good investors will have the ability to see the potential for success, even though the product or service doesn’t interest them.

Demonstrating to potential candidates that you have an active inbound hiring funnel, and also a pro-active promotion and retention policy of diverse candidates, demonstrates to the extended network of their social connections that your company is serious about diversity, which engenders employees from diverse backgrounds recommending to their social networks your company as a potential employer.

Long winded way of saying “people recommend to their friends your company as a place of employment if those self-same people see that your company is a good place to work for everyone, not just the anointed few due to demographics.”

General rules of thumb:
A piece of consumer technology being introduced with a strong marketing push that has wide utility and appeal will take at least five years to adopt in to the mainstream if the current infrastructure supports it.

A piece of consumer technology being introduced with a strong marketing push that has wide utility and appeal will take at least 10 years to adopt in to the mainstream if the current infrastructure does not support it.

A piece of experimental technology being introduced that has wide utility and appeal will take at least 20 or more years to adopt in to the consumer level early adopters and closer to 25 years for it to reach mainstream prominence.

Technical co-founders are hot properties.

Always have been.

Everybody needs one, everybody wants one and everybody is chasing them elusively.

I am frequently asked “Where can I find a tech cofounder?” at networking meetups.

Sometimes they ask about a CTO.

Or a programmer to work for free.

But the question always takes the same shape.

And I respond “What you’re asking is ‘how can I find a rich, hot, single girl willing to date me?'”

Things not to do:
1. Don’t accept the first pitch given to you. Or the second. Or the third.
2. Do your due diligence on your non-tech cofounder. He or she will probably do the same to you.
3. Find out what
4. Make sure that what you are getting is an equitable trade
5. Be aware of the risks
6. Do everything you can to avoid signing a non-compete – if you do have to sign one, put a very restrictive term limit on it
7. If you are signing away anything, make sure your getting something in return for it
8. If you sign something away with out pay, make sure you can get it back
9. If all they have is an idea, and jealously guard it, keep looking
10. Until there is something concrete, don’t sign an NDA
11. Work on an idea that you both came up with
12. If you must work on someone else’s idea, make sure it is one you can be excited about for a long time
13. When you are a cofounder, you aren’t just working for someone, you’re their partner, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of time with them

Questions To Ask Before Taking That Job At A Start-Up

There’s a lot of questions you can ask before you take that tempting job offer from that hot little start-up you just interviewed at.

All of the questions that have stood me in good stead over the years are listed below.

This isn’t a definitive list. It is a starting point. There are an endless list of question you can ask and seek answers too.

The one thing you want, when asking questions and seeking answers, is hard, concrete data. Any answers that are hand wavy “magic happens here” or they don’t have a clear answer you can understand, should raise some very large red flags.

It is better to have an “I don’t know” answer to a question than a long, rambling pitch.

Tell me about the background of the founding team?

Can I see the financials of the company?

Does the start-up have enough cash to sustain itself, including its current team size and expansion plans, for another year?

Tell me about the idea that forms the basis of the start-up?

How many times have you pivoted?

Do you see yourself pivoting in the future?

Tell me about your traction?

What can the start-up do for me?

What is the roadmap, including a step by step plan, for the next five years?

What is your burn rate?

Do you have any revenue?

Where will you find your first customers? Assuming they don’t have any yet.

How will you capitalize your existing market share?

How will you attract market share from your competitors?

Do you have a revenue plan?

Where are you in your funding?

I am a great believer in going lean in everything except my waistline or my cooking.

Going lean means cutting excess where you find it so that you can get from point A to point B as cheaply, quickly and easily as possible.

Cheaply doesn’t mean being cheap – spend money where it’s needed; cut excess expenditure where it is not.

Quickly doesn’t mean fast – heading 100mph in any direction is less preferable than heading 5mph in the correct direction; but sometimes any direction is better than no direction when you don’t know which direction to go in.

Easily doesn’t mean by any means necessary – it means removing the sticking friction that is holding back the advancement of a project; easily is related to quickly – if you cannot move forward quickly you cannot move forward easily.

I value attention to detail in a worker higher than I value core knowledge and here’s why…

I can teach core knowledge, it might take time, but it can be taught.

But if you lack attention to detail, if you have a propensity to cut corners when it suits you, I cannot teach you not to do that, I can only hope that one day you will start taking pride in your work. But that isn’t usually a risk I am willing to take.

You don’t have to get every detail right every time – this website is testament to that fact, it is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors and other minor mistakes.

But I want to see enough care in the details that I won’t have to worry about how big of a corner you cut.

It is attention to detail that will get you the job, every time. People who measure against anything else are measuring the wrong performance indicators.

Ego is what gives you opportunities.

Lack of ego is what lets you decide which opportunities you should act on.

Humans are fascinated by the beginning of things and the ending of things.

We even have a word for the start of a business.

Start-ups.

We should have a word for businesses that are stable and established, perhaps we call them end-ups.

The interesting thing about start-ups is that they don’t much but have nothing to lose.

But end-ups have abundance with everything to lose.

If you are building an MVP, and you’re pre-seed, pretty much everyone is working for free so don’t ever try and get all the details right.

Detail work for just about everyone, is drudge work.

Nudge this.

Polish that.

Tweak that other thing.

Drudgery!

You want to burn through developers faster than you can convince them to work for free?

Give them drudge work.

You want your developer to stick around?

Give them interesting problems full of green field code and they’ll stick around (and make fast progress) almost indefinitely.

You’re building an MVP, the moment you try and make any one detail perfect, you’ve immediately failed at building your MVP.

You have a major problem when the passionate employees in your organization have suddenly stopped talking and stopped being passionate about the problems they are solving.

The one defining characteristic of every great software developer I ever worked with, and in fact every great engineer I ever worked with, was that they had an insatiable curiousity of mind.

The ability to handle ambiguity and how comfortable you are with ambiguity is one of the defining characteristics of successful entrepreneurs who ship product.

Your product development is a series of small decisions that result in trade-offs.

Ambiguity comes when each trade-off seems viable (or none seem viable) and there is no clear path forward.

Being able to pick a direction and move, even if it is not the right direction or the perfect choice, is preferable to deferring to later.

Deferring to later is a choice that only ever leads to no product.

Imagine you’re driving along a dark road late and night and you glance down at your dash and you see a little dial in the corner measuring the oil pressure of your car.

Everything is great with the world, the oil pressure on the car is right in the sweet spot.

But where are you going?

You don’t know.

You’re lost.

But where are you?

You don’t know.

You’re lost.

How long will take?

You don’t know.

You’re lost.

Do we have enough fuel to get there?

You don’t know.

You’re lost.

Can we stay awake long enough to get to place where we can find out?

You don’t know.

You’re lost.

But the oil pressure gauge tells you everything is fine, so you keep driving.

Ridiculous.

But startups adhere to this kind of thinking all the time.

We’re measuring our car’s oil pressure, and it is right where it needs to be, therefore, let’s keep doing what we’re doing.

You see this in companies all the time, there are people who actively create more work for other people because they aren’t doing their job to capacity.

It looks like their doing their job, but they’re leaving loose ends everywhere.

They let other people clean up their leftovers.

They do a poor job that someone else has to come along and correct.

Their ideas and plans actually create roadblocks and hindrances to getting work done.

Their habits, such as leaving tools out of place, or interrupting to ask a brief question, slows everyone else down.

Get rid of them and the actual overall performance of the organization increases because their gone rather than decreases.

Credentials do not convey credibility.

I see CEO, bosses and potential leaders make this mistake time and again.

Be very wary of the man in the shiny suit, whether he is selling snake oil or not.

What you do will always win against what you intend to do.

Whenever someone (software developer, designer, entrepreneur) tells me “I’ve done about 90% of the work” I instantly translate that in to “I’m about halfway done.”

Good general rule of thumb to figure out just how much work is still left before we can ship.