The Convergence of Passion and Reason

I'm reading Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (phenomenal read btw) and it came time to dissect, at least in my own mind anyway, the massive repercussions of the last 8 weeks of the startup life.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not entirely antagonistic to the silver-spoon sort, except when upon interacting with said silver spoon said spooner waves it haphazardly in my face. But there's just some type of FIRE in the belly of a person who has worked their way through the myriad of challenges in startupdom and either made it or didn't make it. I see it in their eyes, on their faces. Even in failure, they still want to storm the castle; even though the war might be over, they can't help but press on...

But it seems to me, at least from a character perspective, that it takes a special type of silver-spooner to have the chutzpa to even "get it on" in this realm. Or maybe (uh, yeah) because of my own extreme situation I'm ever-so-slightly biased... okay, well a lot biased. Having not had anything to fall back on but myself, I don't see things like others might. In my own small world, I've been spoiled -

• My first car was a Datsun (yes, the company before Nissan) 310GX Hatchback that my Mom had practically beat to death on her paper route (it was a nice faded pink/red/orange color). Special thanks to my uncle for replacing the motor with one they found at an auto yard. I didn't have to pay for the car and ran it pretty much until the wheels fell off.
  
• My 2nd car was a used Ford Ranger truck my Grandpa paid for me to get. It was awesome... especially once I spent all my summer work money to put the speaker boxes in.
  
• I worked some in college, but it was mostly for spending money (=food). My parents somehow managed to cover the tuition and keep the other kids fed.

But since then, there really haven't been any special gifts, trust funds, or "oops, I made a massive mistake" accounts that I could pull money from when things got tight and we missed mortgage payments because "Chris wants to run his own company".

I have to quote Wil's blog because he states it so plainly: Commitment = Sacrifice.

But for Pete's sake, I'm not Jim Braddock, and most of us aren't. But there's a big difference when it's your ass on the line, your money, your family. Rands in Managing Humans has an interesting model that relates this to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (sheesh, if I'm the billionth blog to mention Maslow someone should give me a prize) that compares it to the startup life cycle. You put everything you have into getting your product to 1.0, hoping that the business and market will follow.

And thus, I call this The Convergence of Passion and Reason.

This is that very point, the penultimate moment, the razor's edge - you're right there between giving it all a heave-ho and "thanks for the lessons" and continuing to deal with the marital issues, late mortgage payments, creditors, and all that miserable self-debasing goodness. There's something powerful in finding yourself the "last man standing"... strangely.

It's at this point you see the limits of your sacrifice. People start saying they're coming to pick up your automobiles and your wife says she's had it up to there. And you check the online banking and you say to yourself, "something has to change", when you have $4.38 to last you until God knows when. You owe more people than you've ever met. And for all intents and purposes, you're bankrupt. You've sold everything you could sell (that wasn't already in hock) and you've leveraged every family member as much as you could possibly deal with (sometimes getting the money from family is worse than not having the money). It's when you're hungry but you don't eat because you figure you're saving that can of soup for the kids. It's when you eat the crumbs out of the bag of chips (and fuss at your wife when she tries to throw them out). (On a strange side note - if you mix the leftover chips with the dip, you can make your own nacho soup.) You're fed up with being fed up. You're just plain done and you wonder how in the world you could continue. This is reason.

It's at this same point, almost ironically, that something in startupdom "twinges". It creaks, it moans, it moves. I mean, you have a product and a client, there are 8 pilots to get started, and your brain has just come up with a way to merge the social graph with SAP in 2 months. You're the only developer left (also the CTO, part-time legal assistant, and demo prop), but somehow, you're still motivated. I mean, hell, you and your partner do own 95% of this thing still and most of your prospects aren't saying "no" - they're taking appointments and committing to next steps. You hit the venture forum and people follow you because you're so damn real they can't help but do it. They call you back. So you still check the online banking and... after an unknown number of tequila shots later (bottle not quite empty), you pick yourself up (wobble a bit), brush yourself off, and head back into the fray. This is passion.

Let's face it: the limit of your sacrifice is the extent of your passion. That is some severe psychobabble, but it's the point. When you can't sacrifice anymore, Maslow says it will be over for you. It's like Rands says, "who cares about falling in love when you can't breathe?"

I know I'm winded and I don't really care, heck, it's my blog. But I gotta get this point out:

There is a big problem with startup founders or executives that won't sacrifice at a level that is commensurate with their position or compensation.

I have a huge problem with "fake commitments". A soldier who wants to call himself a soldier, but won't get in the fray, afraid to be shot at (read: won't change their lifestyle). Everybody wants a piece of the action, but they don't want any risk.

I'm finished ranting here, but wait for a post on "Everybody wants a piece of the pie, without doing any baking".

Eliminate E-mail?

http://alumni2.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/will-facebook-replace-email/
http://www.mappingtheweb.com/2007/07/11/facebook-email/

A path to legitimately eliminate enterprise e-mail with the Social Graph and Unified Communications.

The key is to have a transition strategy that indicates the type of communicates and properly escalates between the modes of interaction:

1) Paper.
2) E-Mail.
3) Instant messaging.
4) Audio/Voice.
5) Video.

Application of context to any of these channels creates "ambient findability" based on the social graph and the level of interaction.

Communicating Less Selfishly

From Myths of Innovation:

"Unless you're developing an innovation that motivates people to communicate more clearly or less selfishly, innovations that accelerate are unlikely to change the world in the way their creators expect. If you have someone good to talk to, and something important to talk about, communication is rarely in need of acceleration. In fact, software that rewards people for slowing down and thinking about what they're reading and writing might be the greatest innovation of our time."

A Good Night to Blog...

Chaotic couple weeks is understatement of the century.

Watching old "Family Guy" episodes and trying to unwind.

Certainly amazing posts to come as I recover from recent events. Just a tidbit to tantalize and get you to read the next few:

The Successories: I love success lit, all the way back to Think and Grow Rich... but the recent phenomenon is too much. People sell the idea of success beyond any success they've ever experienced.

Fixed Price Shenanigans: Who wins the risk battle? Whoever has the most to offer. Fixed vs. T&M is a classic battle and intrigues many to this day. Can you win with either? Check out the post to see.

The Convergence of Passion and Reason. A requirement for being in a startup.

Ambient Findability. Thought I'd chime in with my view on this.

Stay tuned!

Why?

Why... is the right business decision sometimes feel like the wrong thing to do?

Why... is there so much disparity between the good times and the bad?

Why... does it often seem that even with the good is the bad? Like if someone asks "how you doin'?" you want to say, "medium"?

Why... are the hard decisions so easily and quickly justifiable, but emotionally trepid?

Why... is sympathy utterly and completely useless?

I heard an interesting idea in a movie recently... and maybe I'll be the only business blog in the world who links to Madea Goes to Jail, but in the movie, Madea talks about people who are with you "for a season" and the people who are meant to be with you "forever". When you recognize that someone is with you for a season, you can logically define the reasons that they were there - maybe it was to strengthen you, to mentor you, possibly through some negative way, press out of you some hidden power or ability that just needed someone to press it out...

The connotation is always that these people are obvious negatives and sure, for Tyler Perry the plot works. But it just ain't always like that. Sometimes, people you like are near you for a season and stuff just happens to cause you to have to part ways. You may very well be the controller of the situation, or just affected by it - but it seems to me to be way more subtle.

And I got to thinking... what is it like for that person? Maybe they invested a large amount of time, money, emotion into the relationship or endeavor, only to recognize that it was "for a season". It just sucks for them, having to deal with the loss, even as it were death in a way; the toughest components of that loss being in emotion and relationship (you can always make more money, but it doesn't heal the heart).

For the sake of cool sounding names, let's call it the Theory of Reciprocating Events. Some negative event drives you to a positive event, which triggers negative events for others, in turn driving them to positive events. (One day, after massive success, I won't dance around the experiences of this story in such a way... but until then, enjoy the music.)

Now, that's seemingly complete idealism, but think on it more and practicality will emerge. Think about Godin's Dip, you can see that a dip I'm going through might be another person's cul de sac, or could likely be their success!

Distributed Tidbits

Just a few tidbits about managing offshore development projects...

• You must have a champion. You must allocate local/internal time and have someone pushing the project forward. They also can grease the skids for you in dealing with “anal”ysts (no offense) and other internal powers that are scared of people from other countries and would just as well like to crush you and your project.

• Beware the force to ease your estimates. If you review history, initial estimates are used… maybe never. In most cases, initial estimates are ultimately within a project success range (plus 25%). Tom Petty’s “Don’t Back Down” fits this one.

• The more complex the domain, the more internal/local effort required, throughout. The more we wish it was a parabola, the more it looks like a straight line. Having more people doesn't give you time back - it takes time. It’s better just to look at local/internal level of effort as flat. If you think you’ll grab time in the middle of the project, you’re probably going to get side-swiped and delays will occur. You should prepare to dedicate this time throughout – requirements discussions/refinements, release deployments, testing.

• Beware the legacy… if you’ve never had clear requirements… rapid prototyping, or had some refining process to work out requirements issues quickly, don’t even bother. The 25-40% gains you could have gotten will be gone trying to work things out.

• Don’t micromanage, but sniff where you need to sniff. Don’t kill your team, but do the DD on stuff that you know is complex. Don’t take any slightly complex assumption for granted.

All in all, having a clear vision, good project management, and change control processes are key. You don't have to have documentation for everything - I'm not condoning the mass of paperwork we used to know just as "waterfall", but in working with distributed teams you've got to be a level better than you are with local resources. Better in vision, requirements, management, and delivery - and exponentially better in communicating. It is a critical point to the success of any distributed team development effort.

What is your motivation?

If working a startup is so bad (as Wil points outthen why do we do it?

I mean, yeah, there's that big potential upside and all, but it's not highly unlikely that you won't be massively diluted (like some people at Zantaz) by the time you get there.

I remember a series of points from one of my favorite books, Free Agent Nation, practically a manifesto for independent consultants, that talks about freedom, authenticity, accountability, and defining your own success.

Freedom
Man, I really want to go Braveheart here, "They may take our lives... but they will never take our FREEDOM!". And alas, this is the impact corporate America has on the heart of mankind. I think it will be interesting the day that the cubicle dwellers unite in a massive revolt against the executive borg collective. Strangely, being a part of a startup actually takes away your freedom, at least in terms of having time available to do anything you want and things you might potentially enjoy. It would seem to me that the "freedom" related to being in a startup rests not so much in the time that you have, but in your perceived ownership of that time. Kiyosaki says it best, at the first stage, you basically "own" your job, ultimately trying to create a business that doesn't require you.

But it's the allure of freedom that keeps us going - our ability at least to own our job does have some value.

Authenticity
Be You. Being at a startup, at least in some fashion, allows you to be yourself. Many people, after years of hiding behind the corporate facade, finally end up imploding through some form of compulsive behavior. That's not to say that the folks at the startup don't implode through some form of compulsive behavior, it's just that the source of that implosion is different. At startups I've been involved in, you actually relish in your differences, in your candor, in how you get things done. To be involved in a part of a story that you're writing... now that's the stuff of startup legend.

Accountability
I don't know how many of you have ever been there... but there's a weird spot in the world where employees are "trapped". They can't move up, or over, or anywhere - and it's an awful feeling. You begin to feel like you can't get out of the existing circumstances and that any change is dependent completely on someone else. What's worse is when that someone else is a complete imbecile. One major component of startup motivation is accountability - the fact that I can make my future, I'm not dependent on any one else (well, mostly) and I can make it happen. Folks in startups love to bear their own burdens and will often use those burdens to beat non-startuppers over the head: "When's the last time you had to make payroll?"

Define Your Own Success
A major disparity between the entrepreneur and the corporate junkie is that of vision. "There's something better out there" the entrepreneur will say, and there's a very fast way to do it. Likewise, there's a huge difference between a $6M company and a $2B company and people at every level exude that difference. Success for one maybe simply to learn a new programming language, build a blog following, to revenue targets like $10K month in sales, all the way up the value chain. I find it increasingly interesting the comparisons between Wal-Mart and my startup, as one author states we all need to build a "World-Class Company". I don't particularly agree that that is the success notion of everyone who starts their own business - a major reason for starting your own is to define what it will be!

Freedom, Authenticity, Accountability, and then Defining Your Own Success are the foundation of an entrepreneur's motivation. Anything outside of this, at least where founders are concerned, just makes life difficult. For example, at one point in the journey we ran into a rather massive entanglement that brutally exposed all of our collective weaknesses in a matter of minutes. The resultant conversation led us to a "Why are we here?" moment. We came up with the following:

• To have fun,
• To serve people,
• To make money

But what I've noticed over the last 2 years is that these things are great - as long as they don't impact Freedom, Authenticity, Accountability, and Defining Your Own Success. Once you begin to sacrifice some of this core, in one way or another it affects you. You may begin to lose passion, you might begin to just slog through days, weeks, months, years - without really figuring out why you feel empty. Don't fall for it - you need to have those 4 core items. Any decision you make that will impact those items you should consider carefully, because eventually you'll want out or want some dramatic change.

I've found that with different folks there are different levels of the 4 core values. Be cognizant of what yours are and make sure you elevate any constraints around them.

iTunes... it was tough not to check?

Lemme give some context. For some strange reason I bet on MS back in the day and I have a lot of music I ripped to Windows Media Player. Well, all this stuff is sitting on 200GB USB hard drive.

And occasionally I get the urge to venture back into the past and pull some music that means alot at a specific moment into the NOW.

So, iTunes has a nice feature called "Add Folder to Library". Well, I just found out that this doesn't actually check if you already have the track added. You'd think that APPLE (of all people) would figure this stuff out. Since their whole initial objective was to move people to their platform... it would make sense that they would make that easy, right?

WRONG.

I now have a myriad of duplicate tracks in my iTunes. When will software do what people want it to do?

Turn the Page

Out there in the spotlight your a million miles away,
Every ounce of energy, you try and give away,
As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.
Later in the evening as you lie awake in bed,
With the echo from the amplifiers ringing in your head,
You smoke the days last cigarette, remembering what she said.
Now here I am, on the road again. there I am, up on the stage.
Here I go, playing star again.
There I go, turn the page.
Here I am, on the road again. there I am, up on the stage.
Ah here I go, playing star again.
There I go, there I go.

Now if you don't catch this metaphor as an entrepreneur... you ain't doing it. Massively relevant to my day... 'Nuff said.

This IS Interesting

From Dr. Dobb's Journal:

Modern object-oriented languages encourage you to see the world through the object lens. Databases get this object treatment through the use of Object Relational Mappers (ORMs). It's entirely natural for an object-oriented programmer to see data as objects, rather than SQL calls. But good 'ol SQL isn't going anywhere. What you want as a programmer is the flexibility to use objects when you want, and SQL when you want, and to be able to do all of this on everything from tiny, lightweight databases to huge corporate data stores. Something perhaps like Storm, the open-source ORM for Python. Recently, Jon Erickson sat down to chat with Gustavo Niemeyer, lead developer on Canonical's Storm project. (emphasis mine)

After messing with LLBGen for the last couple weeks, this hit home hard with me. Now, I'm not necessarily an ORM newbie, but I haven't quite been deep tactical into it. However, I'm a SQL guru... you know, I can breathe out a cross-join or a group by having, and all kinds of other crazy SQL things like that.

When I ran into a need to work with ORM on a deeper level (well, let's just say the need ran into me) I thought it was quite interesting how things played out. Initially, I wanted to write a stored proc that did the whole thing. Us DB folks do that - we think that all the code should be there, and some lightweight web service should call it. And maybe that's the future... but at this time, it frustrated the hell out of me - I knew all the ORMs were already there, so why am I trying to work from the back to the front?

So, I said "screw it, I'm gonna figure this out." This is an existing .NET web app, C#, LLBGen ORM, ASP.NET and the whole M$ 9 yards. So, here I am in there creating some new web services to integrate into our C++ Windows desktop app. And as I got into it, I thought, "yeah, this is cool". I was able to figure it out in a couple of hours, got some things going and finished my web service before the new web design was updated (that's another story for the startup side that we'll get to).

At any rate, I still think there's an interesting play between ORM and straight SQL. For some things, specifically web services, it's great to have a simple way to hit the DB with a straight SQL proc call. Over the years I think most people have gotten to where they can do just about anythin with SQL... although I think we can all agree that we hate cursors.

So, I think some of the tenets of Storm are awesome... maybe something will happen for .NET like this in the NEAR future.

The Coffee Shop Office Equation

It's amazing to me how much cash startup companies spend on office space and the stuff to support it. Let's see, over the years, we've had something like:

• Cell phone
• Wireless internet (for traveling)
• Office phones
• Office rent
• Office furniture
• Printers (CD, photos, and presentations) Not to mention the Kinko's bills!
  

Anyway, after some foray into the world of the virtual office recently I thought I'd deep dive on this a little more. Even though before we thought we were managing things pretty well (not counting the Kingfish visit after our VC pitch in Boston).

After Guy's post everybody is looking at what it takes to build a startup, I thought I'd examine the office space phenomena. Now, listen to me closely. If you have less than 5 clients who MUST physically visit you, get this - you don't need an office. Visit them, visit Starbucks, figure out a way around it - you just don't need it. Most of the time, your pride will tell you otherwise, but just get some of this:

Rent: at least $2500month, likely 2-5x that. So... did you know this would buy nearly a man/month of development services in Russia? Or close to 3 man/months in Pakistan? (That's most assuredly a different blog post.) Imagine what kind of marketing this will buy?

Sure there are whiteboards, and coffee makers, and water coolers... and the conference room is good for entertaining clients. But add in the land-line phones in addition to the cell phones... it starts to bust out quick. Now, let's take a look at this option: THE COFFEE SHOP OFFICE

Just so you know, I'm of the ilk that says, "if you sit in Panera all day, you oughta buy something". For some folks that aren't quite that way, the price will be less.

Well, I'm in and out 3 times during the day. I get a coffee/bagel combo in the morning, approximately $5 (don't forget I'm Mid-Atlantic so adjust prices accordingly). For lunch I get a water and salad/sandwich combo, $7. In the afternoon, I need a boost, the latte $4. So, that's $16 per day.

Multiply that by the number of people while live there, let's say 3 for your startup, that's $48 per day. Now, we dock that by 50% because, heck, you're going to buy coffee, lunch, and the afternoon burst anyway... which equates to:

Rent: $480 per month.

And you know it - you were buying the coffees anyway. Now, cancel your landline phones and get one of those great services to host your virtual PBX (with human answerers) and save your startup $2k a month.

These are just the rapid decisions and cost savings that keep a startup rolling! Imagine this money going to product dev, or marketing... could change your world.

So the purpose of this post is to challenge you - think outside of the box from a business perspective. What can you to accelerate your business without accelerating your burn rate?

Honor System??

So, Seth likes the honor system... but maybe only for people who want to try products online, not for allowing comments?

Fred comments about Seth (and Marc) not allowing comments on their blog:

I know there are plenty of high profile bloggers who don't have comments, including my inspiration for blogging, Seth Godin. But when you turn off comments, the blog stops being a blog in my mind and becomes a publication. Seth and Marc will say that if you have a high profile blog, you get too many nasty, mean, ugly comments and spam to boot. True. I've had the same problems, maybe not of the same magnitude. I don't care. You have to deal with it.

And I'm back to thinking about categorizing blogs with individual identities. Seth and Marc want to write, and their blog posts are like that - you have to _read_ them. It's not twitter-style instantaneous comments about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. These guys post in-depth essays with a specific purpose. Not that Fred doesn't do that, but it's clear that the nature of his writing is different. It seems at least there is a "lighter", more interactive feel with his posts. Getting comments about an essay is a lot different than getting a "Dude, I think that song ROCKS too!" comment about a song posting.

I wonder if niches will appear within the blogging space based on blog purposes? If I'm a writer, I can have specific functions to manage honorable feedback, to sell/cross-sell my content (not ad driven!), and publish groupings of content to Amazon and B&N. If I'm an interactive person who is "social blogging", there are the other tools - twitter, integrates social networking components; for deeper levels of interaction.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out...

Funding is the Means, not the End

I had a conversation with a colleague recently who is considering running after a couple of ideas that they have in the Web 2.0 space. It brought us to the question about business/product direction in light of getting funding. I thought it would be good to share here - specifically concerning funding as the means to an end, and not the end itself. Here's the dialogue:

Having put some more thoughts, I am also inclined to think if I really need full fledged product development (even prototype) or just have content with mock-ups for investor presentations. Mock-ups will be much cheaper and UI-wise a better presentation (for the graphical impact). Having a prototype where it's half-working functionality might have a negative result.

Thoughts?

A standard dilemma in the startup world. What do I do first? How do I get what I need to move the business/product forward? My reply:

Hi there,

It really depends on the answers to a few simple questions:

1) What type of investors are you going after? Angel, VC, friends, or family? You should know specifically who you will contact and why. How much money are you asking for in each case? This also will let you know what other types of business artifacts you will need - executive summary, business plan, financials, etc.

2) What are the key requirements for that particular investor? If it's angel or early stage VC, you may get by with mockups. However, as short as today's Web 2.0 product development cycles are, many VCs (depending on where you live) want to see more - users, paying customers, management team, etc.

3) Is there are paths that exists for your company(s) without outside investment? If you are set on implementing your vision irrespective of what your funding options are, then you are faced with an entirely different business decision. If there is a remote possibility this path exists, then my opinion you need to manage like you're not getting any funding; that is, take the shortest path to revenue/customers.

Lastly, if you are not convinced of #3, I would question whether your efforts will be successful. What I mean by that is that if you are building your businesses just to receive funding, it doesn't seem likely (at least in my experience) that you are preparing to build successful businesses. In other words, funding is a means to an end, not the end itself.

HTH,
CP

Thankfully, my colleague has some good ideas about how to move forward. But this level of introspection is critical to the startup process. It's also a good way to vet out of your idea has merit beyond funding. Create something that prospects and customers can associate with and pull on... not just something that you'll shop around, but something that will change the world.

As cheap as it is to get started these days - get going, get users, get revenue!

"The Dip", a book for Quitters

The Dip is for Quitting?
Now, don't get me wrong - I like Seth's ideas about the dip itself. However, I'm not convinced it's always a Cul-De-Sac, Cliff, or Failure. I think there's something else here, something that we call "The Pivot". I think it's wrong to look at The Dip as a place for quitter analysis, but rather it should be examined as an opportunity to Pivot.

9 out of 10 Businesses Leaves 1
We all know the stats: 9 out of 10 business fail in their first year, of the 10% that make it to the 2nd year, 50% of those will fail. Is it really that all these instances are bad business ideas, or wrong business ideas? I wonder if the majority of business failures are due to operational failures - financial issues, late paying clients, mismanagement, partner issues - or because there's no product/market fit? I always equate it to that Bible verse, "love covers a multitude of sins". In business, "cash covers a multitude of sins". If you were rolling in coin, the standard operational failures don't affect you as much. If you're flat broke, everything seems like a massive failure. The point is this - don't use The Dip to say, "drats, wrong business - stupid cul de sac". Use The Dip to say, "what does it take to get to product/market fit?"

Don't Quit! Pivot!
The premise of The Pivot is that you are always some short series of changes away from success, from product/market fit. The Pivot is the point at which you recognize it, almost always from your vantage point well beneath anything in The Dip. The key thing about The Pivot is that things are crushing in from all around - stuff is just bad. Sales are too slow. Relationships suck. Demos fail. It seems the world is, for whatever reason, dead set against your efforts. This is the time you really need to examine yourself, see what you're made of, and see what the steps are between you and product/market fit. Can you get there? The keys to a successful Pivot are generally:

• Identify those steps to Product/Market Fit! This is the real point of being in a dip anyway. It should show you something that you're not seeing - there's a reason you're there, why is it? Odds are this is a key to making your Pivot.
  
• Commit to the new vision and gut anyone who won't. It's harsh, but you can't have it any other way. One of my favorite books, Good to Great, talks about your Hedgehog Concept. And well, either you just found it or it just changed - so make sure you have all the right people on the bus.
  
• Remove all hindrances and traditions. Odds are there wasn't something else causing your Dip in the first place. I always go back to the fact that even today, there are people who are successful with lawn care businesses. I used to not get this. I mean, sure demand is increasing with new housing starts, but one business for every 5 houses doesn't quite scale. The point is this - if you have a reasonable vision, you can make it work. Period. If you're not strong in one particular area, outsource it - but be wise about it. (Most of the time, the Dip teaches you this too.) Get the right people on the bus and get the crud out of your way.

So, for the penultimate caveat: I think he's right about the dead end... but I don't think he did a good job of helping us wayward non-quitters identify it. To put it bluntly, only quit when you're out of money and no one will give you any - well, any more, because it's not unlikely that you haven't gotten some from them already.

How about 32nd Best in the World?
There'll be plenty more time to post on the Pivot, so I thought I'd take this last paragraph to rail on Seth a little more. Here's the quote:

If you're not going to get to #1, you might as well quit now.

This particular quote takes an entire page in the book, with nice strong bold capital letters. Now, in my own small humble opinion, this doesn't seem quite right. If people always waited until they had the idea that they would be best in the world at something, would they ever move forward with anything? No doubt you've had some idea that 6, 12, 18 months later became something as big as Google or Starbucks. You might have even prototyped it, designed it, or built a database or something - but because of this very principle, you immediately found some constraint that caused you not to pursue it...

Someone is already doing it. It's impossible. It will be too expensive to build. No one will buy it. I suck at it. I don't have time. I need to watch the Family Guy repeats I've Tivo'ed over the last 2 years.

Don't Fall for The Pre-Dip Dip
This is what I would call pre-dip dipping. Now let's take a look at this from the individual market perspective. The entire idea of #1 is talking about a pie slice... which we all know isn't a good way to look at the world, but it's the way the world wants to look at things. The Unified Communications market is $15B, and then we say Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, IBM, and the smattering of niche players take up$ 14.9B. So, even if I can make it through the gauntlet of small business (50% of the 10%) I'm only going after a $1MM pie. Bummer.

Don't get suckered by the Pre-Dip Dip. It's just this kind of nonsense that keeps people from doing BIG THINGS. There's something to be said for how you set expectations. First, Be You, and get a good start on solid footing. Then let things come together - product, market, sales, revenues. Make sound decisions, but move forward aggressively towards the vision, no matter how many elephants are pooping in your sandbox. See if you can be the best in town, then move from there. I like Wil's post, there are some great $3M companies out there. Build on a series of smaller successes - get there first, then ramp. It will be a lot more fun.

The 6 Habits of Highly Defective People

Going to put this one to music... good ole' classic rock.

1. Self indulgent. "Life's Been Good" Joe Walsh.

It's all about me, me, and me... did I mention me? It's an important thing to consider the aspects of one's life as it relates to ego-centric operations. I'll post elsewhere about the success literature phenomenon, but suffice it to say there is deep truth in "what you sow, that shall you also reap." Having a life that somehow impacts the world in a positive way is very important - and without it, I believe emptiness is the result. Beware folks that want to celebrate without a good reason to... and also look out for the stone crab claws! Something is up!

2. Deceitful. "Lyin' Eyes" The Eagles.

Apologies to Fred Wilson for the Eagles tune... but you ever noticed how the perpetual liar has some strange gleam in their eye? It can be such a subtle thing, but if you've seen it you know it. It's also an interesting parallel between this and the gleam that you see in the eye of a person who is dramatically successful or confident. At the end of the day though, the lack of integrity shows through - at the base of our being, we need to be "real", this type of defect never gets the level of depth that is rewarded with significance... at least not without jail time.

3. One man rodeo. "I Drink Alone" George Thoroughgood

Cowboy coders fall into this category. This is completely different from confidence and interdependence; both of which are good qualities. There is a point at which it crosses a line and the phrase is like "I don't need anyone!". Well, if it were possible that you could be the best at _everything_ then this might make sense. But it generally yields a whole bunch of "chief cooks and bottle washers". Let's put it this way - you can't scale.

4. Lack of focus. "Takin' Care of Business" Bachman Turner Overdrive

A hundred miles to nowhere. You ever been around those folks who act like a hurricane? Flurry of words, e-mails, calls, IMs, any type of communication, they're on it - or even a flurry of code... with a lack of a solid deliverable. Now, this isn't someone who gets stuck on a problem and works through it, or someone who is overburdened with tasks. It's scattered effort in such insignificance that it doesn't move anything forward. This often is a result of a lack of vision or defined purpose.

5. Inflexible. "Roll with the Changes" REO Speedwagon

"My way or the highway" is daggers to most startup businesses. Now, I'm certainly not advocating that you abdicate responsibility for critical decisions, but you just have to take some risks. Calculate them, keep them in the right place, and fight for what is core to your vision. Embrace the risks that fill in gaps in your strengths. If you're strategic, take chance on the tactical. But you can't expect to win without rolling with the changes. People change, technology changes, business environments change - don't get hung out to dry. This is like fishing in the same hole all day and catching nothing. For goodness sakes, move to a different hole!

6. Always too much to do to get anything done. "Beast of Burden" Rolling Stones

The "successories" (to be defined in another post) call it the "positive mental attitude". It's the first thing you lose when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some people can fake it, but generally they end up falling out at some point. They lose their focus on why they're doing what they are doing and just fall apart. And it's ridiculous. I can't say that I haven't let this one grab me, but I'm incessantly making lists and that helps get a handle on it. I'm not a full on proponent of GTD, but I certainly believe that folks ought to take some of that to heart. Make a list, put stuff on it, cross things off when they're done. Pick the top 6 things for the day and DO those. Just get 'em done and everything else push.

The Way I Read/Write Blogs

It all really depends on the nature of the blog. Lately, I'm getting less and less intrigued by the blogs that say, "Today I'm in Italy", or "Check out the latest tune from the Hedge Monkeys!". Sure, it's the nature of the blog, but I'm either looking for news or heavy content. Most of the time it goes like this:

Scan
Like Joel on Software Business of Software feed... you just kind of rummage through it to see if something catches your eye. But with the folks who put a lot of content out that I know I'm going to read, I just hold on to them and allocate ample time for them.

Drift
Generally blog reading happens sporadically for me. Maybe I'm waiting on something else, or just want to break up the day. So, I'll float to certain feeds, maybe some news stuff, or even scan something I'll read later.

Snagged
This is when I really get hooked by something. Sometimes I wind up outside of the feed reader and link to a few places, or even tag or save it to favorites for later. Now favorites is a different issue altogether.

Now, in writing it's quite a bit different. I'm always writing with a purpose, even if I don't think anyone is reading or not. So, I'll have a blog idea and just frame it up - then come back later and edit, edit, add, revise, etc. until I come up with some work product worthy of "me".

It's more like writing a book chapter or essay than it is the chitter-chatter that some blogs have. I think that at some point, blogs might have categories - those for chitter-chatter, and those for more in-depth content. But for now... just put down your ideas, elaborate, and change the world.

Love and Marriage

Given recent events, I thought it would be fun to give some analysis (or a diatribe if you will) of partnerships and how they impact startups. Managing personalities is probably the most difficult thing in any startup partnership and I've certainly been involved in my fair share of issues resulting from strong personalities, definitely notwithstanding my own.

However, I've been extremely fortunate along the partner path, having read and heard of a myriad of unbearable experiences, most of which cease the operation and kill the opportunity of the business said partners were involved in. Somehow, someway, we're still here. It's an amazing journey, this whole entrepreneurial winding road, and although I'm reticent to cite a Mt. Everest expedition comparative, let's suffice it say that partnerships are only slightly less devastating when you lose. Thinking along that line, we may very well still be closer to the bottom of the mountain than the top...

Which is, I believe, a quite unfair way to look at such a journey. In this world, and in our wonderful country (despite all Her faults, She remains The Land of Opportunity), it seems to me that most any effort is almost always some short list of events away from success, or rather, from reaching some plateau on the mountain above that where one is currently located. More practically, I believe each person in each endeavor could probably list, say, less than 5 factors that would very rapidly propel them to the next level. Whether it's funding, deploying through a massive F500 account, or increasing traffic/conversions 10x, there's just a small number of things that might make your startup the next YouTube.

Given that, there are exponentially more things that can make it go wrong, and partnerships are probably responsible for a large number of those things. First, let's look at what a partner can bring:

Complementary strengths. Most of the time, we're cowboys - driving alone, when eventually we see the opportunity/challenge ahead and recognize, "sure could use a couple other hands". Partners can bring complementary strengths that you lack. With coding founders, it's generally people/networking/sales; although sometimes marketing.

Another viewpoint. Having someone else to call bullspit on you when you're headed down some dead-end rabbit hole has a significant impact on how much money/time you waste getting your product to market.

Additional connections. Most certainly, they'll know people that you don't know and can bring those connections to bear in any number of ways from sales to funding.

Another set of hands. When business starts to pick up and the revenue ramp hasn't yet hit, it's important to have another resource that can take on some of the additional work load.

If you're not in a partnership, but considering one, here's my list of things you must do:

Look for value alignment. At their core, your partner must align with your values. Now, let's say you're a deceiving lying sack of poop, don't get someone else like that. My point is - when the feces hits the rotating oscillator (and it will) you need someone who is going to live up to their commitments. This doesn't mean they have to be perfect or some namby-pamby wimps who always tell the truth, but in certain core areas they must meet their obligations to the company and to do the right thing.

Check their references. Call the people that they give you and ask good questions. Don't fail on this, because you need to ask the best questions you can... because these folks are on tap to give a good reference and you have to notice the nuances. If you have the right questions, it's easier to pick up than if you ask silly fluffy questions. Don't be afraid to ask the tough questions either - this is how you figure out if you're going to give away part of your dream to this person.

Check other references that they didn't give you. Find anybody you know and ask about them. Ask their kids' teachers, direct reports at previous employers 10 years ago, whoever you can find that knows them in any way. Listen - you've got to be right on this, so do your due diligence. Ask their dog, check out their neighborhood, look at their yard. Follow them to their local watering hole, see what they say when they're boozed. Background checks... I'm not a big fan of going that route, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. If you smell anything even remotely fishy, get a background check. It's just that important.

Make sure there's alignment along all areas. If the values align, refs check out, then you have to make sure they align with your vision. In particular, I believe the most important thing here is settling on the corporate identity (check out a future post on this). Since the company is going to take on the life of the Founders, make sure it's the right life! If one partner is settled on having a "nifty product" and another is set on $100M of revenue in 18 months - there's going to be an issue.

Get some solid legal work. The understatement of the century, but I've seen so many folks get tied up in some nastiness that they can't get out of that a decent attorney spending 1/2 hour could have saved them from. Make sure all the docs are tight; articles of incorporation, employment agreements, and especially the shareholder's agreement. This is your only guideline to how the relationship is structured legally. We'll have some more posts I'm sure on the setup of these things. DO NOT short-cut review of any options here - it can mean shares, ownership, company death, and potentially millions of dollars.

Consider merit-basis. More often than not, someone will feel like they are doing all the work. Well, unless you put it in a legal document you have no recourse if this happens. Consider deeply the "for cause" clauses in employment agreements and how that is attached to being a shareholder. If you are particularly wary in this area, make sure you have clear expectations of what this partner is to provide; funding pathways, sales, technology development, etc. Tie it to a legal document if you have to, but be forewarned: this works both ways.

Don't be afraid to talk about exit strategies. The key here is for your prospective partner to understand that you can live without them, and if they screw up, you're going to be successful anyway. Having this attitude will elevate you above "need" and let them know that they are becoming a part of something great - it is important, and they need to understand the gravity of it. You should communicate what the causes for separation are, how they will come to pass, and what will happen. There should be some position where each partner could get booted as an employee (of course) and as a shareholder for actions deemed detrimental to the company.

If you are in a partnership and you think it's going sideways, here are some things to think about:

Pathways forward. There are generally only 3 options: 1) amicable separation, 2) non-amicable separation (nuclear), and 3) modifying their current role. You really want option 1 or 3 no matter what. So do you best to work towards that - anything in the option 2 area is almost certain company death, but... if you took care of legal...

How well did you take care of legal? You could make it. Legal has a big impact on how bad the nuclear disaster will be. If you didn't take care of legal enough, shame on you! It's not unlikely for you to end up in a long drawn out battle that might kill your company. If you did your work there, this can be as easy as a formal letter and keep on truckin'.

Company impacts. How bad is it? There are certain situations where you just need to suck it up and deal with it - if this person is your key revenue generation engine, or your only path to technological prowess, you can't just take 'em out. Think long and hard about the impacts before you send off that blistering e-mail (which is, of course, legally discoverable). Always consult sound legal counsel before making any heady moves. If nuclear is the only perceived option, how bad would it be to manage to keep them around? It's either die or deal with it sometimes, and you just have to figure out what that means to you and your company.

One final note: If you have a good partner, you should feel privileged. Going through these battles is not for the faint of heart - there are times you will feel strangely powerful emotions, like hatred, anger, fear, paranoia... hang in there, take logical steps, do your due diligence. If you align at all in values, you will pull through.

For those of you who thought...

...this blog was going to end up being a high-level jaunt through the strategery of startup and business affairs, be forewarned, things are about to get crazy technical!

New ideas abound and in order to deep dive back into the guts of the latest and greatest tools, I'm back at it again. Now, having been one of the first 5,000 people certified on .NET (Charter MCAD, for what it's worth now, I think I lost the special "I Love Bill G." wallet card), I'm quite surprised that the tools are still pretty much the same after all this time. Granted, I took about a year or so off from programming (instead of typing the code, I was architecting, reviewing, testing, managing, and businessing), so I kinda thought things would be farther along with the M$ toolkit. I mean, I've personally reviewed Silverlight, Expression Blend, and all that jazz... but it still isn't quite the bees knees I expect $50B to generate. Maybe the India effort didn't quite yield the success that Microsoft was looking for?

Being the eclectic entrepreneur that I am, all this stuff perpetually disappoints me anyway. Things should just be easier, which is why I'm ticked at MS and still (after all the hype) a fan of the folks at 37signals. I've had the occasional frolic down the Java road as well as Ruby on Rails (which by the way, does hurt a little bit for a Microsoftie) but it doesn't seem like the black turtle neck and European-style glasses that don't have any optical value have really been a good fit for me.

Although the fashion is not quite my style, the ever-wise technology sages of my mind are still out deciding, and here I am, choosing the platform for my latest world-changing effort. My knowledge and experience lie with the monopolizers, but the gleam of freshness from the latest and greatest are piquing my interest. Plus, it would seem to me that developer rates for these have polarized, pretty much irrespective of the country you outsource to - meaning, that in Pakistan .NET rates = Anti .NET rates, within ~5%, just like the U.S.

And alas, wretched business fundamentals are forever quenching my desire to spend several months getting my product to market! Stay tuned...

Be You

Startups take on the identity of their founders.

Through various events and circumstances, their identity is forged. I've found it incredibly interesting how circumstances can so quickly modify the identity of your company. If you are pitching the VCs for the cash (because, you need cash or otherwise you wouldn't waste time pitching the VC) your company is a massive homerun that you can sell in than 18 months. If you are prospecting with the F500, you're positioning is entirely different - you're an established company with a multitude of client references, on a completely secure enterprise class, blah, blah blah, that's going to increase revenues by 10% in it's first year of deployment. Oh, and you'll be around forever.

But... if you take a good hard look at your product/service and where you fit the market - it's likely that you are something entirely different from either of those things. And taking it a step deeper, if you examine the strengths of your founding team (maybe it's just you... so there is an "I" in team) you may find that you're living in an alternate universe, trying to shoe-horn yourself into a place where you don't fit. You know, the whole square peg dodecahedron hole syndrome. (I've rarely found a startup where the hole was round.)

Maybe this is because I've just recently read Now Discover Your Strengths (I know, I know, I'm late with this book) but there's just something about your innate talents and abilities that drives you to do certain things better than other things, and therefore would evidently cause you to be more successful in endeavors that better aligned with those talents. An interesting corollary exists between your personality, your talents, and your product/market fit.

Not that I'm completely sold on the whole strengths pathway as I believe various talents and capabilities can rise to the occasion depending on your circumstances, and that many times this has a huge impact on a startup. We've all seen superhuman efforts come from unlikely sources - like Seabiscuit. So it seems to me that a startup need not focus on consistent near perfect performances (like larger companies do). Maybe startups are like horse racing. You don't need persistent near perfect performances all year long. You really just want to blow them away at three different races and win the Triple Crown. I feel like some of us in the vast middle earth of entrepreneurs fare better with the sporadic superhuman efforts rather than consistently near perfect performances...

The point is this: if you're the rabbit or the turtle, either way, let your strengths and dreams drive your efforts toward the ideal product/market fit. Don't let the world tell you who to be - be who you want to be. The world is not a pie that is slowly running out of slices; new pies are made every single day by people like you, living their dreams and strengths... and changing the world. There is a place that exists where you are living your strengths and it is yielding the maximum benefit to you and society. That's the place you need to be - and, just so you know, that's the place where product/market fit is at maximum. It might not be comfy (probably won't) and more likely will really suck for a while... just deal with it. Let the experience move you farther along. And be you - because you is who you need to be to impact the world like you are intended to.

Positioning and the Power of Words

I'm continually interested in the means by which words are used within various startup situations. It's often called "positioning" or "managing perception" and at times, it seems to veer on the side of a pure lie. The art of using words to your advantage is a powerful force in business circles and can spin out of control quickly.

Going on since the beginning, when the serpent deceived Eve by twisting God's words, this type of subtelty is de rigueur in business. There are several methods to this, most of which revolves around leaving out crucial facts, or modifying phrasing such that some specific emphasis is avoided or left out entirely.

This phenomenon is most interesting in startups, particularly those that sell to larger businesses. Since such an enterprise requires credibility to make a purchase, even purchases less than some perceived risk amount, business viability and stability are critical components in those decisions. And having been on the other side of that decision process, I know those factors differentiate between who makes the list for the next meeting and who doesn't.

So how do you establish credibility in this situation? Here is where we see this subtlety emerge - initially beginning as harmless positioning and eventually leading to massive hyperbole and cringing engineers who sit in sales meetings thinking, "please, please don't let anyone ask about what he just said!". Or you fight and scrape to establish small user groups with the folks that will let you... it's a tough road. When your sales decision process has to go through an IT department, face it - you're looking at a long sales cycle - as a startup relying heavily on cash flow, that's daggers.

But I think there's way more to it than that. It has a lot to do with your identity, market product/market fit, and your ability to recognize and remove objections during the process. There's a significant difference between hyperbole and recognizing and removing objections. This difference is founded in the most pure logic - the ability to create a series of facts and arguments that alleviate fears and position you around them. In the startup environment, having this talent (I call it a talent) is critical. Ideally, you want to take the shortest path to a definitive "NO". It's often been said that "Getting to YES!" is most important, but as a startup, "Getting to NO" as fast as possible is equally as important. Asking the questions that draw out the NO early and fast and working through the objections that force your prospect to say NO minimize your time outlay and give you more opportunities to land prospects and customers that are more likely to buy.

This mentality allows you to identify the objections you just can't win on - if your prospect is looking for an established base of 10MM users and $10MM revenues, well, that ain't you - walk away and find someone who is looking for you. Don't tell any stories to stretch out there. If they're looking for whiz-bang feature #1047, and you don't have it, don't lie about it. Position it in the future if it is in your future, but don't say you have it just to get to the next step. It all ends up bad going down that road.

I'll discuss identity and how that aligns with product/market fit in another post, "Be You."

Finding Open Seas and Strong Winds

Here recently on the Andreessen blog, there was an amazing truth posted:

The #1 Company-killer is lack of market.

It's one of those things that seems blatantly obvious. However, I'd like to elaborate further on what makes a market and how that's defined. Not having invested a massive portion of my life into obtaining an MBA, I've only come to know what I know through experience and books. There are two books in particular that have impacted me the most in understanding markets and how they are created:

Blue Ocean Strategy
The Deviant's Advantage

The cool thing about thinking about these 2 books together is that you get some very interesting insights: the Blue Ocean is more about innovation in existing spaces, whereas understanding the Deviant is about understanding the cultural fringe and how they come up with new ideas. In examining how the lack of a market can destroy a startup, it's interesting to view how a startup is positioned.

When we look at existing markets, we define it with variables that give us an idea of a company's strengths. One of my favorite views from Blue Ocean is this graph:


Not sure how the quality of this is, but hopefully you can see enough - across the variables, Dr. Seuss innovated by establishing a place where no one else was; thus becoming the first in an untapped market. One particularly good example they use is Yellow Tail wines - how they basically brought a high-end, high-education product to the masses. Now there's a ton more theory and evidence around the tenets of this (value-cost balance, differentiation and all that) but we can generate simpleton equations (maybe there's a layman's guide to market theory in here somewhere):

x = number of market forces/segments/functions
y = number of players on the board
z = size of market
q = ability to a new "x" all for yourself
M = the draw factor of any "x" (demand)

As x increases, y increases. By addressing additional market functions, you attract other competitors. This is seen through companies that try to do too much, and instead of creating a blue ocean, they just put themselves in a bigger red ocean.

As y increases, the number of possible x's decreases. Maybe... but we don't like to think this way. This is the idea that there is some invisible pie, and over time people eat it - it never comes back. This is consistently disproved .001% of the myriad of mISVs out there who become successful in established their own "x".

A low x and a low y = a high q. Although this is certainly true, you can much more easily create new factors (blue oceans!) when there aren't many factors and not many players, this doesn't always mean we get a high M. As proven by the myriad of companies who have a whiz-bang idea, but no one is yet to buy it.

In my own humble opinion (I am just an unfrozen caveman lawyer) the key here is the corollary between M and x, not q. This is where many folks fall into the gap that if they can increase the likelihood that they'll find a niche, they will be successful. Not exactly true! The list of market functions can go out a mile and have no sufficient demand attached to them. So, when we pitch our VC friends, we can't expect to make a list a mile long and say we've create a new Blue Ocean, because we've combined the 418 factors that already exist in the marketplace.

This is the key to "product market fit" as Marc mentions. You've got to have something that opens up demand, and this isn't always the last item on the market function list ahead of the other players.

"The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit." This could be the understatement of the year. Here's where the variables really get tricky, like timing, and most importantly - capital. Even if you have identified the market demand function, if you don't have the capital to get there, you're toast.

East Coast vs. West Coast

One of the interesting things that I've encountered along the way is the seemingly quite significant difference in investment criteria for VCs geographically. Now, my sampling isn't that significant (less than 15 firms), but the investment criteria might look something like this:


Okay, sure, I'll take the "you're exaggerating" comment. But Marc Andreessen's point about qualify, qualify, qualify is hitting home with me, and I believe a major issue is geographical. East of the mighty Mississippi, things are just different - and even though my sampling might small for early-stage technology firms, the fact is that venture capital on this side of the country just isn't as venturous as it is on the other side.

There are intrinsic differences between West Coast and East Coast VCs. I'm personally not beyond thinking that it stems from cultures seeded as the West was won through the Gold Rush and so on. There are some free thinking styles that emerged throughout the later 1900's that didn't take on this side of the country. It's like we got tobacco, cotton, coal, and steel mills and they got PARC.

My recent experience also indicates that although there's a myriad of nearly free communication and collaboration tools out there (full disclosure: I am CTO at some such company) startups and investment firms seem to have a new addiction to having their teams local. Having come from a software background where the entire objective has been to deliver solutions with teams scattered all over the world, I'm skeptical of this need for VCs to have their entire portfolio right in their backyard.

There's something to be said for the perceived impact of the investor and their activities within the startup that would be a driving force in whether the remote VC would be successful. For investors who like to get their hands dirty, I can see why they wouldn't be able to do the remote thing but so much. Even so, technology is rapidly driving the down the cost of being remote and companies are every day utilizing tools that enable remote relationships of this magnitude (our product being one of them).

Either way, there remain some challenges to having the remote VC that impact the style of investment and management based on geographic location. Would love to hear some thoughts on folks who have been through a startup-remote VC relationship and how that came together (or didn't).

Where are the Big Ideas?

It is dramatically apropos to start this post with a quote:

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it", is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage, even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to live, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and drink death like wine.

There's something about founding a company; there's some espirit de corps, some fight for your right to party, a little bit of brotherhood, and a few cases of empty used cans of Whoop Ass. There's some inexplicable ecstasy in the trials you go through to make it. Now maybe I've consistently been on the wrong side of this battle; the side where the mountain seems perpetually larger than our ability to climb it, but there is something about making payroll while you're trying to turn the corner with your product/company and your sales cycle is4x longer than your next month's burn.

Now, in my own humble opinion - this factor is completely dependent on the size of your idea. There's a huge difference between building the next telephone and another issue tracking system. Nowadays, we got folks out there doing all kinds of things and many times it seems easy. There's something major lost in the easy that is only built by the difficult. Companies with no product get major VC funding; companies with no profit get sold and have massive IPOs - and many times, we watch this and think we would like to be a part of it.

And I'll be the first to say, heck yeah, I want me some of THAT! But in more thoughtful times, I remember that there is immense value in the journey. We've got enough books and blogs from happy, successful people - who, by the way, are now mostly successful at selling books or getting traffic on their blogs. Now there's a stat I'd like to see on Amazon/Google Analytics - ratio of actual business successes (let's make it trailing 12 month revenues) against books sold/blog ad traffic by author. That would give us a a clear view of who is full of poop. If it's a VC/entrepreneur blog, let's see their ROI for every investment. Outperforming the S&P 500? Uh...

At any rate, everyone is out to get rich off someone else's money. Where are the people who are out there driving to something real? Something significant, something worth building? Here goes... that whole "project that has meaning" thing. I can smell Open Source/University all over this - just because something is shared and free doesn't mean that it's what is needed. Thank goodness we have 7,452 free issue tracking systems - they are steadily making the world a better place! (sarcasm)

Not that I'm against OSS - the point isn't about the open source part, but the software - where is open/shared actually creating software that is having a massive impact? Okay, there are a handful of projects that fit in this category - but as a percentage, what is the noise-to-value ratio of OSS projects that are differentiated in their category and bringing major value? They're looking to be the next big thing, not changing the world.

And we've got more than enough people who are working the cushy dev jobs while their mISV struggles to convert more than .02% of trial users, trying to find a niche where they can get $9.95/month for an advanced issue tracking system specifically for manufacturing applications.

There seems to me to be some shortage of people out there really trying to change the world. There's like some cosmic ethos to "having your own company" which makes everyone all giddy - but if the time to market is greater than 6 months or exceeds the amount of credit card debt I can carry, or burn exceeds the shortest sales cycle, we duck and cover. What's with that? Big ideas take big nads and that's that. Go to the mattresses with Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and the other big dawgs and crush 'em. Isn't that what America and capitalism is about? Changing the world for the better...

But alas, we are spent building another social networking engine, this time with VOIP, or podcasts, or mashed up stuff, or feeds from the Weather Channel. And another real estate site or another enterprise BI package... was it Web 2.0 or the iPod or Netflix or something else, and I missed it? Drats! Stupid day job.

The Visionary ViewPoint Blog

As I start off this blog, entitled "A Visionary Viewpoint" (note that this does not particularly identify the visionary) I am contemplating the sheer noise of the internet at large. Will anyone read it?

One might think, "shall I increase the noise of my life with yet another blogger added to my feed list?" As a potential "visionary" (or closet visionary) I would hope there is some value to be gained; if not, I should relate myself to those who have blogged (or journaled shall we say) in the past - let it be for the sake of the blogger.

That being said, I thought I'd take this opportunity early in the blog to identify the reasons why this content is going down in digital history in the first place, as well as to give some thought to the potential reader mass what should appear:

• Technology Business Issues - posts about startups, VCs, micro-ISVs, and the like
• Project Management and IT Processes - agile, TOC, Scrum, and all that wonderful methodology goodness
  
• Personal Development, Success, Business literature - posts that focus on productivity, the latest books, analysis, et al

And of course, as with any blog/journal, it's pretty much open to the discretion of the blogger. I will retain this right but try my best to keep you out of the day-to-day "I'm in Paris today" style posts.

Constructive feedback and criticism is welcome. Enjoy.