As one of the first six companies to complete Gazelle Lab‘s accelerator program I can say that it was well worth the effort. If you’re a startup in Tampa Bay then I highly recommend submitting your application NOW. Check the FAQ on their site for an up-to-date list of the benefits you receive and be prepared to part with 6% of the company in exchange for those benefits. In my opinion, it was more than worth it. Also be prepared to work full time on your venture, if you’re holding down a day job and trying to do this… Let’s just say that you need to make a choice between one or the other. Be prepared to work late. Be prepared to speak in front of an audience of up to 1,000 (or more!) or as few as 10. Be prepared to bring a team that can execute – you cannot do this alone as it’s not just a technology solution but a business you’re building. Be prepared to take criticism of yourself, your idea and your company. You’ll be fielding a lot of feedback from mentors and other founders so if you haven’t figured out how to ‘trust your gut’ you probably need to have another founder with that skill or learn for yourself. There’s a saying at TechStars that “It’s just data” and it’s true. Your experience, perceptions and beliefs turn it into actionable information. That’s the ‘gut check’ we’re talking about. Get as informed as you can. Read Venture Deals, Do More Faster and Lean Startup at a minimum before you enter the program. I also recommend Business Model Generation as you’ll need to answer the “How do you make money?” question fairly early on.  Finally, be prepared for things to change right in front of you. It’s just how things work today. If the facts change (such as your target audience) and you don’t change your mind… You’re not going to survive. I had to change the founding team on day 1 as well as the business model and product four weeks into the program. Nobody’s fault – we just couldn’t get the companies we were targeting for strategic partnerships to open up. I had to make a decision to change everything and in the end, we came up with a better product that was more disruptive and far more scalable.

Now, one more thing. If you’re in a corporate job and are feeling a little bored, burnt out or just plain “missing opportunities” then you’re in luck. The “corporate refugee” was a recurring theme of many conversations with both the media and mentors. If you’ve been in a corporate position for a while then you bring a wealth of connections, experience and a built in “gut check” of your own. Hopefully you bring a healthy lack of tolerance for bullshit. I strongly encourage you to consider jumping into the Gazelle Lab program if you’re in this situation. I did and I have not regretted it for a second. You can DM me on twitter if you want to talk.

Since this is Part 1, subsequent parts will delve into the “Be prepared to’s” that I spelled out earlier. This is a great time for Tampa Bay, StartupBus is coming in March, StartupWeekend is coming again next year and BarCamp Tampa Bay was the biggest we’ve ever had. Keep pushing!

This video was taken leading up to Boulder’s DEMO Day in the summer of 2010. What does it mean to the companies that are participating? As you’ll hear David Cohen state that you’ll base your success on the number of meetings that you get. I don’t think it gets any simpler than that as all the work leading up to DEMO Day is aimed at getting your company funded. Gazelle Lab’s DEMO Day is Nov 17th at Mahaffey Theatre.

It’s not the long hours, development dead ends or the faint hint that you may need to pivot your business model sooner rather than later. No. What sucks is that a very small number of people, the small minded, short sighted sycophant with neither vision nor the barest wisp of a good idea, will take more time and effort to beat down, berate and otherwise level an unending stream of put-downs and vitriol against someone who wants to make a difference than it would to meekly and disingenuously whisper “Good luck.”

You don’t need to be championing the next big thing or saving a continent from drought to matter to your family, friends or even the community around you. You do need to give a damn about what you’re doing. You need to believe in yourself, your idea, and your ability to move people to action. Because at some point one of these individuals without the courage to throw their hat in the ring will take a shot at you. When that time comes, if you’ve demonstrated to people that you’re really committed, that you’re genuine, then you’ll have 10, 100, or 1000 people that have your back. And they’ll beat the shit out of that jackass as soon as the opportunity presents itself. And, if you are one of these people, just say “Good Luck” and walk away, leave the ‘making things better’ to the rest of us.

Here’s how I’m dealing with it. First, take a look at Brad Feld’s Finance Friday article from 8/12. Next, if you want more investment money, show what you did and how much you accomplished with the last money you got. This is just common sense. If you turned it into a working prototype, used it for travel and meetings with potential partners, great. Capture all of it. Break it down by what your expenses were. Show exactly what you’re paying your developers, sales teams or creatives. If you get a check from your investor(s) for the business, it goes into a business account. Do not mix your personal expenses and your business expenses. It’s called commingling of funds and when legal action happens (and it will) can cause you to lose your personal protection under corporate status. In other words, your personal assets could be at risk. Seek competent professional opinion if you need more on this subject. If you don’t have an operating account then BB&T can set you up in about 20 minutes. Bring ALL of your partners and bring your articles of incorporation as well as your EIN from the IRS. Know in advance who can withdraw money from the accounts as you will be asked for that.

Now, if you followed Brad’s advice and got a copy of Quick Books, also get a copy of Quick Books for Dummies and it will walk you through the nuts and bolts of the accounting software. Have your EIN when you do it. This will suck at first but it is the administrivia that goes along with a startup. Ten minutes a day and it will be manageable. It’s way better than an investor ready to discuss handing you cash and it takes you a week to figure out how to pull a balance sheet together. By then, they’re gone.

Today I’m pleased to announce that my company, Red Hawk Interactive, has been accepted to participate in Gazelle Lab. When I left my previous role in April it was to get more involved with the growing entrepreneurial and start-up communities that are developing in and around the Tampa Bay area. I also left to start my own company that focused on building digital products in an area that’s disruptive, fast moving, and growing quickly. I’m not ready to share what that is just yet but we’re making progress on a lot of fronts, although we have hit a few bumps lately. Gazelle Lab itself is part of the TechStars Network, which is dedicated to providing seed funding, mentorship, and a vast array of connections. This is my third start-up and in the previous two the biggest obstacles were finding mentors and funding. For Tampa Bay, seed stage funding is almost non-existent. Gazelle Lab and Tech Stars address exactly these issues and give entrepreneurs the immediate resources necessary to stack the deck in the start-ups favor. The heads-down, balls to the wall, three month program wraps up with DEMO Day at Mahaffey Theatre on November 17th in which the start-ups pitch their products and their companies to prospective investors. Take a look at the TechCrunch article for GazelleLab’s launch and the first six companies (including mine) that are participating.

Now it’s just up to us to execute on it.

It’s easy to think of a great concept and then start adding to it. Adding things that really don’t matter to consumers. Adding things that you think make your product cool. Adding things that your competitors have and you think you need to have them too. The real results? You’re wasting time and polluting your decision making process by adding too many things to consider. Focus on what really drives the number of customers you have, how much they’re willing to pay and how fast you can reach them. Focus on exploiting the weaknesses of your competitors. Focus on making your customer’s purchase experience as quick, easy, and painless as possible. Make their experience completely intuitive and test the hell out of the design. Don’t lose site of what’s (in)valuable. Your customer data is invaluable. Feedback on the purchase experience is invaluable. Figuring out how to get from your innovative customers adopting your product (which is fairly easy) to your early adopters taking it up (more difficult) is valuable. Getting their feedback as their using the product is invaluable. If you’re not clear on what I’m talking about, re-read Crossing the Chasm, especially chapter 4, Target the Point of Attack. Learn to edit yourself, scale back and launch with the bare minimum solution. See how people react to it and go from there.

On purpose I had not told my dad I left my day job until just recently. He’s 84 so he leans toward the “stick with your job and save your money” train of thought. I figured I’d break it to him over lunch, that way if he was going to explode he would have to pay for his own food. After I explained the situation to him he was actually very supportive. Then came the inevitable “What are you working on” question. The dreaded question. Remember, he’s 84 and once told me that computers were a fad. He’s a bit more reasonable now. Oh, and he can’t see either. After making him sign an NDA (just kidding!) I broke it down for him and related it to things that he’s accustomed to using. In two minutes he understood it and said “I’d use that!” He’s a bit out of my age demo but what the hell, good enough. Three concepts that have really come about over the last five years that he’s never seen or used and he gets it. The power of a good story transcends everything. No techy details, no discussion of business models, innovation, marketing or sales. Just a good story built on concepts that he’s already familiar with.

I’ve seen people build sixty page powerpoint decks to convince others that they know what they’re talking about. In the end the audience’s eyes glaze over and they’re asking “WTF was that about?” If you can’t break your concepts down in five minutes for someone who has no idea of what your talking about to start with, perhaps you should reconsider what you’re saying.

There’s times when you’re heads and down pounding shit out that you forget how much progress you’ve made. At one point I was keeping track of stuff to do (aka “Action Items”) with Things on the Mac but about 30 days ago stuff started happening so fast that I didn’t even have time to enter them. At some point I started to get overwhelmed and thinking nothing was happening fast enough. That’s when I stepped back and took a couple of hours to make note of everything we’ve done. To be certain the “to do” pile is bigger than the “done” pile but there’s things in the “done” pile I thought would take a year to finish. The overwhelmed feeling disappeared and I got my ass back to work. It’s a necessity to keep track of what you need to do, but seeing what you’ve done will get you through the rough spots.

Also, a bit of thanks to the following people for direct support or encouragement: Stephanie (for setting the bar WAY high for work ethic!), Marvin Scaff, John Morrow, Miss Destructo, Joel Lopez, Prof Bill Jackson, Daniel James Scott & Gazelle Lab, WaltonDesigns, Brantley Smith, Adam Crall for sage advice, Douglas Lee Miller for listening to me rant about entrepreneurship and innovation, Dishtopia for relaxing tea (in a doilie free environment) and to 717 South for refuge and great martinis.

And for those of you that are curious, we should be ready to announce some of what we’re working on within the next 90 days…

There’s a large number of things that, if you took them away, I’d still find a way to make things happen. On the other hand, there’s a small number of things that I really don’t have the time to re-learn, desire to re-experience, or money to re-buy. So here’s a brief list of them, broken down by category.

Tools:

• My iMac and a 20 up/20 down connection.
• vi – Indispensable.
• Korn Shell – Similarly indispensable.
• Google

Skills:

• Typing.
• Linux 0.96 Kernel It shipped with Slackware in ’93. If you could get this to install, compile, boot, and dial out on a 2400 baud modem on a 386DX you were stoked. You also had to learn just about everything about computers, from bios settings to manually setting jumpers. No Google for another 4 years.
• 10 Days to Faster Reading My reading speed went from 350 wpm to 850 wpm in one month. Great for plowing through tons of stuff.
• Getting Things Done Create one way in to your own process for getting things done. For me, everything physical comes through a box that’s by my left foot. From there I either knock it out or put it in Things to follow up on later. Same with emails except they don’t go in a box.
• Practical C If you can write even semi-basic programs in C then you can hack your way through just about any other language. Or at least read it and figure out what it’s doing. Plus, you also get to allocate memory all by yourself.
• Running Meetings There’s two types of meetings – informational and problem solving, there is no “both” or “we’ll play it by ear” options. Here’s how to set an agenda, stay on track, end the meeting, and follow up. This is apparently so difficult a subject that Harvard Business Press had to publish this.
• Presentation Zen Seriously, please stop throwing everything on a single slide to show how much you could find on Google. If you want to show how much you know try and use as few words as possible to convey your idea. The less you slap on a slide to get people to understand what you’re talking about the smarter you are.
• Knowing that the sale price minus COGS had better not be negative. Not even close. Ever.
• A statistics course in college. The professor made us calculate the odds of a real horse race for our final. I can’t remember how I did but it made calc and trig look pretty damn simple. I also learned that the only time there’s ever a precise answer is in calc and trig. Everything else is SWAG.
• Advanced Selling Strategies A book by Brian Tracy in which, if I distill it down says, shut your mouth and listen to what your prospective client’s problem is first. Then figure out how to solve it. Never get those two backwards. Find the pain points first, then the solution.
• Peak Performance Learning the mental skills of the world’s top athlete’s was invaluable. I used this to help me get into the Teenage Mr. Arkansas in 1984 at 16 years old. And the concepts apply to business too.
• USMC. ’85-’89. The last two years was working in two-man teams, on our own, away from the battalion. I really learned that I could fend for myself and pretty much deal with anything that came up.

So there it is, the list of the top 16 things that make everything else possible. None of these (especially boot camp and getting the .96 kernel to boot) do I want to repeat. Everything else gives you the basics to figure out how everything else works. If there’s tools or specific tools sets that you’ve picked up that you couldn’t or wouldn’t want to be without then feel free to leave a comment here. Maybe you’ll be able to help someone else out.

The bylaws are drafted – in my opinion they’re a bit of overkill, I’ll start pruning back some of the verbiage over the next day. But at a high level you need to answer how the Board of Directors conducts itself – how many seats, how are they elected, terms, scope of the director’s powers over the organization, how the board selects corporate officers, how they’re documented and who can appoint a director in the event of a vacancy. It also needs to state how the bylaws are amended and what constitutes a quorum. The first meeting to get all of this put together is the “organizational meeting of the Board of Directors” and that meeting is where all of this is agreed to and recorded in the meeting minutes. That meeting is this Friday evening. As I’m preparing the agenda and materials for that meeting I’m also working on stock issuance, vesting schedule and dealing with the rest of the paperwork. Also, as a reminder, if you’ve formed a company in Florida, Annual Reports are due May 1 of it’s a $400 penalty. Fortunately, you can file electronically.

Now, to blow off some steam I went with some great friends to Iron Maiden last night. Great show, one of the best I’ve seen in the Forum. Bruce Dickenson is about 52 or 53. He did not stop running for the entire +2 hour show. Non-stop, the guy was always moving. Really impressive and I didn’t see anybody in their seats for the whole show.