Entrepreneur: Day 53

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Some great news is probably coming out so just be patient. In the meantime I’m taking an hour or two a day and devoting it to learning something new. Python has been hanging out there for a while and it’s the development language for one of our potential platforms. After two days I’m about half way through Dive Into Python. I’m not quite accustomed to writing blocks that are defined by how they’re indented but I assume I’ll get used to it. Other than that it’s pretty simple.

One interesting tool I have found recently is Balsamiq Mockups. This is a great tool for mocking up screens quickly and there are over 75 controls (including iPhone widgets) that you can drag and drop. Far better and much easier than Vizio or PowerPoint. It also has plugins for Confluence or XWiki – sadly, no bugzilla. It’s also less than $80.

Entrepreneur: Day 49 (Backups)

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Contingency PlanIn 13 years of overseeing databases I got caught without a backup exactly one time. Luckily it was for a dev system and it wasn’t a catastrophe but it did remind me of how important they are. Actually, they’re not just important, they’re your ass if things fall apart. Same goes for products. Your optimal way to go-to-market may not always be open to you. In that case you’ll need contingencies. Say for example that the primary feature in your product, the feature that distinguishes it from your competitors, can’t be implemented. Do you go to market anyway and hope for the best? Hopefully not. Do you wait until you develop a new capability or feature and then release? Or do you release without the feature and release the new capability as soon as it’s ready? It’s one of the last two options, but it’s all up to you to figure out. One of our possible contingency plans is shown here.

Where the Hell Have I Been?

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Actually, I’ve been right here…

And I highly recommend it. With no real vacation for more than two years I was starting to get pretty edgy. So we hopped down to Aruba and after about five days I was ready to get back to work. I realized that I just can’t sit under a cabana all day and have drinks served to me. I was almost completely disconnected as the wifi access stopped about two rooms away from us. I cleaned up on roulette the last day we were there too. But other than that it’s great to be home. I knocked out about 30 miles on the bike this morning and I’ve put in about a full seven hours of work so far today.

If you’ve never been to Aruba, there’s two ways to really get a good “taste” of the island. One is on a TomCar from Green Zebra Adventures. The other is on the back of this guy, Jesse James. There are about 35 horses at Rancho Notorious and if you get the chance, take half a day and check them out. If you like getting your ass kicked in general, take the “galloping allowed” tour. We timed heading down there just right as the off season is just beginning. We were the only ones there for the Tom Cars as well as the horse back rides. Perfect timing because we didn’t have to wait for anybody to catch up. Also “somebody” also wrecked our Tom Car forcing me to have to drive on in a different one without a governor. But our guide didn’t tell me that and left it to me to discover. So… Tom Cars WILL drift!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work. Anybody up for starting BarCamp Aruba?

There’s No Such Thing As Ketchup

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Actually, there is. But I’m actually referring to “catchup” as in the type of activity you do to catchup to your competitors. At this point the “next big thing” could just about be any-thing, why in the hell would you spend your time building what your competitors have already done? I’m a huge fan of Scott Adams (it won’t be long before I’m asked to take this down) and this one from December of ’09 pretty well sums up how futile this strategy is. If you don’t have any ideas but can execute, GREAT! Team up with someone that has great ideas. Don’t know anyone like that? Go to BarCamps, CodeCamps, Front End Developer Conference or even a StartupCamp. If you’re in Tampa or the surrounding area then you’re in luck because all of these events are either coming up in the next few months or are looking for people to help launch them. If you want to get involved then please let me know and I’ll make sure you get in touch with the right people. At a minimum get out there and see what people are working on because it’s interesting, it’s fun, and above all it’s ORIGINAL!

Entrepreneur: Day 31 (Tools and Skills I Can’t Live Without)

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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.

Entrepreneur: Day 30

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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.

Anger Management.

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I knocked out 45 miles on the bike this morning – at about mile 30 I was ready to chuck it and go home so I could get started early on a few things. Until… the paper boy (yes, somehow we still have those) ran a stop sign. The intersection is actually a “T” so he was making a left and coming into my lane. Three feet away, two feet away… Six inches away and the bottom of my right pedal is scraping the top of the curb. I’m about as far over as I can get and I’m about to jump the curb. Then he decides to stand on the brakes. Way to pay attention jackass. At that point I was so pissed I finished the rest of the hour in zone 4, 2 over my target. So anger can be an asset but only if you control it, focus it, and turn it into something of benefit. So now I’m ready to really get back to work and kick some ass today. While I’m at it, please wish my friend @meggiehd good luck as she gets ready for the London Marathon.

Entrepreneur: Day 24 (Task Lists & Budgets)

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Two things I’m pretty bad at – creating task lists for myself and sticking to a budget. Neither have I had to really manage tightly over the last fifteen years and it’s taking some getting used to. I’m not a low-level detail person, my Myers-Briggs personality type is ENTP and they’re not exactly nit-picky about details. However, I realize that I need to be closer to the details of the operation of the new company as well as more closely manage my own finances. Three tools that I’m using are Things, Basecamp, and Mint.com. I’m using Things for personal projects and tasks like “renew my drivers license” and “grocery” lists. There are versions for Mac, iPhone and my iPad and they all sync together as long as you’re on the same network.  I’m using Basecamp’s free version to get the company off the ground and launch the first product. It doesn’t support task dependencies but it gets me close enough. To manage my own finances I’m using Mint.com – they’ve already saved me about $2,000 a year on car insurance by switching to eSurance. Seriously. And I can set a monthly budget for gas, coffee, food and as many other categories as I need. It’s been about ten years since I needed to be on a budget and this is a great tool to keep me honest and see how I’m tracking according to plan. So although I thought all these posts would be about starting a company and launching a product – it’s also about fixing some of my own weaknesses that I can’t exactly hire someone to handle.

Entrepreneur: Day 19 (Focus)

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On the left is the “read” pile while on the right is the “do” pile. What I’ve learned over the last three weeks is that there are a lot of things going on that will try and take your time away from you. One of the skills I didn’t have when I started was the ability to say “no” I won’t get involved with that. At times it hurts as there are a lot of great things going on. Startup Weekend is getting ramped up and there’s always meetups and events to go to. At some point I realized that my time is better spent getting my shit straight. I’m having to make some tough choices as you can see. Things I want to do (read) vs things I need to “do”. I can do all of them and suck at each of them or I can focus on one or two and rock ’em. So here’s a hint, keep the “need to do” pile at a minimum and the “want to do” pile growing.

Also, the company is formed and I’ll be ready to announce it next week. I’d do it now but then everyone would go to the website – which isn’t ready yet. One thing I screwed up: I formed it as a straight C-Corp instead of an S-Corp. Since a C-Corp is susceptible to double taxation (but at this point 2 x $0.00 = $0.00 anyway) I wanted to form it as an S-Corp so that the tax liabilities pass through to the stockholders. I’ll fix that next week, when I go for and seed round of funding I’ll look again at moving it to a straight C-Corp. Not really a bit issue at this stage.

Entrepreneur: Day 18 (Pitching)

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Don’t pitch ideas, pitch results. And never say “I’ve got a great idea!”

I’m working on two separate types of presentations – one for investors and one for strategic partners. For investors the key points are how much money can we make, how fast can we expect a return, what’s it going to take to get there, and what results we have so far. For partners it’s how do we support the brand and improve the consumer experience. In neither case will I discuss how good the idea is. Instead I’ll be pushing what we’ve accomplished, how we scale the solution, what our next steps are and where we are according to plan. That’s what is in both types of pitches although they’re both aimed at different audiences and have vastly different expected outcomes. So if you’re getting ready to pitch the next big thing, focus on what’s in it for everybody but you.