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)
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)
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.
Entrepreneur: Day 17
So far, the week is not going as expected. It’s taking a little longer to get access to cash to make this work and GE didn’t do me any favors yesterday by restricting one of my credit accounts to one series of outlet stores. What I’ve learned so far is that people have a lot of good ideas. A lot of good intentions meant to help you – but if they’re not lined up with your vision then you’ve got to tell them either ‘wait’ or ‘no’. Frenetic activity does not equate to progress, it just causes you to lose perception of what you ‘should’ do and what you ‘need’ to do. You ‘should’ create reports, measure, check, verify and strategize. What you ‘need’ to do is launch a product. All the ‘should’ work will delay or even prevent you from doing that.
And by the way, I did miss a couple of days posting. I took the weekend off to hit the 98RockFest in Tampa and Festivals of Speed in St Pete. So the pic is of Stone Sour closing out the show.
Entrepreneur: Day 12
Start saying “NO.”
There’s a lot of things I want to be doing and that I want to get involved with. There are three or four events all coming up that need help and I want to jump in and make sure each of them succeeds. After all, I’ve got all this free time, right? Well, there’s a part of me that says “Shut the hell up and get to work!” I caught my self today getting ready to contributed more time and effort, but when I stepped back and asked “Do I really need to get involved with this?” and “Is this more important to me than what I’m working on?” both answers came back a solid “No.” It’s great to get involved with community projects but you have to take care of your own stuff first. So focus, launch, grow and then get involved with a lot of other projects.
IdeaGen. (Entrepreneur: Days 9, 10 & 11)
Not a whole lot of progress over the past two days, basically refining strategic partner and investor pitches as well as getting access to credit and operating cash. There has been a huge breakthrough but I’m not yet prepared to share it.
But I can share this… Someone said to me over the weekend “Why don’t you start generating more ideas?” Well, for one, I don’t have a problem coming up with a lot of ideas. I need to focus on the one’s I’m passionate about and get those done first. But this discussion did remind me that a lot of people do have issues generating ideas. By accident I also saw The99Percent.com’s posting of Idea Generation and Execution.
I’ve had a number of discussions with my business partners that revolved around the difference in thought patterns between corporate people and entrepreneurs. It’s very hard for many to understand why someone would not or could not be a little more open minded, a little more creative. I’d written a post a few months ago about Innovators and Operators and how they approach the management of a business very differently. One through aggressive creation and the other through aggressive optimization. Both sides have their strengths and both have their weaknesses. But trying to get each group to change their perspective. This interview is from 1999 and shows how IDEO goes about looking at things differently. If you’ve used IDEO’s Method Cards then you’ll immediately see some similarities in their process and how the cards being to walk you through analyzing how things are used on a daily basis. Here’s a hint – take any established player in a market that has a low cost of entry (in other words it’s not pharma). Take one or two of their products and use the Camera Journal card to start your research. You will find a weakness in the product if you look hard enough. Do this several times with different companies and different products. At some point you’re going come to the realization that you could do better. It’s likely that you’ve found a new product.
Good luck.
By the way, here’s a link to the transcript of the interview.
Took the Weekend Off!
Ok, not entirely. I did get some work done but more importantly we went to the Grand Prix of St. Pete and met a lot of great people there. We were guests of Andretti Autosport and ExactTarget and both companies are tremendous professionals. We arrived around 9:30 for breakfast in Andretti’s hospitality area. From there we got to tour the garage where Marco Andretti’s and Ryan Hunter-Reay’s cars were being worked on. As we were getting the tour the team pulled Marco’s transmission in about five minutes. That alone was impressive. How they could work with us within inches of us I still can’t figure out. But as some of the Andretti crew said, “If it weren’t for the fans, we’d have no jobs.” We also got a tour of the motor homes used to work on the cars. Everything was spotless, the cars, the garage, the motor homes, everything. We headed back for lunch where I bumped into @prebynski and @MitchNeff, great seeing you guys.
Around 12:15 we headed over to pit-lane to see Marco’s, Ryan’s and Danica’s 
cars as they were being rolled out for the start. A lot of work to get these cars to the start of the race, how the teams make this happen with us getting in the way all the time is exceptional.
For the start of the race we were sitting almost on the start-finish line. It was tough to tell what happened at turn one but there was a collective sigh of relief when Marco walked away from the Venom car after it was flipped over. One-hundred laps later and it was over. We enjoyed every minute of it and we really appreciate the hospitality of the Andretti Autosport team. I especially want to thank the ExactTarget team of Tim Kopp and Brian Tomey for inviting us to a great weekend.
Entrepreneur: 1st Week Recap (+Days 7 & 8)
I learned three key elements this week:
- Fear precedes making a decision, focus comes after you make a decision.
- Keep an eye on mistakes you’ve made in the past (HBR’s latest issue is the Failure Issue) and learn from them. Take inventory of them. What decisions did you make, why did you make them and what were the results? Would you make the same decisions over again?
- If you’re committed and passionate about what you’re doing then that will get other people pulling for you. In other words, if you give a damn it will attract others. Find a way to get those people engaged if you can.
If you’re putting your own startup together then take a look at the resources that SCORE has to offer. They also have webinars and online workshops.
For keeping track of all the things I’m now responsible for I’ve been using Things on the Mac. It’s at bit limited for anything beyond simple tasks so I’ve been playing around with Basecamp and now Zoho. I’m still undecided, Zoho gives a lot for a little money but Basecamp is really straightforward and doesn’t try to solve everything.
[edit] Add Apollo to the list – I haven’t created an account yet but the interface looks clean and straight forward. This is one I hadn’t heard of yet.
I’m taking Sunday off and going to the Grand Prix of St Pete. I went to the inaugural one a few years ago and it was a great race. Tonight I’m teaching my girlfriend who Mario Andretti is. This should be fun…
Entrepreneur: Day 6
This is going to be quick because I’m starving. Sales Strategy and Marketing Strategy are both 90% complete. For Marketing – leverage a strategic partner’s existing market presence to enable us to get ramped up quickly. Stress the benefits to their existing customer base and how this will allow those customers to stay using their product longer. That’s overly simplistic but we’ll figure the rest out as we go. For Sales Strategy – yes, we will have sales. That’s about as much as I can share.
What did I learn today? That the exercise I did yesterday (list all my mistakes) paid off today. Somebody wasn’t responding and we went with someone else. Probably waited a bit too long. So add that to the list: if you’re going to cut a service provider do it quickly and move on. It cost us time but no money, at this stage they’re equally valuable.
Entrepreneur: Day 5
Planning day. And looking for real estate. A good friend of mine, Brantley Smith, is the Director of Marketing and Interactive Media at The Continental Group. It may be some time before I actually need the space but I’ve got a really good idea of what’s out there and for how much. He really hooked me up with some great comps and I really appreciate Brantley’s help in putting this together.
At this point the company name has been picked and a quick logo has been put together. By the end of Friday I’m looking to have the articles of incorporation filed and EIN paperwork submitted. Roles and responsibilities have been chosen by the three partners as well as initial number of shares and their valuation.
The product name has also been chosen and I’m putting the roadmap together, should be ready by Thursday to discuss with the rest of my partners. I’ve also come up with an initial list of potential strategic partners to begin contacting.
I also feel like I’m not getting enough done. Not working hard enough, not working fast enough. Not sure if that’s realistic or I’m just ready to haul ass and get this launched. Since I’m sitting around a lot more (as I’m now working 
from the house) I want to get more consistent in my training. The bike has been sitting around for a few weeks – unfortunately the bottom bracket seized and it’s in the shop. Should be ready by Thursday. To prep I put together a quick schedule to start getting back in the groove. I usually train from 4:30 or 5 AM until 7:00 AM for 3-5 times a week. That’s a bit much all at once so for 2 weeks it will be 5-6:30 AM for 3 times a week. That’s about 85 miles a week. From then on I’ll add about 20 minutes a week and an extra session every other week. So in about six weeks I’ll be back up to almost 3 hour sessions five times a week. Personally, I like getting into the office already having my workout done. By then I should be able to post shots like this one of Tampa Bay.