My Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs? Build Something!

May 22, 2012 7 Comments

I’ve been connected or introduced to a handful of aspiring entrepreneurs recently, folks that have lots of work experience, but no experience starting a company from scratch.  And the first question is always the same, “I don’t know how to get started”.

Ten years ago my advice might have been different, likely starting with the creation of a well thought out business plan that you use to raise money around based on the concept and research alone.  But today the costs of starting a business continue to plummet, particularly the costs to actually build a Minimum Viable Product or at least a prototype.  Simplified programming languages, open source code and dramatically reduced cloud-based hosting, processing and storage costs through services like Amazon EC2 and S3 have not only reduced the costs to build, but more important have enabled thousands of entrepreneurs to start businesses without the need for an outside cash infusion.    And there is no better way to share your vision and get others excited about your idea than to physically demonstrate it with a powerful product experience.  Gone are the days of million dollar investments required to get a demonstrable product, complete with features and functionality.

So the answer to the question is simple – Build something that you can use to:

  • Get others to actually use and thus prove value and traction,
  • Share with investors to get them excited about your product vision, and
  • Reduce the “cost of money” if and when you actually do raise capital

But what if you as the entrepreneur don’t have the skills to code a prototype or build a product yourself?  Easy, get immediately integrated into your local tech community events or get networked and find a technical co-founder.  Notice I didn’t say go find a engineer and convince them to build you something on the cheap or even free in exchange for “some shares”.  Rather, do your homework on the market opportunity, tell a compelling story and share your vision in a way that gets them excited and committed, even if part-time, to the success of the product which will inevitably require lots of iterations to get “right”.  Why should they be a co-founder?  Because engineers are the world’s scarce startup resource and, in my opinion, often the most underestimated from a strategic standpoint given the importance of technology in company building.

It’s really a subject of a future post and I digress, just go get a technical co-founder and thank me later.

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Avoiding Complacency

May 21, 2012 1 Comment

This past week I sent the email below (verbatim) to my leadership team, not as a critique, but as a challenge.   I really find my own personal motivation goes in cycles and I have to fight through this issue from time to time.  The title of the email was the same as this post, “Avoiding Complacency”.

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Guys, I wanted to share a simple technique I use every week to ensure I’m staying motivated and focused on the right stuff.  To be clear, this is not a critique on our/your work ethic, commitment or anything else other than my normal “challenging” the team to stay awesome.  I recognize everyone is working hard. 

Candidly, one of the issues I personally have to wrestle with is avoiding complacency, becoming “comfortable” in my role and most important, losing a sense of urgency and paranoia that I believe is critical for any startup to succeed – the leadership team simply has to feel an almost overwhelming sense of urgency and belief that if we don’t get better fast, someone else is going to kill us.
 
One of the things I do every Sunday night before the week begins is to answer the question, in writing “In addition to all the crap already on my calendar this week, what am I personally going to do, this week, to move the needle for the company?”
 
We should all take this view and we should push our teams to take this view.  On a weekly basis, its not sufficient for us to “move our existing, albeit important, workstreams closer to completion”.  We each must actually accomplish something, each week, that is foundational to our success, that we can all see as a big step forward, that those looking in (investors, press, customers) would say – yeah, that’s big.
 
Now, is this realistically going to happen each week?  No, but it HAS to be a goal, a focus that each of us holds each other accountable to.  I want us to ask each other this question and I welcome you saying “Rob, what did you do this week to move the needle?”

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Personal Tagged with , , , , , ,