A friend of mine recently started his own venture up in the San Francisco Bay Area and has been blogging about his progress each week. This week, he talked about "echo chambers" - where founders of startups sit around and talk amongst themselves, persuading each other that what they are doing is absolutely right. See a snippet of the post below.
Week three of my startup company has been pretty exciting. We met up with one of our board of advisors, who provided really good feedback and information. It's always great to have people who really make the effort to share their knowledge and insight. It's not like you rely on that for direction, but it's good to keep your head out of any echo chambers you might be in, and really listen to other experts out there to see how other people and groups think in the same industries. That is one of the most important things to learn in a startup: how everyone else is thinking about the same problems.
The worst that could happen to a company is for all the founders to put their heads down, bury themselves in code and business details, talk amongst themselves, and in essence, persuade each other that what they are doing is exactly right. Echo chamber. Everything really comes down to the same way of thinking for startups: release fast, often. This will get you the most feedback from real life people, and with what they say you can easily determine what to build next as a feature. There's no need for you and your founders to be geniuses, knowing exactly how people will want the app to behave, knowing the perfect UI flows. There's also no need for countless hours discussing how exactly the best way to present information is. Just present it as best you see it, and let the people tell you.
Good advice for any entrepreneur. See here for the original post on his blog.
(Click on the image above to see a larger image if you want to read the back cover)
I knew I was supposed to get these today but I was hoping for earlier than 5:30. I'll be sending out about 50 of the first batch of orders tomorrow.
I'm very pleased with how the book turned out--both the content and the packaging. I'm looking forward to the response I get from readers--that's what really matters. I'll share more thoughts on my experience soon; right now I need to package up some books!The Little Green Book sells for $14.95. You can order now and receive free shipping, but only until Friday, December 18th.
“Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for- because unless we stand for something we shall fall for anything” - Peter Marshall
This is so true for business. But the most important thing which entrepreneurs don't realise is that having a vision statement by itself doesnot suffice.
The vision has to be something you commit to on a daily basis. The strategies you come up with should support the businesses vision.
So why do you need a vision statement ?
A vision statement is a tool that can guide your organization as market conditions, technologies, and buyer behaviors change and evolve. It summarizes what an organization wants to become within a specified time frame and should resonate with management and staff. Not only does a vision give shape and direction to the organization’s future, it helps set priorities and criteria for product development plans and strategies. A well-crafted vision will help employees feel proud, excited, and part of something much bigger than themselves.
Here are 5 tips to choose the right "vision statement" ?
When you pitch your vision to prospective investors, prospective partners and possible employees, you need to gauge their reaction. You will need to find out if there was anything in your pitch which interested or excited them. If there was no interest, you will need to make it interesting.
You will need to understand how "far fetched" it is. If your vision is too "far fetched", the people around you will just tune out. They will feel that this is an impossible task and it not worth taking an effort. You will need to move away from complete hallucination to a little more reality.
If you have not included the "human factor", then your vision statement is not ready yet. Any organization you build will need to interact with people (consumers, employees etc) and including human values in your vision statement connects with people who read your vision statement
If your vision statement has not stretched the organization's capabilities and image, it is not the right vision statement. It has to give shape and "direction" to the organization's future. If the "direction" is not present, then redo your vision statement.
If your vision statement is more than a page long, It is blurry. Make it more clearer by making it short and fit in less than a page.
I attended a good panel this morning organized by the people at Ogilvy PR in DC.The topic was innovation in organizations, and there were some great panelists.
We ran out of time, but I would have loved to discuss the dynamic between the outward-facing guys and inward-facing guys within companies.My own attitude has been that a company should do its best to create tension between the outward-facing team (maybe led by the CEO), and the inward-facing team (led by the COO).Both teams are essential to stimulating innovation.The trick is, even though you want to foster tension between the outward and inward forces, you need the outward force to win often enough to keep people very busy.
There has been so much flake with regard to Steve Jobs. There's the holy guru of Design (note, he does not have a degree in marketing or design, he's a dropout with a good design "sense")Steve Jobs who made the iPhone possible and thus bring about a revolution. There's the asshole Steve Jobs who just doesn't listen to anyone or anything and tells you what is good. There is the Steve Jobs that survived Liver damage and rescued Macworld from the throes of super boring presentations. There is also Steve Jobs apparently that people don't seem to know about.
actually it's humorous to read when people say that Steve Jobs is not humble. You're obviously one who's never worked with or for the guy and never seen that side of him.
But for those of us that have and have seen him grow over the years, he shows that side more than you think and it's something that helps Apple move forward and not be stuck as it was when Spindler & Sculley.
The thing about Steve is he looks at things from angles you'll never see. He's not the designer but he does have a knack for putting himself into that space of "how would this work best or feel best for me if I were to use it". So many people in business fail to do this simple exercise and then wonder why their company fails, or their website fails. And when he does this exercise it's not from a place of cockiness or arrogance, but rather one of being humble and seeing things from all sides.
Then the fun begins when he challenges you to step into your excellence and make things happen, make changes, improve things and strive for perfection without expecting a pat on the back. That's the part that people find difficult. Steve knows you can do what he asks, he only wants you to realize it and achieve it, without needing that back pat. And when you do get one from him, it's an amazing feeling. But for those that never experience all that I just described, well...sorry you were not around the man. He's a pretty great guy no matter what's written about him.
A couple days ago, I (Maria) sent out a tweet listing several women-led startups in response to TechCrunch's tweet asking for Twitter list suggestions. That inspired me to write about these female entrepreneurs, what they're starting up, and how they're staying active!
Samasource brings dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty. They are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social business that's in the seed stage after launching mid 2008. Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means “equal”.
Former Principal at Charles River Venture, Susan is effervescent and driven. She has a lot of fun doing whatever she does. Susan was the former CMO of the Apache Software Foundation and has significant experience in online gaming. It's not too surprising she's taking on Ohai. next.
Ohai builds flash-based massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). They are venture backed by $6M and, with an impressive team, Ohai has just launched! Here's Susan presenting at Le Web about Virtual Goods and Ohai:
Rashmi is a fearless woman who writes a great blog and shares a candid perspecifve of the challenges for women raising money, She puts her Cognitive Psychology PhD from Brown University to work at Slideshare and within the tech community.
Gina is a social networking expert who was a former financial analyst for Goldman Sachs and most recently co-founder of Ning with Marc Andressen. She hold a Stanford MBA and she puts it to good use by evangelizing Ning and constently improving an already great product.
Ning is a service provider that lets you build social networks around any interest. Founded in 2004, launched in 2007, Ning has raised $119M in venture funding and has a massive amount of users.
Sandy and Elaine are the co-founders of Meebo. These two females and Seth Sternberg met at during their studies at Stanford. They all co-founded Meebo and continue to solve hard technical challenges.
Meebo is an ajax-based in-browser instant messaging program which supports multiple IM services. They've been around since 2004, raised nearly $40M, and have gained a strong following. As I've mentioned, these ladies are smart and here's Sandy sharing her experiences leading the technical team at Meebo:
Caterina is a fellow Canadian who is most known for co-founding flickr. She's tenacious, passionate about user experience design, and all around fun. I've met Caterina before and her startup life is an interesting one.
Currently, it's Hunch. Hunch a consumer web applicationthat helps users make up their minds. They raised a $2M series A earlier this year. Previously, it was flickr and you all know what happened there.
Regardless, I am a big fan of flickr and you can view a glimpse into my life via my flickrstream.
How does she stay active?
I've heard she works out at a fitness gym (ping me to update).
Joyce Kim and Susan Kang make up the female-duo being Soompi. Joyce is an attorney and was the former co-host of the GigaOM Show on Revision3. Susan builds the technology powering Soompi and is a prominent k-pop enthusiast known widely from Korea, LA to SF. Together they rock my Asian pop world!
Soompi is an Asian focused entertainment site, the largest English-speaking Korean and Asian website about pop, dramas, and celebrities. Back in the late nineties, Susan's original K-pop blog started taking off and, in 2006, Joyce and Susan decided to make it a real business. They are profitable through direct advertising and a premium 'Friends of Soompi' model. Here's a pretty random video they did, all in the name of entertainment:
Vicki is a firm believe of pursuing your passion and working on things that resonate deeply in your heart. I met her back in Canada, when I was working on my wee startup Kiwi Innovations (customized cell phones) and when she was the CEO of the NRG Group and KidsNRG, Canada's premier catalyst and supporter of youth entrepreneurship!
Shinyoung was the first female CEO in Korea, having built an education website, Bebetown, which was acquired by Iconsupe. She's got spunk, is not a follower, and will always be doing something entrepreneurial. Shinyoung attended Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU where she was often found prototyping new ideas such as the original Funji device.
Jen's been in the art and technology scene since the nineties. She owns an art gallery, actively writes on her blog called Personism and runs a quarterly photo competition, Hey, Hot Shot!
It's art, for everyone. 20x200 is an e-commerce site for art collectors. This site champions affordable art and so far they've raised a series A round.
#s People loves entrepreneurs and we love Aaron Patzer for what he has created. Here's a little video that we'd like to share with you of Aaron Patzer on starting a new startup company.
First of all, this post is NOT intended to be a political statement or judgment, merely an observation. The only provocative aspect of this post is that the title could have been, "One Way the Government Affects the Economy," but instead I chose to use Obama's name because my example comes from his policies.
Last Friday my company (AlumniFidelity) was selected to give a presentation to a room full of private investors at something called a Grubstake Breakfast, where investors evaluate new companies to see if they want to invest in them. We were selected to appear along with four other companies out of a pool of 40 under consideration.
As many of you know, AlumniFidelity sells software and consulting services to schools and nonprofits to help them find new donors and lower the costs of their online fundraising. The other FOUR companies that were selected to present were ALL health care companies. Typically, this Grubstake tries to showcase a wide variety of companies.
The consensus in the room was that due to the stimulus, as well as Obama's general focus on health care, right now investors and entrepreneurs want to focus on certain types of health care businesses that can be expected to profit from government spending.
When it comes to major industries, it is not a groundbreaking revelation that government spending has a major impact on shaping the economy. However, I was surprised to see an example of government policies shaping such early-stage investment and entrepreneurial activity. Especially since the government hasn't even started spending money that would affect these companies, and the health care policies themselves are not even finalized in any form.
Again, I'm not casting judgment or making a political statement. (And, for the record, my company actually benefited, because we stood out from the crowd as the only alternative for people who simply weren't interested in the health care industry.)
