Archive for the ‘startup’ Category

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RB @Evan William’s 10 rules for startups

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

So good I’m RB’ing (re-blogging) it. Just in case the original ever gets taken down.

#1: Be Narrow
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there’s less chance for conflict. This is all so logical and, yet, there’s a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial. Just remember: If you get to be #1 in your category, but your category is too small, then you can broaden your scope—and you can do so with leverage.

#2: Be Different
Ideas are in the air. There are lots of people thinking about—and probably working on—the same thing you are. And one of them is Google. Deal with it. How? First of all, realize that no sufficiently interesting space will be limited to one player. In a sense, competition actually is good—especially to legitimize new markets. Second, see #1—the specialist will almost always kick the generalist’s ass. Third, consider doing something that’s not so cutting edge. Many highly successful companies—the aforementioned big G being one—have thrived by taking on areas that everyone thought were done and redoing them right. Also? Get a good, non-generic name. Easier said than done, granted. But the most common mistake in naming is trying to be too descriptive, which leads to lots of hard-to-distinguish names. How many blogging companies have “blog” in their name, RSS companies “feed,” or podcasting companies “pod” or “cast”? Rarely are they the ones that stand out.
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Posted in business, entrepreneurship, people i like, startup | Comments

Flame out or become a $1Bil business

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

VCs take a porfolio approach to managing risk; individual company is largely irrelevant because of diversification effects. In fact, one of my portfolio companies was once rejected by Sequoia because, “You’ll almost certainly build a nice $100 million business. But we’d rather have a riskier investment that either flames out or becomes a $1 billion business.” Thus the key metric is expected value.

Quotable quotes, from 21 Million Reasons For Mint To Sell via CloudAve.

I’ve blogged before about Vinod Khola’s video here (iinnovate’s interview), where in it he says one of the problems he notices in entrepreneurs is that they don’t dream big enough. Just recently Sarah Lacy wrote that the consensus of the recent TC50 panel is that nobody was “swinging for the fences“, everyone just playing it safe–basically dreaming small.

Sarah writes:

Here’s why this matters: Start-ups by definition don’t have the experience, market position, funding or resources to tackle obvious market opportunities. If what they’re trying to do makes clear business sense, a bigger, better-positioned company would do it. A start-up’s only edge is that it’s not built into legacy businesses and preconceived notions and can do something, well, crazy.

There are entrepreneurs somewhere building the next big companies. But it’s probably just a wonky side-project that no one—not even the entrepreneur himself—realizes is the next big thing. That’s who we need to drag on stage next year.

I agree, if it’s an obvious opportunity, someone’s already on it. We need more crazy people working on crazy ideas.

Vinod Khosla on problem solving: You don’t solve all problems before you jump into a new situation. You just believe in yourself, and say, “I’ll figure it out, one way or another”. Vinod had no idea how he was going to pay for fees and rent when he got accepted to the Stanford GSB. To me, this is the “leap of faith” advice entrepreneurs talk about. You just got to jump.

Posted in changing the world, entrepreneurship, passion, quotes, startup, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Comments

Ex-Google China Chief speaks on mobile internet, cloud computing, ecommerce

Monday, September 7th, 2009

It’s Labor Day, I’m still groggy from just waking up .. but this is a good piece worth sharing here if you’re looking for opportunities, and focused on mobile and cloud computing. Google’s China chief Kai-Fu Lee just left Google (some of us recall this as it was a controversial high profile hire because Lee was poached from Microsoft). Here’s what he is up to next, and his words from an interview with peHUB.

“There is a confluence of several things happening in China, and we’re at an inflection point of mobile Internet, cloud computing and ecommerce. It’s really now or never.

There is an abundance of companies here and VCs have lots of money, but there is a lack of angel funding and experienced entrepreneurs. It’s a compete imbalance. Whatever you might think of Y Combinator or Idealab in the U.S., the China market is different. China needs this type of business-building platform to hire and train people and provide angel funding, which is scarce.

There also is a worldwide economic crisis, which means that there is a bunch of strong talent out there that we want to hire, in order to start a lot of exicting businesses.“

On why it’s “now or never”, he says,

“Ecommerce in China has gone from 7% adoption to 25% adoption. Payment capabilities are just happening. Really, it’s a lot like the late 90s in the U.S. Remember how quickly Amazon and eBay and even Google search took off? You have to imagine the current Chinese Internet as news and games and blogging, but a big shift is inevitable. The average Chinese Internet user is just 25, compared to 42 in the U.S. That means they are getting older, getting more money, getting married, having kids… A rising ecommerce will lift all boats.

In terms of mobile, there are 650 million cell phones in China and mobile Internet usage is growing like crazy. It’s not just knowledge workers, but it’s also growing rapidly for groups like migrant workers and people making just a few dollars a day. They view it as the only way to access information, and with usage and volume a lot of things will grow.

There also is 3G, which is the one thing the Chinese government is going after and developing this year. In China, when the government wants to do something it happens.

For cloud computing: China has never really developed a software market, and what’s happening is like what’s happening in the U.S. – moving from packaged software to online or the cloud. In that process new businesses and models are starting to happen. If you look at the success of the Amazon platform or Google apps in the U.S., it will also be true in China because there are millions or people who want easy ways to build websites.

There is incredible opportunity right now.“

Via peHUB.

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Posted in business, cloud computing, entrepreneurship, innovation, mobile, problem-opportunity, regular reads, startup | Comments

Excerpt: Larry Page’s Commencement Speech

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Full post can be found here.

You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming.

I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web — he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born.When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

When I was here at Michigan, I had actually been taught how to make dreams real! I know it sounds funny, but that is what I learned in a summer camp converted into a training program called Leadershape. Their slogan is to have a “healthy disregard for the impossible”. That program encouraged me to pursue a crazy idea at the time: I wanted to build a personal rapid transit system on campus to replace the buses. It was a futuristic way of solving our transportation problem. I still think a lot about transportation — you never loose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby. Many things that people labor hard to do now, like cooking, cleaning, and driving will require much less human time in the future. That is, if we “have a healthy disregard for the impossible” and actually build new solutions.

I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. There are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name. They all travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue. The best people want to work the big challenges. That is what happened with Google. Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. How can that not get you excited? But we almost didn’t start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program. You are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was the first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help. What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

As a Ph.D. student, I actually had three projects I wanted to work on. Thank goodness my advisor said, “why don’t you work on the web for a while”. He gave me some seriously good advice because the web was really growing with people and activity, even in 1995! Technology and especially the internet can really help you be lazy. Lazy? What I mean is a group of three people can write software that millions can use and enjoy. Can three people answer the phone a million times a day? Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy!

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Posted in changing the world, passion, regular reads, startup, things to remind myself | Comments

Shai’s Divide and Conquer!

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Shai Agassi is a real genius—one of my rock stars that I’m just dying to meet. I’ve already got to meet the other big name in electric cars, Elon Musk from Tesla.

He has said before that he’s good at break big problems into smaller problems, solving the pieces, then aggregating the results. I’m not familiar with his work at SAP, but clearly he’s proved this with his divide-and-conquer approach to problem solving here. Computer scientists make some of the best problem solvers out there.

In this TED talk, Shai talks about a shift in thinking: viewing the electric car’s battery a discrete unit that’s interchangeable, vs. today’s mentality where the car is one with the fuel tank (who would buy a car without a fuel tank, or vice versa?)

I’ve previously blogged about unbundling production from delivery before with examples of Amazon.com and it’s IT infrastructure, mobile phones as a poverty buster, and this is kind of like that, but with other concepts tied in – e.g. subsidized pricing (e.g. like how cell phones are subsidized by carriers).

The analogy Elon Musk uses (I can’t find where he said this, but I swear I remember him saying this), is like air travel today. I can fly to Europe from California for $500. But that’s because I’m not the first person to ever fly on that plane, nor will I be the last; the same air plane gets reused over and over for many flights. The point here is that the owner of the plane doesn’t have to recoup the cost of the plane with a single flight, it is done over a period of time. The higher the utilization rate, the faster they recoup the investment.

That’s why Elon’s SpaceX goal of building a reusable rocket is so revolutionary (most people don’t realize this) and is an important step for man-kind. Imagine being able to fly to the moon or other planets in our solar system for the price of a flight ticket?

Back to Better Place. In Shai’s talk, he shows how battery for electric cars follow a Moore’s law-like curve; battery prices will drop as its technology increases. By unbundling the ownership of the car and the battery, you can increase the utilization rate per battery which result in people owning these cars having access to the latest and most efficient battery at that time (vs. someone stuck with the same battery for the lifespan of the car). Small but important point.

Shai’s a very cool guy who is literally, changing the world. I’m a big fan.

Check out his TED talk if you haven’t already!

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Posted in changing the world, cleantech, entrepreneurship, ideas, innovation, passion, people i like, startup, technology | Comments

Startonomics – Los Angeles ‘09

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Last week, I made a trip to LA for Startonomics, held on UCLA’s campus. Like most Web 2.0 conferences these days, the presentation slides are all online, and streamed live on the Web, and the videos of the talks to be available online soon. My favourite video + slides startup is still Omnisio – they still do the best job IMHO in presenting the video and slides together in sync.

So why go if all the content is online for free?

Because you can’t meet cool new people and do the face-to-face interaction thing ;)

During the conference, I jotted down some notes, pen and paper. The following are a tiny subset of them .. in a very scribbled fashion (because I have no time to make it pretty :/ )

Morning Keynote Address by David O. Sacks, Founder/CEO of Geni & Yammer

- Lesson from PayPal, don’t rely on someone else’s buy-in to succeed. If your business model hinges upon someone else saying “yes” to you, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

- Avoid deep tech in first few iterations, fail hard and fail fast. All technology as time goes by eventually grows deep anyway, once you’ve tested it on the market and you know you have a rough diamond. “Not right today, but I can fix it tomorrow”

- On the flip side, if you fail too fast, you don’t learn anything. Aka, “pace” your failure.

Get Your Bootstrap On: Starting Up When the Economy is Down by Mike Jones, CEO, Tsavo Media

* This was by far my favorite, I got to speak to Mike during the break and he’s a really cool guy. I can’t seem to embed, but you can find the video here

- Aim for success, prepare for failure

- Good startups, they send weekly status reports to their board of advisors without being asked. It measures where they are and how far they are from the projected objectives. Transparency is good.

- When you raise money, it’s your responsibility to bring back the money to your investors!

Just Like the 405: Seven Ways to Drive Bumper-to-Bumper Traffic by Jason Nazar, CEO, Docstoc

- Like Docstoc: You must ask yourself what piece of the puzzle are you solving? Are you adding value over time?

Afternoon Keynote Address by Richard Rosenblatt, Former Chairman, Myspace.com, Former CEO, Intermix Media, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Demand Media

- When running a startup, things *will* go wrong. Everything MBAs project will be wrong. But if you go in knowing that you will fail, that’s okay. Because you know you will need to change and evolve your product/b-plan anyway.

- What kind of company will you build? (a) King of my hill (b) Get what the market gives you (c) Go big or go home – change landscape

Pitching and Packaging for Partnerships: How to Land Amazing Deals and Tell If They’re Working by Peter Pham, CEO, BillShrink

- You want your partners to say “you’ve built what we’ve wanted for years, but just didn’t have the resources to build it ourselves”

- You won’t get to be there in person to pitch all decision makers inside of a large corporations, but your email will be forwarded throughout the chain, so include screenshot mockups, they speak volumes for your product.

- Send partner weekly updates, move deals along, don’t let the line go cold.

How to Create a Web site the Users Eat Up and Beg for More by Ted Rheingold, Top Dog, Dogster, Inc.

- Use the “so what” litmus test on proposed new product features, fight feature-creep.

- Actionable insights are everything, don’t do inconsequentials.

- Quantitative success does not equal qualitative success.

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.. and many more below other good talks below. Check out the links, for the preso slides as well.

Jim Benedetto (SVP MySpace) on Scaling for the Masses (session 3)

Mark Jeffrey (Mahalo) on the Art of Product Development (session 2)

Neil Patel (ACS) on Finding Users (session 5)

Sean Percival (CEO Tsavo Media) on Social Media is Dead, Long Live Social Media (session 6)

Jay Weintraub (CEO LeadsCon) on Monetizing by Numbers (session 9)

Frank Addante (CEO Rubicon Project) on The Dynamics of Olympic Startups (session 10)

Dan Gould (Fox Interactive) on Idea to Advisors to Angel Funding to Series A (session 11)

Mark Suster (GRP Partners), Brian Garrett (Crosscut Ventures) and David Travers (Rustic Canyon) wrapped up the day to give their take on startups in LA, valuations in ‘09 and what it takes to get them to cut a check.

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Posted in entrepreneurship, startup, technology | Comments

STOP THINKING AND START WORKING

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Hah .. the title of this post is not the result of a broken caps lock key. It’s a direct quote that I’m stealing from my now-colleague, Carl Mercier. Carl is the founder of a startup named Defensio, that my current employer just recently acquired. In a post-acquisition interview on StartupCFO, he said,

I think the best advice I can give to entrepreneurs is STOP THINKING AND START WORKING. I’m one of those guys who’s afraid to fail. I hate losing. I used to try to come up with the perfect idea and the perfect business model. Obviously, it was never quite as good as I wanted it and I was never starting anything. Not starting meant not failing: it was my comfort zone. But not starting also means not winning. It’s very cliche, but your original idea really doesn’t matter. It’s all about execution and being able to seize the opportunities that arise.

I’m a thinker, planner, strategist, but often I get stuck in the planning phase because I want to get it soooo right, the first time round. Dare I say I’m a perfectionist? I certainly don’t think so (and certainly don’t want to be one!)—but then again perhaps it’s my blind spot. I just don’t want to do a sloppy job. I can live with “good enough”.

This interview made me realize that Carl and myself had rubbed shoulders at least once before at Y Combinator’s Startup School @ Stanford, just last year. We just didn’t really know each other then. Certainly happy to know another YC SUS gang at the work place. What a small world! :)

I actually really like this quote. I’m posting it here, also to remind myself .. that subconsciously, maybe I’m just afraid to fail, as much as I convince myself that I’m not, and that I just need to get the hell out there and execute. I like it also because it hurts a sore spot.

As my Practical Product Management teacher John Milburn would say, “it ain’t worth a flip if you can’t prove it.”

p.s. Carl—By golly I swear I will make it to the cool kids pre-SUS robot party ;) See you there!

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Posted in entrepreneurship, execution, fear, startup | Comments

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