Finding Free WiFi

Rational Hesitation of a Would-Be Entrepreneur

Saw this on the back of a Starbucks cup this morning, inspirational enough to share:

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating- in work, in play, in love.  The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation.  To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life" --Anne Morris

I love the middle line, that 'fear parades itself as rational hesitation.  One privilege (well, sometimes it's a privilege) of having started a company is that, one people know you've taken an idea to market, they feel inclined to tell you about their great ideas. 

One such individual had been 'incubating an idea' since college.  He was in his early 30s.  When I asked why he hadn't gone for it yet, his answer was simply 'the timing just hasn't been right.'

I then launched into my typical ra-ra speech that it's hard, it's painful, you'll lose sleep, you'll cry, but nothing should stop you from pursuing it immediately, as long as you're passionate enough about it.

He'd allowed his fear of failure to manifest itself into a perpetual state of rational hesitation...which really is the worst place on earth to be.  All you end up with is a bunc of 'woulda coulda shouldas'  and a laundry list of excuses. 

If you've been thinking about the same thing for over 10 years...it's probably time to start doing something about it.

Sports and Startups

Living in the sports/startup world is interesting.  One minute I'm reading Sports Illustrated making sure I'm up to date on the industry (as well as getting my college basketball fix, GO DAWGS!), the next minute I'm reading some obscure random tech/entrepreneur/vc blog that the majority of Sports Illustrated readers have never heard of.

Luckily for me, the lessons are occasionally the same:

From SI's Feb 2nd Issue (On How LeBron James is, well, scary good):

"Cleveland general manager Danny Ferry attributes the new regimen (weight lifting) to James's national team experience.  'From a corporate sense, it's like those guys spent their summer sharing best practices," says Ferry.  'If they have a meeting in the morning and Kobe Bryan comes in sweaty, LeBron's going to say Holy ...., this guy's already working.  That's what it takes."

Maybe it was just the sweat comment, but it reminded me of the Five Smells of a Startup CEO.

  (I of course like the sweaty CEO since that's where I live).  More than the sweat, it's the idea of 'best practices' of Startup CEOs and how to learn from the successes (and mistakes) of all those who went before you.  

I love sports.  Startups rock.  I'm lucky I get to live in both worlds.  I hope you're as excited about the worlds you live in.

Focus on User Experience

Great quote from the blog at 37 signals:

"Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience"

-John Gruber

Harder said than done, but something to think about.

If You Offer Free WiFi, Steal This

We were in the bay area last week, and after a meeting near Berkeley we stopped at a coffee shop to get some work done.  Actually...we planted outside of a Teriyaki joint.  Quickly.  See the image below.  This is what popped up when I logged into their wifi network.  They asked for my email, warned me that it the network wasn't safe to send important data, told me about their restaurant, ran some ads.  Etc.  Etc.  Etc.  Very cool, I learned how Quickly started.  Stuck with me enough to post it, and if I'm ever in that area again you can bet that's the restaurant I'll remember.

Dear every coffee shop in the nation...why don't you do this?

Write That Down

"Nothing kills a great idea like sitting down and thinking about it"
---Brent Lamphier, July 2008.

Had a conversation with a budding entrepreneur the other day, and this was the advice I ended up giving.  He'd been incubating his idea off and on for a number of years.  Eventually, you have to stop thinking about it and just try to make the dang thing work.  Good luck to him and good luck to you.

How to Bootstrap Silicon Valley

Last month, after the UW Business Plan Competition, we were selected to pitch at the DFJ Venture Challenge in the valley.  When I found out we'd been selected by the partners as the 'wild card,'  I was in Ohio for my grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. 

Thus began our adventure in spending as little money as possible in the valley while meeting with as many people as possible.  The adventure:

Day 0 -Find out we're selected.  Rapidly change plane ticket to get back to Seattle.
Day 1- UW pays to fly us down there.  Awesome- Travel Cost- $0.
Fly into Oakland so that our VP of Marketing, a Berkely undergrad, can steal a car from his brother.  His brother picks us up, we drop him off, and head across the bay to Palo Alto.
Sleep in the Sheraton...1 night compliments of UW.  Awesome. 
Day 2- Head to Sand Hill Road for the DFJ Challenge.  Intense day.  16 Competing teams, all winners of the Big California Schools (UW was invited for the first year) business plan competition and two wild cards (including us).  Everyone gave a 5 minute pitch with 5 minutes Q&A in the morning.  6 companies selected for the finals, a 15 minute pitch with 15 Q&A in the afternoon.  We were honored to be in the finals.

At this point most teams headed home, including the other team from UW.  We, however, with our free plane ticket to Silicon Valley, didn't want to waste it.  So began the boostrapping adventure.

Step 1:  Get dropped off at a Mountain View Coffee Shop around 6:00.  In Suits and carrying our luggage.  We get back to work.  Below us a hippie rock band plays (we look quite out of place in suits).

 Sit at coffee shop for 4 hours.  Until they close.  Waiting for Mountain View couch we're sleeping on to get back from downtown San Fran.  Get kicked out of coffee shop for closing.  Sit on outside table of a closed restaurant for 1 hour, waiting.  Buy beer from local corner store.

Mountain View friend happens to be moving, so there is one small couch and a little bit of floor space.  I get the floor.  Awesome.

Next day, invited back to DFJ to demo our product.  Take CalTrain from Mountain View to Palo Alto.  Don't pay for ticket. In our Silicon Valley nievity, we think we'll be ok without a car (returned to brother) to get across Stanford's campus to Sand Hill road in two hours.  Wow.  Bad idea.  Take pictures with phone of campus so we don't get lost (it seems much, much bigger than UW).  This is only one picture.  In the next picture you can see Sand Hill road to the FAR right.

An hour or so after getting off the CalTrain, after hiking through a ditch, we find Sand Hill Road.

Only we weren't far from the bottom of Sand Hill Road.  DFJ is at the end of it.  And it's up hill.  Arrive for delicious free lunch meeting sweaty.  Very sweaty.

The next day, we woke up to hear that a meeting we were trying to schedule could, in fact, happen...at 10:30 am.  Downtown.  We we're still in Mountain View.  Luckily have the brother's car for the day, and book it downtown.
Meet with firm, then walk...and walk...and walk...around the city to get to next meeting

Meet with guy at Google...get awesome Google lunch (you wonder why they get top talent).  Book it to Union Square.  Meet with a VC EIR on 36th floor of Hyatt for a drink (great place for a meeting for future reference)

Then drive back to Mountain View for meeting with former Yahoo exec.  Lots of driving.  THEN drive to Berkeley, where we have 2 couches to sleep on.

Crazy 3 days.  Absolutley Crazy.  Now we're going back this week, if you have a couch to sleep on let me know.

Quotes for Entrepreneurs

Quotes circulated the Seattle Tech Startup (STS) mailing list last Friday.  A few of them:

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit.  Genius hits a target no one else can see."

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

"Do twice as much, twice as well, in half the time, with half the resources."

--Seattle's own Kelly Smith

"It's never the wrong time to do the right thing"

--Seattle's own Bill Bryant

"To be an entrepreneur, you need a little self-delusion and to have the ability to inflict mass delusion because most people can't see past tomorrow"

--David Billstron

"Striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible"

--Mikhail Bakunin

"We can't solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them"

--Albert Einstein

"The best part about being a founder is you get to decide which 20 hours of the day you want to work....or....the great thing about being an entrepreneur is that it's a part-time job, and you get to decide which 12 hours a day you want to work."

--Unknown

Pearls of Wisdom from Blue Nile CEO

BlueNile.com Founder Mark Vadon served as the keynote speaker at the UW Biz Plan Competition awards ceremony last week...some pearls...or golden nuggets... of wisdom from his speech (which was one of the best I'd heard in a log time, Keynote speakers should follow his example of short, sweet, inspiring, and funny).

"Keep banging your head against the wall until the wall falls down."

"Don't be afraid of failure."

"I built my business around men having no clue."

"Steal good ideas from other entrepreneurs."

"Entrepreneurship is running out of a closed jewlery store near an airport with the windows boarded over and you have to fix the fax machine."

A Nail Problem

Watching the Daily Show tonight, and the guest author said 'To a man who has a hammer, every problem is a nail problem,"
Quoting (though a bit off) Mark Twain.

Makes more and more sense every time you read it.

Be Confident, Not Arrogant

On Alyssa Royse's entrepreneurship blog at the Seattle PI, she interviewed some local bigwigs asking pitching tips...good timing after my post the other day.

My favorite line:

From Janis Machala, startup guru:
"Be confident, not arrogant."
Most people haven't learned the art of walking that line...granted I probably haven't either...but advice worth thinking about in everything you say about your business.