Monthly Archives: February 2012

SSP 134–Professor Steven Blank

Bob and I had a true luminary on our podcast this week – Steve Blank, the founder of the principles of Customer Development. I was a little star struck! Prof. Blank is one of the most important entrepreneurial thinkers of our time … I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to speak with him.

While reviewing his first book and talking with him, I came up with a summary of the most important lesson for a software developer like me who wants to be an entrepreneur – focus on WHO, not WHAT.

I just had dinner with some other programmer/entrepreneur friends, and I saw the same impulse in them … it’s so exciting to focus on the product – the WHAT – that it’s hard to focus on the customer – the WHO. It’s not enough to build a cool product. You have to be able to find the person who will buy it. It’s all about the WHO.

The real pleasure of getting to meet my heroes like Steve Blank is just getting the sense of who they are as people. My impression of Steve Blank is that he is very kind. He really cares about helping entrepreneurs learn and succeed.

I hope you listen to the show. It’s one of my favorites that we’ve done. Also be sure to buy Prof. Blank’s just released book, The Startup Owner’s Manual.

SSP 133 with Sailesh Ramasray of BizFusion

Bob and I released Show #133 of the Startup Success Podcast yesterday, featuring an interview with Sailesh Ramasray of BizFusion, a full-featured accounting system for small businesses.

My favorite insight from the interview is that most businesses should internationalize but do so by taking advantage of English as a common language. It’s not that difficult to add new markets, so you should probably look into it.

Sailesh’s approach to BizFusion reminds me somewhat of Michael Sliwinski’s approach to Nozbe. I’m going to have to figure out how to describe what makes them similar to me <stroking chin> …

How geeky

I’m going to be heading down to South By Southwest in a couple of weeks, and I am stoked … I’m even going to be taking the Startup Bus!

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to miss one of my son’s gymnastics meets. He has ten this year, so making 90% is a decent percentage, but the fact is I HATE missing this.

As I mentioned not too long ago, most problems can be solved with a specific amount of money, and this is such a problem. I could

  • Fly back from the conference for the meet, rent a car (it’s in Detroit) and fly back to the conference. Cost – about $1,200 and it  would cause me to miss 20% of the conference, which is a problem for work.
  • Teach my wife how to use the Flip video camera and have her record everything for me. Cost – nothing.
  • Teach my wife how to set up a laptop with a good video camera and stream the event to me live via Skype. Cost – almost nothing (I might have to borrow a mifi). The real problem here is that I would be expecting my wife to handle A/V issues that I normally handle myself. That’s not going to happen
  • Buy my wife a tablet with a built in video camera so that she can stream the event to me live via Skype. Cost – $300-1000 depending on which tablet I get.
    • I could get a “Windows 8” ready x64 tablet, but that would wind up being a toy for me
    • I could buy Paula an iPad or Android tablet (like the 7” Samsung) – that latter option is pretty tempting
  • I could borrow a tablet. Cost – $0 (plus some sort of favor in return, I suppose)

I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do at this point. Seeing the video would be cool, but I really want to stream it live.

Next step: checking out the wifi quality at the venue …

Bad ideas

The most common obstacle (excuse?) I hear for someone not creating a startup is, “I don’t have a good idea.” Well … so what? Maybe you should work on a bad idea instead.

Jason Cohen suggests your idea probably is bad, even if you think it’s good – but hey, you have to start somewhere, so you should probably go ahead and pursue it.

I’m beginning to think that it’s better to pursue an idea that you KNOW is bad than to pursue nothing at all. After all, if the goal of Lean Startup is to validate that your idea is good, couldn’t there also be value in validating that your idea is bad? There is a certain amount of learning how to measure that goes into creating a startup these days, and you can learn a lot by proving that your idea doesn’t meet the measurement thresholds you required for a success (most importantly, that revenue > costs). In some ways, your emotional skepticism about your bad idea will help you learn more about the process – it will help you stay objective. I suppose there’s always the possibility that your idea turns out to be good, but it’s more likely that you’ll spot a good idea right next to your bad idea.

If you have no idea at all, then just pick a space you like and start exploring. I’m interested in scheduling, email productivity, educational phone apps, “personal relationship management,” and a lot of other spaces. Pick a space at that scope, then talk to friends about possible ideas. Just pick the first specific idea that comes to mind. Do some basic customer development by talking to customers in that space or follow the process that Rob Walling recommends for a more self-serve product. The process itself should open your mind to more ideas – and as you evaluate them, one of them is bound to be a good one.

Planning ahead

As life gets more complicated, planning gets more important.

I’ve never been a good planner. I don’t like planning, so I naturally resist it. But as work gets more challenging and my 9-year-old son Gus gets more active, planning is simply unavoidable.

There’s the school of thought that if you want to learn to swim, you jump in the water. That applies to me here. Since my life isn’t going to get simpler, all I can do is make my best effort to plan ahead a bit, because if I don’t, everything falls apart. I’m confronted with the effects of any failures to plan daily. I’m under water, and my arms are flailing.

And wouldn’t you know it – it’s starting to have an effect. I’m beginning to think a couple of moves ahead. I’m beginning to fix process failures as I notice them. I’m recognizing better what’s important to me and what isn’t.

I still make plenty of mistakes, but it’s cool to see myself starting to suck less at something important.

What about you – is there anything you’ve struggled with a long time that you’re starting to get better at? Did you get there by diving in or some other way? Did you get there by … planning ahead?

Deadlines

The nice thing about deadlines is that they force you to ship. Your article, your app, your art will never be perfect, so of course you can always make it better tomorrow. Deadlines force you to give that last burst of effort to make something at least “good enough.”

I’m OK at externally imposed deadlines, but I’m not so good at creating deadlines for myself. That’s what a regular project sprint cycle is – it’s an internally imposed deadline to ship every week or two.

Internal deadlines are all about creating a regular rhythm. It’s less about getting something done at a specific time and more about inducing that burst of creative effort in a predictable, reliable way.

Gotta go – I have an article due …

What money can buy

A while back, I mentioned Jacob Needleman’s Money and the Meaning of Life. One of the points Needleman makes is that for almost any problem in life there is a very specific amount of money that will solve it.

If you are building a software company and have figured out how to scale, there is usually a specific amount of money that will help you execute your plan. This is what VC’s provide.

If you have an incredible idea but no time to build it, a specific amount of money will allow you to quit your job to focus on your startup. An angel investor might provide this.

If you are sick of hosting your own blog, there is a specific amount of money that will help you remove that problem from your life.

If you want your son to be a racecar driver when he grows up, there is a specific amount of money you can expect to invest in that goal.

If you want to impress your sweetie on Valentine’s Day, you can think of a specific budget to lavish her with gifts, flowers, and a dinner at a fancy restaurant.

BUT … there are some problems that can’t be solved entirely with money – it’s important to know the difference.

Happy Valentine’s Day – spend some time today appreciating the things that money can’t buy.

Learning git

I’m working on some startup-oriented content with teammates around the country. It’s mostly text, not code, but there are a healthy amount of code snippets mixed in.

For any other project like this I’ve worked on at Microsoft, we have collaborated using SharePoint or (gasp!) email. But the guys leading this project are very comfortable with git, and since this content is aimed at developers who would likely use git, it makes sense to collaborate on github.

Instead of working directly in PowerPoint, we’re building the content primarily in readme.md files, which are text files with simple markup that make them look good on github.

Even though I was familiar with git, I had never actually used it on a real project (I had never gone past hello world). It took a couple of hours, but I’m starting to get it – I’m beginning to understand why so many developers (especially startup developers) are so fond of it. Once you get going, it’s pretty darn easy and efficient to collaborate with people around the world.

It’s going to be interesting to see if we meet the tone of our intended audience with this content, and I’m curious to see how much the tools we use affect that. Regardless, it’s always fun to learn and actually use a new tool.

Envision then do

You have to know exactly how you want the music to sound in your head, hear exactly how it actually sounds in the room, then bring the two as close together as possible.

That’s paraphrasing a knighted British conductor – I read the quote at school more than twenty years ago and since then haven’t been able to find who actually said it. If you know, please tell me.

When you get pretty good at something, you can start doing it without thinking. Perhaps you can get up in front of people without having to prepare or write without having anything to say. Maybe you can start hacking away on a software project before you really know what you want it to do.

In some ways that’s good. If you want to improve your craft, you have to do it. Sometimes it’s best just to dive in and see what happens.

Sometimes it’s not so good. You can spend an afternoon or a week or a year building something that nobody wants.

So it makes sense to balance doing with envisioning. Before you sit down to practice your craft, ask yourself the simple question, “What am I trying to accomplish?” Picture the outcome in your head. What does it look like? How do I get there?

Got it in your mind? Good. Now sit down and make it happen …

BUT – as that conductor pointed out, the “music” you envision in your head never sounds exactly the same as the music in the room.

On the way to building the software you envisioned, you found shortcuts or obstacles or serendipitous detours. Sometimes you have to plow past these to realize your vision – but sometimes you have to alter your vision to take advantage of what your software and your customers tell you. Building software is an ongoing negotiation between what’s desirable and what’s possible.

Whether you’re creating software, making music, writing a blog, or sculpting, the goal is to maintain a lofty vision while bringing your vision and your reality as close together as possible.