Category Archives: Work

It’s OK to build things

So much of the writing for startup founders these days focuses on Customer Development / Lean Startup: prove your market before you spend a lot of energy building a product. I agree with those principles and even started a column in Visual Studio Magazine primarily to discuss them further. These are Good Things.

But if all you want do is build things – THAT’S FINE, TOO. Just be honest with yourself and recognize you are taking a different path. There are lots of great ways to build things that don’t involve Lean Startup:

Build something small – Actually, Lean Startup doesn’t say you can’t build anything – it just says you should build the minimal amount practical to learn something – to prove or disprove a hypothesis. If you have a business idea, and you can whip up a mobile app or basic website to implement it in a weekend, then go for it! If nobody else but you likes it, who cares? You only spent a weekend on it. If you’re lucky enough to get feedback, you can make changes and put it out there again next weekend. Being a good hacker is a great quality for any startup founder, especially if you’re willing to ship early and often.
Build something slowly – Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe, is a proud advocate of the classic idea to “scratch your own itch.” He did it with Nozbe, and it has worked out very well for him (I interviewed him here). Recognize, though, that this might take you longer than using Lean Startup, because you are making a lot of effort to satisfy yourself first. It took Michael 2 years before he was willing to show Nozbe to any potential customers. If you are super quality-obsessed, this might be a good approach for you … but you better be patient and have the ability to stay focused for a long time without promise of return.
Build something free – take Audacity for example. I spend a few hours every week using this fine tool. It’s free – I’ve used various paid tools, but I simply prefer this one (at least for podcasts – it’s crazy simple for voice editing). I don’t know what motivated its creators, but for whatever reason, they decided it was more important for them to build a great piece of software than to build a software company. That’s a perfectly reasonable choice, and the world is a better place for having Audacity in it. You could do something similar (BTW, I also use the donation-ware Levelator and the for-pay GoldWave in my podcast production activities. They all rock at what they do.)
Build something at work – you don’t have to create a startup to build your own software. That’s what work is for! Whether you work for a huge company or a startup that someone else created, you can be paid to build cool stuff without ever having to take financial risk yourself. If all you want to do is build cool stuff, then consider finding a job that will pay you to build cool stuff – there are plenty of them out there.
Build something for your community – if you don’t want – or are not quite ready – to build a startup but still want to create something brand new and leave your mark on the world, then consider finding a worthy project in your (geographic or thematic) community, and build something useful and cool for them. There are even organizations dedicated to connecting creative people like you with worthy causes – check out GiveCamp, for example.
Build something risky – yesterday, I mentioned that I have the deep-down feeling that I have great vision, “just like Steve Jobs.” I think most entrepreneurs feel that way. And if I have that kind of vision, surely I don’t need to do Lean Startup, right? Well … whether or not I have that kind of vision, I don’t have Steve Jobs’s guts, timing, or post-first-stint-at-Apple financial resources. Vision alone doesn’t ensure success, but it certainly helps. If you DO have the guts and financial resources and suspect you have the timing to succeed by doggedly pursuing your awesome vision until you realize it … then by all means, go for it. Just realize that for every Steve Jobs that succeeds, there must be thousands who fail (and it took Steve Jobs a few tries to work past some failures, too). In my opinion it is LIKELY you will fail if you try to copy the Steve Jobs approach to business.

I’ve got a list of more than twenty startup ideas – some of them completely suck, I’m sure, but there might be a couple of good ones in there. At the moment, I am favoring ideas that REQUIRE me to do Lean Startup/Customer Development, because I want the experience of doing that right now. I need the practice. But there might be a weekend pretty soon where I just want to code something, and then I might pause and work on a different idea that fits into one of the categories above.

What do you think? Did I miss anything? Am I full of it?

Ah, but that first “yes” is glorious

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Yesterday, I mentioned how hard Lean Startup can be in practice. It’s one thing to have the abstract knowledge of what to do – it’s quite another to do it. It sounds so simple to find ten people who will buy your product before building it. But that doesn’t say anything about the emotions you’ll experience when you talk to people who won’t buy you’re product. “It’s a great idea, but it’s not for me” is longhand for “no.”

Undeterred, I continued to make my pitch to potential customers. At lunch with some friends today, I got one of them to a maybe – he would have purchased it 3 months ago, but his situation doesn’t warrant it today. If his situation warrants it again next month, he would strongly consider it.

And then I found the right customer – one who said “YES! I want that!”

Oh … my … GOD!

If all those initial no’s had the familiar sting of rejection, that first yes was simply AWESOME. I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight because I’ll be digesting some of the specifics I learned from these conversations – and because now I have a specific customer to think about – what would it take to please Tom?

I still have only one person who said they would pay – I need TEN. I’m going to learn different things from all of them, but hopefully I will see patterns emerge that inform the next step in this journey.

One really important detail I learned today is the TYPE of customer who is perfect: account execs. My perfect customer (at least based upon the first one that I’ve found) has the title of Account Exec. That gives me a useful new focus for Customer Development. Before I was just talking to anyone in business. Now I know a specific type of businessperson to focus on – that should make finding nine more customers easier (we’ll see).

Sorry to be so abstract about my idea. It’s not because I’m secretive – I just don’t want encouragement (on the specific idea) from my non-customer friends at the moment. I need the discipline of finding ten real customers before I move on to the next stage. For me, that stage will be creating a 30-second marketing video, as VC Dave described. I COULD do that now, but again, I think I would get too much encouragement from friends who wouldn’t actually be willing to pay – I want some buzz, sure, but one negative of this particular product idea is that it’s expensive compared to alternatives (due to a higher cost structure). Once I get ten people willing to pull out their wallets for my product, then I’ll let you know what it is and get all that wonderful encouragement (and criticism).

Before you can get to ten, you have to get to one. That first one is glorious … Tom, you’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Smile with tongue out

The second installment of my Startup 101 column in Visual Studio Magazine came out today, and it’s on this very subject – talking to customers. Let me know what you think.

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Have a question about your startup or want to practice your pitch? Register for the next Smart Bear Live with Jason Cohen!

Tough medicine

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For the last couple of years, I’ve been counseling every startup founder I meet to practice Lean Startup principles – Get out of the building! Talk to customers!

Of course, that whole time, I’ve been safely ensconced in a corporate job … easy for me to tell others what to do.

Lately I’ve been getting the entrepreneurial bug myself again, and I’ve been exploring a few different ideas. You know what I’ve discovered? Doing it the “right” way kinda sucks! Or at least, it’s really HARD. I want to build things. I want to trust my vision and do things the Steve Jobs way – deep down in my heart, I know I’m one in a trillion, just like him (don’t you feel the same way?). But here’s the thing … I’m not willing to BET on that. So I’m taking the same medicine I recommend to everyone else and doing my Customer Development.

It’s really a bummer when you talk to five people about an idea and none of them would buy it. It still feels like rejection. However, I’m learning about the pain points those people actually DO have. I also realize I might not have found the right people to talk to yet. It’s forcing me to be more precise in thinking about who my ideal customer is. I would have to reach a lot of them after I build – it’s a lot cheaper to reach a few now. And if I can’t find ten people who would pay for my idea? Whew – good thing I didn’t waste my energy coding.

Building a startup is like solving a puzzle. There are so many different pieces you have to fit together. I love that. I love the challenge of figuring out a business model and a compelling value proposition. I love BUILDING things. But amazingly enough, sometimes the way to win is by deciding you can’t solve a particular puzzle before expending too much energy on it.

And then you simply move on to the next one.

Software GR

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I’m heading out to speak at Software GR tonight. My goal is to give developers a broad overview of the competitive landscape. I’m not just going to jump up and down and say “We’re great! They’re crap!” The cloud is still in such a state of rapid growth that there are pockets of excellence all over the industry. I want developers to know where the good stuff is and why they would naturally gravitate to one vendor over another.

Microsoft has a great story with Windows Azure, and it’s only getting better. Our competitors are doing some pretty cool things, too – together, we’re all continuing to raise the bar on a nearly daily basis. That’s good for everybody.

It’s a great time to be a developer.

Enterprisey

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I made a comment on one of my favorite blogs today where I described a way of writing software as “enterprisey” … I’m not sure what the real word is to describe it, but I assume you know what I mean. Some software feels intended for consumers or small businesses and some feels intended for big businesses – you know, it’s enterprisey.

More and more, this is an arbitrary distinction. As the “consumerization of IT” continues, a great deal of software that was in fact originally intended for consumers or small businesses is finding a place in bigger and bigger companies – GMail and Google Docs comes to mind. On the other hand, as more and more enterprise software that was traditionally sold on-premise comes out with SaaS offerings, software that was once available only to big companies is now available to very small businesses and individuals. That brings to mind Office 365 with Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync ($6/month!). There are countless other examples of both approaches.

As companies move from consumer to enterprise or enterprise to consumer, there are all sorts of subtle challenges. I suspect that those subtle challenges will be obscure memories within just a couple of years. More and more, people just expect their software to work.

Isn’t competition wonderful?

Autosave

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My 8-year-old son Gus just had a nice day recovering from a great gymnastics meet by staying in his pajamas all day and alternating make-up homework (he was sick most of last week) with lengthy rounds of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, his new game for the XBox.

Gus takes his racing games very seriously … he’ll sometimes spend an hour or more customizing a car with wheels, parts, and decals (it’s kinda like photoshop – I think he’s learning design skills from this). When he’s having trouble overcoming a specific racing challenge … well, let’s just say it gives us all an opportunity to work on anger management principles.

So after a great day of racing and customizing his new game, he turned off the console and then looked horrified. “I forgot to save!” He was crushed. All his “work” from today was lost.

I thought for sure it was a mistake – doesn’t it just save as it goes along? I had him turn the game back on, but sure enough, it was back to where he started the day. Unbelievable.

I did an Internet search to be sure his work wasn’t lost and eventually discovered that you have to go through multiple menu levels to enable “autosave.” Obviously, I did this – if it didn’t have autosave, that game was going in the trash – but what planet were they on when they didn’t enable this by default?

You don’t have to guess what your users prefer … you can measure their behavior patterns. I don’t know if there’s an easy way to get telemetry data for XBox games, but there are various toolkits to measure users’ actions for web, Windows, and phone applications. When choosing default settings, I would tend to err on the side of NOT losing any data and only change that default if my measurements showed a vast majority of users bothered to go into a menu to turn OFF something like autosave. It’s possible EA did the research that proved most users didn’t want autosave on and Gus is an anomaly … but somehow, I doubt it.

I remember my friend Rory repeating his rant that the stupidest question in all of computing is “Do you want to save?” Of course I want to save! Why are you asking me that? Worse – how is it possible to forget asking me that??? Just save it and allow me to revert if necessary.

If you’re a developer, please – PLEASE – make it harder for your users to throw information away than to keep it.

SSP 131–“VC Dave” Dave Feinleib

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Bob and I released show #131 of the Startup Success Podcast yesterday, featuring our interview with Dave Feinleib, better known as VC Dave and author of the book Why Startups Fail and How Yours Can Succeed.

I really like Dave – he’s been around the block, but he retains his sense of fun about building startups. He just happens to find it fun to build companies that affect lots and lots of lives.

My favorite bit of specific advice from Dave is to build your 30-second marketing video before you build your product. That syncs with a lot of other Lean Startup advice, but it’s simple, concrete, and fun. It forces you to figure out what’s the true value proposition of your startup. If you think you have a great idea but the people you’ve been talking to find it squishy, maybe you just haven’t packaged it well enough – figure out your 30-second marketing pitch to customers and make a video out of it. Brilliant.

Dave’s also a violinist, so he must be cool …

Thanks, Dave!

Upcoming Smart Bear Live–with special guest Mark Suster

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Last year, Jason Cohen started a new question-and-answer show for startups to go along with his popular blog. It’s like “loveline for startups,” and he called it Smart Bear Live. It’s a GREAT opportunity to ask a question of a true startup guru. Or maybe you don’t have a concrete question, but you’d like to validate a business idea. That’s great (but don’t expect coddling). If you are a bit farther along and want to practice your pitch, that’s fine, too.

Your next opportunity to participate live is February 9 at 5p EST. Visit bit.ly/sblreg to register. This is your chance to talk with not one but TWO startup gurus, because Jason will be joined by noted VC Mark Suster. Jason expects to have an interesting guest host on every show.

A little more background on SBL and my involvement … after his kickoff show, Jason asked me if I wanted to help out. I jumped at the chance, since Jason is one of my favorite startup thinkers. I had been wanting to do a question-and-answer show of my own, but Jason knows more than I do and has a bigger audience, so I think I can do more good by helping him with his show than by doing my own. Now I’m scheduling shows, guests, and callers, and I’m producing the audio. I guess that makes me the producer. If you’re reading this – I’m your IN 🙂

There are two kinds of shows – onsite and call-in. The upcoming show on February 9 is a call-in show. You can listen from the comfort of your computer or phone (don’t forget to register to ask a question), thanks to BlogTalkRadio. We’ve done two of these call-in shows so far; listen to the recordings here and here.

Last month we did an onsite event outside Phoenix to kick off the next round of AZ Disruptors. Hamid Shojaee hosted, and I handled tech and questions. Jason actually stayed in Austin and Skyped in. It went great – it’s amazing to me how well it works to have a room full of people engage with someone projected on a screen. Audio recordings from that show should start showing up on Jason’s blog soon. If you have a community that could benefit from a local SBL meetup with Jason on Skype, please email me to discuss.

Smart Bear Live is a really big deal, in my opinion. Jason is smart as hell and really knows how to dig into startup details. If you’re stuck, he’ll get you unstuck. He’s the first to point out that he’s not necessarily right every time (editor’s note: he’s still probably right), but it’s the conversation and probing that’s useful for ANY startup founder. Take advantage of this awesome resource and call in!

Finally, if you have an abstract question that you want to ask without actually getting on the air, feel free to leave it in the comments below (or on the registration page). I will sometimes ask those myself in between callers. I will make sure the answer gets back to you.

Finally, when you are talking with other startup founders and reach that point where you think they need some help but can’t really put your finger on it … send them our way to ask a question.

Hello Node.js in 10 minutes

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Many think that Node.js is the Next Big Thing in software development. As a way for creating web solutions, it’s got a lot going for it:

You write code in familiar javascript (so client and server match)
It uses event-driven, non-blocking I/O – which means that it’s really fast for certain types of operations and it’s easier to write certain types of applications
It’s open source AND it strives to support Windows as well as Linux

If you’ve been meaning to check it out, now is the time – all you need is 10 minutes to walk through this “hello world” – surely, you’ve got time for that …

Step 1: Install node.js from nodejs.org (I chose the Windows installation)

Step 2: Open cmd, add path, test node

Open a command prompt, and type

path=%path%;"c:Program Files (x86)nodejs"

To make sure that node itself is working, you can evaluate a tiny program right from the command line by typing

node -e "console.log('hey there');"

Step 3: Create, run, and test server

Of course, that’s not what node is really for – it’s really for writing web apps … so create a file called server.js and copy the following into it:

var http = require('http'); 
http.createServer(function (req, res) { 
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'}); 
  res.end('Hello Worldn'); 
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1"); 
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

This trivial example creates a web server listening on port 1337 of localhost that returns “Hello World” to any request. Run it by typing

node server.js

from the console and then test it by opening a web browser to http://127.0.0.1:1337/

That’s it! 10 minutes from thinking about node to running a simple “hello world” web server.

Soon I’ll get into the kinds of things node.js is good for, but first I want to show how easy it is to deploy node.js to Windows Azure – even if you don’t have a Windows machine (I’ll post that within a couple of days …)

Fleeting

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Earlier today, I spent several minutes writing a multi-paragraph reply to a comment on a blog I read regularly. I thought it posted, but when I went back to see if there was a reply to my comment, it wasn’t there. What a bummer – I was enjoying the conversation, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to recreate my words.

I wish there were an easy way to save everything I type into a browser. There are many security implications, I know, but this has happened to me enough that I’m willing to make the tradeoff with security for the assurance that I won’t lose my work.