Scary thoughts on startups

Top 10 scary things for entrepreneurs, in no particular order:

1. Actually getting started.  It's much easier to talk about starting a company - everyone thinks it is so exciting and gives you a 100 suggestions and you feel you're floating on air and are high on enthusiasm.  But actually start a company and suddenly there's a metric ton settling down on  your shoulders - now you have to talk about reality, not dreams.
2. Building a team.  Yes, you have your best friend from college as your co-founder, but what if you say zig and he says zag?  What if you can't find any good people with the right skill sets, for example, you can't find developers and you have to learn how to code (all over again)?  What if there's nobody but you in your company?
3. Having the right idea. You did talk to 100 people before you started, but they were friends of friends at that huge end-of-summer party you went to and though they all thought it was cool, it could be that they were in party mode.  How can you be sure your idea is really good?
4. Business plans.  It's either a big mystery and you have no idea how to go about it, or, you know exactly what to do and hate the idea of having to re-word, re-calculate, re-format every time you show it to someone new.  
5. Getting money.  What if you don't know any rich angels and your friends and family have slim wallets?  Maybe you can bootstrap, but you'd have to figure out if there's a boot to strap (or a strap to boot) - and it has to work with your specific idea.
6. Legal coverage.  Lawyers cost money (see above), but could you get sued, cheated, conned out of money/stock/intellectual property if you're not sufficiently lawyered-up?
7. Competition.  The horizon is full of 800-lb gorrillas and pesky little startups (not yours) that want to do exactly what you plan to, and look like they'll get there faster and blow you out.
8. Customers.  Or users.  What if they don't show up?  Or worse, they don't show up only randomly and you can't show a chart-popping growth rate?  Is it a bad idea or bad marketing?
9. Time.  As in the thing you can run out of, along with money.  
10. Expert advice.  The blogs, the pundits, the classes, the social media groups, all making holding forth on why your startup will fail, and, to add insult to the injury, why your company is not even a startup because it doesn't fit some VC's startup profile or, to rub salt in it, why you will fail because you don't have the profile of a successful entrepreneur - wrong college, wrong age, wrong degree, wrong home town, whatever.

This stuff could make you want to throw up your hands and head back to the safety of a corporate job.  And you would, but for the fact you believe the scariest thing of all is not being what you want to be - an entrepreneur.

Happy Halloween!

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The business of writing well

Writing is communication, so it should not come as a surprise that good communication skills (writing) are absolutely necessary in just about any career, especially the ones where you need to influence the thinking or behavior of others.  Even those who can write reasonably well, still want/need to work with someone who can do it better - providing jobs for the oodles of marketing/messaging pros out there.  Coincidentally that's what I've been doing the last week, enjoying the focus on the wording of the message instead of the features of the product, for a change.

One of the top education stories this week is the recently released report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, assessing writing competency for 8th and 10th graders.  The results themselves are not encouraging, only a quarter performed at the 'proficient' level or higher, but the way the test was done was definitely cheer-worthy.  It not only made the test computer-based, but it paid attention to whether students used the tools available to them through computers - even basics like spell-check.  Many of us have seen (among family, friends, coworkers) that the top students are often accomplished at writing, as well as math and science, and, unsurprisingly, they have ready access to tech resources (unfortunately the digital gap still persists, feeding the achievement gap). Though the fundamentals of good writing (and critical thinking) are timeless and technology-independent, the way we write has definitely changed and the person who knows how to access and use the myriad tools and services available has a clear advantage.  Kids need to learn to write well, using digital tools, if they're to flourish in the jobs of the future - and it's a challenge that we can definitely meet.

By the way, the example of the 'Lost Island' test (listen to nature sounds and snippets from a diary and write about your imagined experiences on that island) appears skewed to the more imaginative among us.  I personally would have loved it as an 8th grader, but I know many super-smart and successful people who would have not welcomed it that much.  They'd enjoy reading Harry Potter (or Robinson Crusoe - extending the island theme), and obsessively watch episodes of 'Lost', but would get lost themselves trying to imagine something like it.  Here's a report on the NAEP writing test if you want to know more details.  What level of creative writing is necessary for every student?  And should creative writing really be bounded ('stifled') by rules or should it flow unfettered?  (You might want to check out my older post on why entrepreneurs should write too!)

Good products do social good

I got to thinking about this when reading a Quora post on how to get people to notice your startup.  There are many suggestions for marketing, social or otherwise, but the key is always just one thing - build a good product that people want to use.  Marketing is good for only so much, if the product doesn't do it, for whatever reason, it's not going to make much of a difference.

Thinking about some of the really good products of the past few years made me realize how many of them have had huge, positive, social impact - even when they didn't start out that way.  Apple created iTunes to get people to quickly and easily buy music for their iPods - no stated social goals, purely revenue/profit driven.  But, it (was) is a product that people want to use, and now it has vast numbers of educational podcasts and videos, from top universities too, and iTunes has, as a side effect, made quality educational content available to everyone.  Social good?  Check.  Take Google, from search to YouTube.  It has changed the way people get information, and more, it quickly and easily delivers previously unavailable information to people who need it.  For every person who wastes hours watching dancing cats, there's someone learning about how to identify heart attacks from just plain stomach rebellion to too much spicy food.   I don't know about the 'don't be evil' mission of theirs, but their tool is seriously used for good.

Let's not forget the now ubiquitous smartphone - and it all started with Apple's iPhone, though the med tech visiting villages in India to provide on the spot assistance is not using an iPhone necessarily.  It's changed education, health care, emergency assistance - you name it.  Again, the goal was not to do good directly, but provide this must-have tool which has changed our lives that could be used by any number of people to deliver the 'good'.

Then there's Facebook.  Almost a billion users strong, recently reviled for its tanking stock price and the social network that everyone joins and many kvetch about.  It started out as an exclusive, somewhat elitist (only the cool schools are in) online student group, almost a gossip board.  Now it is not only keeping far-flung families connected and feeling loved (go grandmas!) but providing a platform for a myriad socially focused groups and even played a part in mobilizing people during the Arab spring of 2011.   It fosters conversation, whether someone is sharing their latest idea for going green or slamming the convention speakers.  It is bringing people together, and helping keep them that way (though arguably some of them need to be reminded to get out and do it in person too).  Much of it may be banal and self-serving, but there's no question that Facebook has been an agent of social change

By the way, the older companies like Microsoft and Yahoo are also doing good on a daily basis with their products.  Whatever you may say about MS Office, the world still uses it - and that includes kazillion non-profits - because it does the job, and I'm finding that tons of social groups, especially small volunteer ones, are all active users of Yahoo groups.  And of course, there's their email - used for distributing sketchy jokes as well as tips to manage your money - the app that just refuses to go away. (By the way, if you're a fan of the all 'good' ideas bubbling out there, check out The Daily Good.)

Yes, this list is mainly of tech companies, because, honestly, that's the field I'm in and what I was ruminating about.  This is not to imply that these companies are all warm and fuzzy like gargantuan, but cuddly, teddy bears.  It's just that all of these are for profit, in a major way, yet they have achieved vast, global social reach and impact - because of the nature of their products.

Maybe more wannabe social entrepreneurs should focus on their products and why people would want to use them, knowing that the good will follow (along with the money).   What do you think?

(Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)