Never too late!

So, it's been eons since I posted on this blog.  There was always something else to be done. And since it didn't appear that any readers were having paroxysms of withdrawal symptoms because of the paucity of posts, there was no external pressure to do so.  I had started the blog mostly to get myself to write something which was not 'business-y' on a regular basis, which unfortunately is not a strong enough motivator for me to make the time. So when weeks became months and I still hadn't posted, I got to thinking that maybe it was too late to post and I should give up.

But, I do have another motivator - I don't give up, not easily.  If I were a canine, I'd be a bulldog (or is it a terrier?), sticking with stuff, growling and yapping long after a sensible creature, like a cat, would have walked away.  Anyway, what's the worst thing that can happen if I posted after a long hiatus?  Nothing more than spambots getting happy.

Plus, there was the bonus of having a ready-to-go topic to write about in my not-too-late post: it is never too late for most things in life. (Let's not get literal about this with a "it is too late to catch the train if it's already gone!" type of argument, though.)

Here's my random, very incomplete, list of things that get pushed way, way out to the background until it seems their time has passed, but they clearly belong in the  'never too late' category.

1. It's never too late to get in touch with an old friend
2. It's never too late to tell someone how you feel about them if it's good (if not, file it under 'things better left unsaid' - after all, you've managed to not say it for so long)
3. It's never too late build on relationships you care about
4. It's never too late to start a fitness program, or just start moving (if you want to keep it simple)
5. Expanding it a bit, it's never too late to start paying attention to your health and what you eat
6. It's never too late to start learning a new language 
7. Actually, it's never too late to start learning anything, as long as you have the basic capacity to do so (it might help if you first learn swimming before you try surfing)
8. It's never too late to end a bad habit (still smoking?) or build a good one (call your mom every week!)
9. It's never too late to start saving, even if you're a boomer who partied like there's no retirement
10. It's never too late to read the book you've wanted to for years (Shakespeare waiteth for thee)
11. It's never too late to start a new activity/hobby - like blogging :)
12. It's never, ever too late to be compassionate

What's special about a New Year

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why is the first day of the New Year so special?  It's not just the good times and watching the ball drop in Times Square even when you're thousands of miles away in a different time zone, though when you're young, good times may be all that you care about.  But, as you get older, you want more from the event than just the ephemeral experience of partying.  It is because the new year promises a new beginning and we all want another chance, if not for 'do-overs', at least for 'do-betters'.

And new beginnings require changes and big efforts require big changes. If you're already on an fitness program, it is not difficult to add another 15 minutes or do another routine, but if your exercising consists only of clicking your TV remote from the couch, starting to exercise requires you to change.  Change is difficult for many of us who've been conditioned to aim for comfort and predictability and avoid any chance for failure.  But change is life and as we're all changing in small ways even if we don't know it, we might as well sign up for the big changes that we can consciously make to get us to where we want to be and who we want to be.

Considering a change in 2014?  Check out this post from James Altucher.  Wild and crazy, but totally on the mark in its message.  Vive la change!

Fresh thinking

Yes, successful entrepreneurs are expected and encouraged to be dedicated, focused, even consumed by their ventures, 24/7. But they're also expected to be sharp, unfettered and creative thinkers capable of coming up with innovative solutions for the marketplace as well as more mundane issues like punching up your presentation.  Are there things we should/could be doing to keep the creative juices flowing? 

In my view, there's one simple directive to help keep the noggin fresh and peppy: get out.  In all possible ways.  Get out of your office (or your garage).  Get out some evenings to do something other than hanging out with your team in a bar over beer and chips.  Get out of reading the same old, same old, and mix up TechCrunch with the Economist or vice versa.  Get out of your chosen field and meet people in others, and if you're very much in the left brain world, make it a point to get to know folks in the arts.  Mostly, get out of your comfort zone and do something different fairly often.

Which brings up the obvious point, not all entrepreneurs think that they need to be creative - they'll leave it to the design guy or the marketing gal.  There are many entrepreneurs who believe they're done being creative as they came up with their business idea and now they should just focus on execution.  But execution draws on outside the box thinking too.

An example is a possible new market niche for us, an idea that came to me when I was sitting at the Startup Conference in Mountain View a few days ago with a friend who wanted to check it out (I attend one of these occasionally as part of my 'getting out').  Funnily enough, the keynote speaker, Dave McClure, started off by pretty much calling all the entrepreneurs there losers for attending a conference instead of being busy building their companies.  It is a totally valid point on how to use your time, or not.  These events may be worth attending if you're just thinking of starting a company, and want to know what others did (no live-streaming video of yourself - Justin Kan already did that.)  But my expectations are pretty much to hear something different and maybe meet someone I wouldn't have otherwise met - an unusual mental break for a few hours.  Best of all, it worked!

There's another hot new book being pitched to entrepreneurs - Jonah Lehrer's 'Imagine: How Creativity Works'. (Side note: seriously, how does one keep up with all the reading and still accomplish something?  Sure, it's part of keeping your brain fresh but your time is limited.  Realistically, the best one can do is to skim blogs to pick and choose the few books that resonate.)  Anyway, there's a listen-worthy interview with Lehrer on video here.  He provides a well-reasoned approach to creativity, offering some hope that creativity can be cultivated and you can keep it going even as you get older - you don't have to lose it. 

Choose to be more creative.  Shaking up the brain is good, but you need to care enough to want to zumba. 

Entrepreneur Educator

The New York Times magazine this weekend had an education story that makes for some compelling reading. The spotlight was on Ramon Gonzales, the principal of a public middle school in the Bronx. He's taken a struggling school and made it successful, or at least relatively so, despite significant challenges.

Gonzales could be considered a shining example of the vision of Joel Klein, the previous chancellor of the New York City schools, who aimed to transform every principal "from an agent of bureaucracy to the CEO of his or her own school'. But Gonzales was not only following the 'chief executive' approach but was clearly displaying an 'entrepreneurial spirit', akin to a founder of a scrappy startup.

He finds creative ways to bring in money (boot-strapping). He personally invests time in building his faculty and guiding them (shaping team and culture) knowing that it is key to success. Gonzales realizes that perceptions matter and pays attention to seemingly small things like greeting students at the door (marketing) and he cares about the outcomes for individual students (customer focus). The most important quality of a startup founder/CEO is that he doesn't give up easily and so far, Gonzales appears to be digging his heels in and refusing to give up ground to charter schools.

It is easy to understand how our economy relies on entrepreneurship for growth but it takes a little imagination to see how that could extend to education too. Maybe our schools need entrepreneurial educators like Gonzales in order to thrive. You can read the whole story here. Makes one think - and dream!

Knowing your customer

It is Super Bowl Sunday with less than 90 minutes to go to kickoff and what I've found most exciting is, no not the team match-up, but the VW ad which will air during the game but has already become a must-see in the past couple of days.

If you haven't already seen it, it is worth a look - it is heartwarming, geeky and funny and very well done, with the car having a subtle but powerful placement. You may wonder why I'm writing about a Super Bowl ad from a big auto company in an entrepreneurial blog. It is not a big stretch - this ad speaks volumes for thinking different and having a fresh approach which are de rigeuer for entrepreneurs. But, most importantly it shows that they truly know their customer. It is clear that the car is aimed towards young families where the parents grew up with Star Wars and are now excited about introducing their own kids to it. The kind of family that would have more than a little fun with the idea and would find the commercial both pleasing as well as memorable. And they released the ad early in order to build online buzz - again guessing, correctly, that making an impact through social media can only add to the TV viewing and not dilute it in any way, especially with their core audience.

Watching the ad was a lot of fun, but it also reminded me how important it is, whether you're a startup or big company, to know your customer. Early stage companies cannot dream of Super Bowl ads, but they can make sure that their one-pagers, presentations, websites, even FAQs, status updates and email messages are crafted so they speak to their customer - which means knowing what is important to them, what touches their hearts as well as engages their minds. It is much harder when you're a small startup and probably don't have dedicated staff for this - most likely the founder/entrepreneur is doing the bulk of the 'messaging' - but it is all the more critical to remember to maintain the customer focus.

I plan to watch the game with friends and while I'll be enjoying the general Super Bowl hoopla, I'm sure some of the enjoyment will come from viewing the commercials with an entrepreneur's eye - maybe there'll be more inspirations to be found there. And, here's the VW ad - enjoy!

Universal new year euphoria

On New Year's day I was with friends and family (watching the Rose Bowl was our purported goal) and we got into a discussion about how New Year celebrations were unnecessary and forced on everyone when it was just a day like any other. While I'm all for people not being compelled to do anything, least of all wear silly hats and drink copious amounts of faux champagne, I believe there's a lot to be said for marking and yes, celebrating, the beginning of a new year (emphasis on the new). Sure some might feel a perceived peer pressure to have 'epic' experiences on December 31, but that's like any other social expectation which most secure adults should be able to withstand comfortably. What excites me, and what I like to signify and celebrate, is the feeling of newness and the myriad possibilities starting January 1 - because even though it appears to be just a day like any other, it becomes special just by thinking it is so.

The best thing about an observed new year, regardless of the calendar you choose to follow, is the shared perception that it is open to change - of the good kind. Of course you can resolve to change your life starting September 23 or July 17, it is perfectly doable and people do it all the time, but unless that happens to be 'new year day' in your part of the world you'll be the only one doing it. January 1, on the other hand, is when billions around the world are clearing out cobwebs, literally and metaphorically, and gearing up for the good stuff in work, play, health, relationships, spirit, and all things important. There are the best-of and looking-ahead lists, the planning seminars, the health club discounts, the rejuvenation conferences for minds, bodies, careers, the how-to launch your business workshops, sermons, prayers and rituals of renewal - there's a 'fresh start' zeitgeist that generates a heightened sense of hope and determination that could last for weeks after the new year.

This universal euphoria pulls everyone along, and it's a good thing, particularly for entrepreneurs. It helps you reflect and plan, review and re-energize and often provides a convenient point to shake things up and create new goals and programs. And nobody questions the timing - changes are pretty much the norm for the new year and everyone, whether team member, advisor, investor or customer, is primed for it. Yes, the new year may be all in your head, but when it's in all our heads at the same time, it packs a pretty powerful punch and may be just what you need to make the changes you desire.

Innovation matters

Innovation is must-have for entrepreneurs for sure, and entrepreneurs have been anointed the potential saviors of our sluggish economy so innovation's been rather news-worthy lately. There was a recent Newsweek article on how Americans and the rest of the world (the part that was polled that is) view the state of innovation and the American economy and this stuck with me:
On some issues there is widespread agreement: two thirds of respondents believe innovation will be more important than ever to the U.S. economy over the next 30 years. But the survey shows some striking contrasts as well. Eighty-one percent of Chinese believe the U.S. is staying ahead of China on innovation; only 41 percent of Americans agree. To find the next big breakthrough, Americans are focused on improving math and science education, while Chinese are more concerned about developing creative problem-solving and business skills.
(You can read the article here.)

Good news: we believe that innovation is important. Bad news: many Americans believe we are not staying ahead of China in this. Worse news: more Americans focus on science and math education while more Chinese are thinking about 'creative problem-solving'.

Why is it bad if Americans think they're falling behind? True, you don't want to be smug or delusional, but perceptions should be based on reality and the reality may be not that the US is falling behind, but that the others are catching up faster. The downside of this belief is the rush to change the way we do things, even the ones we do well, particularly the good part of US education (yes, it's there!) that develops non-conformist creative thinkers.

Math and science are important, actually, critical - in fact they are the foundation for problem-solving and there's not only a knowledge deficiency in these subjects among US students, there's a marked lack of interest in these purportedly nerdy areas (something that is not the case in most of Asia). But the US didn't get to be an innovation leader sticking to a "just the facts ma'am" approach. Facts are within the box and need to be known, but it is the ability to look beyond the facts and think outside the box that drives new concepts and quantum jumps in innovation. Innovation is not a bunch of theorems and formulas - it is spotting opportunities and then knowing enough about theorems/formulas to build on them. So the US should not only focus on math/science skills, but also on creative thinking and make sure students have plenty of unstructured time when they can exercise their right brains and dream up new ideas.

But, it's not all bad news. One of the best stories of 2009 is this one about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and it's forty red balloons challenge to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet (also a DARPA result). The balloons were tethered in 40 locations across the US and the first team (it was just not possible for an individual to do it) to identify all locations won a substantial cash prize. The goal? To learn how the power of crowds can be gathered quickly and productively - and possibly more things that are not even understood yet. You can read more about the red balloons and the MIT team that won it by checking the press release from here. What is amazing is the idea that the Department of Defense, which one would assume would be stodgy and secretive, created this wacky public challenge. It is so cool and I believe this is how the US can stay ahead - being innovative about driving innovation and making it fun.

Design the startup

I've been attending a course/lecture series at Stanford this quarter on 'the ecosystem of design'. It's been very enjoyable and almost always instructive and relevant. I do like the fact that it gets me to 'think different', something that one needs to be reminded about when in heads-down tactical mode.

This week the lecture was by Brenda Laurel, the chair at the graduate school in design at the California College of the Arts. She was entertaining and informative, and I found her perspective particularly interesting as she'd been an entrepreneur and done a couple of startups herself. When she stepped through the design methodology used in her design projects, I was struck by how similar the sequence was to what one goes through when launching a startup:

• opportunity space
• secondary research
• primary research
• analysis
• findings
• values
• design principles
• design
• change

But for the financials/business plan and the replacement of 'design' with 'build' or equivalent, this pretty much tracks with what one should be doing when launching a new venture. I was particularly drawn to 'primary research' where you go out and try to determine what to do and how to do it instead of relying on what analyst groups and topic trends say - all to often, the initial offering is built without doing first-hand research of the customer's wants, needs, constraints, behavior etc. And the very last item, 'change', is a gem (there is an implied release/launch to the customer before that) - the first version is rarely the one that makes general release.

Though 'design' for many conjures images of cool post-modern shaped everyday kitchen gadgets in the MOMA, the process is still a structured exercise in defining a problem and designing a solution - just like a startup. And it is imperative that design be a part of the process when building that startup. It is a challenge for pre-funded early stage startups that don't have access to high-priced design outfits, but design principles and methodology can be adopted by just about anyone quite successfully to achieve at least a first level of design sense. I've found it helps to get everyone involved in the product to think of themselves as a potential user/customer and that has generated a ton of good ideas - mostly on what not to do. Though it does take a little bending of the mind to get an engineer to think like a designer, it can be lot of fun and the results are more, well, friendly.

Why startups are innovative - Reason #3

I'm sure there are a couple more important reasons, but this is the one that I'm thinking about now, so #3 it is.

Outside-in thinking. AKA thinking outside the box. Yes, that one, the one that's fast becoming an old saw, hammer or what-have-you, and is a foundation for many high-priced classes teaching organizations to innovate (does anyone still not know how to connect the dots?). Though tired, it is tried and true and most of us believe that's exactly what we'll be doing.

But there's the inevitable knowing-doing gap. Thinking outside the box can't be mandated, and you can't always rely on peppy (Dr. Pepper-stoked?) facilitators leading your team through mind-expanding exercises like associating recruiting to horses (honestly, I did one of those!). To be truly effective you need creative thought not just during dedicated brain-storming sessions, but also when dealing with to day-to-day demands, be they figuring out the right wording for an email to an angel investor or designing a stop-gap solution to a user problem. That's how a startup gets to be excellent, and not just another venture.

What helps, a lot, is an environment that is conducive to unconstrained thinking. One with constant exposure to fresh thoughts. To people who don't think just like you - at least not all the time (watching Top Chef, ok, but Top Model, huh, why?). And having a marked absence of silos is a big factore. A silo, even if one could be established, would surely crumble in a startup due to the small number of heads and the vast quantity of hats to be filled. Not having a silo means you are not isolated with others who are in the exact same function/department, so you are automatically exposes you to other perspectives. Wow, if the finance guy can routinely listen to the product marketing and the development teams (of one each!) haggling over features, just maybe, every now and then, he has an idea that blows the problem away. Often, it doesn't even have to be an idea, just a question, asked from a different point of view, is all it takes to spark a creative solution.

It is not at all far-fetched to think that the architect's casual idea can spark something for marketing or a tester's question changes the user interface. But many assume that technologists can't get inspiration from other functions like marketing because they're, well, non-technical and can't help solve tech issues. Not so. What the outside-in thinking is all about is to get you out of your current rut and look at the big picture, the forest, the planet even - and that, instead of yet another tech deep-dive, may be what you need to see the solution,. If nothing else, it may re-frame the problem and it may not be such a big deal anymore.

Lastly, it's not just that startups are able to solve problems quicker - the solutions are often more creative than they would be otherwise. as they are informed by the diverse experiences of the entire team. Being small is both a bane and a bounty - startups never seem to have enough staff to get everything done, but they sure rock at innovation.

The adaptive startup

Shift to succeed. Actually, that should be ‘shift to survive’ since survival is success for startups.

Course corrections keep a startup afloat and moving forward instead of bobbing in place, or worse, getting up close and personal with rock-bottom. Every entrepreneur and his/her team would of course insist that they’re aware, and unafraid, of making corrections. But like many other good intentions, these could very well get reduced to minor acts of marginal significance (much like a chapter in a book devolving to a blog post to a Twitter tweet to a Facebook status update…).

The reason is that course corrections are hard to do. Even for ‘mere websites’ where you can make a change and publish it right away to your user base, a shift in features or market is not easy to undertake, especially for a startup with limited resources. Things get easier when you’re bigger and have enough revenue to support changes – but when you lack a cash goat, let alone a cow, it may be tempting to think you’d be more damned if you do than if you don’t. And a shift may be needed any time during the first few years, from the time you’re sketching out a business plan until you’ve established a steady and growing revenue stream, and beyond. (Even the big guns have to pay attention to shifting fast enough and hard enough to stay ahead of the competition, and sometimes their problem is that they're too big and set in their ways to move.)

Shifts can represent a narrowing of focus or an expansion, and both can be difficult. For example, even in our early user-trial stage, we’re hearing the need to add more features to just one specific area. It’s great to get this feedback and know what is really needed, but that means a drag-n-drop to trash of most of our plans and a new hunt for resources with specific skills. While it may be a shorter leap from a marketing perspective, development teams usually get seriously frazzled when asked to set aside what they’ve slaved over so far (and got very emotionally attached to) and move to something else, especially if they feel it is unproven. But, there are few guarantees in a startup, and you just have to keep the focus - build what your customers/users want! - and get on with it. For much the same reasons, more established startups may shift by adding whole new offerings that could change the game, not just the way it's played. In a previous post I'd written about Sharpcast and their founder CEO Gibu Thomas as a quintessential entrepreneur. At that time they were just readying their beta which was about auto-sharing and syncing photo albums across different devices, and they'd got plenty of advance praise. As one of their beta testers myself, I really liked their product, but could see a lot of other, more urgent, uses for that functionality. They are sharp people (pardon the pun) and figured out what grabbed their users very quickly, but I can imagine that delivering it, while supporting what they already had out there, was no easy task even with funding. It took some time, but they now have a new offering available in beta, which has already garnered great reviews (see the ReadWriteWeb post here). Looks like they're on to a good thing.

But is all change good? Shouldn't you hold on to your original vision instead of just 'selling out' to what could be a temporary trend? That is why course corrections are hard, you don't just do them - you have analyze and define them first, and as an entrepreneur you do have to ask yourself if your vision can encompass the change or if this is nothing like what you imagined, not in a good way. And when you do figure it out, you still have to sell it to your team, and they may balk, which is a good thing because it will force you to understand and communicate why it is the right thing to do. Shifts can be required in operational areas too (how you host for example), not just product or market strategy, and the more open-minded and alert you are, the more likely you are to see the need for course corrections, though thankfully they're not always large in scope.

Startups = change, and it's best to embrace it and thrive.

Keeping it Fresh

Startups by their very nature are expected to be innovating, bleeding all over the proverbial edge. And for sure, every startup has a green field/blank slate (insert favorite metaphor) and you can be truly different in all areas - product, service, even organization and management.

In the early days there's the heady rush of creating, the willingness to entertain all ideas even if they're spacey and could go the way of poor Pluto, and everything, even mundane decisions like ordering food for late-night sessions, are considered afresh and optimized. And when it comes to the product, the team's wallowing in research, brain-storming, asking the experts (even if it only your PhD candidate buddies in the local university), seeking customer feedback like it is the wisdom of gurus - freshness is so much the norm that you don't even have to think about it.

Unfortunately the patina of 'legacy' comes on quicker than one would like. The moment you have your 30-second pitch and your first 10-slide PowerPoint preso, you think you've got it all figured out. The moment you finish your prototype, it seems simpler to build on what you already have, even if you'd planned it as a temporary artifact to be scrapped when you start building V1.0. You think you've got the innovation part done and now you can start building.

And to be pragmatic, that's exactly what you should do to avoid the dreaded analysis paralysis or all ideas, no artifacts syndrome. But, but, but....you have to figure out a way to keep it fresh, have a window open to new ideas, new technologies, new input, just new slants to thinking, to make sure your product and company are not getting too rigid too soon. This is not easy to do, especially in an early stage startup when you're juggling so many different priorities with so few resources. But my personal bias is that freshness is one of the key characteristics of a startup and it is much easier to make it part of the culture there. As mentioned earlier, in the early days fresh thinking is pretty much a given - the challenge is making it a conscious practice in order to make sure that it doesn't dissipate with every checked milestone.

There may be no one way to do this, and to be effective, it is best to be open to input from non-typical sources. I recently attended a workshop at Stanford on a subject that was in the general space of the venture I'm pursuing, but didn't come anywhere close - but I found it made me think along very different lines and I was able to translate it to a new, richer perspective of the product offering. I am not sure how much of it I will use and when, but the whole experience was worth it just for expanding my thinking. And at the other end of the experience spectrum, a casual conversation with someone I barely knew at a networking event sparked an idea for a cool new feature.

I really hope to keep the innovation going and keep pushing the 'best if used by' date out further in all that I do, and to help me in this, have started reading a couple of books on the subject in my so-called spare time (results in a future post). I remember, when I first saw Apple's 'THINK DIFFERENT' plastered on the side of their corporate headquarters a few years ago, I found it faintly irritating as I felt it should be 'Think Differently' . But there's no denying Steve Jobs (and whoever came up with the phrase) is a genius. It took only a couple of drive-bys for me to get past the constraints of grammar and realize that the meaning is the message, and brilliantly so - a message worth remembering in the pursuit of freshness.

The call of the conference.

An early-stage entrepreneur conjures up the image of someone who's got no time for anything that doesn't further his/her business. Abs turn to pot bellies, hairstyles change to long and longer, beards become biblical, families are held together with tokens and promises, friends limited to birthday e-cards, and conversations about politics and what's hot on TV become impossible to sustain. So why should/would an entrepreneur attend conferences?

Attending conferences specific to your field or ones where you're likely to find customers are no-brainers. Attendance is a sales and marketing requirement. How about conferences for entrepreneurs? For a first-timer, or someone who's testing the waters, these conferences could be a great learning experience. They usually have tracks on the basic to-do's and you get to ask questions, or better yet, listen to someone else doing ditto, and you'd easily get your money's worth out of it. There's also the promise of networking, which delivers, but rarely as much as you'd expect (that's another post). Still, if you're new to startups, picking one or two of the more effective conferences (check out the speakers and panels first) is definitely worthwhile.

What about entrepreneurs who already know about stuff like incorporations and term sheets? Shouldn't they be out hustling for team members, customers, funding etc., instead of attending a conference? Well, I asked myself that question, but decided that I could clear up one day and go to one. And I did so for 'inspiration'. No, I didn't necessarily expect new ideas, I've already got mine, but it is kind of like going to a revivalist meeting - when you're in a gathering of the uber-faithful, everyone is so incredibly upbeat and excited about entrepreneurism that you can't help but absorb some of it.

Yes, you do have to pick and choose which keynote speaker is worth your while, and panel discussions may do little except give you a place to sit and catch up on email, but going to one does freshen your thinking. If nothing else it re-energizes and confirms your startup decision - a little caffeine for the entrepreneurial spirit. I've yet to meet someone at these conferences who wishes he/she stuck to a corporate job. And, as an added bonus, you're likely to run into old friends and maybe meet someone new who's fun too (just don't go expecting to find your CTO there).

So, if you hear the call of an entrepreneurs' conference, it's okay to give in once in a while. Notwithstanding the lukewarm coffee, the hard folding chairs, the dry chicken and the soggy salad, there could be dynamic speakers and fascinating stories too - a nice little pick-me-up for the hard-working entrepreneur.