Entrepreneurial attitude

I believe entrepreneurs are distinguished more by their approach to life than anything else.  Here are two stories I ran across recently that bolster that belief, of two very different people who exemplify the 'just do it' ethos of the entrepreneur.

First up, an 'oh wow' account from a young techie about how he went about making a new dice game.  It details how he went from concept to a game that is now ready to buy, pulling together whatever resources he needed (and learning a lot on what they were and how to find them) to make it happen - a departure from delivering software to delivering a physical product.  The 'oh wow' part is not only does the game sound cool, but that he took on the effort, and more importantly, the risk of failure, at building something new.

The second story is more of an 'awww...' one - an 89 year old woman (yes, 89!) who decided to pretty up her walking stick and seeing how everyone liked it, she started a business selling decorated canes to anyone else who wants a little cheer on their stick (cherry on the top - she raised expansion funds on Kickstarter!)  Here's a lady who happily plunged into entrepreneurship when everyone would be expecting her to be sitting back and relaxing in her rocking chair.

How many of us think of products like these and don't ever take them beyond a Sunday afternoon daydream spin?  These may not be ideas that "put a ding in the universe", "disrupt" anything or aspire to "billion dollar market caps", but their creators didn't let modest goals, lack of experience, or age hold them back from bringing them to market - and clearly, they had a lot of fun in the process.

Enjoy the stories on Happy Canes and Space Dice - do you have a story to share?

Image courtesy of Master Isolated Images/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ikigai

One of my least favorite things about the end of the year is the ubiquitous 'year in review' list.  The best, the worst, the whatever-the-editor-fancies list.  So, as my last post for the year, I decided I would not do a 'look back' piece, but a 'look ahead' one instead.  As I work with a for-profit as well as a non-profit organization, I thought it might be good to reflect on encouraging and inspirational to-do items for entrepreneurs who are hoping to make a difference in 2013.

But, then as I was randomly web-surfing while drinking my chai, I ran across a mention of 'ikigai', the Japanese word which roughly translates to your reason for being. The 'Why?' of your life. Ikigai has been recently mentioned in various articles (like this one) as one of the secrets to a healthy long life.  Frankly, I'd think that it would be great for anyone, at any age, to know his/her own reason for being.  In fact, most people who seem happy with their lives appear to have a good sense of their own 'ikigai' and are living it, whatever it may be - feeding a family or fighting for causes.

Ikigai is probably what is driving most entrepreneurs - at least the ones that stick with their ventures.  There is something powerful driving the middle-class woman who starts a school for destitute children in India (here's the story) as there was something driving Steve Jobs.  Ikigai might be the answer to the question 'what makes an entrepreneur?'.

Of course, the 'reason for your being' is available to everyone, it is just different for each of us.  And it takes effort to figure it out.  When you do, you're half way to fulfillment.  The other half is figuring out how to live your ikigai. In a long-ago post, I wrote about why I do what I do - create, care, connect - and it is good to be reminded of it as I make choices, big or small.  After all, the ikigai is only the reason for your life, you still have to take the actions that make it your life.

Wish you a happy 2013 - may you find your ikigai and bounce out of bed every morning in anticipation of living it!

Top CEO trait: Stick-with-it-ness

It's been said before: what a startup needs is a CEO who doesn't give up just because the outlook is bleak.  I've covered this in a previous post about Pandora which was one of those companies that everyone expected to fade away but went public and is still going strong.

This applies to large companies too - what helps a shaky enterprise survive and succeed is a CEO that believes in its potential and digs in for the long haul to nurture its growth.  We know all about Jobs and Apple.  The story of Ariba is less well-known.  I was one of those who was surprised that Ariba was still around when I heard it was to be bought by SAP for $4.3 billion.  Today's article on Ariba story and CEO Robert Calderoni in the Merc News reminded me again why persistence is a virtue in CEOs.

Too many entrepreneurs think if you don't make it big fast you might as well get out ('go big, or go home').  That may be true for some companies/industries, but it is certainly not universal.  For sure it could be difficult to stay with a venture that doesn't produce enough revenue to pay the team, but that's why entrepreneurship is not for everyone, regardless of the prevailing hype.  True entrepreneurs stick with it as long as they can see there's potential in their vision - they bootstrap, moonlight, crowdfund, whatever they can do to keep the fire burning.  (For sure, Ariba didn't have to go ask Granny for funds, but they had the same problem - at a different scale - of staying afloat and re-tooling their business.)

The trait of determination is even more critical for social entrepreneurs.  All change is hard, and effecting social change definitely takes a patience, learning and perseverance.  The people who need to change the way they live, work, eat or learn may not be ready to do so just because you have this wonderful idea to make it all better, even if it costs nothing.  Behavioral change takes time, and may require many failed efforts before hitting a successful model, which means the company needs a CEO who's willing to stick with the vision and do what it takes.

In an earlier post I'd quoted Randy Komisar on entrepreneurs matching up to different breeds of dogs at different stages of a company's evolution.  One important breed got missed there - bulldog!

Exit signs

Entrepreneurs are probably one of the most 'advised' groups out there.  There's oodles of advice on how/why/when one should start a company and how to keep it going (though the going gets tough on that one).  But presumably entrepreneurs need to be told how to know when to pack it in because there's advice out there on that topic too.

Recently I read a much-commented guest post by Mike Troiano on the OnStartup blog, titled 'Be Captain of Your Destiny, Not Prisoner of Wishful Thinking', which listed five indicators which should convince an entrepreneur that it is time to admit that his idea doesn't work and exit.  While those criteria are worthy of consideration, I do believe that a true entrepreneur is not in the game because of a single idea, but because of a vision.  And if one idea doesn't work, it is highly likely she'd adapt and make it something else.  If you read the post, make sure you read the comments, especially the one by 'V' which I think is more in line with those of an entrepreneur who doesn't 'roll over and die' quite that easily.

In my view entrepreneurs have one sure-fire sign that it's time to move on - when the money runs out.  As long as there's money, and, even more importantly, as long as there are customers, the entrepreneur is still in the game. An example of this tenacity is a friend of mine who's helping her husband in his startup.  The idea is his, but they're partnering on the effort, especially in taking turns bringing in income, and they've been working at it for quite a while.  They'd run into various roadblocks, including the  'great' recession, and every time they reached out to customer prospects, or pitched to investors, they learned things that got them to re-tool their product and adjust their market position, and they've done this multiple times.  After many months, I got to meet with my friend a couple of days ago when she told me that they're in launch now. The product looks promising and their prospects are exciting.  This appears to be the real deal. 

One of my early posts was about a VC wondering when to hold on to a company, and in my view, it was when you could see the founder/entrepreneur still engaged and still passionate about making it happen - it was  'know when to hold' without being hung up on the 'know when to fold'.  Entrepreneurs who have a vision about a problem that needs solving, are willing to change their ideas on how to solve it, but don't give up on the vision, unless it is something they didn't care for that much in the first place.  Someone who's an entrepreneur by conviction, not an entrepreneur by convenience, would rather detour than exit if at all possible.

Domain expertise

Conventional wisdom has it that you should only work on what you know.  As in what you studied in college and/or gained experience in through your jobs. This is especially true for entrepreneurs - 'domain expertise' is expected in founders.

But entrepreneurs are also advised (pushed)  to 'follow their passion'.  And the reality is that not everyone recognizes their passion early on.  Or if they do, they are not able to indulge it and they settle instead for jobs they're good at - maybe to pay off the monster college debts they racked up studying 'marketable' subjects that they were not so passionate about.

So what's an entrepreneur to do when she discovers the passion for an area that she has no direct experience in?  In a previous post, I'd written about how it is important to get to know the area well if you are going to build a company around it and suggested various steps that you could take.  And a few days ago I met an entrepreneur who exemplifies the commitment to doing what it takes to make that shift successful.

CK12 has been getting a lot of attention in education and tech circles for making the promise of online textbooks a reality, and, most importantly, an affordable reality.  But what is less known is how the founder Neeru Khosla went about starting CK12.   Her background was in biology, not education.  Neeru was involved in leadership roles in various non-profit efforts until she decided to jump into the digital textbook revolution and make online textbooks readily accessible.  But before she did that, Neeru joined a Master's program in education at Stanford University.  I had the opportunity to chat with Neeru at an event last week and I asked about her experience.  It was 'very hard' she said, understandably.  It is no cake-walk to get back into college when you've been out of it for a couple of decades or so, especially for a demanding program.  'So why did you do it?' I asked.  Her answer: it got her involved with people in education. 


The organization is well established now and there are millions of views of the textbooks on CK12.  It got there because Neeru was willing to do the hard stuff and didn't let age or lack of domain knowledge stand in her way.  And that's one of the defining characteristics of entrepreneurs - they do not shrink from tackling the difficult, challenging, out-of-the-ordinary things that are needed to make their ideas reality.  Living your passion takes commitment!

The Tao of Steve Jobs

Just to get it out of the way, 'The Tao of Steve Jobs' has nothing in common with the movie 'The Tao of Steve' except for the first four words.  That's it.  This is not a book or movie or anything more than one small blog post about one amazing man.

It's almost a month since Steve Jobs died and there have been a zillion people opining about his life and legacy, as well as the inevitable detractors and tut-tutters.  And just when the stories seemed to be slowing down, out came his biography and TV shows - even SNL did its best. There are so many angles to the stories too - Steve the entrepreneur, the dropout/rebel, the wunderkind who was shunned by the tech establishment and then came back to show them, the family man who was felled by cancer.  Here are two widely different perspectives I liked reading: James Altucher's blog post and the eulogy by Mona Simpson (Steve's sister). 

For Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, Steve was a god.  The one we all wished to be like, the fearless (and smashingly successful) entrepreneur,  the tech visionary who couldn't be caught, the genius worshiped by product designers everywhere.  Would-be entrepreneurs as well as famously successful ones (Zuckerberg, Page and Brin for example) desired to learn how to do it 'Steve's way'. 

The Tao of Steve Jobs, as I like to call it, are all those 'core values' that define the way he did things.  All these items are well known and are excellent advice not just for entrepreneurs, but possibly to anyone wishing to make something meaningful in his/her life:

• Focus.  
• You can't do everything, and certainly can't do everything well.  And yes, sometimes the focus is overwhelming and obsessive, but it may have to be so to get the job done.
• Simplicity.
•  Not only because of the inherent beauty in simplicity, but because it ultimately produces a better product, experience, outcome.
• Excellence.
• 'Perfect' trumps 'good enough' every time.
• 'Stay hungry.'
• If you're not striving and yearning for something, if you're not passionate about it, it's not going to happen.
  
• 'Stay foolish.'
• Do what you believe in.  Take the risk to act on it.

 (The last two are from Steve's speech to the Stanford students.  If you've somehow missed it or want to hear it again, here it is - one of the best commencement speeches of all time.)

A long while ago I wrote about what is important to me - create, care, connect (you can read that post here).  I realize how Steve epitomizes each of those.  He was undeniably creative - I've always appreciated Apple more than any other tech company as they tended to create, not copy/buy, successful ideas.  Steve cared deeply about what he did (even if he did not directly show his 'care' in the traditional way for social causes).  He micro-managed (and threw tantrums) because he cared so much about every aspect of what Apple built.  As for connecting, he connected the dots way, way outside the box and saw possibilities others couldn't even imagine.  Despite his imperfections, I admired him and what he represented - an embodiment of truth in design and the entrepreneurial fire.  He will be missed, and it may be ages before another like him shows up, but, like me, techies and entrepreneurs everywhere will be inspired by the Tao of Steve Jobs for a long time..

Upside of Failure

The Sunday New York Times magazine had a thought-provoking article on whether schools should focus on building 'character' and not just academic competence.  I generally applaud the sentiment, though I also believe that kids get much of their character guidance from parents and the community, with the school supporting and emphasizing it.

The article is titled 'What if the Secret to Success is Failure?' and goes on to cover all the character-building benefits of failing at something which then leads to future success.  Again, yes, I do support the concept as I believe it builds resilience, which is a big factor in successfully navigating this fast-changing world.  (I also believe students should be taught compassion, but that's a different story.)  What made this article particularly appealing to me is how much of this approach resonates with successful entrepreneurship.

"True: learning is fun, exhilarating and gratifying.... — but it is also often daunting, exhausting and sometimes discouraging."  Just like entrepreneurship!  "People who accomplished great things.... often combined a passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take."  That is the defining characteristic of an entrepreneur.  The concern about children from affluent families having so much done for them that they're unable to deal with setbacks is somewhat like an over-funded startup failing because it never had the pressure of limited resources making it focus on what was really important.  And of course, the idea that failed experiments and uncertainty contribute to the development of grit and ultimate success is one of the reasons that, in Silicon Valley at least, a two-time entrepreneur is respected, even if the first time was a bust.

There is more, for example, 'social intelligence' and 'optimism' are super helpful for entrepreneurs too.  Read the article here - it'll make you wonder if teaching entrepreneurship will do more than just help build the economy.

A true entrepreneur

I was sent this link a little while ago and thought it was one of those too-good-to-be-true stories: poor kid in rural India fails school but ends up building a profitable business and is greeted by Presidents. But the story of Masukhbhai Prajapati is one of a true entrepreneur who showed enormous passion and perseverance. Some other classic entrepreneurial characteristics that he showed are:

• He didn't let himself be defined by the environment he was born into
  
• He could innovate outside the box and outside the 'normal' for the world he lived in
• He continued despite many failures
  

I am also thrilled with his business focus and products - taking 'useful' things that the middle-class and rich take for granted and making them affordable and accessible to the poor millions. And the fact that he's doing them in a sustainable eco-friendly way is absolutely amazing - a clay refrigerator that doesn't need electricity, how cool is that? This from a guy who never finished high school and learned engineering by just doing it.

The 21st century needs more people like Mansukhbhai - not just more college dropouts creating social games online. His advice to entrepreneurs is universal - 'put your heart and soul into what you do' is one of them - and while he may not be a billionaire, his success is unquestionable as is his social impact. In my book, he is the real deal and you can read his fascinating story here.

Crazy like an entrepreneur

There was a recent NYT article about a young entrepreneur who could be described as 'hypomanic' - "grandiosity, an elevated and expansive mood, racing thoughts and little need for sleep" - and how these very qualities which could signal a borderline mental disorder are what could be best for an entrepreneur.

Sure, entrepreneurs are often called 'crazy' - they take risks, are overly enthusiastic about their ideas which don't seem practical, and have enormous confidence in their abilities to pull off something that looks iffy at best. Steve Jobs famously exhorted would be entrepreneurs to 'stay foolish'. So it should be nothing new - but this article focuses on what may be an extreme version of it. There is some of the next Zuckerberg glamor/clamor with investors hunting for brainy (and arrogant?) college dropouts with grand ideas for the next big thing a la Facebook. It doesn't seem to apply to entrepreneurs who go after ideas like the next generation fuel cells or a new heart valve or a better way to offer customer service - the stuff that may need deeper education or experience along with fire and faith - it is more about the brilliant college dropout with a tech game-changer. The entrepreneur profiled fits the bill of brilliance, obsessiveness, exhibiting single-mindedness from early childhood etc. Of course, he doesn't have any interest in a social life either. And while all entrepreneurs have to give up much of their 'ordinary life' to work on their startups, giving up all of it doesn't seem to be a smart move. Focus is necessary, tunnel vision is not, and entrepreneurs need people skills too, though the examples mentioned in the article don't seem to display much of the latter. Steve Jobs is cited as an example of another hypomanic entrepreneur and described as 'a despot and a control freak' - probably not the dream boss for most people.

There's the suggestion that highly successful entrepreneurs are not only extremely passionate and driven, but that the top priority in their lives is their venture, not the people, not even their families (many of them are young and single when they start). You can read the article here, but in my view, the world also needs, and offers hope for, entrepreneurs who are not going to be the next Zuckerberg or Jobs.

The road to entrepreneurship

Prerna Gupta provides a textbook case for why people choose to be entrepreneurs. Unsatisfied in spite of her high-paying, high-perk consulting job? Check. Bored selling something that didn't excite her for another (VC) company? Check. Hated working in a 'conventional structure'? Disliked having a boss? Miserable sitting in an office working on 'someone else's creation'? Check, check, check.

So she did the logical thing: started a tech company with her boyfriend (now husband). Prerna is well aware that success is not guaranteed, yet the risk of failure is not enough to send her back to a safe job working for someone else. She has realized that even the most routine work is more meaningful when it is towards her passion (her startup) and being an entrepreneur has significantly improved her outlook on life.

So should everyone who's unhappy with long hours or selling things they don't care about bail and start a company? Of course not. Most people would be happy to find work they care about, even if it is working for someone else. After all, few entrepreneurs can go at it on their own - they need to build a team that can get passionate about their idea and there are plenty of people who'd bring entrepreneurial gusto to someone else's startup. But when many aspects of your work seem at odds with what you want from your work life, it is clear that you should stop and assess what you should be doing as Prerna did. Clearly Prerna had some advantages that smoothed her road to entrepreneurship: a Stanford degree and being surrounded by the startup culture in Silicon Valley that almost pushes smart young people into starting companies. Another advantage is that she obviously has the ability to face potential financial failure with some equanimity too. Most would-be entrepreneurs may not be so lucky, yet, paradoxically, someone who embarks on a venture even without these advantages may be the true entrepreneur for taking the road, potholes, speedbumps and all.

You can read about Prerna here - it's a good read for all entrepreneurs and entrepreneur-hopefuls too.

The frugal entrepreneur

One of the lessons we all have (or should have) learned from the great melt-down of 2008-09 is how to get things done on the cheap. This is especially true for the majority of startups and small businesses that found investors were scarcer than buyers for homes and the seed/startup money had dried up like dew in the desert. For many ventures success in the last 18 or so months has been defined as survival, and that has been possible only by leaps of creative resourcing.

For those who embrace the frugal entrepreneur's path to future wealth and success, 'The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur' by Mike Michalowicz is a good read. It's a light-hearted but spot-on collection of tips and guidelines on building your venture with innovation if not big bucks. (You can also read ReadWriteWeb's post on this book here. I think I've written about the entrepreneurial passion about a zillion times, and was happy to see it features hugely in this book too, as Mike's take is that finding your passion is the first step to launching a successful company. Coming to think of it, have you found any successful entrepreneur who says you don't need passion?

Check out TPE - it could be just the energy shot you need to keep pushing (no pun intended).

Power from the people

Lists are ubiquitous and ever popular. They give the illusion of control - if you can just check off these 10 things you'll lose weight, get into your dream college, find your soul mate and build an amazing company from scratch. Ah, if only. But, lists are still useful if you don't treat them as the 'check' kind and I particularly enjoy reading the entrepreneurial ones (by entrepreneurs) to see what truths they hold dear.

For example, I recently read list of tips for entrepreneurs from Kevin Rose, Digg's founder (you can read the list here). While the focus is on web startups, there are many good things on that list and after the first one ('just build it' - can't top that), my favorites are 'hire your boss' and 'demand excellence'.

The 'hire your boss' bit is about hiring people who you'd respect and you'd want to work for, even if you're hiring them to work for you. And the 'excellence' one is to hire passionate people who are as consumed by your vision as you are. In my experiences both at large corporations and startups, I always had the most success when I hired super smart people who were super committed to doing a great job. They were not always the people with the top college or top company pedigrees, but they definitely had a 'spark' and certain common characteristics: early and complete commitment to the goal, quick at learning, uncompromising in quality and integrity but understanding business constraints, and able to consider challenges as just 'stuff to resolve'. Most of all they enjoyed their jobs and it was exciting to work with them.

I've mentioned this in previous posts about having team members with 'fire in the belly' and 'the right stuff'. An early stage startup needs a passionate team even more than an established one as there's more chaos to be endured, more challenges to be met and hurdles to be jumped which would be difficult to manage with a team that's not emotionally vested in the outcome. But even though you may not have your dream team yet when you get started on the venture, figure out a way to do that without compromising on your management team. It is better to take your time, even if you have to work with consultants for a while, and hold out until you find people who mirror your passion instead of taking on those with extensive resumes but the involvement burner set to low. More than money, your startup is powered by people, the ones who're as crazy about your idea as you are - not to mention, it's way more fun than being the lone crazy in the group!

Getting down to business

When I'd last written about the team of 10-graders that I'm mentoring on entrepreneurship through BUILD (read my posts here and here), they were re-visiting their business plan as their world-view and team had changed over the summer. They were frantically re-doing their presentation as they had to pitch to a VC (a real one!) in order to get the few hundred dollars of 'seed funds' they would need to get their idea off the ground.

There was a bunch of writing to do - presentations, business plan, even team bios, and these students were stressed as they had to do it all on top of their regular school work (remember, they are in this program because they need all the help they can get to stay in school). My co-mentor and I were dismayed by their lack of enthusiasm - it seemed that they were just going through the motions and had lost their excitement, and we were hoping it would come back.

It sure did! All it took was practicing their 'elevator pitch' while meeting and greeting at a 'mock-tail' party and pitching to a VC who showed real interest and asked relevant questions. The team was floating after the presentation - they were thrilled that they could field questions on pricing and market surveys entirely on their own. And yes, they got their seed funds - this is modeled after the real world, but is a much more sheltered one after all, propped by generous donations.

Now that they're getting down to business, not just creating PowerPoints, the excitement is palpable, and they're very much fired up as in my 'fire in the belly' post. They're nervous, they have tons of questions, but they don't think they can fail - in fact, they believe they have already won, which is the most empowering feeling a teenager could have.

As someone who's cares about education, I'm happy to see how starting a business brings so much to these under-resourced teens: they're motivated to stay in school, they experience supportive relationships with successful adults who care, and they build the confidence they need to aspire to college and get there. As an entrepreneur, I'm thrilled that they're learning the fundamentals of business now and know that they will not be scared to start one if they had a mind to do so in the future. And the fact that I get to participate in this, however minor my role, is the scrumptious icing on the proverbial cake.

Dream of sea turtles

Last week I attended a cool gathering - a smallish group of people gathering over wine and munchies not just to network or socialize (that happens anyway), but to hear and discuss stuff outside of the regular work milieu. Kind of like the salons of a past century, but more oriented to ideas and trends than art and philosophy, though that would be cool too.

Last week's topic was 'Strategic Philanthropy' and there was a panel of leaders of different kinds of local successful non-profits. Each of them talked about what they do, why and how they do it, and how they're managing in the bog of the Great Recession. They were all very engaging, and provided fodder for some very interesting post-panel discussions, but I felt that one speech in particular had a strong entrepreneurial appeal and it's message was transferable to just about any endeavor.

Wallace J. Nichols, ('J'), is the director of Ocean Revolution, an international program using creative techniques to preserve our oceans. His was a very well-constructed pitch with high impact - started with a story, outlined a few key take-aways that he elaborated, and ended with audience participation and a very simple call to action with strong emotional appeal. Anyone looking for funds (for or non-profit) could learn from him. What I liked about his speech, was not just the delivery or the message of saving the oceans (a biggie), but his four guidelines for making things happen:

• Don't be afraid of the unconventional/radical/revolutionary
• Collaborate with others to make things happen
• Build networks actively
  
• Use networks to spread the word/do the work

The first point was illustrated by a story on how as a youngster he loved sea turtles and wanted to make a living around them and had no idea how to do it and 15 years ago everyone thought he was wasting his time. But, he dreamed big, got a theory on turtle migration patterns that he went about proving with the help of a turtle 'volunteer' tagged with a transmitter, GPS, a comp. sci grad who helped build one of the first live update tracking sites on the web and a bunch of young people across the world who got fascinated by the story of the turtle going from Mexico to Japan - which substantiates the other points. At first glance it may appear that the last three points are all the same, but he explained that they were not so: collaborating is seeking peers with synergistic core competencies to participate in your efforts, building networks is spending time getting to know people (not just on Facebook/Twitter) and finally using networks to engage in and actually deliver on your initiative (a la crowdsourcing). The last one may seem hard to do if you're selling widgets for bean-counters or something, but it is eminently feasible all the same.

All of these are excellent reminders for any entrepreneur, and I believe the turtle story would be a great one for any young person wondering how to hold on to a dream. The closer was memorable too - J gave a blue marble to everyone in the room and told us that it was a symbol of the earth and to cherish it and pass it on to the next person who would benefit from it. To really understand the spirit behind the blue marbles, I recommend checking out his post here - it's an awesomely simple way to get across a big idea.

Field of expertise

ReadWriteWeb has a continuing series on startups and entrepreneurs which makes for good reading, especially if you're interested in tech startups. A while ago they had a post on 10 things to be clear about before you start a company - and I thought of it today as I was thinking about a startup idea (just for fun). All 10 points are worth considering, but I'm not convinced that everything is as clear cut as it is made out to be. In particular, I have a somewhat different take on #3, does your venture involve something you understand really well?

On the face of it, it makes sense. You can't do what you don't know. Mrs. Fields had wowed friends and family with her cookies before starting her company. Thomas Fogarty is a cardiac surgeon and knew exactly what he was about when he created the balloon catheter and then went on to launch numerous medical device companies. And he also built a successful winery, a far cry from medical devices (though red wine is supposed to be good for your heart). My friend Gillian Verga was inspired by her own weight-loss experience to start an online community in WeightCircles. So does the entrepreneur always have to be the subject matter expert? Or just know enough to know when to bring in the experts? And what is 'enough'?

I am personally partial to the idea of an entrepreneur being one who sees an opportunity and pulls together the resources to grab it. The entrepreneur does not have to be, and is often not, the one who knows it all about the specific area - too often an expert does not see the proverbial forest for the proverbial trees - but obviously s/he has to know enough to figure out what's a real opportunity, the challenges, the market etc. You the entrepreneur need to know enough to figure out if there's a business there. And of course you need access to the people who are masters of that domain so you can get the smarts you need when you need them.

That said, I also believe that any half-way decent entrepreneur would be at least familiar with what their venture is all about. You have to know the problem you want to solve, either having experienced it yourself or being close up to some one who has. In fact, I don't think it is even feasible to develop an entrepreneurial opportunity unless you're familiar with - not necessarily immersed in - a space. The sequence is pretty much: see the opportunity in something close to you, dig in and get comfortable that there's really a venture there, get access to the market, take the leap.

And finally, unavoidably, you need passion. If you are not passionate about the space you are in, expertise alone won't keep you in the game. You'd be inclined to give up the first time you believe you're running out of money and use your expertise to polish up your resume instead. And passion can be used to direct your entrepreneurial itch too. If you're really interested in an area (global warming, education, health care) but don't know too much about it, you can spend some time getting familiar with it - taking classes, volunteering, networking, mining the web. And then, you'll either find your own 'eureka' idea or hitch yourself to someone else's. Bottom line, that has to be the holy grail: making an impact in something you really care about.

A sign of the times?

A few months ago I had written a hopeful (as in, full of hope) post about three different people who had talked to me about the startup dreams and plans (you can read it here). I followed up with those entrepreneur-hopefuls and found that everything has changed.

The first was a senior level manager in a small but thriving company who wanted to work on something more personally fulfilling (while making money of course) and had thought she'd landed on just the right thing. At that time she was trying to figure out whether she should quit her job to work on her idea right away or do it part-time. Fast forward to now. She's not only still in her old job, but because of the economy and cut-backs all around, she has to do more with less and hasn't had time to even think about her idea, a fact that bothers her to the point that she prefers not to dwell on it.

The second person was in a very large multi-national with a very useful app that she had helped develop and was trying to launch as a separate venture with her company's support. It is no surprise that the budgets right now don't have much slack for something new, especially if it is not core R&D, so it's back to business as usual.

Lastly the two young men with startup fever spent many weeks going through dozens of ideas, building mini-plans for each before rejecting them. One of them gave up and decided to opt for a dependable paycheck (he'd recently gotten married). The other looking for a like-minded partner found that all his friends who'd wanted to do something on their own had decided to go the corporate route. So, he's put his entrepreneurial dreams on ice too and is looking for a job, preferably in a small funded startup.

Is it the economy that caused them to forget their dreams? Of course, summer of 2009 is in economic doldrums with glimmers of improvement but nothing you can bet your business on. It is very hard to find the fuel to power startups: angel investors, early-stage VCs, early-adopter customers or consumers with healthy discretionary spending. But, it is not impossible. I do believe that an entrepreneur who's truly passionate will figure out a way to keep the idea alive, even if it's just a few hours on nights and weekends working on plans, doing market research, scouting for co-founders - something that will keep the venture simmering slowly on a side-burner and out of the deep-freeze. It's not easy (startups are never easy) and I recommend that entrepreneurs who want to survive these times to remember Steve Jobs' famous exhortation to 'stay hungry, stay foolish' - dreams die only if you let them.

Substance and style

Last Saturday was the final business plan competition for the high-school freshmen in the BUILD program (the Peninsula site). It was a gorgeous day at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And it was smart thinking on BUILD's part, and generous of GSB, to get these kids, most of whose parents haven't even finished school, to visit one of the world's best universities - the kids in my car kept up a steady 'wow, this is so cool!' from the moment we turned into Palm Drive.

The team I was mentoring won points on their clever, viable, idea, their comprehensive presentation and how they had figured out all the necessary details. But, the team was made up mostly soft-spoken, diffident kids and there was no obvious spokesperson who could sell. So, ultimately the team didn't make it to the final round since they couldn't 'talk it up'.

In the final round, the two top contenders had some things in common: smooth-talking CEOs who turned on the charm in introducing the problem and solution through a snazzy Powerpoint, and enthusiastic teams to back them up. One really wowed the crowd with frequent jokes and elicited much excitement among the audience of classmates, mentors, teachers and family. The other team had a couple of jokes, but would have clearly lagged behind in the applause meter. On the other hand, they were the team with a working prototype, a detailed market survey and a believable plan for market expansion. Given the fact that the panel of judges included CEOs and senior executives, it was no surprise that the team with more substance won out over the team with more style.

Of course, these 9-th graders didn't really have the opportunity to form their own teams, and the teams were not evenly balanced on competence and charisma, yet they were remarkably easy-going and accepting, in fact, celebratory, of their classmates' success. But all of them learned a lesson that's critical to any startup team making a pitch: what you say is as important as how you say it. And passion is a key element in the 'how' - if you don't show overwhelming enthusiasm for your idea, you can't expect anyone else to buy it.

It may sound corny, but there were no losing teams in this competition. The goal of the program is to build self-confidence and develop skills that help in business as well as school and make college real for kids who grow up thinking that it is out of their reach. I could see the difference: the kids who were nervous speaking to anyone they didn't know last fall, now got up and made a great presentation. They spoke with confidence and answered questions without faltering. (Note to BUILD folks: remind judges to drop bizspeak like 'did you factor the cyclical nature of the demand in forecasting sales' for the much-easier-to-understand 'do you sell the same number every month of the year'). On the way home our team was pumped: they were talking about colleges they'd like to go to and how they should start their business anyway, even if they'd didn't win the competition, as they think all their friends would love to buy their product - and oh, by the way, would it help them get into college? Hats off to BUILD for involving the community and bringing entrepreneurship to help in education - as mentors, we felt really good that we had a small part in bringing about this transformation, and I personally enjoyed getting a fresh perspective on teens and startups!

Got influence?

A few weeks ago, I participated in a panel discussion about using influence to deliver results. It was moderated with ease and distinction by Neerja Raman, a Valley exec, management speaker/author, and now research scholar and proponent of social entrepreneurship. It was a panel of impressive women, all with insightful stories and if you're interested, there's more information to be found at Neerja's blog and Peggy's (one of the panelists).

At the panel, the stories I shared were about managing up and/or out - either top bosses during my corporate stint, or VC investors and customers from entrepreneurial forays. But influencing your team is an ongoing, daily need, not a sporadic activity, and more so in an early stage startup when you have very little history and the culture is still being formed. Sure, when it's only you and a couple of co-founders and you've all worked together before, the influencing patterns are so ingrained in you that you probably don't even notice that you're following them. Whenever you're presenting anything of consequence to your tech co-founder, you will give it a game-changing, revolutionary tinge because that's what floats his boat and he's still got penguin stickers on his car. It's all automatic by now - just like in your family.

But that's not the case when you throw new people into the mix. First, you don't know what floats their boats, revs their engines, juices their hybrids, whatever. Though the beliefs, politics and fashion trends of millions have been driven by a few, influencing is often a a one-to-one game, requiring you to adjust your plan based on who you're trying to influence. That said, there are 'group think' opportunities, though rare in smaller teams, where you know if you can convince one key person, the rest woud follow. So yes, it takes getting to know the individual and his/her hot buttons.

Asking 'what are your hot buttons' is kin to a lame pickup line, and any answer you get is suspect. Most startup folks will say that they're driven by the idea, want to do something meaningful and interesting, and participate in building a company, yadiyadiya. But aside from money and security (usually not the strongpoints of an early stage startup), and the still valid Maslow's theory, people are not influenced by the same things, even in a startup. Some are drawn by appeals to their sense of adventure (we're going to try something new and get to invent it as we go!) while others are more partial to predictability (we're trying something new, but not really - see how it is similar to all this stuff you've done before, and here are 25 reasons why it is a good bet and the giant safety net in case it isn't). In a previous startup, I found the architect always responded to the 'big picture' pitch, while the development manager wanted everything presented in terms of timeline and resources, and didn't really care about anything outside of that. It may appear trivial, but it took some juggling, and quite a bit of time, to present to each one separately. It was a relief to get to the point that, at least for some things, I could present to one and give him the responsibility of convincing the other.

It sounds like calculating, manipulative behavior, but it isn't really - it is thoughtful and adaptive. It's being an effective leader and understanding that getting the support and buy-in of the team often takes pitching to each member's sweet spot. Which is why anything of significance, while it could be 'announced' in a meeting, pretty much requires individual discussion to get past 'reaction' to 'results'. It takes work though - especially the part about finding out what makes each person tick, and then remembering it every time you've got to make something happen. While there are many leaders who don't bother with these nuances, it is pretty much necessary for those entrepreneurs who are not aiming to be titled 'despot' - or failure.

What helps the entrepreneur is the the passion for the cause. You are so committed to your startup that you'll do whatever it takes to make it succeed, and right there you have more than half the influence you need.

The last lecture - another view

If you've not been totally oblivious of the goings-on in popular media (yes, that could happen even if you're not in Bora Bora watching nothing but the waves), you must have heard of Randy Pausch's last lecture. If you haven't, you could go over to the store and pick up a copy of the book version from the bestseller shelves, or find various clips on YouTube. But, do yourself a favor, take the hour or so you'll need to see the full lecture, not just the Oprah sound bites. Yes, it is geeky (he's a professor at Carnegie Mellon after all), but that has its own charm and is part of who he is. Go to his website http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ - it's bare bones, but you can view the lecture as well as get the all-important backstory.

What's so special about this last lecture? After all Randy doesn't say anything we wouldn't find in self-help books or the secrets to success from movers and shakers - though he has lived an impressively accomplished and fulfilling life in a relatively short time. Much of the impact is from knowing that he's dying, though he doesn't dwell on that, and instead breezily moves past it with self-deprecating humor. It's the distillation of lessons from a life well lived by a very smart and caring person - the kind of person who'd make a great mentor.

So what's this got to do with entrepreneurship? Quite a lot actually. Even though he is an academic, he exhibits many of the characteristics of an entrepreneur and almost every piece of advice he gives would resonate with those of an entrepreneurial ilk. My personal favorite is the bit about brick walls being there to prove your dedication and how badly you want something. For startups, the road is not only rocky, but brick walls pop up at seemingly every turn. And not only do you, as the entrepreneur, have to bulk up to swing the metaphorical jack-hammer, you have to get your team to do the same - preferably on their own, without waiting for the caped crusader to do it for them. If you - and your team - are truly committed to your venture, you don't see just the brick wall, but you also see the cracks, the toeholds, and the myriad ways you can get past it.

Of course, like everything else, it is easier said than done, and practice does make it more automatic. One reason the last lecture hit home is that recently our team did a roadmap and targeted a mini-launch based on a date driven by the market and our business goals, and what we believed to be the must-haves in the product. The team then went off to do a detailed scheduling exercise and came back with a date that was over 2 months out from the original target. As it was all well thought out and reasonable, they felt that it was 'reality' and I should be ready to face it. I probably sounded like a woolly-headed new age flake when I responded with it being just one reality, not the one that I was willing to accept, and that my aim was to figure out how we were going to make the target date because that milestone is super-critical to our success. I was confident there was a way, though it might have appeared I was delusional. To keep it short, and sweet, with some discussion, juggling and a dash of 're-thinking' we got to the target date with an acceptable deliverable - and a hefty boost to the morale all around.

So check out the last lecture. But for a few who may be squeamish about it's earnestness, most will find it an inspiring packaging of life lessons. Much of it applicable to startups too. And a reminder that when you really want something, the goal should define the path and not vice versa.

All about the 'tude

Attitude. That's what gets things done. Yes, it is a staple of every inspirational speaker or motivational totchke shelves, but there's a reason for it - some people need reminding.

In a previous post, I've opined on the startup balance between resources, timeline and deliverables and the constant challenge it raises, especially in the early stages when your dreams and deliverables overpower your resources. And I held forth on how to make those compromises. But, as I'm now involved in an almost daily balance reset, I've realized that there's one important component that determines how successful you're going to be, and that is Attitude (a big 'A' in a good way).

For many of us, especially those who tend to let the left brain be big boss (the right does little more than visualize pin stripes, cigar and some power girth), we tend to get all analytical about it. That goes double for the techies. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating an emo-meltdown, channeling fear, despair or anger. But you need to shake up the can-do attitude and pass it round for a good whiff before you get into the fray.

For instance. We have another user trial coming up. We have a list of must-have features. What we don't have is enough engineer-time to get those taken care of - in the 'normal' manner. And our framework makes it counter-productive to try to get contract help, at least in this time frame. Yes, there are constraints. But, as I heard Marissa Mayer of Google so succinctly put it in one of her talks: creativity likes constraints. It is so much more effective to address your problems with the attitude of 'Whoo! An opportunity to show how I can make things happen!' instead of '*&!# this is going to blow up'. It's not being new-agey to say the way you feel impacts the way you think which affects the outcome.

Build the attitude, build the startup (and be a hero?). This is one of those things that should go into your culture. Leadership by example is required of course, but it may need a little more nurturing. A workshop if you can spring for it. Or maybe those totchkes?