Posts filed under 'Startup Scar Tissue'
Maybe once you are a famous writer like Seth Godin you can get away with almost anything. I read this book and was completely lost. Out of respect for Seth, I read it again and made some progress. My interest was sparked because it looks just like the picture that Amnon drew (http://think-smarter.com/rosen_sharma/2007/04/10/if-they-complain-build-it/).
There are some golden nuggets in the book which get lost in the narrative. The one which I agree with is that well rounded is not the way to being the best. I come from India where there is a large middle class … I think of it more like a frozen layered cake. If you are well rounded it will take you a long time to reach the top if you ever break though. However if you are laser focused for the first few years of your life you can cut through the cake and once on the top can open the umbrella and become as widespread and well rounded as you want. First you got to win at something and be the best at it.
June 21st, 2007
I recently attended a talk today about AIM, from a CEO who had gone through the process of listing there. It was very educational, here are some of the insights:
Basic Understanding
- To list on AIM you need to hire a banker in the UK
- The banker calls fund managers to sell your stock to them
- only funds, not inidividuals can buy or sell stock on AIM
- there is no “exchange” to match buyer to seller, if a fund wants to sell the stock in your company they contact your banker who has to find another buyer
- Thus once you are listed you have to retain a banker permanently (yearly fee)
Subtleties
- Bankers dont underwrite the offering, the cost of the roadshow etc is borne by the company without guarantee of listing (can be close to 1M)
- You can list without any revenue, but need to give clear guidance of milestones and then stick to them
- The CEO/Management team has to constantly sell to fund managers as it is incumbent on the company thru the banker to find a new buyer if existing shareholder wants to sell (or the share price can drop)
- US fund managers can’t buy or sell funds on the AIM market
- Funds which buy your stock dont have any representation on the board
It is an interesting vehicle to raise money for a private company, but it has its own nuances.
June 9th, 2007
I was attending a talk by Amnon Landan, who joined Mercury in 1989 and was CEO from 1997-2005. One of the things he talked about was how to decide whether a product idea was worth pursuing or not. 
He made the picture above. When you build a new product, the first 10 customers or so like the idea of the product and the vision and buy it. Then come the implementations where rubber meets the road. The vision meets reality. The product always falls short. It has gaps, doesn;t work in all the cases etc. And usually the euphoria that came with the first 10 customers leads to stress and strain in the organization.
Someone in the audience asked, should you ditch the product at this stage or keep going with it. Amnon said the more the customer complain, the more you should build the product. Almost always the same customers will become your biggest champions once you have delivered.
April 10th, 2007
Dennis Drogseth is a vice president with Enterprise Management Associates, a leading analyst, market research and IT consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado, focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management.
This is an awesome article about startup mistakes (Link Here).
January 23rd, 2007
What Steve Jobs did at Macworld is a classic example of what CEO’s should not do. He raised expectations astronomically. (Mike Egan echoed the same sentiment in his article @ computer world). As a CEO there is immense pressure to sell the future. Steve Jobs has to figure out a way to sustain his growth rate for apple; while ipods are selling … the growth is slowing down. So he sold the future … before it happened. The future
almost always never happens the way you had expected.
Maybe this is just a show for the world and Steve has correctly set expectations at his board. But for us mere mortals, setting expectation is where you are seen as successful.
So why do CEO’s feel compelled to raise expectations:
- for most startup’s its because they want to increase the spend.
- feel like something will happen, so it wont be an issue
- over-confidence, in-experience, ego
- the board wants to believe it also, things will be great in the future
Are you setting the right expectations?
January 22nd, 2007
How to Blag an Interview
Every now and then as a technology journalist, you’ll find yourself agreeing to participate in what is referred to a “Press Tour”. Vendors do these once or twice a year, when they have a shiny new product to talk about.
This means you sit in a room with them for 30 minutes to an hour and talk.
Link to the post.
January 19th, 2007
Vijay Anand (the force behind Proto) posted this note from a Demo Conference Veteran to help people have the maximum impact during their product presentations ( You can get the original posting from here).
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Shel Israel
Date: Jan 14, 2007 9:43 PM
Subject: RE: Proto.in Presentation Tips
To: Vijay Anand
1. Be humble but proud. Remember the star of your presentation is the product not you. Your audience wants to see the technology. Spend as much time showing it as possible.
2. It is far more memorable to make one point very well, then to make several points.
3. The objective of a good presentation is to get the people who matter most in the audience to want to come up to you after your talk and say, “tell me more.”
4. Remember to always play nice. Your worst competitor in today’s conference is tomorrow’s business partner, employer or employee.
5. Speaking without hype, in a style that is authentic and in the tones you would use when meeting a new business partner.
6. If there are potential investors in the audience ignore them. They are going to follow the buzz you make with the technologists in the audience. Focus on the technologists.
7. If you are a star of the conference, remember that you just did well at one event and on one day. If you do poorly remember that you just had a bad day and the world has not collapsed. In either case, you will have learned a very valuable lesson to take with you moving forward.
8. You, your product and your company are being judged at every minute during the conference, not just when you are speaking from the dais. The conversations and networking are the most important part of any business networking event.
9. Do not exaggerate what your product can do. Do not be overly optimistic about when it will be ready.
10. Make it clear that you want as many partners as you can get.
–~–~———~–~—-~————~——-~–~—-~
January 14th, 2007
This is fantastic video for enterpreneurs:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294
he has also written some interesting books:
http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/bio.html
December 5th, 2006
We (the think-smarter crew) are going to introduce you to a novel technique called the “blank presentation method” which will enable you to identify 70% of what should be built with 10 blank sheets of paper. No kidding. The following parable brings out the basics of how this gets done.
A story is told of a tourist in Paris in a bar one night. He got talking to a young Parisian and they hit it off. As it got late, the tourist said “I must go now”. The Parisian replied, “Let me walk you home”. “You don’t even know where I’m staying”, said the tourist. “You don’t need to tell me, I’ll take you there”, said the Parisian. Intrigued, the tourist accepted the offer. The Parisian took the tourist’s elbow and led him out of the bar. He then proceeded to walk the tourist home by exactly the same route that the tourist had walked home the previous two nights. The bemused tourist asked. “How did you know where to lead me? Have you been following me?” “I didn’t lead you” replied the Parisian. “You led me”.
How did the Parisian take the tourist home? What he did was actually quite simple. After exiting the bar, he applied slight pressure on the tourist’s arm as if to turn left. The tourist’s home was to the right, however. The tourist reflexively reacted to the pressure negatively by pulling his arm slightly away, and the Parisian was able to correct his course and turn right instead. Similarly, at each intersection, he guessed which way to go, and was able to correct his course based on the tourist’s reaction to the pressure he applied on his elbow.
Thus, through a simple process of hypothesizing where to go, validating the hypothesis, and correcting his course, the Parisian was seemingly able to lead the tourist home.
Lead, listen, learn, iterate.
December 3rd, 2006
