thoughts, observations, and commentary from an entrepreneur / CEO / husband / dad / consumer / producer / fan / advisor / participant
25 Sep
I recently had breakfast with a guy (he shall remain nameless) who told an interesting story. In short, it went like this: there was a 5 person start-up that built an impressive web-based software product. They went to sell it to a large organization that had a 75 person development team (with, incidentally, zero testers or QA people). Two guys from the product company met with the CEO and the head of technology.
That giant dev team had been struggling to produce anything of any degree of quality, and the CEO nearly blew a gasket when he saw what a tiny team was producing while his massive (and massively expensive) team was proving to be inept. Funny thing is, the small product company didn’t get the sale because the head of technology blocked it, presumably by convincing the CEO that it wasn’t “enterprise ready” or something along these lines (i.e., covering his ass).
It amazes me how the combination of ignorance and people trying to protect their jobs can create such massive waste and inefficiency. There are plenty of cases where big teams make sense, but 99% of the time your web application development project is not one of them.
Small teams. Clear responsibilities. Tight schedules. Narrow scope. Total accountability. These are pretty simple concepts.
17 Sep
Mike Chasen was the speaker at the Potomac Officers Club event last week. He talked about his experiences as the founding CEO of Blackboard, which he’s built from a 2 person partnership crammed into a tiny office in DC in 1997 to an 850 person publicly traded company with offices around the world. Blackboard provides software that helps universities put their courses online. Some points he stressed that stuck out at me in terms of lessons for growing start-ups:
I was impressed by the story of Blackboard. Mike started the company with only a couple of years of professional experience and grew it through some turbulent times. For him to remain at the helm through all that change and maintain his passion and effectiveness is remarkable.
14 Sep
Now that we have all this space, we’re excited to fill it up with smart folks. We’re hiring passionate people, and I predict you know someone who would be a great fit at Viget. If you think I’m right, have them visit viget.com and send a resume to jobs.va@viget.com. If we hire them, I’ll buy you both a beer (or soda, if you prefer). Some roles we’re looking to fill:
We’re actively interviewing for these roles. If you know anyone who would be a good fit, please send them our way. We have some very cool work going on and it’s a great time to join us.
14 Sep
Last month I mentioned Rails Rumble, the app dev contest that went down last weekend. The apps are done — 92 of them, in fact — and now anyone can go play with them and vote for their favorite. Two Viget-associated teams participated:
Clinton assembled a tiny all-star team with Julia Kulla-Mader and Jackson Fox dubbed “Snack Nut Item” and built Clubhouse:
Clubhouse is a network for clubs or teams or any organizations, providing them with loose and fun event scheduling. Anyone can create and join clubs, create events, and plan the future! It is more filling than a good breakfast. It is like Meetup.com, but free, and what the people want. Also, iCalendar! Yeah!
Ben, who couldn’t play the whole weekend due to “social obligations” (otherwise he’d have been in VL South along side Clinton), formed a solo team called “Texasbenonian People’s Front” and built Irksome:
Irksome is a web-based client for IRC, providing all the normal features of IRC through a much friendlier UI – and with searchable transcripts!
Nice work, guys. As DC’s Startup Weekend draws closer, I can already tell that the insights from the Rumble will be valuable.
Update: check out Clinton’s post about Rails Rumble on the Viget blog. He makes some great points …
13 Sep
The Era of Conversation event is happening in DC on October 4th, hosted by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW). I’ll be giving a talk about “building individual relationships and readers” in the tactical “Organizational Blogging & RSS” portion of the event. From DMAW:
It’s too late to talk AT your customers and donors. The New Media Conversation involves talking WITH them. Blogs, social networks, wikis, user-generated video, and other web 2.0 interactions have put organizations in the listener’s chair. Meanwhile, companies, non-profits, and political organizations are scrambling to understand and embrace the two-way dimension in one-to-one communications [Don’t be discouraged. YOU can do this — and you WILL profit from the experience!]
Start with the basics. This unique “Era of Conversation” event discloses the underlying principles and tools of conversational communications (keynotes). Then, sessions hammer brass tacks into some of the more popular social media tactics (track 1), and spotlight real live case studies with [shock!] actual results (track 2).
Hope to see you there. If you have any specifics you’d like me to cover in my talk, leave a comment or email me — or just show up and heckle.
13 Sep
Local marketing / PR / social media guru Geoff Livingston, who blogs at The Buzz Bin and is the primary author of the upcoming book Now Is Gone, asked me a few questions about SEO that I did my best to answer intelligently. He was way too generous with his description of me (*blush*), but I do appreciate the opportunity to discuss the topic. Thanks, Geoff!
6 Sep
It’s official. Today we announced our move into our new space at Viget. I wrote about it on the Four Labs blog. Kudos to Andy for making it happen on-time — it’s no small miracle that we managed to pull it off. It’ll be another few weeks before all the furniture is in and we’re really settled, but for now it’s a thrill just to be in our own space.
2 Sep
Seth, intro’d as “the #1 marketing guru in the United States” (which he politely disputes,) posted this 6 minute video on his blog today.
It’s a quick summary of a lot of the themes he talks about on his blog and in his books including the recent history of marketing — a great way to get to know Seth and how he thinks. Some points:
2 Sep
Paul put up a talk he gave at the final Y Combinator dinner of the summer called How Not to Die. The message is not only to never give up, but to be as public as you can about your work to add extra motivation — since such publicity will make it “unthinkably humiliating to fail.”
There’s no doubt that without extremely dedicated founders, any start-up is doomed from the beginning. Working hard and staying motivated through the miserable times (because there will be some) is essential to success.
Quitting makes sense sometimes, though, and the idea that quitting = failure = humiliating is dangerous. Working extremely hard on a start-up for years only to eventually realise that it never had a chance to be successful no matter how hard and long you worked — that’s humiliating. Not because hard work is bad, but because all that time could have been spent working hard on a different (and hopefully better) idea.
Good entrepreneurs have great vision and a unique perspective — on the market, their business, and the future of both. Seeing ahead of time when hard work will get you through and when quitting is the best path to big picture success is what great entrepreneurs do well.
I like Paul’s essay. His emphasis on focus is spot on. His statement that “if you can just avoid dying, you get rich” is a bit much, but his analysis is interesting. There’s a big difference between survival and success.
In this country, I maintain that it is relatively straightforward (but not necessarily easy) for a hard working person to build a sustainable business that supports a full life. Hard work and decent decision making can pretty much get you through.
Building an exceptionally successful business is complex (and hard) and often includes at least a few things going your way that are largely outside of your control, but within your ability to identify, understand, and react to — as long as you’re looking for them.
So work hard, but not with blinders on. Always balance intense effort with a quest for clarity and perspective.
Thanks to Peter for the link and Seth for inspiration.
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