The world of “entrepreneurship” is just bloated. From the “entrepreneur” itself, this small world lavishes with “business angels”, “business plans”, “seed capital”, “ramen profitability”, “break-even point”, “market forecasts” and other endless jargon concepts.
I have been thinking on writing this post for a long time and, truthfully, there’s more to say than I am willing to write today. I will try to focus on a part of it. Let’s limit it to 10 bullets. While can’t (still) write on how to sucessfully IPO a company or digg into startup personnel management advices, I will approach the first step or the 1% of inspiration because, and paraphrasing Lau Tzu, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” and some other random folk “Success is 1% of inspiration, 99% of transpiration”.
1. Idea vs. Implementation
Vendder, our main company product isn’t properly born out of a new idea, similar projects have already been sucessfully accomplished. Of course, there are a lot of space for innovation and we are leveraging Vendder with new concepts, like social/distributed commerce and by building our services over an already tested open-source framework, enhancing our development cycle.
Nevertheless, the perfect idea badly implemented is always worse than a simple, well executed idea.
2. Carefully choosing your partners
A startup is like a marriage, except you’ll spend more time awake with your partner. I have been working, traveling and being friends with Filipe for a long, long time. Remember, this is important, don’t choose your business partner mainly on technical skills, most co-founders will trade social/soft skills for pure technical.
3. It’s a marathon, not a sprint
Don’t blow yourself up in the first months, or even years. Startup world moves fast but remember sucess is, in this case, made of trial & error. Be prepared to let go blood, toil, tears and sweat.
4. Use your connections
Your best startup friends are also your friends and contacts. They, and most importantly their own contact network, will provide you importan feedback, get you valuable business leads and ultimately be your first clients. Don’t be afraid to ask for favors, some server space, a new monitor, a logo or helping you on acccountacy, or other tasks you’re clueless about. Most, if not all, good stuff that happened with our company has been induced by our contact network.
5. Demand critics
Your friends will provide your support but you’ll also need critic feedback, mentorship and conselling. I am not expert by any means on all e-commerce details, from shipping to cross-country taxes, customer relations… there are so many specific areas and someone will always excel in at least one of them. Ask for sincere opinions about your ideas, the more humble you are the better responces you’ll have.
6. Startups are not sexy
Social acceptance sticks mostly with standards. Standard is a nine to five job. Standard is working for the boss. Standard is being in a bad mood on week days and drunk on weekends. Standard is the missionary position. Creating your own, self sustaining business takes no missionary position, no one will be openly waiting for you.
Paul Graham states, and I confirm, go and find a nice, big and reputable company to work for if you want to impress chicks. Working 10+ / day, without fix income and predictable outcome is not sexy at all.
7. Be strong spirited
It’s a up and down. Expect happy, happy days and dull, dull moments. Every thing you’ll achieve, from a nice word from a happy customer, a 1.000 Eur contract or finished on time milestone takes you to the moon. But the downside is awfull, you can be dragged into endless emotive discussions with your best friend/co-founder, shout ‘what tha fuck do you know?’ when your consultant/angel investor turns you down you break your lapto when you cannot merge your code into the code repository and destroy all team work. Think well if you are suited for string emotions. Waking up without a reason at 9.00 everyday is not so bad.
8. Prepare yourself
“Fuck business plans” is a common thing I read around the startup world.
I would add, “Fuck business plans, if you already have no plans”. Before you fully commit to your idea you should prepare yourself. Spending time writing down the concept of your idea, how to achieve it, exploring the market, guessing how to fund and a why to sell it to the market is valuable information for your decision on leaving you Herman Miller chair and got back to your mom’s garage. It will question your motivation and make you reflect and, ultimately, save you from a big investment on a poor idea.
9. Are you a Jack of all trades?
Nothing better than Robert Heinlein to explain why you cannot be a “specialist” in a small group of people while wanting to change the world upside down…
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
10. Love.
I will leave this one to you.