Recently in Entrepreneurship Category

Thanks to TechCrunch Elevator Pitches, Internet entrepreneurs now have an outlet for their pitches...and an inlet for my criticism.

Do...

• ...get to the point
• a bad example of this
• ...create mental imagery (pitch)
  
• ...relate your startup/idea/concept to something people already know.
• "Kongregate is YouTube for games" (pitch)

Don't...

• ...be boring, mumble/speak softly, have a unibrow  (pitch)
  
• ...be a douche bag
• ...use buzzwords, especially not in large quantities (pitch)
  

When I was running with Brad Feld the other day he told me that he sees 25 year old entrepreneurs all the time that have never failed before.  This shocked me.

How can you consider yourself, or call someone else, an entrepreneur, having never failed before?

This got me thinking.  Then it got me thinking about Star Wars.  Then I changed my personal definition of what an entrepreneur is.

Remember when Luke Skywalker is training to become a Jedi with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back?  When Luke decides to leave to go save his friends in Cloud City, Yoda tells him that if he leaves now he will lose all that he has worked for in his training.  Luke responds with something like, "but I'm a Jedi".  Yoda then says, "No, you must first face Vader".

Maybe this isn't the best example, but in order for entrepreneurs to become entrepreneurs, they must FIRST fail!  Failure is a rite of passage.  Just as Luke must confront Vader to become a Jedi.

So, to formally amend my personal definition of what/who an entrepreneur is: they must first FAIL.

A few days ago Brad Feld was in town speaking on a panel at the IP & Entrepreneurship Symposium here at the Boalt School of Law at Berkeley.  Being a fan of his blog I signed up to attend.

The evening before the conference I emailed Brad and asked if he wanted to go on a run Friday morning before the conference.  I won't lie, I felt a bit creepy/stalker-ish, but he emailed back and said yes.

Nothing like a 6 AM run through the streets of Berkeley and campus.  After a refreshing, pitch-black walk over to his hotel at 5:30am or so, we met up and set off.

"Thanks for reaching out", he said in response to my asking him to go on a run.

"Thanks for not calling the cops", I should have replied.

Anyway, the run lasted 48 minutes or so, as I gave him the grand tour of Berkeley and campus and back to his hotel.

We had one of the most interesting and entertaining conversations I have had in a long time.  We talked on so many different topics, ranging from the Web and entrepreneurship to foreign policy and American sentiment now and during the Vietnam War era.

There was never a dull moment and I was a bit sad when it had to end.  Brad is an incredibly interesting and fun person; certainly atypical of other VCs I've met.  

Thanks for reaching back, Brad.

Tiddlywinks, apparently.

Internet startups are starting and running cheaper than ever.  Frugality is a point of pride.

"Money in the bank is cash for your wages", says Gianforte in Bootstrapping Your Business.

I am glad that innovation is cheaper and entrepreneurship is cheaper than ever before, mostly because the timing is right for our start-up.

I even pride myself on my cost conscious attitude.  

But when does cutting costs become cutting corners?  When is frugality dangerous in a start-up?  When should you spend the extra buck and do it right?

I imagine these are questions with "fine line" answers.

Should you ever cut corners on legal fees? Which ones?

Is having an accountant a luxury or a best practice?

Innovation is getting cheaper for those on the web. 

Server costs are falling; better yet, cloud computing is making it cheaper and easier for startups to scale quickly and effectively.

Storage costs are continuing to fall as well.  As it gets cheaper and cheaper, more and more are giving it away for free. 

Microsoft's recently increased storage space on Windows Live Skydrive from 1GB to 5GB.  Google came out of nowhere and gave away 1GB of email storage with each Gmail account.  YouTube did it for video. 

I even remember the days when I was doing HTML work, hosting on GeoCities, AngelFire and others.  They were all competing with each other on how much space they could give away for free.  When I started 5 or 10mb was huge! Today that's paltry.

The Web 2.0 boom has been making it easier and cheaper to innovate.  More so, companies are quicker to get off the ground due to so many cheap, or free, ways of doing things.

Google Docs means free document collaboration.

Skype means free calls, even if its VOIP.

Skydrive means free 5GB of online storage and backup.  Share among colleagues.

Legal forms are standardized, cheap, and easily accessible.

And of course, the most important thing: Information!  Information on every topic is more abundant than ever, so much so that we are having problems sorting through it.

I noticed something on Jason Calacanis' blog today that struck the entrepreneurial nerve in me.  I'm not a regular reader of his blog so I don't often have a chance to notice this.

Jason, being very popular and active in the Tech/Web world, has a list of social networks, microblogging, social bookmarking, and other popular Web 2.0 tools that he wants you to be his friend on.  He wants you to add him as a friend on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, see his activity on del.icio.us, etc...

Behold, exhibit A.
This got me thinking.  Isn't there some way to simplify this?  Why not create a single button that expands into an entire menu that does this. 

Just like the AddThis and ShareThis services.  The situation is the same.



Has something like this already been done?

As more and more people join more and more social networks, social bookmarking sites, microblogging, and other fine products of Web 2.0 something like this may be in greater demand.

Cold calling is probably one of the most difficult and nerve wracking things to do, but it is probably one of the greatest skills an entrepreneur could have.  There are so many things to learn, connections to be made, and information to be gained when cold calling.

Cold calling takes so many forms.  You can cold call your competitors posing as a potential customer, gaining heaps of valuable information.  You can cold call an industry expert or knowledgeable individual for advice.  You can cold call a potential customer hoping to get a meeting.

Here's a fun story: The summer after my freshman year of college I had an internship with Northwestern Mutual Financial Network--Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance being their biggest business.  I was trained and titled as a "Financial Representative" and expected to meet with and sell to prospective clients.  The only problem was getting in front of them. 

The most intuitive solution is to start calling within your circle of people you know.  After you've exhausted this list (read: refuse to call friends and family to sling life insurance), you have to move on to the next best thing: a phone book. 

Armed with a script and telephone I boldly called my voicemail until I worked up the courage to call someone real.  I was sweating, literally.  My heart was pounding, I stumbled across my words, and skipped over parts of the script.  I'm sure I sounded like a complete idiot.

But I learned some valuable lessons: phone skills, asking for a meeting, asking for advice, asking for something the other person is reluctant to give, getting past gate keepers, and being calm, cool, and collected.

The most important lesson I learned: getting past "no", gracefully hanging up, and dialing again...all without sweating.

Cold calling for life insurance makes every other kind of cold call seem trivial.  Cold call competitor's businesses for information.  Cold call alumni for advice.  Cold call your voicemail for practice.  Just cold call.

You will mess up.  You will look like an idiot.  You will get 'no'.  You might get yelled at.  You might feel bad for a while.  You wont die.  You will learn.  You will be thankful.

Is success inevitable?

Is entrepreneurship simply a game of playing the odds and eventually succeeding? Or, is entrepreneurship learning from failure in order succeed?

Some would say it is both, but these questions are really irrelevant in the light of failure.

Acceptance of the possibility of failure is a must, as is acceptance of failure itself. 

Acceptance of the prospect of success is a must, as is acceptance of success itself.

Whether you believe success in entrepreneurship is luck or education, or both, you must accept failure to succeed.  If you believe it is luck, then you accept failure and roll the dice again.  If you believe it is education, then you learn from your failures and try again.

Whether you believe success will come by luck or learning, you will always face failure.  Not accepting failure, either way, is what causes your suffering.

Blindly rolling the dice until success is failing blindly.  Those who fail to see success, fail to succeed.