|Morten Lund - It's all about luck
First of all I'm really really sorry to say that my Newspaper project did not survive - not sorry for me (I take all responsibilities) - I just hate myself for bringing other people (employees and partners) and service providers into trouble - it feels unfair and coward-like...
takes courage to tell a true story in which you are not the triumphant hero.
Paul Graham says
The guys on the scavenger hunt looked like the programmers I was used to, but they were employees instead of founders. And it was startling how different they seemed....
I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I'd only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They're like different animals. And seeing those guys on their scavenger hunt was like seeing lions in a zoo after spending several years watching them in the wild.
Well, other than the fact that anyone willing to get sucked into a company team-building scavenger hunt is already a different species....
but yes, employee-ship is different. You see it over and over again; company acquired, employees leave as soon as contractual handcuffs fall off (and some before that.)
But there is one theme is his essay I dislike: the use of the word humans (I dislike his emphasis on prgrammer as well, but one fight at a time.) Are all humans alike? Uh, no.
One big mistake I made when I was first a manager was assuming all designers were alike, and that they were all chomping at the bit to make crazy big things. In particular, there was one designer who just churning out banners. I figured s/he was dying to do something a bit more meaty; but when I moved this designer onto an interactive project they were simply miserable and no amount of extra mentoring time made a lick of difference. Only retuning this person to their 9-to-5 ad slot job returned their equilibrium and -- yes it's shocking-- joy. Since then I have seen many other folks suffer; big problem people stuck on a website when the redesign was over slowly going mad with "optimization," and optimization people getting the deer-in-a-headlight look when it's time to start a big project for a new product line.
More recently, I've seen employees star-struck by the silicon valley startup stories suffering in silent embarrassed misery, able only to leave by proclaiming the company f*cked up, which --even if true-- is an excuse for getting the hell out. Is joining a tiny startup a good idea? Hey, we promise you roller coaster thrills AND all the visits to office depot for ink cartridges you can eat (literally, since we can't really replay your expense account. Want some more stock?)
When you are in a start-up and like it, it's hard to quantify why it's so awesome. No health insurance, you get to figure out what's wrong when the network doesn't work, you get to deal with the blue screen of death yourself, you get to answer the six a.m. east coast what's this on my credit card call in exchange for what? Freedom to make your own crappy decisions?
It's worth it for me.
I'm like a cat, only slightly domesticated. I'm not a wolf, I won't die inside a company, but if you dump me on the side of a highway I'll be fine. Perhaps a bit wilder than that: every so often I have to go walkabout, with no guarantee of return to my food dish.
But there is no shame in being dog-people, and I hate that Paul Graham's essay suggests there is something wrong with you if you are.
The Path to Entrepreneurship - Sramana Mitra on Strategy
What about working for a big company, they asked. My answer: Working for a big company early on in life develops in you a very narrow skill-set, at a very slow pace, whereas, the range of skills required to become an entrepreneur is frighteningly wide.
It's a recursive old world we live in these days, in which ideas are put up on one blog only to be refined and realized by the next several blogs. I've been giving a building community talk that is starting to do what I want it to, i.e. connect theory and practice, and Josh Porter's slides on slideshare had influenced my thinking. Now he reports on my talk, moving the ideas forward further still.
Different views of self We expose different views of self. Our home self, our work self, and services each represent a different view into our lives, different relationships, different interests. Our Facebook profile, for example, shows a different window on us than our LinkedIn profile does.Interesting question: if all of our online profiles were added together, would it be representative of the *real* us?
(this is a very pertinent question given the recent claims that Facebook is trying to map *the* social graph…it’s not clear at all that anybody but a single individual knows the extent of their own social network....)
This reminds me I have not been a good girl and reported on one of the two things I found more revelatory at Graphing Social. Facebook is the next Google (unless they mess up.) When I saw them speak, I was really surprised at their point of view. They are obsessively driven to map the social graph. Your goal very much defines you as a company. Corporate missions are often doublespeak, but if you can take a mission and boil it down a sentence, like "making the world's information findable and useful" then you can create a collective mindset that will move the needle. It must be big enough to be aspirational, small enough to make progress toward.
If Facebook's mission is to map the social graph, they will have a data asset that they can monetize. They do not need to worry about missed opportunities enjoyed by the application makers, they don't have to worry about an unclear ad business. Or at least, they shouldn't (and their valuation certain suggests it's a non-issue.) They will own a core piece of data that is so useful and more important, so novel that their business model should make itself visible as the Social Graph gets built. They are waiting for their adsense. Maybe, like Google, they'll spot a company doing it half-right and because they understand the social graph they can connect the dots. Or maybe once they understand how people connect, a new model will become obvious.
Perhaps there is a very obvious 1:1 relationship between Facebook and Google simply in they are both mappers. What's left then, to map out? It would be a good thing for a start-up to know.
I said one of two things... the second is not so big, but still very interesting. This new generation of developers are radically more user centered than any of those before. Slide, RockYou, and others hammered home over and over in their talks the value of both user testing and A/B testing. I know many larger corporations that can't manage to do qualitative and quantitative research affectively, and here are these tiny companies launching products in a handful of days, and they manage to squeeze it in. As Porter (Michael, not Josh) says, "What gets measured, gets managed." These kids have their eyes clearly on the end goal, and know how to get there: through the good auspices of their users.
Funding Facebook Apps panel: Valuation & Metrics - Matt Marshall VentureBeat (moderator), Lee Lorenzen Altura Ventures, George Zachary CRV, Luke Nosek The Founders Fund, Jeff Clavier SoftTechVC
introduced as "money burning a hole in their pockets"
when asked do you want nuts and bolds or higher level discussion of strategy and platform, audience was wildly in favor of the second.
Now for the fashion show.
I feel an obligation to reveal that I was tired and bored and over-sugared, and this is at least 50% fake
lee: we do only facebook aps
george, ho hum, funding again
Luke, we love facebook, they are already making us rich
Jeff: I am french and we don't do facebook aps, why am I here, you silly people?
i am tired. I need about 40 downward dogs to unbend for typing in these chairs. Jeff actually said they invest on folks who have facebook aps as part of the strategy, not entire. and I have never seen him without sunglasses on his head.
Lee sounds like he's going to pass out from fear every time he speaks. He was all kinds of smart sunday, but i think it took him an hour to recover from stage fright, and there were only about 20 of then. Now he's pimping adonomics, which is certainly worth pimping.
George reminds me vaguely of Jeff Weiner for reasons I can't put my finer on. I had a looooong coffee one day in which we geeked out wildly and widely. I really like him, even if CRV didn't fund us. :)
matt marshall, meanwhile, is moderating with a grace and style that could easily have made him a diplomat. he makes you at ease, and then you spill your guts... journalist gold!.
George: I tend to think facebook will be the winner, and the portals are struggling because people don't wake up every morning and say I want to see media, they wake up and want to see friends.
Matt: but myspace is still bigger, and will be opening, and orkut is
George: I'm not a facebook investor and I wish I was. Facebook has the best user experience. There are moments of genius in the UI. I think any SN designed by committee will not work out.
Jeff: theez eez something something eet eez something something. I really have no business making fun of French accents,my husbands family will string me up. apparently he said "One of the first that transitioned into the older demographics"
Lee: Google will have a difficult time in moving users out of facebook.
Luke: tee hee hee I'm rich! I'm rich! or maybe something more like "We are very careful about not becoming something like Microsoft, where trust with developers is lacking"
Lee: if you take the first no, and say you can't get VC funded, you aren't much of an entrepreneur, you wimp. go home and hug your mommy, silly baby!
Matt: you say you just like infrastructure plays, not aps, and you syndicate with other investors.
Jeff: when you have a fund my size, you do 30+ deals a year at 250K. but look at the next size, it's a 1M 1.5M, so as a solo I can move very very fast, i can't bring all the value, but I can syndicate wiht a few funds I like working with very efficiently. On the no application rule, but it doesn't mean I'll never do it. never say never.
Matt: what little guys did you invest in, any why bother with such small fry?
George: social media we seed funded with Jeff, they started with aps and moved up to developer network. we cna't quantify. it's hard to quantify breakout markets, it's all gut feel.
Matt: you are close with slide. why slide owns so much of the space?
Luke: the slide CEo saw the graph as separate, and was ready to think about it as a platform, and they ran with it very quickly. when they first went viral on myspace it was a big fight to keep it going but with facebook it was almost too fast. massive growth from the myspace work (it echoes the advice to experimentation early and understand the space)
Lee, all warmed up now: points out rockyou and slide own half the social graph, tremendous power in a couple spaces. microsoft is trying to keep facebook a googlefree zone. (popfly?) these lessons in platform changes is that when there is a platform change it's a chance to get back in the game. rockyou must be a 1/2B company because of the way they own the social graph, if MS was willing to do 15M for % of facebook. Apple caught up with a platform change and would they now open up itunes, so folks don't have to buy an ipod?
Matt: google?
Luke: they've been a great search company/ad network, but it's a one trick pony. gmail is still at the back of the pack. They could use gmail to build a social graph, if they went that way. but we're blown away by facebook, when they make a mistake they correct it, I'd be very comfortable betting on an ap company that made facebook their primary focus. it's hard to make a better product at this point. It's clear social is more important than search, search just isn't that sticky. There is no lock in. those was will be very interesting when they play out.
Lee: the one play google might do to hurt facebook would be college oriented edu only, to get disgruntled facebook users, and they could pay college students to switch.
Luke: but you'd have to pay people. that's how locked in people are.
Lee: the new groups tool should placate disgruntled facebook users who have found their mom on it.
Matt: rockyou has a combo ap/advertising play. how's that? are ppl afraid of UGC?
George: yeah, CPMs are low because it's a new category. ppl are afraid of using their jobs, putting an ad against something people woudn't find tasteful.
just to jump on the google thing, I don't think they'll be a serious threat. Google is tech centric, not consumer centric. They'll spend a lot of money/time to monetize social networks.
Matt: who could challenge?
George. no one. Myspace is bigger, but they are owned by a media company, and they don't get it. I don't think they'll beat facebook.
Luke; I think myspace will slowly go away. newscorp is just not innovative.
Lee: think about the genius of this move, google when they wanted the best programmers they put out the math problem and offered nice food (to keep talent out of microsoft's hands?) Facebook has 300 ppl and they are committed to what they are doing, no salary overhead...
jason calcanis: Saying myspace is going away is ridiculous. How could you say it?
Luke: I could say it very very slowly.
jasonC: facebook hasn't made any money yet! you say it's going to be as big as google? are you drunk?
_I am quoting accurately now!!!!_
Lee suggests facebook could challenge google on search, jason replies that he just said if google can't learn facebook's business, how could facebook learn google's
wow, i went form making stuff up out of boredom to transcribing the real thing. I can't wait for the next panel..... at least it won't be boring.
At Tuesday, August 14, 2007: Monthly Program (BayCHI), Guy Kawasaki calls out Don Norman is in the audience It was a 10 minutes drive, and I drove past thoroughbreds frolicking in the late afternoon sun on the golden palo alto hills. I couldn't tell you how cinematic and incredible and unreal the view was as I pulled into the Parc parking lot. Those who say location doesn't matter need to make that drive. Beauty and the brain are together off Pagemill road.
Guy is demoing Treumors to a packed auditorium. It's a me-to application, nothing interesting or new about it except Guy has the marketing punch... he may make it work, because like all the rest, it depends on enough people using it. How important is technology anyhow?
blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say "no"
If you're an investor, you look at the risk around an investment as if it's an onion. Just like you peel an onion and remove each layer in turn, risk in a startup investment comes in layers that get peeled away -- reduced -- one by one.Your challenge as an entrepreneur trying to raise venture capital is to keep peeling layers of risk off of your particular onion until the VCs say "yes" -- until the risk in your startup is reduced to the point where investing in your startup doesn't look terrifying and merely looks risky.
As a entrepreneur, one of the hardest things you'll do is raise money. Over and over again, you are telling your dream and people poke holes in it. You can't help but start to feel resentful-- 'why don't they see the big picture! This will change everything.' Marc does a good job of allowing you the one thing you need to negotiate: perspective.
blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup very useful, and you gotta love the closing metaphor
C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.
Yet again, pants are the source of my happiness.
Reading Design Observer: Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos
I was struck by how many of the quotes he chose applied just as nicely to running your own start-up. With excuses to Beirut's hard work at selecting these quotes (and do go read his original...)
On your userbase (and pricing):
"When you're bleeding a guy, you don't squeeze him dry right away. Contrarily, you let him do his bidding, suavely. So you can bleed him next week and the week after, at minimum."
Pricing is tough. Your customer is your partner, and when your partner goes out of business, you go out of business. Anytime you find a way for your customer to make money and you take your piece of the action, that is better. More suave.
On creative blocks:
"My advice? Put that thing down awhile, we go get our joints copped, and tomorrow the words'll come blowing out your ass."
Paulie's advice to frustrated amateur screenwriter Christopher: good advice for us all. When you are banging your head against the wall trying to work on the slide set, or the forecast, or whatever... sometimes walking away is the only answer. Getting your joint copped is a bonus.
Sometimes sitting and staring at a problem actually cannot produce the solution. (in my case, I'm blogging instead of working on my slides, and it's loosening up my writing muscle, getting me warm.)
On professional behavior:
"You don't think. You disrespect this place. That's the reason why you were passed the fuck over."
Some founders think they can go crazy because they are a wacky founder: goofy t-shirts, weird behavior, etc. Hey, you are the genius who founded this beauty! But if you don't want to wake up morning to a freshly appointed CEO sitting in your chair the next morning, respect your board, respect your customers and respect the place. And always, always think. I don't care what Blink taught you, thinking is still a useful skill.
On appropriation:
"Fuckin' expresso, cappucino. We invented this shit. And all these other cocksuckers are gettin' rich off us."
"Oh, again with the rape of the culture."
Steal: good stuff everywhere, and you are dumb or proud or both if you don't copy the good stuff. Every time I hear the story of Apple and Xerox parc and the mouse, the storyteller suggests Parc was the bad guy because they were too slow to do something with the cool item they had invented. The road to bankruptcy is paved with good intentions.
On the unintended consequences of technology:
"It sounds to me like Anthony Jr. may have stumbled onto existentialism."
"Fucking internet."
Those of us in the internet business have to remember we are not in control of the 'net, nor our users, not the interactions between the two. The winners will ride those wild waves, handing over control as often as possible to the users and let tehm show us what we've built is really good for. 50 times more true for us platform-types.
On commitment:
"I came home one day, shot her four times. Twice in the head. Killed her aunt, too. I didn't know she was there. And the mailman. At that point, I had to fully commit."
This has been the hardest lesson for me to learn. A start-up means you do not
* think about quitting
* think how nice the lunches are at google
* think about doing a little something on the side, for a couple bucks for a new ipod
* start another company (dilution is death)
You are in, or you are out, and if you are in, you are in all the way. Or else you might as well walk over to the toilet and empty your savings straight in.
And finally:
"More harm is done by indecision than by wrong decision."
Dang! Too true...
The Commute: Hardball: The Questions You Shouldn't Be Afraid To Ask VC's
if I had the guts to carry my entrepreneur passport again, with all its stamps of failure on it , and was looking for some nuggets of information that might "level" the playing field and help put more transparency in the funding process, I'd start by just making sure I asked the following questions of my future venture funders.
If you really want to know what it's like to be an entrepreneur, well that's what it's like for me. Last week, we oved heaven and earth to get Found|Read up on PublicSquare. PS is not Wordpress, and so the design, optimized for Wordpress were missing consideration for a ton of our features. Honestly, we were still adding in the comment management tools yesterday which was a shame because we got techcrunched Saturday morning. But you can only do what you can do-- and we did it and I'm proud. It's already an amazing community. People are talking, sharing ideas...
So having called in all my babysitting chits for this launch, I promised Philippe sunday off to go play with the boys, taking Amelie. Pal Andi came down and we decided to use the gorgeous weather to attack the garden. Many hilarious adventures ensued, including Amelie losing her diaper (how?) and falling off the nursery plant shopping cart, Andi winning a battle with blackberry bush-- but at what cost!-- and me hurting my back. I drugged up and was asleep at 8:30 along with Amelie, curled up together on the couch. Hal watching a nature program on sea turtles we drowsed off (yeah, that's good for the back!)
Miraculously I'm doing better, but I fly out to New York today, and I haven't packed so I pop up wide awake at 3:30 a.m.. Making coffee, I noticed those golden beets sitting on the counter forlorn. Some knit to relax, some paint, some build model airplanes -- I peel.
Today I feel like I woke up on a balance beam. Found | Read up, two potential killer employees, three potential awesome killer corporate deals, four potential killer new advisers and a partridge in a pear tree. But at 4 a.m. it's still just me, in my lame plaid PJ's and despite the event horizon I also see the horrible documentation and the massive usability bugs and the missing critical features and the weak-*ss front page. It's like scaling a mountain range-- I scrambled up the top of the first mountain and now I can see that scrambling down the other side while faster will not be easier *and* I can suddenly see there are several more mountains to go.
4 a.m. Some knit. I peel.
one of the contestants shouted “and we’ll buy everyone free drinks if we win!”. Well, they won by a landslide, a score 10db louder on the meter than the other 3 contestants. Right after receiving their award the winner shouted “ok, but we’ll buy drinks _after_ we get funding”.
As Mena says, "Don't be a dick." The story has a happy ending-- read it.
Word of wisdom from our guardian angel, dshen
"4. Don't let desperation cloud judgment. Ever. And its corollary, don't let euphoria cloud your judgment either!"
Reminds me of my favorite quote from the Community Next conference: "Signing up to be an entrapreneur is like signing up to be bipolar."
Useless, absurd, must, need, appalled, just, infuriating, essential, etc. - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) is a favorite post for those appalled by 37signals hubris. Reading it again, some months later, they don't seem tto be jerks so much. Merely startled by the language (and I'm not just talking spelling, here, folks) used by the irate customers.
There are two sides to every story, of course. I have been a 37signals detractor in the past and will probably be again in the future. That said, as we develop our product and get it into the world, and as I live through the B&A redesign fallout I find myself sometimes started by the contents of my email box. I think I will restrain myself from reprinting anything, but there is one important thing to recall:
PublicSquare is run by two people, both who "know better" as you like to say, but also both who are desperately fighting for the survivial of a company. Boxes and Arrows is a bunch of people, all who "know better" but who aren't paid and typically work two hours a week on it (myself excepted-- been doing 30 hours on B&A and 40 on PS. Thank god I work at home, or I wouldn't recognize Amelie anymore.)
Every single hour we spend is a choice:
* build something we think is nifty
* build somethign that demos well
* fix something nonessential but broken
* fix somethign essential and broken
* build something essential to our stategy, but not to our revenue
* build something essential to our revenue, but not to our strategy
* build something we feel is morally "correct"
* build something that will save us time
* do customer support
* promote what we are doing
* respond to morons who think arial narrow is a crime against god
* work on ppt & excel stuff for investors
* play with baby (Lars and I both have babies within three months of each other)
* salvage marriage to increasingly disgruntled spouses
* consider yet another consultanting job so rent gets paid (and DON'T DO IT because FOCUS IS KING!)
* read up on legal stuff we should know or we're gonna get creamed by IRS/INS/VC
* chase lawyer/accountant/etc who isn't as worried about our business as we are
* dig up baby sitter so we can go to a networking event
* go to networking event
* write potential investors "Not dead yet! Doing more nifty things than ever!"
* do happy dance when investors write us back
* do happy dance when revenue shows up
* exercise so we don't develop question-mark posture (see happy dance mentioned previously)
* check in with each other, since we are on different continents
* blog occasionally, to show signs of life
* promote features that keep us going, like the job board
* design revenue sharing program
* research legal stuff around revenue sharing program
* figure out how to track and do math aroung revenue sharing program
... and so it goes, and so it goes.
You have to choose! You can't do everything, so you have to choose the things that take yoru farthest.
And while 37 signals is slightly larger than we are (okay, way the heck larger) I bet some days when a user says "But you HAVE to have localization" they just look at them and think, "Buddy, you have no frigging idea."
some time later, having read all the posts, plus some trackbacks and commentary Okay, I don't understand. I would have taken that post down and apologized. But it doesn't matter, really, does it? People who hate the attitude will wait patiently until some wild-eyed fast-typing rails kid writes a copy-cat ap... that includes some of the desperately desired features.
maybe I can do this afterall...
Rouxbe claims to be "The Recipe to Better Cooking" but is it?
The concept is simple: technique is better communicated by video than text. Recipes only workif you know what you are doing.
It is beautiful, no doubt, with a dean & delucca-like clean and airy design. In many ways it is a shining example of desing best practices - recipes are broekn out step by step, so you can watch each part once or twice before tyring to coopy. And the food videos are gorgeous, shot in that soft-porn style that has made food-peddlers from saveur to rachel ray sucesses.
But of course they have their weaknesses, disguised by elegant user expereince and a lightweight airy desing that owes as much to Getty Images as it does to Dean and Delucca.
First off, I don't want to cook from my laptop any more than I have to. I have a small enough machine and a big enough kitchen (barely!) my laptop can come onto the counter. But this is bad news:
A simple solution might be just to unpack the videos into printable recipes with screenshots. But this raises the real problem of Rouxbe. They are too pretty.
Those video recipes are gorgeous. They will take too long and cost too much to light, shoot and cut (not to mention the need for a 'food stylist'.) The addition of making illustrated text versions will further drive up cost. This is an unhealthy proposition for a start up.
It also hurts their ability to gather user-generated content. They set the bar too high-- how am I going to feel posting my "how ot prepare fava beans" shot on my digital camera with its video feature? Boom, they've just locked themselves out of both a source of free content and a way to deeply engage their audience.
Design is not enough. But for now... look at that sexy halibut, scantily glad in frisee. Oooh, baby!
We’re trying to underdo the competition… at Noise Between Stations
IT departments spend months deciding whether to offer a service, evaluating packages, and designing a scalable offering. Meanwhile, individuals and teams simply sign up for a web-based service and get their jobs done.
This I got from a friend who said it was Michael Moritz's preferred take. Considering his track record, I'd say following his investment pitch format might be a smart idea.
How to Change the World: The Entrepreneur's New Year's Resolution: "I Will Fix My Pitch"
Back working on my slides. I can't even begin to tell you how many versions I have of them. But in interest of trying to be useful, I'm going to share this, the first of several bits of advice, and the templates I've made from them.
Download PPT
Don't forget: your name and contact info needs to be on every slide-- that means sticking it in the footer of the master.
I put the same content in the slide and the notes area, so I can read the slide, delete it, put in new material, then refer back to the notes area. You can do as you please, but I recommend deleteing the footer area if you plan to send your slides around. ;-)
I'm surprised how often I see the word "versus" in email. Photoshop vs. illustrator, personas vs. ethnography, email address vs. username, and blogtools vs. CMS. When I was a freshman in art school, I learned a useful word: dichotomy. It was years later I learned phrase "false dichotomy" and I'm wondering how many people have yet to learn it. In particular, I'm thinking of those working in new media/participatory media/social media.
I keep reading how blogs will make traditional publishing irrelevant. I also read how traditional publishing already provides a reliability and consistency that will show blogs to be merely a fad; the geocities of our time. And just over a year ago (I know because my domain registration notice just came) I sat down with friend Lars and added the word false to that particular dichotomy by thinking up PublicSquare.
A dichotomy is defined as "a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities."
1. Almost everybody talks about blogs and big media (usually thinking about New York Times or Fox news, depending on who has annoyed you most recently). But publishing is currently taking the form of a continuum, from blogs to big media, with wikis, jotspot, writerly, writeboards, scoop and many others filling in the space between one maverick vomiting up ideas to a group refining raw facts into something palatable.
2. Mutually exclusive: Bloggers are adding editors, Om Malik for example, and newspapers are adding-- nay, forcing-- reporters to blog. Drupal has blog modules and articles modules and the difference is slight.
3. Contradictory. um. yeah. How contradictory are these two writing forms? When I was looking at them recently, they both depended on one thing for success: a person who can consistently write, and write well. Of course someone who writes every day, but only on their cat's antics and their hair challenges is an aspect of the blog, but is this person really making Arthur Schultzberger tremble in his shoes? A journalist and a (successful) blogger are much of a muchness, except one gets fact checked and edited.
Where revolution is truly happening in my opinion is in the birth of collaborative publishing tools that enable new behaviors in writing, often children of the wiki family. Where blogger and other blog platforms were simply (though certainly impactfully) ways to make writing significantly easier, and came form a long line of tools form the printing press to the electric typewriter to microsoft word. They are all technology to get technology out of the way.
But wikis, writerboard, slashdot and scoop are all trying to get groups to be smart together, to write together and they give birth to a new kind of writing *and* giving voice to one-hit-wonders of authorship.
More on this coming soon... .
Being an entrepreneur is hard. It's a simple fact. Even if you have a partner in your project (and you kinda have to, to stay sane) it's still very lonely. Everyone you talk to tends to make you doubt yourself, everyone seems to have heard of something kinda like yours, or questions an aspect of you b-plan, or wonders about the real market size, or your suitability to do what you are doing. An if no one does, you do yourself as you lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling (or the bureau in my case.. I have to sleep on my side now.)
So let me tell a little story. A friend of mine who is an engineer build a little engineering widget he really needed for himself, and then he build a little company around this widget. He knew the world need these widgets because he sure needed these widgets. And he was right, and sold the little company to a big company for real money and then bought, among other things, a house and a series of race cars.
At the end of his indentured servitude (when you get bought, the big company also buys you for a period of time, sometimes as short as a year, sometimes as long as five) he decided he wanted to do it again. But this time he wanted to build a big company,a consumer facing company. So he looked at the hot spaces, and choose one. He then figured out what he wanted to build in this red-hot space and started shopping the idea around to VC. VC was lukewarm, because that's what they do. They always doubt you at first (and sometimes always). And he kinda floundered. He lost interest. He still wanted to build his own company because he likes being his own boss, but he wasn't so sure he was building the right company. So he kinda put off reworking his dog 'n pony, and kinda spent his time puttering around when he should be working on the prototype. And things didn't really move forward.
My point is, he never believed in the idea for himself. He intellectually thought he had a very good idea, but his soul never latched on.
Now I can feel it personally... if you don't in your own heart feel like the idea you are laboring on is valuable to you personally, alights on your own interests and desires, it doesn't matter how much money you think you can make, and how good an idea you think you have. You have to feel more than that, you have to ache to bring your idea into the world no matter what. And that faith allows you to roll over to your other side and fall asleep peaceably.
