Validating Business Ideas Before Finding Technical Cofounders – Forbes
Validating Business Ideas Before Finding Technical Cofounders – Forbes.
Startup Workshops Update
This group is 8 months old, 400+ members, gaining nice momentum every week. I see people connecting and getting things done and real relationships building. And I’ve met some amazing people. L.A. is a funny place but I love the startup scene here.
For 2013 I’m trying to figure out where to go next. One guiding premise of mine has been to spend minimal time on this; it’s just a meetup group, not a company.
However, it keeps growing growing on its own, and I am seeing more of what’s needed to make people in this group successful – sessions on SaaS/Cloud Computing, better software technologies, focused consulting, API training.
Thursday Night Meetup with Consulting giveaway – “How can SoCal Startups Leverage Silicon Valley success?” at ROFL. We’re giving away 2 consulting packages for 1 month. Cost is $10 plus food cost. Only a few spots left.
Next Year – Many possibilities – basic web design training, a 2 day conference in April, another 2 day conference in Hawaii in May. If you want to be involved in any of these please contact me. There’s no pay but many other benefits.
Venues – This is always a pain for organizing events. We discussed starting our own little venue company in this group. Anyone interested in this also please contact me. The critical piece, as always would be a full stack developer (see next topic).
Job Board – I come across jobseekers and jobs several times a week. Thinking about starting a very simple list of startup/tech jobs. any thoughts?
I’ll see some of you Thursday and Happy Holidays to everybody! tomnora2020 (at) gmail
To visit Startup Workshops, go here:
http://www.meetup.com/Startup-Workshops/
“It’s a Feature, Not a Company” – Build a Company
This is a line that was pretty common in Silicon Valley until recently. Steve Jobs even (ab)used that line on Dropbox when trying to buy them out of the market (They turned him down.)
Now that’s all changed, for the moment. The threshold for “company” status is very low, including the following list of minimum pieces at their lowest cost.
1) a url – $10 2) incorporation – $200 3) Internet – free 4) build a website – free 5) development tools – free 6) office space – free – home, starbucks, hipster coffee shop
In other word, the barriers have dropped if you’re willing to do most things yourself, which is a good thing. You still need an amazing idea , business model, some focus from a developer (critical!). You can create a single feature “disposable” company, nothing wrong with that, it’s a learning experience, fail fast, etc., it might even create some value and get acq-hired. And It’s a lot better than talking to folks for a year about an idea that never materializes.
But that’s not the way to create a company that can live and grow for years. In doing that you have to be honest with yourself, make some sacrifices and seek continuous enhancement of your entity. In the world of easy startups, everything is a startup, people drink their own koolaid too much.
Here are some great ways to maybe move into higher ground:
- Seek outside criticism and listen to it. Put on your flack jacket and let ’em rip you up. Be open to changes but don’t be a wimp either. You may see something nobody else does, but listen.
- Pay those you ask to help you – money, equity, trade services, something meaningful. Give them incentive to help you think straight. Make sure you pick the right mentors with track records. Never ask for something for nothing, you’ll get what you pay for and a bad reputation fast. Better yet, pay it forward. This is an area where strong developers actually have a lot to trade these days, but usually try to do everything themselves. Not likely to succeed.
- Diversify – get people difeerent than you involved as team members – different genders, races, ages, expertises. Here’s a great 3 minute talk on this by Stanford prof Kathy Eisenhardt http://j.mp/UaVjky
So look for the opportunity to build a company, share the wealth, and seek higher ground.
follow me or DM me @tomnora
A Million Failures
About a year ago, during a speech I was giving for a Hacker News group, someone in the audience brought up the notion that “Failure Is Good”, i.e. Fail Fast, Fail Often. This is a major change in thinking from the past, due to many factors, and it makes a lot of sense. Rapid prototyping of web apps and mobile apps now means rapid prototyping of startups.
Since everything in life is becoming an app and MVP is good enough to actually attract revenue and/or funding, you can actually try something and throw it away within a few weeks. The cost for this is from $0 to $5,ooo.
The problem is when someone tries this over and over with the same result – junking it. I see a lot of this in my circles There is a price for doing this; you wer yourself out, lose credibility, waste peoples money and time, lose friends, etc.
A better option is to vastly improve your odds each time by getting smarter, refining, capitalizing on mistakes, getting help in the areas where you’re weak, have less ego and more focus on not accepting failure.
If you add up all the attempts to launch startups over the past 2-3 years by all participants, there are probably at least a million failures. Many of these were stepping stones to better things and/or a quite valuable learning process, maturity, personal growth. But over half were probably unnecessary ego bursts and fleeting ideas where deep down inside the founder knows it ain’t gonna happen but keeps going for many reasons.
Most people are very good at one thing at a time, not five so pick ONE and try that role and let as many others as possible help prevent failure number one million and one. @tomnora
Updates on Startup Workshops and the Startup we’re launching
I started a new group 2 months ago in Los Angeles – Startup Workshops – #SUWSLA to teach startup success concepts and try to launch new startups.We have over 100 members now, have had a few meetings and are in the process of launching a new startup with some of the members. Below is my update to the group today. Please feel free to join (it’s free to join) even if you’re not in LA, you can get involved in the discussion and we travel to many other places. And if you are in So Cal, please join us for one of these events. The next one is a Happy Hour Thursday night in West Hollywood.
Message to group 5/14/2012:
This group now has over 100 members, with minimal exposure – pretty cool.
I never had a goal of maximizing overall # of members, just to provide tools that can be used immediately as well as a network where members actually help each other to start and grow startups. So far, so good – we have some pretty amazing people in the group and we’ve (almost) started a startup.
HAPPY HOUR – looking forward to this, 16 rsvps so far plus a few more I know of. The goal of this is to make connections and hear about the startup we launched together in April. There’s a lot of frustration in trying to get a business going, especially when it relies on technology to succeed, so please come if you can and bring a friend who is interested in the startup thing.
STARTUP #1 “LAUNCHED” – WE’RE STILL EARLY EARLY STAGE – Last week we had our second meeting, this week we’ll have our third, with home work assignments, so it looks we may be actually doing something here. It’s an experiment so stay tuned. We have a strong team, but we’re still looking for more development skills.
NEXT GENERAL MEETINGS – I’m getting ready to announce this, leaning toward Funding The Startup as a topic. I’m trying to finalize sponsors and the venue. Not sure if we should try to launch another startup after this one, what does everybody think? Starting to look like an incubator here. Also working on an Orange County meeting for late June, details coming. Also looking at Palo Alto, Scottsdale, Boulder, Austin from inquiries there.
Hopefully I’ll see/meet you Thursday night or soon after. @tomnora