Thought & Theory

The first post I read a few weeks back talks about “Baking your cake before you slice it up”. The main thought here is that before you start giving away equity in your start-up, get things running first and actually ’start-up’. Take the necessary steps towards building a successful product/company and then slice things up. Here are his main points of emphasis:

• Get Incorporated
• Build a Prototype
• Get Some Traction
• Time to Slice it up

Full article here.

The second post talks about the right time to cash out and what to do with the money you take. This is always a decision that can eat away at someone, not only to sell your “baby” that you’ve invested your life into, but also to put a value on what has been your life’s work for X amount of years. Now, you could be one of the lucky few who doesn’t have to pour sweat equity and knocks one out of the park in the first swing, but either way you can learn from this advice:

• It’s not about Retirement
• A Million buys most of your stuff
• Reducing Debt is all that Matters
• If the Money is on the Table, Take it!

Read the full article on cashing out here.

Some really fun and inspiring stuff over at Montygog’s Art-O-Rama (Dave Perillo’s blog). His style reminds me of that cartoon on MTV, can’t remember the name?? Dennis will know…

And in memory of the late, great, Sho-Nuff.

If you haven’t read Guy’s books, definitely check them out. His blog also provides a ton of entrepreneurial tips and experience. Here are his five most important lessons learned as an entrepreneur:

• Focus on cash flow. I understand the difference between cash flow and profitability, and I’m not recommending that you strive for a lack of profitability. But cash is what keeps the doors open and pays the bills. Paper profits on an accrual accounting basis is of no more than secondary or tertiary importance for a startup. As my mother used to say, “Sales fixes everything.”
• Make a little progress every day. I used to believe in the big-bang theory of marketing: a fantastic launch that created such inertia that you flew to “infinity and beyond.” No more. Now my theory is that you make a little bit of progress every day–whether that’s making your product slightly better, increasing your skill in one small way, or closing one more customer. The reason the press writes about “overnight successes” is that they seldom happen–not because that’s how all businesses work.
• Try stuff. I also used to believe that it’s better to be smart than lucky because if you’re smart you can out-think the competition. I don’t believe that anymore–this is not to say that you should strive for a high level of stupidity. My point is that luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don’t get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, “One must wait for a long time with your mouth open before a Peking duck flies in your mouth.”
• Ignore schmexperts. Schmexperts are the totally bad combination of schmucks who are experts–or experts who are schmucks. When you first launch a product or service, they’ll tell you it isn’t necessary, can’t really work, or faces too much competition. If you succeed, then they’ll say they knew you would succeed. In other words, they don’t know jack shiitake. If you believe, try it. If you don’t believe, listen to the schmexperts and stay on the porch.
• Never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do. This goes for customers (”fill out these twenty-five fields of personal information to get an account for our website”) to employees (”fly coach to Mumbai, meet all day the day the arrive, and fly back that night”). If you follow this principle, you’ll almost always have a good customer service reputation and happy employees.

Source: Sun Microsystems

I stumbled across this guy’s stuff the other day and just had to share some of the pics. Love the tension and style in his shots.

Check out the Portfolio

It’s not quite true copy and paste, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Open Clip