entrepreneurship Archives - Page 165 of 235

Company Mantra – It’s in the game!

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

While watching a documentary on the evolution of video games I heard the coolest company mantra ever.

It was from EA sports, the gaming company which focused on creating games which closely represented the real thing. More important for startups was how they got there. One of the key developers came up with the internal motto “if it’s in the game, it’s in the game”. This later evolved to be the brand tagline “It’s in the game!”

EA went the extremes to put everything ‘in the game’. Some of these extremes include:

Getting the actual TV commentators to do voice overs on the games
Licensing teams, sporting organizations brands & players
Getting the actual athletes in the studio to get each players exact movements

The result being amazingly realistic games. Amazing games which wouldn’t have been possible without the mantra – a mantra which simply did not accept compromise.

Mantra is only powerful if we embrace it in every thing we do. EA sports did and went on to be a $4 billion US company with large profit margins.

What is your startup mantra?

steve – founder rentoid.com

More on leadership

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Leaders have to sell hope. That is their job.

So when we lead our team, partners, tribe, customers, family or friends, we know we’ve achieved something when their belief levels match ours. When this happens we’ve lead our crew to where ‘we all’ want to be. And belief is a key ingredient in achieving goals.

It starts with belief. But this shared belief, is one small part of great leadership, it is by no means the only ingredient.

How solid are the belief levels in your startup world?

Steve – founder rentoid.com

Our Job

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Our job as entrepreneurs is this:

“To organize the factors of production.”

To organize these factors from concept to revenue in perpetuity. This is our job in a ‘for profit’ organization. The number one challenge is not to become a factor of production. If we do this then we’ll never actually own a business.

Steve – founder rentoid.com

Your worst nightmare

Posted on November 9, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

From a competitive viewpoint, imagine for a moment that our worst business nightmare came true.

Maybe Google decides to enter our market space. Or the Coca Cola Company launched a beverage with the same consumer benefit we’ve been bootstrapping. Or large company X decided to compete against “us” head on.

Well – you’d be surprised how that feels. How it makes us react, and how it very quickly changes our perspective on what is the most important element in ‘winning’. In competing effectively for our share of wallet.

All of a sudden many of the projects we are investing our time on seem far less important than they were yesterday. Maybe that front page redesign can wait, maybe the shiny new web 2.0 buttons are a little less important. Maybe our packaging will do for now and quite possibly every project we have on the agenda, excluding customer ‘centric projects’ can be put on hold.

Here’s an exercise worth doing with your team. Act as if. Act as if it has just happened. Have an ‘emergency session’ with your team on how you’d react if a more well resourced, financed and well known competitor came to play. Build your battle plan. Once your battle plan is drawn up – throw out your current business plan and work on that instead. Because they are coming, especially if your startup is in a fertile consumer territory.

After the intital fear, most entrepreneurs just get inspired, get angry and get on with it. A good scare never hurt anyone.

Steve – founder rentoid.com

Evernote.com – great home page

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a visual from the website for www.evernote.com which has a super home page. Clean, clear simple communicaiton of what they do.

I use it on my iphone and it rocks. Get on it.

Steve – founder rentoid.com

Invoices

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Today’s task is boring, even hateful. Doing invoices. As with all great ironies, this ought be a task we revere look forward to and basically enjoy. ‘Payment’.

Given we often forget the important stuff we all know. I sometimes write a reminder and stick it to my office wall.

Here’s my pic: (Art’s never been a strong point)

Yep, I’m reminding myeslf that this somewhat laborious task is actually a cause for celebration, the celebration of hard work as we collect our earnings.

Startups struggling with boring stuff – remind yourself why it’s important!

Steve – founder rentoid.com