entrepreneurs Archives - Page 8 of 80

Advice they'll never take

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently talking with a colleague from an extremely large corporation. We were discussing the relative cost of building smart phone applications. He went on to tell me how much they paid for the app after he gave me a demo on his phone. He then asked the price it should have cost to build it. I told him it should only be cost 5-10% of the price they paid.

Flummoxed he asked some advice on how to get things built for this much lower clip. Here is what I told him – Remove your logo from your business card before you get the quote. He laughed and asked if I was serious. I was very serious.

Sometimes the simplest advice is the hardest to take.

The abundance crisis

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

The late great comedian Greg Giraldo was one of the smartest and funniest guys who ever lived. He really had an eye on society. In 2004 he had a bit in his stand up comedy routine which spoke of the Obesity Crisis:

He said:

They say were in the middle of an obesity epidemic. An epidemic like it is polio. Like we’ll be telling our grand kids about it one day ‘The Great Obesity Epidemic of 2004’. How’d you get through it grandpa? “Oh, it was horrible Johnny there was cheesecake and pork chops everywhere.”

It is not without a small amount of irony that we are now entering what I regard as a great content crisis. There is such an abundance of content available that we are literally gorging ourselves on omnipresent opinion and data. We are doing this without thinking about how this shapes our minds.

“… Oh it was horrible Johnny, there were blog posts and celebrity stories everywhere….”

Both of these consumption problems are a function of our make up. Our desire intake as much information and food as we possibly can is mostly out of our control, it is coded into our DNA. Our current human operating system which dates back around 2 million years has us programmed to eat all of the food available to us (which is why sugar and fat taste best), and to take on all of the data available to us (which is why we are mesmerised by media). These behaviours are part of the human species survival doctrine. Our ability to be omnivorous, control our food supply and acquire knowledge are what put as atop of the food chain. The problem is than our DNA is yet to update its operating system to cope with an over abundance of food, and now information. Given our operating system updates via natural selection, we are faced with an intellectual challenge – the ability to ignore the instinct for more, and instead to choose less, but less with the required nutrition.

As we enter an age where we have access to most everything, both physical and mental, longevity and success are being redefined. The art of living well is becoming less about wealth and more about the ability to choose, and choose well. And that choice will invariably need be about the nutritional value of our inputs into our person, both mental and physical.

Focus Folly

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

There is nothing more common in startup land than to hear the advice of remaining focused. I used to believe this myself, but recently I’ve changed my view. I’ve changed my view because I think we focus too soon. We tend to focus when we think the idea or the space is we are playing in is hot. We should only focus once we have real in market validation. While there are many measures which validate a concept, media coverage does not amount to market validation. We have to remember the objectives of the media – especially when it comes to technology industries. What they want to do is the following:

Report on something new
Try and predict new trends and what’s next
Fill up their pages for traffic (fill the void)

Just because what we might be doing is interesting and different, doesn’t mean it will get traction in market. In fact, sometimes media coverage in the early phases of a startup is an indication the idea itself might be bad. They cover the new and the shiny, which could mean we’ll have a much harder job ahead of us in changing behaviour and redefining how something is done.

I think we can take a lesson from the old fisherman we see on the shore line. They tend to cast a lot of lines in the water and employ the multi-fishing rod strategy. Not knowing which one will get a bite. They use different bate and different sized sinkers. Some lines are cast far from the shore, while others are much closer. They are looking for validation, for a bite. And once they get a bite, they’ll focus on that particular fishing rod and reel it in. Focus, post validation, not before.

When it comes to non-fishing startups we need to look for real in market validation. Real usage growth and revenue are the simplest. And once we have that, we can start to focus without folly.

#BBB Launch Shindig

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

For people based in Melbourne the people behind the #BBB podcast are having a little get together tomorrow night >>> Details are here.

We figure that given most of our audience are local why not get together, share some ideas, have a Q&A and a cheeky beer or two. We’ve already managed to pump out 7 episodes – my personal fav is the Business Horror Stories, which I did not participate it, but happened to have a personal horror story shared within the cast.

Here’s a more thorough list of what we’ve covered so far:

Listen to BBB right now

Here are the episodes so far:

Ep 1 – Get Learned
Ep 2 – Build your network
Ep 3 – Manage that project
Ep 4 – Career transitions
Ep 5 – Disrupting retail
Ep 6 – Bootstrapping
Ep 7 – Horror Stories

Come along!

Steve.

5 things to check out

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I happened upon 5 things in the past few days – all of which had a certain something. Most of these came from Dan Groch over lunch on Thursday. They inspired some thoughts. So here’s the 5 pieces & the thoughts they each inspired for me:

1. WorryDream – I can’t really explain this other than saying this guy is a genius with genius ideas. Have a wonder through it.

2. Bobby McFerrin plays the audience – Yes, that Bobby McFerrin. He does something so amazing and shows the power of non verbal communications. Wisdom of crowds and the importance of music. Very enjoyable to watch indeed.

3. The inner game of tennis – An amazing visual of how to remove complexity. The simplicity of instruction without thought. How we can actually let our body do the learning once we avoid over intellectualising everything. I’ll be using this technique while surfing and doing anything physical.

4. Digital feudalism and how to avoid it – This in my view is an incredible risk to our species. Shiny things and big brother control from brands we actually love. They’ve already teamed up with the NSA, and we are letting it happen. HT to Josh McDonald for this one.

5. Powerful ideas about ideas – Alan Kay demonstrates some new teaching methods.

Again another reminder that a cheap laptop and the internet are all we need to know all we desire. And I’ll leave you with this simple fact: Anyone who has access to the internet, has more information at their disposal than the US President did just 10 years ago.

Don't start a business

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

No, we shouldn’t do that. It’s such a big thing with no clear way to start, and no clear way to end. There’s a really big chance we could waste a significant amount of financial, temporal and emotional resources on it. It’s too uncertain and adds a whole lot of life complications to it, it takes a lot of organising, registrations, financing, commitment to something for which a future which is unproven.

Here’ a better idea. We should do a project instead. Projects are superior to businesses. Superior because they tell us more about the future. It can sample our predicted future reality and test it for truth. In addition to that it has a number of micro benefits which add up to something significant.

A project helps us get over our inertia. It’s only a project.
A project can be bootstrapped more heavily, as we don’t need to build in any scale.
A project allows us to do a minimum viable product, but actually mean it, and actually do it.
A project is not a life long commitment. We can close it off any time for any reason we choose.
A project tells our circle and the market that this is temporary, but worth trying.
A project doesn’t need huge resources, only enough to cover one cycle.
A project is likely maintain momentum and energy as the finish line is in sight from the start.
A project let’s us test our assumptions, but in the real world – the market place.
A project can lead to a better conceived project.
A project can lead to important collaborations and discoveries.
A project can lead to something bigger… maybe even a business.
A project….

In fact, when we really think about it, business is simply a project which worked well and got bigger. Or we could say that a business is a number of separate yet continuous projects linked together in perpetuity, performed by the same people and infrastructure.

And so, it’s pretty clear if we just start with a project or tow, we might be lucky enough to end up with a business.