Archive for 2011
December 31st, 2011
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“When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”
William Somerset Maugham
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“It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.”
Edwin Land
This reminds of Peter Drucker’s “organized abandonment” model for firms. He suggests that every year a business re-evaluate products and markets by asking themselves “if we did not do this already, would we go into it now, knowing what we now know?” If the answer is no then it no longer represents an opportunity. Further investment should be considered very carefully and deferred where possible in favor of new and emerging growth opportunities. See also:
- Brad Pierce’s “Reversify Your Product Offerings: Do Less with More“
- Carmine Gallo’s Fast Company article on “Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs” in particular this excerpt:
Early in Apple’s history, lead investor Mike Markkula sent a memo to Apple’s employees that outlined his marketing strategy. In that memo he talked about the importance of focus. Markkula wrote, “To do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all the unimportant opportunities, select from the remainder only those that we have the resources to do well, and concentrate our efforts on them.
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“Bootstrapping is not seeking outside funding until you have a business that both requires and merits investment.”
Sean Murphy
This is similar to an entrepreneurial proverb that Marc Hedlund offered:
The pitch that goes, “We could accelerate our growth with more money” is much more compelling than, “I need your money or our doors will close.”
More context:
The best way to get investment is not to need it — if you have a running business with real customers and you’re paying all your bills, you are much more likely to get a funding round than if you need the round in order to survive or succeed. The pitch that goes, “We could accelerate our growth with more money” is much more compelling than, “I need your money or our doors will close.”
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“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.”
Samuel Johnson
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“Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”
Edwin Land
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“Zoom in for traction, zoom out for impact.”
Sean Murphy
I used this as the title for “Zoom In For Traction, Zoom Out For Impact”
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“Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.”
Edwin Land
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“Treat your customers as if they were newspapers reporters; this is the new mantra for savvy companies of all sizes.”
Matt Mickiewicz in “Why Customer Service is the New Marketing“
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“It’s the picture on the box that sells the LEGO set.”
Sean Murphy
I used this as the title for “It’s the Picture on the Box that Sells the LEGO Set.”
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“It’s a whole year between Christmases, but it’s a short Christmas between years.”
Ashleigh Brilliant
For Christmas I was given a CD that collects all of Ashleigh Brilliant’s Pot Shots (epigrams). They are quite good: I will be weaving more of them into my quotes for entrepreneurs in 2012.
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“We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
I used this quote to open “Record to Remember, Pause to Reflect“
December 26th, 2011
And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we’ll find better days
Cause I don’t need boxes wrapped in strings
And designer love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we’ll find better days
John Rzeznik “Better Days“
Entrepreneurs are by definition optimists. They see possibilities that others may discount or overlook. If we are to reach better days we need as much entrepreneurial imagination applied to the hard challenges facing us.
“The only certainty is a reasonable probability.”
Edgar Watson Howe, “Country Town Sayings”
December 25th, 2011
“It’s a whole year between Christmases, but it’s a short Christmas between years.”
Ashleigh Brilliant
December 19th, 2011
We have four Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfasts® scheduled in the last two weeks of December. In addition to our regular roundtable format of introductions followed by each attending suggesting issues they would like to discuss or questions they have for the group we are going to discuss “What did you learn in 2011 that will make you a better entrepreneur in 2012?”
Here are the four breakfasts we have scheduled in the last two weeks in December
- 7:30am Tue-Dec-20-2011 Coco’s Bakery, 1206 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA (back room)
- 9am Fri-Dec-23-2011 Red Rock Coffee, 201 Castro St, Mountain View, CA (upstairs)
- 7:30am Tue-Dec-27-2011 Heavenly Cafe 3116 Oak Rd, Walnut Creek, CA
- 9:00am Thu-Dec-29-2011 1206 Oakmead Parkway, Sunnyvale, CA (back room)
Cost is $5 in advance / $10 at the door plus the cost of your own breakfast (separate checks). Check us out over the holidays if you want an early morning conversation with other technology entrepreneurs.
December 16th, 2011
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Call-in Book Review recorded on February 22, 2012
Terry Frazier, Steve Hogan and Sean Murphy recap Christensen’s’ “The Innovator’s DNA chapter 2” with insight of how they have incorporated associating into their work.
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Chapter 2:
Discovery Skill #1 Associating
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The Innovator’s DNA
by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen
Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess.
The authors outline five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.
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Additional Book Reviews
December 14th, 2011
“If you’re doing something big, people will compliment you. Most will give you accolades or be quietly supportive. But it’s those who simultaneously support and challenge you who can help. The best teams know this. They embrace feedback and seek criticism. They find ways to change and improve. And they know that when someone criticizes them, it’s an indication of respect. Only the people who really care risk helping us improve. ”
Brendan Baker in “Seek Knowledgeable Criticism” h/t to Rafe Needleman
Your startup is a work in progress. When most entrepreneurs evaluate where they are it’s difficult not to include the promising future they foresee naturally ensuing from current efforts (or on bad days the certain doom no matter what they do).
The first self-assessment to make is “do we have traction?” By traction I mean the ability to set and hit goals that increase your knowledge of the market or reduce the risks associated with becoming viable. There are many milestones that are necessary to enable a real goal that in and of themselves don’t increase your knowledge of the market or reduce the risks associated with viability. Some examples:
- Getting incorporated, registering a domain, getting a bank account, getting a Federal Tax ID, etc.. These are all important steps to be able transact business that no one on your team may be familiar with, but they are not goals. They don’t reduce your risk or increase your knowledge of the market.
- Spending money on tools, equipment, services, etc… You may never have hired an attorney or an accountant before or setup an account on a cloud service , and it’s possible to pick the wrong person or provider, but it does not reduce your risk.
If you don’t have traction you need then zoom in and narrow your focus. Ask for specific advice on how to understand the market opportunity, verify that you have identified the key risks that you face in the near term, and how to reduce or minimize one or more risks that you face. Here the most helpful criticism can take the form of questions:
- How are we measuring … how far have we come since…
- Who are we benchmarking our progress against and why?
- What have we already tried to solve this problem and what has been the result? What have we learned?
- What is the real problem that we are trying to solve?
- What can we accomplish in the next two to three weeks with the folks already committed to the team.
These questions can provoke a conversation that can help you form a plan of action for the next few weeks that will improve your traction. Once you have that plan you can present it to friends and advisors for feedback and critique.
The second self-assessment to make, if you are satisfied that you have traction is to determine what are the next set of realistic goals that, once achieved, will significantly enhance your viability or impact for your customers. Now is the time to zoom out and consider a broader context for your next set of actions. Here the most helpful criticism can take the form of different questions:
- How close are we to your next goal? What should we start measuring once we achieve it? What metrics no longer matter or are now counterproductive?
- What relationships have we created that can now help you grow your business?
- What are the most significant constraints on our growth or ability to add value to customers?
- What problems have we promoted in solving the ones that we faced earlier?
- What core values do we need to hold on to as we grow?
- What specialists do we need to add to the team on a temporary, part time, or full time basis?
Once you have those answers reviewing them with customers, partners, and advisors can yield additional insight.
December 13th, 2011
“Every so often—every 60 years or so—a body of technology comes along and over several decades, quietly, almost unnoticeably, transforms the economy: it brings new social classes to the fore and creates a different world for business…something deep is going on with information technology, something that goes well beyond the use of computers, social media, and commerce on the Internet.”
Brian Arthur in “The Second Economy“
Anne Rozinat is co-founder of Fluxicon, a provider of software tools and services for business process mining. She has project experience with a number of major European firms in customer service, healthcare, IT services, healthcare and government. Her training is in software engineering with a PhD in Process Mining and she is a founding member of the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining.
She is joining us on Wed-Dec-14 at Noon PDT to discuss Brian Arthur‘s “The Second Economy” article in the October 2011 McKinsey Quarterly.
“Business processes that once took place among human beings are now executed electronically. They are taking place in an unseen domain that is strictly digital. This shift is quietly creating a second economy, a digital one.”
Brian Arthur in “The Second Economy“
In addition to her published research and her private client work Anne is an active blogger and has several posts that bear on Brian Arthur’s “Second Economy” thesis:
“In any deep transformation, industries do not so much adopt the new body of technology as encounter it, and as they do so they create new ways to profit from its possibilities.”
Brian Arthur in “The Second Economy“
In the same way that computer networks required much more sophisticated network management and systems administration tools and methodologies, the increased digitization of business processes–blending automation with human expertise in extremely complex workflows–will require us to invent new tools and methods for specifying and managing them.
“This second economy that is silently forming—vast, interconnected, and extraordinarily productive—is creating for us a new economic world. How we will fare in this world, how we will adapt to it, how we will profit from it and share its benefits, is very much up to us.”
Brian Arthur in “The Second Economy“
Our hope is that conversation will touch on impacts, risks, and some early examples:
- Understand Pervasive Impact of Process Digitization on Business
- Key Risk Is to Make Work Processes Invisible
- Complicates “Management By Walking Around”
- New Tools & Practices Needed to Leverage
- Early Example: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
- Blends Automation and Human Expertise
- Creating New Kinds of Business Models
Please Register and join the roundtable discussion Wed-Dec-14 at Noon PST.
December 9th, 2011
We have been facilitating Bootstrappers Breakfasts® since 2006 in Silicon Valley. Our promise is serious conversations about growing a business based on internal cash flow and organic profit. This is not for entrepreneurs who want to meet VCs–there are plenty of meetings in Silicon Valley that already enable those conversations–this is for founders who are actively bootstrapping a technology startup.
We define bootstrapping as growing your business based on organic cash flow, not seeking outside funding until you have an opportunity that both requires and merits outside investment.
Here is a list of the next set of breakfasts scheduled in Silicon Valley
Cost is $5 in advance / $10 at the door plus the cost of your own breakfast (separate checks). Check us out over the holidays if you want an early morning conversation with other technology entrepreneurs.
November 30th, 2011
You can follow @skmurphy to get these hot off the mojo wire or wait until the end of the month when they are collected on the blog. Enter your E-mail if you would like Feedburner to deliver new blog posts to your inbox.
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“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.”
Donald A. Adams
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“Abbot Zerchi smiled thinly. ‘You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.’”
Walter M. Miller “A Canticle for Leibowitz“
hat tip to “My Small Boat” blog.
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“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.”
Heraclitus (Fragment 18)
I used this as the opening quote for “Customer Interviews: Allow Yourself to Be Surprised”
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“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.
Paulo Coelho “The Alchemist”
I used this as a coda to Customer Interviews: Allow Yourself To Be Surprised
h/t to Johnnie Moore’s “Decisions” where he offers this additional insight:
“People are easily preoccupied with the idea of making a decision as if it’s all about creating certainty. What it’s more about embarking on an adventure? And if it is, are we looking to pressgang the crew or are we taking willing volunteers?”
Johnnie Moore
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“I need to get some sleep. People on the Internet will still be wrong tomorrow.”
Jim Treacher
A riff on xkcd’s “Duty Calls” that I used for Late Night Comments and E-Mail” but Treacher offers better advice.
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“The long tail is for organizations that own warehouses.”
Seth Godin in “The Starfish and the Long Tail Have Trouble Getting Along“
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“We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible” Allan Massie
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“When in doubt, choose to go deeper rather than faster. Accept the idea that reflection and understanding your own nature, including the dark side, is the key to effective action.”
Peter Block in “The Answer to How is Yes“
I used this quote to close “Record to Remember, Pause to Reflect”
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“Not only should you calculate the Lifetime Value of your customers, but also their perception of the Lifetime Value of your solution.”
Chris Hopf
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“Health is not valued till sickness comes.”
Thomas Fuller
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“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
Thornton Wilder
I used this as the opening quote for my Thanksgiving 2011” post.
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“Without a clear vision of the goal state, I expect movements to devolve into identifying enemies and engaging in wars.”
Jason Yip
I took this to relate to the Lean Software, Lean Startup, Agile Software movements because those are the topics he commonly blogs about.
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“We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.”
Walt Kelly in “Pogo“
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“Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.”
Henri Frederic Amiel
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“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Leonard Bernstein
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November 29th, 2011
On Wed Nov. 30 from 6-8pm, we are brainstorming with some folks about forming a mastermind group for technology firms. We want to take stock and evaluate what will impact our bottom line. Join us for the upcoming Open House. Bring your 2012 plans and let’s brainstorm on what this mastermind meetup could be.
If you are looking for a group of peer entrepreneurs to compare notes with on your business on a regular basis this may be of interest to you. You can register at http://www.meetup.com/BayAreaMastermind/events/39869532/
We are meeting at
Pacific Business Centers
1250 Oakmead Parkway Suite 210, Sunnyvale, CA
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