Posts filed under 'skmurphy'
March 13th, 2010
I got an e-mailed question from someone who had watched my “The Limits of I’ll Know It When I See It” video.
Q: In your talk you say “Most recurring problems are a combination of an unsolved technical problem and an unresolved emotional component to that problem.” Is there more about this in Ericsson’s “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” or in the Gary Klein’s “Sources of Power“?
A: It’s actually from another great book: ” The Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin. I found this quote on page 108:
“The aim is to minimize repetition as much as possible, by having an eye for consistent psychological and technical themes of error.”
but he is a little clearer in two other interviews, the first is Scott Barry Kaufman’s “Learning About Learning: An Interview With Josh Waitkzkin“ (yellow highlight added)
S. In reading your book, it seems as though your major strength in Tai Chi Chuan is the way you put your mind into the game. You were able to beat players much stronger than you by “getting into their mind.” I find this fascinating. Why do you think you were so good at psyching people out? Was it because of your early chess experiences?
J. Sure, my chess experience taught me a lot about the psychology of competition. World-class chess players are incredibly brilliant people who have spent their lives figuring out ways to get it your head, to break you down. Usually every high level chess error is accompanied by a psychological break of sorts-to survive, you have to understand the inner game. I am always looking for where the psychological and the technical collide–that surely comes from my chess study. But frankly, I think I really got good at the psychological game after chess. Chess taught me how to be relentlessly introspective, how to unearth tells in myself and in opponents, but then I really took that foundation and put it into dynamic action in the martial arts. I work on being a heat seeking missile for dogma. If you unearth or instill a false assumption in an opponent, they are in a lot of trouble unless they feel you getting into their head and kick you out fast. Of course this eye for false constructs is an important tool in the learning process as well.
The second is Thomas Huynh’s “Interview with Josh Waitzikin” (yellow highlight added)
Q: Did you find the skills or outlook you gained from first learning chess on the streets of New York City (Washington Square Park) helped you to outmaneuver those who only had classical training?
A: [...] To survive in the park you have to be a fighter. You have to be able to handle any kind of distraction. Honestly, I think those early lessons lay the foundation for my most intense world championship fights years later. I learned early that just about every error has a technical and psychological component, and if you get good at discovering those connections, you’ll be a step ahead of the competition. And of course as a kid, facing other 7, 8 and 9 year olds in National Championships felt like a piece of cake compared to what I dealt with every day in Washington Square.
Here the implications for the roots of a recurring error or consistent mistake in play coming from both a technical and a psychological blind spot are clearest. Robert Pirsig wrote something along the same lines in “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” which also applies to entrepreneurs building companies:
“Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial, really. It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test’s always your own serenity. If you don’t have this when you start and maintain it while you’re working you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.”
For more of Robert Pirsig’s insights see “
Entrepreneurs Need Gumption to Succeed” and “
Some Great Quotes Collected by Tim O’Reilly.”
March 11th, 2010
I met Matt Perez in 2003 just as I was starting SKMurphy. It was the tail end of nuclear winter in Silicon Valley and folks were trying to figure out what was next. We kept running into one another at various networking events and as we got to know one another realized that we both had a passion for technology and innovation.
After I facilitated the Conversation Central roundtables on “Global Teams” at the 2009 Design Automation Conference I decided that a significant shift was underway where not only were teams in larger firms more often global but startups and small technology firms were going global much earlier in their life cycle than had been the case in the 1990’s. One of the enablers for this is a host of low cost collaboration tools. Some that are synchronous like Skype and real time dashboards, and others that are “quasi-synchronous” like wikis, distributed source code management and Yammer. These tools enable faster decision making because the team is able to maintain a “shared situational awareness.”
After a lunch with Matt in December where we had discussed this trend he agreed to share some of the ways that his firm, Nearsoft, was using Yammer and other collaboration tools to enable them to keep distributed teams providing development services and ongoing support in sync.
Q: Can talk you a little bit about what your firm does? I understand that your focused is on outsourced product development.
Nearsoft is a software product development firm with operations in Mexico. We work best as innovation partner to ISVs, SaaS companies and consumer-facing sites. These businesses understand that software is at the core of their business and they demand to work with people who are as dedicated and serious as they are about building great software.
We specifically avoid working with businesses that treat their software as a “backroom” operation or, worse, as a necessary evil.
Q: How do you work with clients?
We work in long-term relationships with our clients. We create teams around each client, with the right skills in the appropriate technologies. As the new team learns about the client’s business, they can contribute to all aspects of it, not just the raw coding.
Short-term, project-based engagements don’t work for us and I don’t believe they work for clients, either. It may work for doing something of the side, some throw-away code. But for the core product, you want to have a stable team of people that work well together.
We invest heavily in hiring the best and brightest and have created an environment that helps attract and retain that level of talent. A big part of that is because of the opportunity to work with leading-edge companies in the Valley as part of their core team. If we had people work on little projects here and there, we would not get the good ones; or, if we got them, they would not stick around for long.
Q: What collaboration tools do you use internally and with clients to support your methodology and your engagement model?
A: The first that comes to mind is Yammer, a Twitter-like system but for private use. Our folks are used to Twitter, so using Yammer was a natural. It works great for geographically distributed teams because it helps maintain a team presence.
In the situation where everybody in a team works out of the same office, team presence is a function of being physically in the office at the same time. Without consciously checking, you know when people are “there” and when they’re not. Yammer serves a similar function in that even if I am not reading each posting individually, I get a sense of people being “there” as the stream flows through.
It’s also a casual environment where people can jump in and out without much protocol. If I am looking for somebody, I can just ask “anybody seen Joe?” and one or more people will respond. Also, if people are joking around a particular event, you can also jump in and do the water cooler thing that’s part of social cohesion of effective groups.
Besides Yammer, we use Skype a lot. For example, a group of us keep a Skype “group chat” open all the time that we use a lot like Yammer. The reason we do it on Skype is that it’s easier to switch to voice conferencing when the text chats get too convoluted.
One of our client teams uses video all the time. They use both Skype and Adobe Connect.
Of course, we also use a number of tools to keep track of open issues, source code control, etc.
Q: What has been the impact of Yammer on your ability to deliver results?
Yammer and Skype and the rest of these real-time tools give us and our clients the benefit of being in touch constantly. Little problems and misunderstanding remain “little,” they don’t snowball into big, hairy messes. One person may say, “I am going to implement X using Y” and immediately another will jump in with “No, you shouldn’t use Y for reason Z.” They may go back and forth in the text stream, clarifying things. Then switch to voice or video. Misunderstanding is cleared before any major work is wasted building the wrong solution.
Without something as immediate as Yammer or IM tools, the question may sit in somebody’s email for a day before anybody looks at it. By then, the wrong solution may be finished only to be thrown away.
BTW, that is true for the folks working physically in the same office. In many ways, it is more convenient to casually ask a question or make a comment using one of the tools than in person. You can ask your question without “imposing” on the other people to drop what they’re doing to answer your question. The other people can choose when to respond. If they glance at it and see a “Google It” question, then they can just ignore it. If it looks important, then they can direct their attention to it at their convenience.
Q: What, if anything would you do differently?
When I started the company I tried several models before settling on the way we operate today. It would have been nice if somehow I could have gone through that part of it a bit more quickly.
We’ve had a couple of startup clients that didn’t make through the crisis in 2009. I thought they were dynamite businesses and wished they could have been able to stay in business. We helped all we could but in the end they didn’t make it.
Q: What else have you learned from working internally and with customers in this fashion?
The most salient thing for me is that cultural alignment is key. Effective communications include a ton of stuff that’s never said; it literally goes without saying. There’s a lot of “y’know what I mean?” in there and it would be too costly, emotionally and in time, to explain every little subtlety that goes on in a conversation. Likewise, it can very expensive when people miss out any of those subtleties. To deal with this you need to make sure that everybody in the team is aligned with the goals of the business and that they “know” what it takes to get there.
One example I can think of is when a developer is asked when he can get something “done.” If we both don’t have the same understanding of what “done” means, then we are going to end up in hot water.
Q: Thanks for your time
For some outstanding examples of how to blend humor into an explanation of a complex service I would encourage you to take a look at two of Nearsoft’s videos:
I really appreciate Matt’s willingness to talk about some of the practical challenges in working in a geographically distributed organization. If you would like to talk about lessons learned from your startup or innovative business practices that you would be willing to talk candidly about, please contact me and we can explore an interview that would be of interest to bootstrapping entrepreneurs.
March 10th, 2010
Given Milpitas’ strong commitment to entrepreneurship and new business development, the Bootstrappers Breakfast promise of serious early morning discussions among bootstrappers will have many local entrepreneurs feeling right at home. The focus of the monthly meeting is on technology businesses whose next stage of growth is based on internal cash flow and organic profits.
Entrepreneurs who like to “eat problems for breakfast” bring business issues and challenges to discuss with peers. The Bootstrappers Breakfasts have been meeting on the second Friday of the month in Milpitas since 2008. Other Breakfasts are held in Minneapolis MN, Mountain View CA, Palo Alto CA, San Diego CA, San Francisco CA, and Sunnyvale CA.
Date: Friday, March 12, 2010 7:30 a.m. (2nd Friday of the month)
Location: Omega Restaurant, 90 South Park Victoria Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035 (Off Freeway 680 at corner East Calaveras Blvd. and South Park Victoria Drive)
Cost: $5 Advance Registration, $10 at the door 
Info: see www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com.
At last month’s meeting the roundtable topics included: forming a new business and getting it off the ground. It also included discussions about tips on building a customer base. Members are saying great things about us:
- “A great group of entrepreneurs in start up mode and restart mode. The greatest value of these meetings is that they refocus my thinking of what is possible.”
- “I attended my first Breakfast on Feb 13th in Milpitas. It’s a great group, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I learned a great deal more about Patents, Trademarks, and Intellectual Property matters from the guest speaker. I met a dozen people and learned about the needs of others involved in small business endeavors. However, I felt a genuine camaraderie with these folks and will actively adjust my schedule in order to attend future meetings.”
About Bootstrappers Breakfast®
Bootstrappers Breakfast® is for the founders of early stage technology startups. It is a chance to compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. These breakfasts were designed for entrepreneurs to share ideas and leverage thoughts with other folks who are serious about growing their business.
March 9th, 2010
A lot of bootstrappers start out by selling their product or services to friends or people they know and/or have worked with in the past. One of the early thresholds a team crosses is making the transition to “selling to strangers” (see the “Startup Maturity Checklist” for some relevant questions) and they can get tripped up on a number of points.
Two key challenges
- Free Consulting: strangers may want to learn more about the technology area you are addressing and request one or more sales calls while they listen attentively. The net effect is that you are offering free consulting to someone who has no intention of buying. Tipoffs: always encouraging, “tell me more.” They talk very little about their own challenges but are very interested in your offering or the technology arena that you are focused on.
- Column Fodder: potential buyers at large companies may need to solicit a minimum number of bids in addition to the team that they want to do business with. This means that they will put you through the exercise of generating a bid just so that they have three, even though they have no intention of working with you.
Here are four steps to take to immunize yourself against the default assumptions you made when selling to friends.
- Balance time invested against size of deal, probability of a win, and competing alternatives. Establish a marketing budget in hours in advance (e.g. default might be 15 minutes for an inquiry, 60 minutes for a phone call) and adjust it as your understanding of deal size, probability of a decision, and probability of a win evolve.
- Always put an expiration on any quote or proposal, if nothing else it gives you a reason for one last E-mail/call.
- The first payment is always the most difficult, if appropriate ask for a token payment after you have expended some marketing effort to assess interest level.
- If you are not certain of interest in getting started, float a later date (e.g. six weeks instead of two) for the follow up and see if they pull it in. If you are not having conversations every week or two then the deal is in percolate or nurture mode and is not active.
February 28th, 2010
“When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.” William Wrigley Jr.
“Your brand is the promise that you keep.” Kristin Zhivago
“Plans are made, unmade, revised, and recast through action and interaction with others on a daily basis.”
Saras Sarasvathy
“Ask for input only if you plan to do something with it or about it.”
Richard Moran “Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts”
“Simple ain’t easy.” Thelonious Monk
“One competitor to customer development is a co-founder’s belief that product development, in and of itself, creates value.” Sean Murphy
“Sometimes I am blocked by things I can see, other times by things I cannot. Too often, it’s just my fear of the unknown.” Sean Murphy
“At a distance big companies look like aircraft carriers, but close up you see they are really a thousand canoes.” Rick Munden
- “From a distance you look like an aircraft carrier, but as you get closer it becomes clear you are really a thousand canoes. ” Rick Munden recounting a vendor’s description of TI
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison
“The surest way to be cheated is to think oneself cleverer than other people.” La Rochefoucauld
February 23rd, 2010
- Wikis dissolve voice and authorship. Use them where there are rewards and incentives at a team level, where a team is being held accountable for a result.
- Blogs and forums preserve voice and authorship. Use them where knowing who said what is important.
- Start with frequently updated information that is also frequently accessed:
- Meeting agendas and minutes (avoiding the bottleneck of the designated note taker and/or overlapping amendments in different e-mails that then have to be reconciled),
- Early and still evolving specifications
- Project status in a dynamic environment
- Projects end, products are shipped and end of life, problems get solved. At some point in the business world many wikis must be congealed into a document or document set and either archived, frozen as a static HTML tree, or transferred to a content management system where more formal revision and change control methods are more appropriate. Unlike Internet wikis, older project or product wikis are often better preserved as read only archives.
- Wikipedia anchors a lot of expectations in a use case that is rarely appropriate to a team that is not building an encyclopedia. Hope that useful content will be curated in a general purpose wiki is unlikely to be satisfied.
- Use many small team level wikis, each for a distinct project or purpose, where the team membership is clear and there are shared incentives for cooperation and success.
February 17th, 2010
I can always tell when I am feeling stressed because I dream about being back in school taking an exam I haven’t studied for. Although to be candid some of those dreams are closer to suppressed memories than unrealized anxieties bubbling up from my unconscious.
But a year or two ago I had a dream a while ago about a tiger that I keep turning over in my mind.
A tiger is pacing in a cage, but it’s not a square cage, it’s more of a maze.
It’s not in a zoo, more like a warehouse or strangely configured storage unit. The floors are smooth cold concrete.
The tiger is trapped in a maze of walls of iron bars and plexiglass.
The tiger starts out in a section that’s primarily iron bars with a few walls of plexiglass.
It leaps against the bars and can’t break out.
Then it sees what appears to be an opening and runs into a plexiglass wall, which it can’t break through either.
But running into the the plexiglass a few times makes it more cautious.
So it paces,
alternately sniffing and growling,
confused and angry,
trying to find a way out.
Finally it comes to an opening that just has strip of masking tape on the floor.
And there it sits, convinced that this is some new barrier that’s also uncrossable.
Any resemblance to recent legs of your entrepreneurial journey (or mine) is entirely coincidental.
February 16th, 2010
I think that there are better products, impossible products, and unthinkable products.
Better products follow an established trajectory in an industry. They are “15 minutes ahead” and the easiest to sell…for a while. Examples include:
- Faster computers with larger memory
- Cars with better gas mileage
Impossible products find a way to relax one or two constraints that designers of better products have taken as fixed. They are harder to sell, not so much because they are hard to understand but difficult to believe, prospects will ask you “What’s the catch?” Examples include:
- ATM Machines replacing human tellers to dispense cash
- Ethernet over twisted pair
Unthinkable products are typically developed by someone from outside the target industry or are the result of repurposing a product from another industry. Their developers were not handicapped by the mental roadblocks that come from following established practices and patterns in an industry. They can be extremely difficult to get prospects to understand–much less believe in–as they are almost always incompatible with current practices and infrastructure. But they can create an entirely new category of product. Examples include:
- IDDQ testing in semiconductors
- The Reebok Pump shoe
- Henry Ford realizing that a meat packing plant’s “disassembly line” could be run backward to assemble a car.
What are you working on?
See also
February 15th, 2010
Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, February 16, in Sunnyvale where George Grellas will present a short legal guide for entrepreneurs. George is a veteran Silicon Valley startup business lawyer who heads a boutique firm that specializes in early-stage technology startups. Since 1984, as a founders’ lawyer, George has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs in helping them with their strategic planning, entity formation, IP protection, funding, acquisitions–the range of their startup legal needs for both deals and disputes.
George’s style is practical, direct, and down-to-earth, emphasizing a strong working knowledge of technical issues (including tax) explained in a manner that is made understandable and helpful for those new to startups as well as for seasoned entrepreneurs. He is the author of the Startup Law 101 series of tutorials for founders and entrepreneurs.
Bring your questions for George and the other entrepreneurs around the table. As always, there will also be time for your general questions and concerns.
Update Feb-17-2010: George made some thought provoking opening remarks on his visit, in particular:
Startups are interesting. It’s a rather grim time in a macro-economic sense but for early stage startups it’s a pretty amazing time because the infrastructure has been built out. There is a lot of opportunity to launch companies creatively without the capital intensive needs that were there a decade or two ago.
Of course there are many situations where you have capital intensive needs and that occupies the traditional VC realm. But there is a huge and expanding area in the last decade, and the last few years in particular, where with creativity and innovative focus on areas like enterprise people can leverage very interesting business models in ways that used to be unthinkable without a lot of money.
Related Links:
February 13th, 2010
Colin Cherry in “The Telephone System: Creator of Mobility and Social Change” makes the point that the full impact of an invention is very difficult to predict (emphasis added).
Inventions themselves are not revolutions; neither are they the cause of revolutions. Their powers for change lie in the hands of those who have the imagination and insight to see that the new invention has offered them new liberties of action, that old constraints have been removed, that their political will, or their sheer greed, are no longer frustrated, and that they can act in new ways. New social behavior patterns and new social institutions are created which in turn become the commonplace experience of future generations.
Such realization does not come easily, quickly, or even “naturally,” for the new invention can first be seen by society only in terms of the liberties of action it currently possesses. We say society is “not ready,” meaning that it is bound by its present customs and habits to think only in terms of its existing institutions. Realization of new liberties, and creation of new institutions means social change, new thought, and new feelings. The invention alters the society, and eventually is used in ways that were at first quite unthinkable.
I think that we are now at a transition point in our use of web applications: the larger challenge for software entrepreneurs is not inventing a new technology, but determining how to apply the last two decades (Tim Berners-Lee had the first webserver working in 1990, SLAC had one in 1991) of invention to business problems in new ways, many that would have been unthinkable earlier.
This is what customer development helps entrepreneurs to understand: how to apply inventions to problems that customers will pay them to solve.
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