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The two reasons people say no to your idea
“It’s been done before”
“It’s never been done before”
Even though neither one is truthful, accurate or useful, you need to be prepared for both. Seth Godin keeps it simple.
That’s why that as an entrepreneur you have to focus on customers needs and keep the naysayers away.
Entrepreneurship for geeks
Etech is happening right now. I’ve been following what’s happening at the conference via some blogs. Celso Martinho (SAPO’s CTO) is there and reporting. Epicenter and Radar are very good sources too.
Via Radar I saw that Phillip Windley has taken some notes on Marc Hedlund’s tutorial Coder to Co-Founder: Entrepreneuring for Geeks.
Lots of useful advice from hands on experience. Here are some of the ideas (and motivations) I find most relevant.
It’s Good to Be King: It’s fantastic to have an idea, get people to work on it, and see if it works. It’s enormously satisfying to do that. Everyday there is a new problem, something you haven’t done before, something new to learn. As founder, you get to do everything and that’s fun.
Better ideas: Your ideas will get better as you understand business better. Engineers like to think all ideas are about engineering, but there are more things you need to know. He suggests following a sales guy around. Sit in on a sales call and listen to customers. I think that’s excellent advice—but don’t limit it to sales.
Good reasons: One good reason to start a company is you get to create a company you’d like to work at. Boy is that true! There is nothing better than being about to make decisions that make a company a good place to be.
Bad reasons: Don’t start a business to be rich or famous. There are better, easier ways. Don’t start your business because you want total control. This doesn’t work. The very ideas of a “company” is that you get other people to help you and you have to delegate authority to them.
The idea: The idea will change over time. What matter is identifying the demand. Talking to people will help identify the demand and help you refine the idea. Early on, find out what matters to people, rather than designing the Web site.
Partners: it’s enormously helpful to have a partner. Co-founders and others can give you a big push. When you’re all on your own either you do something or nothing happens. When there’s more than one, you can feed off each other. You have a commitment to someone else.
What to worry about: Is there a need? Are you building for yourself?
Share a passion: Find people who believe. If you’ve got to convince them, they don’t have the vision of what you’re doing. Find people who are as passionate as you are.
Identifying demand: Marc’s company competes with Quicken (and lots of other online apps), so what problem exists that Quicken doesn’t meet? Marc noticed that Quicken wasn’t a high priority product from their public filings. This led him to believe that there might be unmet demand.
Solve a problem: Some successful companies can simple mitigate a problem, but most need to solve it.
Entrepreneurship is not about following rules. Each case is a case. So all of this advice is just that. Nevertheless, reading what other (more experienced) people are doing is worth the time and save everyone some simple mistakes.
Wii + Joost: Series on demand
As soon as the guys at Joost decide to make a Wii version I’ll finally be able to have a device which I can use to decide which TV (?!) series to watch and when to watch them. All on demand.
Plus, the Joost interface is perfect for the Wii Remote.
From Wikipedia
What is Joost ?
Joost (pronounced ‘juiced’) is an interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web
The Wii (pronounced as the pronoun we, IPA: [wiː]) is the fifth home video game console released by Nintendo.
A distinguishing feature of the console is its wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and can detect motion and rotation in three dimensions.
Monocle
New magazine Monocle has launched and is full of great content. I found the magazine yesterday (at the usual place) and decided to visit their website today.
The concept
Monocle is a monthly magazine that covers such subjects as global affairs, business, culture and design. Alongside, there’s a website covering the same areas through a variety of articles, videos, mini-documentaries and talk formats.
The areas
Affairs - A global mix of reportage, essays and interviews with the forces shaping geopolitics.
Business - Devoted to identifying opportunities and inspiring the reader.
Culture - With a tight group of opinionated columnists, reviewers and interviewers, it delivers the best in film, television, music, media and art.
Design - Bypassing hype, design is dedicated to unearthing emerging and established talent.
Edits - Bite-sized and thought provoking, Edits are vital life improvements curated in a fast-paced well-researched collection.
Interview with Lego CEO
On this first number of Monocle there’s an interview with Lego CEO where he talks about focus, new business models (like the Lego Factory) and open sourcing their creativity to their passionate users.
There was something he said that stayed with me: Lego is about Play. It’s a strong and simple message about what Lego is about. In the 30’s Lego founder Ole Kirk Christiansen insisted that Lego employees should embrace play in their work day. He believed that play contributed heavily to the creativity process needed to develop such innovative products.
At some point of the interview there’s a reference to a book by Dan Pink called A Whole new mind.
A book excerpt
The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind – computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.
A search on Google and a new link to follow takes me to an interesting new perspective on the world we live in.
got milk ?
Get the glass is a brilliant interactive campaign for the Got milk ? brand.
The campaign
aims to reposition milk as a precious commodity not to be taken for granted. In this campaign consumers get to see milk through the eyes of the ailing Adachi family desperate for milk and its healing powers.We want people to imagine what it would be like if milk really was that scarce and how that would change the way we think about it.
The campaign includes a virtual board game where the goal is to help a family (The Adachis) get a frosted glass of milk that is enclosed in a refrigerator chamber, heavily watched by security cameras, guards and state-of-the-art robots in a maximum security compound. All this avoiding being sent to Milkatraz.
The quality of the complex flash graphics and the rich experience make people feel that they are in the game itself.
Videos
The campaign also includes videos that can (only) be seen once you’re inside the board game. I searched for the videos online but could not find them elsewhere. Brand agencies should understand the power of video promotion and start making it easier for people to share their videos. The easier it is to share, the more people will see them and wider the video (and the brand) will be spread.
(via A Source of Inspiration)
“The Art of the Start” Video
Guy Kawasaki did one the best presentations on entrepreneurship I’ve ever seen.
If you have a startup, a project or want to start one do see this video.
reboot 9.0
reboot is happening again on the 31st May and 1st June in Copenhagen.
This year’s theme for reboot is “human?”.
A big word, but a word that saturates what’s happening and all ready on a deeper level has been transcending reboot the last couple of years.We’re connecting to each others as human beings once again. We’re building tools to empower humans - not institutions. We’re creating new iconic collaborative human manifestations. We’re finding ourselves as humans and our human voices. We’re humanizing our organizations and our socities. We’re reestablishing links to nature we’d long forgotten. We’re looking at the world together as humans - not as consumers or workers.
As last year, everyone is invited to take part in the creation of reboot 9.0. If you want to participate you can make suggestions for speakers, topics and conversations.
This is the 3rd time I’ll be in Copenhagen for (a) reboot. Last year I was in need of inspiration and reboot provided a lot of that and much more.
Goplan launched
Goplan is an online project management and collaboration tool developed by the good guys at Webreakstuff.
At the Goplan’s blog the team explained that there was a long period in testing, and a longer period of development in which they
paid attention to what the blogosphere was saying and to what testers left in our feedback system, and built a solution around the needs of the majority of people.
Taking your time to launch is a good thing, specially if your using that time to listen to the people that we’ll be using the application.
It’s great to see a company based in Coimbra, Portugal launching a web application that is going after a global market opportunity. Good luck!
SXSW Interactive 2007
SXSW conference took place last week. Lots of interesting conversations over there. Sean Ammirati wrote some posts at Read/WriteWeb covering some of the topics.
Very interesting stuff on the current Web and some good ideas on what and where we might be heading to.
- SXSW: World Domination via Collaboration
- SXSW: Scaling Your Community
- SXSW: Why Marketers Need To Work With People Media
- SXSW: Using RSS for Marketing
- SXSW: Web 2.0, Semantic Web & Scientific Publishing
- SXSW: Under 18 Blogs, Wikis & Social Networks
Adegga on Twitter
I’ve decided to put Adegga on Twitter and will be doing some Adegga updates there.
For now Twitter is just IM on steroids and I still can’t see good value in using it but I’ll give it a try. Despite that some other problems, adoption is growing and Twitter becoming ubiquitous among early adopters.
What ever happens in the future, micro blogging in Twitter is in fact a new form of communication and it is integrating the Web, IM and SMSs into people’s lives like no other application has been able to do (except competitor Jaiku).
Regarding the attention span Steve Rubel says that Twitter is pushing our attention to new limits. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. The Web, email and IM are distractive enough.
update: I’ve received some private messages regarding my view on Twitter and I would like to clarify it. I do think that Twitter is a very interesting new form of interaction. The huge growth that we’re seeing will help Twitter develop new features (through its users needs) and possibly become something that will be much more useful in the future.
