Quarter Life Crisis

If you’ve decided to go the unconventional route and work for equity in a startup as an employee, then here’s some of the questions you need to ask your prospective employers.

Guy Kawasaki’s 9 Questions

Genuine VC’s 7 Questions

On Startups 6 Questions

We’re at an age when we really have nothing to lose. According to PaulGraham.com, why not do a startup now? Well here my perspective on why not. Its hard for people our age to start a venture finance-able company unless we are the inventor of the product. Unless you have the technical skills that make you an invaluable part of the management team, there is really not too much room for you in a start up. If you are an enthusiastic, passionate evangelist for your cause, once you convince VCs that you have a potential business, they will just boot you, keep the technical expertise pieces in play and invite their own management team to take over. People who have done it and have a track record of success. Remember, VCs have to consider what’s in the best interest of their limited partners, and an entrepreneurial internship experience for an inexperienced newly grad wanna-be CEO is not the best interest of the LPs.

If you want to start a company, make sure you have the passion (sales skills) and the technical skills (according to Tech Coast Angel/UCSD Professor Michael Lutz) . These two attributes will make you a vital part of the management team.

See Penelope Trunk’s take on entrepreneurship. Do it when your ready, but keep your day job!

LA Times article about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who gather for “Founders Brunch,” a private invitation-only event in San Francisco.

 This is just remarkable.

“Cameron Johnson truly took that perspective to heart, parlaying one hit into the next. Back in 1994, when he was just 9, Johnson launched his first business out of his home in Virginia, making invitations for his parents’ holiday party. By the seasoned age of 11, Johnson had saved up several thousand dollars selling greeting cards. He called his company Cheers and Tears.”

Source: Forbes: How to Make a Million Before You Turn 20 

What were we doing when we were 9?

Cheers to all my colleagues at the von Liebig Center!

Kauffman Foundation Says von Liebig Center Fills Seed-Stage Funding Gap

Kansas City, MO, January 24, 2008 — An emerging approach to identifying, funding and commercializing university-based innovation is proving quite effective at seeding new companies, according to research conducted by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Max Planck Institute of Economics.

According to the Kauffman Foundation, “proof of concept centers” are an effective vehicle to help launch the commercialization of university innovation and to fill the seed-stage funding gap for new technologies.

(See full article here, Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD)

According to the report, a successful proof of concept center benefits from locating at universities that produce innovative and marketable technology, are located within a strong external network of investors and innovators and have an administrative team and advisors with a depth of commercialization expertise. A unified approach of providing seed funding, advisory services with industry connections and educational initiatives also is vital to ensure the commercialization of university technology.A copy of the paper can be downloaded at www.kauffman.org/poc. In addition, an analysis of the Kauffman Foundation report will be published in the June 2008 issue of The Journal of Technology Transfer.

About the Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City is a private, nonpartisan foundation that works with partners to advance entrepreneurship in America and improve the education of children and youth. The Kauffman Foundation was established in the mid-1960s by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman. Information about the Kauffman Foundation is available at www.kauffman.org.

About the Max Planck Institute of Economics

The Max Planck Institute of Economics conducts research on a broad set of problems relating to change in modern economies, including experimental economics and entrepreneurial studies. Located in Jena, Germany, the Institute is part of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Germany’s largest research organization. The Max Planck Society employs some 4,200 researchers in some 80 institutes in both the sciences and the humanities.

Source: Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD

Copy of the full paper: www.kauffman.org/poc.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

From TechCrunch

These guys are young. Some interesting concepts here, but would you pay $20 to buy a reservation for a table at a restaurant? I wouldn’t, but maybe its an NYC thing.

I have a free berth into the SDSU Business Plan Competition for winning a smaller competition last year with a technology taken from work.  There’s still some more work to be done to the business plan.  Anyone interested in joining me?  Please let me know for details.

Here’s a list of the top 25 applications that can help grow your business - may come in handy some day.

This one is something that will already come in handy:

“MyStickies.

Does your business involve online research, but keeping a pad of paper and a pen handy for notes seems arcane to you? Or maybe you’ve made the cost-effective choice to try to make your company paper free. Whatever your reason, MyStickies is one of a number of digital sticky note apps (among others are stikkit, jotcloud, sticky tag, and webnote) available to you to quickly record short notes. In addition to putting post-its on your desktop, MyStickies will also let you put digital stickies on a particular web page so that when you return to the page later on, you won’t need to spend time trying to remember where you were in your research.“

Source: http://www.avivadirectory.com/entrepreneur-apps/

I’ll probably start playing with the top 25 so I’ll be well rehearsed when the time for a startup does come around!

Top 10 reasons why online startups fail.