How to startup - Latest Comments

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: don’t pull the trigger too quickly

Chais meyer — Thu, 27 May 2010 14:02:42 -0000

I dig that you are willing to take the time to share your thoughts/ideas with the rest of us that are interested in business! Thank you, I know it is time consuming but very much appreciate it.

Re: Visionary or opportunist – find out who I am (and who you are)

Grant G. — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:47:13 -0000

Thanks, glad u liked this post.

Re: Visionary or opportunist – find out who I am (and who you are)

Jags — Sun, 23 May 2010 14:20:35 -0000

It was a very nice read........ :)
I appreciate you taking time and writing nice content.
Im a budding entrepreneur & an opportunist

Keep it On

Re: Daily things to do as entrepreneur (week 11): Dig deep, passion and solution will follow

Grant G. — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:21:23 -0000

Is it possible to describe this common denominator (their similar approach) in one sentence?

Re: Understand what triggers consumers, and I will give you a Free Idea

vrikhter — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:17:28 -0000

Or better yet focus on the part of the world that they know and understand. I've been meaning to finish my blog post about that...

Re: Daily things to do as entrepreneur (week 11): Dig deep, passion and solution will follow

Andrew Warner — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:29:10 -0000

I've interviewed over 200 entrepreneurs now and one of the things I've discovered is that their approach is similar.

Re: Understand what triggers consumers, and I will give you a Free Idea

Grant G. — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:29:48 -0000

that would be very nice of you! Thanks!

Re: Understand what triggers consumers, and I will give you a Free Idea

Andrew Warner — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:44:49 -0000

I'm going to email this post to Sally Hogshead.

Re: Understand what triggers consumers, and I will give you a Free Idea

Grant G. — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:27:13 -0000

Thanks for the comment, I am hearing you...I don't have the expertise to build something at this scale. The system has a few key components: 1. people search engines 2. media dispatch system (to people iphone, gtalk, etc)..etc.3. Voice/video interactive system 4. Payment mechanism. etc. Aardvark already solved the most difficult tasks 1 + 2. It can be a subscription model, consumer pays the system, which then pays for whoever consumer chooses to communicate. But in general, people tend to "show off" their knowledge and like to help, that is just human nature, Aardvark recognizes it. I understand your saying that more extensive answers/interactions may not be as acceptable as to aardvark's answer format...but u never know.

A giant system like I mentioned here is simply way beyond my reach. On the other note, I have figured out what project is more suitable to me and currently focusing on that. I think Individual entrepreneurs should quit the idea of "changing the world", instead, trying to do their part to make it a better place.

Re: Understand what triggers consumers, and I will give you a Free Idea

vrikhter — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:14:41 -0000

So why don't you build it yourself? Sounds good to me. One clear though: the guy standing there is paid by safeway, who is going to pay someone on the other end of your call? Sure, right now they can give answers that are typed up in less than 2 min most of the time on aardvark, peerpong, quora. If you get into a long discussion, is someone going to be incentivized to do that? I'm not saying yes or no, just posing the question.

Re: Daily things to do as entrepreneur (week 11): Dig deep, passion and solution will follow

Korf — Fri, 07 May 2010 01:51:00 -0000

Solid post - and good props to the work @mixergy is doing - the recent interviews with Chris Dixon, Peldi from balsamiq, and Paul Singh were all home runs... serious required listens for any entrepreneur.

That said, given that we are at a bit of an inflection point again with cloud computing, mobile, real time all converging and changing the landscape of almost every aspect of business, one wonders if we don't need to do a little more future thinking about disruption and how technology will shift the sands under current pillars and create opportunity for entrepreneurs? Your post seems a little focused on now - where serious thinking about coming opportunity presented by emerging technology tomorrow may land today's reader on tomorrows fattest wave.

Re: State of Fitness industry startup

Grant G. — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:30:52 -0000

this is actually a pretty cool information, people should like it more;)

Re: Daily things to do as entrepreneur (week 11): Dig deep, passion and solution will follow

Grant G. — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:29:55 -0000

it actually helps me a lot by writing it

Re: Daily things to do as entrepreneur (week 11): Dig deep, passion and solution will follow

Andrew Warner — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:25:39 -0000

I love following your progress!

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur (part 4): practice gut feeling on your ideas

Andrew Warner — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:25:42 -0000

Great post. I'm going to send it to Simon.

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur (part 4): practice gut feeling on your ideas

bookluver321 — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:45:28 -0000

The first step you mentioned was reading... There is a great book titled, "The Ultimate Boomer Business Launch Workbook" by Jeff William that offers great step-by-step tips on how to become a successful entrepreneur.

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur (part 3): searching for the melody, not the technique

Stan KrTil — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:02:55 -0000

Hi Grant,

Very insightful stuff you write here. BTW I enjoyed my visits to China very much. (All three of them) Hong Kong, Taiwan and Peking with its surroundings and the Great Wall.

I trust that you are happy where you are now working, however I would like to ask you for help if it fits your schedule.

We, with the team of scientists, are producing frequencies. www.FrequeZone.com and want to give away 100 thousand free CDs to people to experience the results.

Product is well tested and when listened to, brings the results. No exceptions.

Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Looking forward to hear from you at your earliest convenience I remain

Respectfully yours

Stan KrTil CEO
FrequeZone.com
Phone: (250) 770-8781

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: don’t pull the trigger too quickly

Grant G. — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:01:11 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: don’t pull the trigger too quickly

Andrew Warner — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:00:58 -0000

Great list. I tweeted it.

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: Occasionally working against intuition

2above — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:41:30 -0000

I will have to try the mobile google reader, I was thinking about reading the blogs on my iphone: now you just let me know. Thanks for that! I have not read either book yet, but I can't wait to get to them.

[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us '0 which is not a hashcash value.

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: Occasionally working against intuition

2above — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:38:55 -0000

I am glad it's helpful. It feels great for me to see people resonate with my experiences.

[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us '0 which is not a hashcash value.

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: Occasionally working against intuition

Spencer — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:57:30 -0000

Hi,

Awesome post! I can relate to a lot of what you are saying. Start With Why is one of the best business books I have ever read, really makes you realize why a lot of companies fail. I've even dropped iGoogle and just switched to core blogs on Google Reader (mobile is better). It is much more productive.

I haven't read Hackers and Painters yet, let me know how it is, it's on the next list to order.

Keep up the good work!

Re: Daily things to do as an entrepreneur: Occasionally working against intuition

lkinnard — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:36:47 -0000

I appreciate the practical info. I have encountered several of the above issues and will try to implement some of your solutions! I especially like no. 4. Thanks for the insight

Re: A failed entrepreneur

@PaulJoslin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:15:56 -0000

Yeah, the latter of the 2 is the initial approach I am aiming for at first. I know of companies who have started like this, kept a lot of their equity and earn very decent money from it. It also reduces the risk of being left homeless, with no money or job.

However, some could argue that taking the 2nd path, will almost guarentee you will fail. What I mean by this is that, the lack of time you will have available to work on the side start up (outside of your job) means that things will potentially move slowly, a unique idea you release may be copied for a competitor within weeks. Not to mention that it relies on you sacrificing your life completely, you work all day, then you go home and work all night... then you wake up tired the next day. Repeat. The disadvantage of this is that you're going to wear yourself out and perhaps end up making more cut throat decisions / having a nervous breakdown. I know running a start up is not an easy business, bootstrapped or not, but having to sacrifice time to keep fit or see friends, to run your start up in the evenings is a potential 'life fail' - I almost wonder whether this is why in your tale above, you seem so bitter about everything.

On the plus side, working as a bootstrapped company you don't rely on the income, so even if you only make a small amount of money, it's an extra piece of income ontop of your normal salary and you can potentially offset any 'business costs' against your overall wage to reduce risk and costs.

The only problem is, that at some point (in theory) your start up will grow to a certain size, where it needs better servers, more staff and your full time. This is where finding a partner and getting funding from the start is helpful.

Potentially bootstrapping could kill a really good idea which grows fast overnight. By the time you decide you need to expand and get funding, the competition has tasted the idea and executed it better (bigger servers / more staff etc).

This is why, as stated above - I have a list of ideas, some so easy to implement I could get them online within a day and some more complex that'll take a long time to get going. My plan is to start bootstrapping the easy and simple ideas, allowing them to gain traction - this may be enough to earn me a nice side income, this may get aquired for a small amount allowing me to fund future projects... however, the biggest thing this should do is give me a launch pad to go from and prove I'm able to execute an idea successfully - which should help when it comes to funding.

Then once this is all complete, my aim is to perhaps take some of the bigger ideas, find a partner and then go for funding (around March 2011), preferably Y Combinator (as I think the mentoring / networking is worth more than the money it gives), hopefully aim for around $100,000 funding to gain a start up visa and then see what happens.

Out of interest, from your experience, what sort of hosting have you used in the past for your ideas? Is a modern day VPS from a hosting company enough? is it worth buying your own servers and going for co-location in a data centre or is a stack of dedicated servers required to have a proper stab.

Apart from my own time, hosting is currently one of the greatest costs that stand in the way of getting to where I want to be.

[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us '0 which is not a hashcash value.

Re: A failed entrepreneur

2above — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:10:00 -0000

In general, I think there are two ways people choose entrepreneurship: option 1 is most reported - find a partner to work on things you are excited about, workout a prototype, then get funding to do it full time: I find this option is seen more among people with consistent, simple career path. Option 2 is less reported by mainstream media or bloggers, but it's more common about entrepreneurs: you are excited about certain ideas and bootstrap it on your own without quitting your day job. If it proves working and demands more time, you will slowly phase out your day job and focus on this passion of yours. Sometime, or most of the time, I think your deep-hidden passion can be awaken from reactions you receive from other people: maybe you were not exactly sure about what you were doing, but the positive reaction will encourage you, and that alone can make you become more passionate about what you do.