Blog of an Unstoppable Entrepreneur, StartUp and Unexpected Marketing enthusiast. Writing about all things business, tech and creativity related. Recent Posts: Your browser does not support JavaScript. Click to read the latest news.
What Are The Magical Ingredients Of Your Successful Startup?
This was the question posed to me recently on Quora (Answer here). Of course the first instinct is to list the obvious: team, vision, product, network, etc. None of which happen to be "magical". So it would seem there is no magic, well with a possible exception of one very special ingredient - You.
To which you might say "duh". But this "you" is not just any kind of "you", it would not be magical then. What this "you" needs is an additional trait, something most do not have, unfortunately.
This attribute is a strong, unstoppable, uncontrollable desire to succeed. This desire needs to be so strong that it would engulf you and drive your whole life toward this single goal. This is true not only for start-ups but for anything really.
Take sports for instance, are the best athletes the most talented? Sure, some are, but the vast majority also have the biggest desire to win that you can imagine. Most, probably all, have also met the mystical rule of "10,000 hours" as mentioned in the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. The rule basically states that to be successful in anything, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours doing it.
For instance, as a hobby, I am also a professional pool/billiards instructor and I see time and time again that talent, or any other factor, has very little to do with success. Sure it gives a little edge, but in the end it all comes down to desire.
Some people play the game in a wheelchair and are far better than 99.9% of all players out there. Why? They spent thousands of hours practicing, honing their skill, finding strengths in their weaknesses, modifying tools to help them succeed, etc. They filled their minimum 10 000 hours several times over.
With start-ups it is exactly the same. You might not even have an idea, know any code or be particularly good at entrepreneurship. If you have the desire you will have your mind searching for ideas, you will spend every little bit of free time learning how to code/how to do business and be entrepreneurial. Most likely the path will also force you to take steps towards meeting new people and finding where investors, developers and entrepreneurs hang out. Whatever needs to be done, will be done. That is of course if your desire is truly unstoppable.
It is not about kinda-wanting to be successful and kinda-liking your start-up. It is about being the magic ingredient of your own success. So in short, the formula to success (Or rather, maximum probability of success) is:
Startup Success = You + Unstoppable Desire.
Once you have that, you will do what it takes to find and gather the other essential (not magic) ingredients around you.
As a cliff note, check out the video below. Normally I do not like motivational speakers much, but this video seems to be a good fit:
The other day we were talking with Tina Aspiala, creator of eat.fi, about the state of the world start-up ecosystem. One thing that we discussed was the fact that increasingly, start-ups are “solving a problem” of doing something in a cool and new way as opposed to real world changing problems.
Now before I go on, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy and even use products from start-ups such as Instagram, which I still classify as as useless. They are simply not solving any major world problems and are not adding gigantic value to the community. That being siad - it is not their fault.
There can be a lot of reasons attributed to the blow up of “useless” start-ups, but one that I would like to discuss in particular is what I call “problem inaccessibility”.
Entrepreneurship has become somewhat of a trend among young people who are in or just out of university. Now these guys and gals are very smart and creative individuals, they are problem solvers. Lock a bunch of them in a room, give them a problem and they will probably come up with a dozen start-up ideas around it by the time you are done with your coffee.
What they need is a good source of real problems. Currently the origin for most ideas comes from your own problems and experiences, whether at home or at work. Thirty years ago people usually had a ton of experience in a certain field before they created what can now be considered a “start-up”, this ensured that the problems that were being solved were very real. Our generation lacks experience in real tangible industries such as engineering, medicine, space exploration (had to be included) because they jump into entrepreneurship without first spending a dozen years in an industry where they would get a chance to see, feel and solve real problems.
They want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, so instead they solve the “problems” that surround them and their peers. Such as which new game to play, how to make more friends on Facebook or how to make your sucky pictures look as if they were taken by Ansel Adams himself, etc.
So, I would argue that we simply need to make real world problems more accessible to entrepreneurs. Perhaps this could be addressed by creating a problem sourcing solution that would allow industry professionals to communicate with entrepreneurs and start-up enthusiasts.
Another approach would be to create a “consultancy” approach of going out there and visiting industries and talking to professionals about their day-to-day problems. The problem is making a solution that would be widespread enough to make a difference. Perhaps a network of accelerators that would first define problems and then look for start-ups that would be willing to solve them?
All is not lost however, there are still very cool companies out there that are trying to solve very real problems. I recently spoke to a guy in Helsinki who is building a space satellite start-up. That’s right, they want to decrease the cost of sending a satellite into space twentyfold. At the same time they want to send satellites that will scan the earth’s surfice to solve very real world problems. Much better than another photo filter app, right?
An interview that I did with Phil Libin from Evernote during Arctic15. We discussed recruitment, the Scandinavian/Baltic region in terms of entrepreneurship as well as Cybernetics, Evernote Business and gaming.
For the longest time, I have been toying with the idea that the current management and political systems are grossly outdated. Seriously, in the past 50 or so years everything has changed, but the way we manage and structure companies is virtually the same across the board. Organizational structures were always used in order to fight the problem of inability to quickly gather, distribute and act upon information. There was simply no other way to do this efficiently without introducing some sort of bureaucratic and hierarchic systems. Until now, that is.
Finally, we have the tools (internet) and skills (people) that can be used to remove whole layers of management and make organizations much more efficient as a result. This is thanks to the idea partially discussed in a book by James Surowiecki - “The Wisdom of Crowds” where the argument is that a crowd can often make more intelligent decisions than the brightest individual. The problem is - we are not really using the technology to experiment with this true form of crowdsourcing. At least not in the corporate context.
There are some companies, however, that are starting to move in this direction. Prime example - Valve Corporation, where desks have wheels so that you can easily move between projects and teams. Projects are organized virtually by no other means than simple collaboration. There is no hierarchy to speak of and nobody has a title. What could possibly come out of this? Well, one of the best gaming titles in history (twice) and a total equity of about 2.5 billion dollars.
I argue that one could take this a step further. What if you let every single company decision be completely guided by your employees? After all, if you are doing it right, you are hiring the best people available and they are all smarter than you are. What if you develop a software based solution that would allow you to ask each employee to vote on specific decisions and actions of the company? Centralized and shared collaborative tool for information sharing and decision making. Startups are often doing that while they have less than 10 employees, but once they scale up, the general thinking is that there is no other way to efficiently manage a company without introducing the all too common hierarchy and business practices. I beg to differ. Do you?
Garage48 is a hackathon aimed at getting an idea into a prototype in 48 hours. I was there as a mentor and sponsor on behalf of ArcticStartup. It was an amazing experience and it was great to see so many talented people under one roof.
Startling startup idea up for grabs and reasons to give yours away.
The startling part is why on earth would anyone want to give away a business idea? Aren’t you supposed to cherish them, work on them and eventually sell them in order to get rich and famous?
Yes, but that route is the one less travelled by. Most ideas find their homes in the minds of very clever people (And some in not so clever minds) and they settle there for good. Which does nothing good for anyone and I would argue that in certain cases, you should give your ideas away (As I am about to do). The reason being is that many entrepreneurs/ developers/people have some ideas that they are simply not going to follow through with. To that end, I have come up with a series of questions to help you decide if you should give your idea away:
So you have an amazing idea at the back of your head. Did you do anything about it in the past 12 months? (Anything at all, even thinking about it counts)
Do you have a serious excuse for not having worked on it? (There are very few acceptable ones, for example you just lost all of your income, declared personal bankruptcy and your wife/husband filed for a divorce and is suing you for all of your possessions. Actually, come to think of it, this might be the best time to start.)
Are you going to do anything about it in the next 2 weeks after reading this blog?
Are you willing to dedicate the next few years of your life to get your idea off the ground? (Some ideas require a lifetime investment, though)
Are you prepared to make sacrifices in order to get this project off the ground? (Time, Money, Friendships, Relationships)
Would you be happy if somebody else executed your idea for you and you got to live in a better world because of it?
If you simply can’t start this idea because you are already in a start-up or another venture, have you planned a specific date/year when you are going to start working on this idea?
Is your idea worth quitting your primary job (primary source of income) for?
If the answer to at least two of these questions is “NO”, then seriously consider giving it away. Tell it to entrepreneurs, developers, post it on blogs, forums, tell your friends or on websites such as 7billionideas.com. If somebody “steals” it and finds success with it, great! Your actions created value, which would otherwise be forever lost. Besides, you might just find the motivation and the needed partners through this practice.
Idea giveaway:
I answered “NO” to way more than two questions in regards to this idea, so please feel free to use it and if you need any help with it, let me know.
The Problem: Sometimes people need to kill 10-60 minutes of their time and they are simply bored and would like to watch a video. Some watch episodes, others movies and some TED talks. However, I don’t want to spend 60 minutes searching for content, I want to press play, watch the video and move on.
The Solution: Provide a service similar to Stumbleupon.com, where you would select the amount of time you need to kill and also your interests (Educational, Humor, Stand-Up, Tech, News, etc.). The system would automatically line up a choice of say 5-10 videos of the required length and topic for you to enjoy.
If you are going to do it, which I actually doubt, then feel free to let me know and give me a minority stake in the company ;)
Are you going to give your ideas away? Why or why not?
This blog post is in part inspired by a question on Quora that I replied to recently.
For a lot of startups $5000 seems like a drop in a bucket that will not be enough to get anything done. Some believe that it is only enough to get a user interface design or a part-time developer or a product video, but according to my experience you can get all of the above and much more for much less.
Sure, the London Olympics Committee spent $400,000 on their logo that is almost universally hated. That, however, does not justify spending even $4000 on one.
Back in the day when information was still scarce, freelancing was a thing of the future and competition was low in every area of business – things used to cost a lot. Most start-ups need the basics: website, logo, product video, minimum viable product (MVP), copywriting, legal advice, etc. In one of my projects I outsourced part of the software solution from Pakistan, a logo design from Estonia, a product video from Russia and crowdsourced copywriting from the US of A for a lot less than $2000.
The main point here is that you do not have to turn to your closest media agency or a development house for a quote on your next big project. With a little bit of creativity, five thousand dollars might just be enough to not only push out a viable product but to effectively start a fully functioning company.
Heck, when I attended Garage48 (Hackathon, where you get a weekend to code and present your MVP), people got their first international paying customers after 24 hours with zero investments. It cannot be done! I hear you scream. Well, here are some tips on how exactly you may want go about it:
Use Elance.com, Freelance.com, oDesk, Guru and other crowdsourcing services to get coders, designers, advisors and lawyers.
Find freelancers in Eastern Europe to cut on design costs. A logo can cost you as low as $30, and I mean a good one. One that is likely to last until your Series B, C funding rounds (if you are going to need that, that is).
Get a presentation video from freelancers or services such as wyzowl.com, starting at $475 for a professional looking video.
Do marketing research and usability tests on fivesecondtest.com, which can be done for free if you do some tests for other people. You can also use oneclicktest.com to get an idea of how good your logo, slogan or a marketing message is.
Another free marketing research tool: heycrowd.com You can ask the crowd anything, just don’t make it sound too business like, or you will have to pay.
Use TextMaster.com for proofreading and copywriting. As low as $28 for 1 000 words worth of copywriting, which should be more than enough to get you started.
To promote your business and to try out how advertising works for you (Estimate CPA, CPC’s etc) try to get as many Google, Bing, LinkedIn coupons as you can. For example, Google will give you one for registering for Webmaster Tools and also if you call them directly and ask for one. In some countries Google also sends them by e-mail to selected bunch of people, ask your friends around for one. Also, very often when you register your domain, the registrar will provide you a free coupon for Adwords.
There is also a list of free tools that can be handy for your start-up: http://startupsteven.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/startup-tools/
Although there are a lot more ways to stretch the money to the limit, the general idea is: Think before you buy and optimize anywhere and everywhere you can. In fact, I could argue that $5000 can be too much in certain cases, as starting with nothing at all will really help you appreciate what business and entrepreneurship is all about.
If you have more ideas, please feel free to list them in the comments.
Very often businesses, especially start-ups focus entirely on the knowledge of their specific industries and practices in order to form strategies for success. Reading blogs from experts in the industry, books from “gurus” and case studies of successful businesses (By the way, I would recommend reading those of the failed ones instead).
However, the truth is that there are many alternative places where one can garner insight into what it is like to survive in the business word. These resources can be thousands of year’s old, rich in experience and shaped by centuries of trial and error. One such resource is Martial Arts, specifically the style of Wing Tsun.
In it, there are four core principles that are so close to what startups should be focusing on, that I could not resist making the analogy.
The principles are:
1. If the path is free – strike.
2. Stick to your opponent.
3. Yield to greater force / Move around, give way.
4. Don’t stop until the end / Follow through.
If the path is free – Strike:
Too often entrepreneurs that have a creative idea keep it in their cupboards in search of “better times”. In fact all they are waiting for is for someone else to bring their idea to life – first. It happened to me a few times, and I do not want to do the same mistake. If you have a creative idea that is just sitting there – do something about it or give it away. Send it to me for instance. (I bet you thought that you should do something about the idea right about now, well, do it.)
Stick to your opponent:
The opponent in this case is the industry and the competitors. You need to live and breathe the industry. You need to be aware of every new development, every new move and every new competitor, business or client. You are also your own worst enemy. While working with one particular start-up, I noticed that the CEO knew less about the company he was running than anyone in the team that is definitely not the way to go. Information is paramount to your success.
Yield to greater force / Move around, give way.
Have you seen a company trying to do the same thing over and over again without success? Hitting a brick wall every single time?
Well, you should not do that. If there is a force in front of your path that is preventing you from moving forward, pivot. Change directions, let it go past you or move around it. Change directions, brands, landing pages, company name if you have to. Just do not keep on beating around the bush.
Don’t stop until the end / Follow through.
One very good friend and a former boss of mine once told me: “If you do something for at least two years, you will find success.” Although the exact period of time may vary but too often, too many of us, give up way too early. Never despair. Keep on trying to do what you believe in and it might just turn your way as it did for Evernote.
If you had to come up with four principles of your own, what would they be? Do you agree with these principles? If you have more examples, please let me know in the comments.
