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Great post on team makeup of great startups

Pioneers Festival + Startup Weekend Iasi trip

I’m on day five of my road trip, and just settled down with a shower after:

* an 2 AM overnight bus from Vienna to Arad that was late by 2 hours * my bus mates trying to prop their feet on my thighs * a 13 hour drive to Iasi

I’ll post more stories via my Maptia page, but until then you can check out my route at my Lean Adventurist site

Owning my superpower

A few weeks ago I was contemplating wiping, if not just hiding, my military experience away from all public records. I was starting to travel more to various startup conferences across Europe, and afraid that my military experience would bring up a difficult past for certain countries. I wanted to be sensitive to these histories and cultures - not shove my past experiences down people’s throats.

I was public with my concerns - I consulted with Ivan, founder of Vet Cloud, who’s had experience in Eastern Europe and graciously inquired with a few of his friends, and asked a US Special Forces veteran at IBM SmartCamp who’s based out of Denmark. I expressed my concerns and sensitivities, and really opened up my fears - including to some strangers.

Those fears turned out to be baseless. More people came back to me saying that they’d rather me stand for something, than nothing at all.

Looking back and I see that these concerns aren’t infrequent. Being Asian, I wrestle with self-consciousness being in the public arena. “The nail that sticks up does get beaten down” is a real Asian cultural pillar, one that gets repeated every single time I meet with a family member from a more traditional cultural backing. And being Hong Kong born, I have fewer leniences than some of my second-generation immigrant friends.

But as an entrepreneur, I’ve realized I need to take these leaps of courage. I represent my family who’s proud of seeing the first Asian entrepreneur in a few generations. And most importantly, I represent military service members and veterans who are serving and have served, regardless of nationality.

I’ve learned this - get over myself. Own my past, my present, and my future. And own the things that make me different and unique - my superpower.

So I'm up early on a Sunday morning to judge BattleHack London, and have been so impressed by the quality of developers and most importantly, teams. The teamwork, camaraderie, and execution is second to none - and it gives me a lot of optimism knowing that London has such a strong community.

As I'm about to take the stage and judge, I just thought of the above Mentor Manifesto. I think it's important to keep the right perspectives in mind, and that is this: it's the entrepreneur/developer/hacker that is, in Theodore Roosevelt's words, the "man in the arena". And judges like us, like other supporting members of the startup ecosystem, need to keep that in mind always.

Brainstorming charity from the ground up

I've been giving to charities and working with charities for a long time. During my consulting days in DC I independently worked on fundraising projects for LiveStrong and Make A Wish, and fundraised for Room to Read during TechBikers and the Christina Noble Foundation and the John Smith Memorial Trust as an MBAdventurist. I've also given independently to charity.

But what I'm fascinated about is thinking about how a new charity model would look like.

The traditional charity model is this:

1) Person fundraises for an organization, which supports a cause

2) Organization receives money

3) Organization has the power to distribute money on projects as they please (unless the dollar amount is huge so said person can say what specifically they want to invest in)

4) Organization doesn't quite disclose the economics of the fundraising

What if the model was turned around, thus:

1) Person says what cause they want to support, and how much they're aiming to fundraise

2) Organizations bid for the money

3) Organization must distribute money in the way the person prescribed

4) Organization discloses exactly the economics of the fundraising

It just seems strange that in a day and age where people are more careful about where they spend their money and measuring the ROI that there are industries where there is little questioning of what the money actually achieves.

To pivot is the easy part

While on a panel tonight, an entrepreneur asked me when is the right time to pivot. I spent a bit of time on the answer since I wanted to make sure I gave sound advice (talk about pressure!), but I divided my response to two parts.

I. The decision to pivot is based on gut feel. Data is useful, but data can be erroneously interpreted based on context and bias. Furthermore, data is a great indicator of past patterns, but it's remarkably bad indicator of future success when you're creating an innovative product or service.

Rather, trust the gut. Trust that you know your customer, your use case, and the industry enough that a pivot is warranted. But this is the easy part.

2. The hard part is figuring out what to pivot to. This was a slightly more challenging part to answer. Each startup is different, and the options to where to pivot to is limitless.

The only thing filter I could summarize is to pivot towards something that is more aligned to the team's expertise, and to something that leverages learnings pre-pivot, whether it's a specific technology or industry.

This second part is something I'll need to spend more time with.

Don't force a situation - instead let it develop

I was in a few situations this past week where I saw others actively take control during the wrong time. This control/situation misfit is a regular occurrence with entrepreneurs, since in many ways we are programmed to hustle or act immediately, regardless of situation.

As a founder and entrepreneur, I too find it difficult at times to be passive. Like many high risk-takers, passivity connotes losing or giving up control; but it doesn't necessarily mean so.

"Letting the situation develop" is a quote I encountered while reading the seminal book Mission, Men, and Me; essentially, it means to actively wait and delay a decision until more information is available so that a better decision can be made.

Here's an example - I have an ex-colleague that once said that Texas Hold'Em poker is at the core an information game. What separates pros between amateurs is that pros are more willing to wait for the flop, turn, and river deals to gain information about each player's hands, even at the expense of paying for those deals.

So try this - next time you're rushed into making a decision, try letting the situation develop further and gain more information. At the end of day, life and business is very much about timing, so make sure you don't misjudge control/situation fit.

Seeding demand is important to create real demand

hadilaasi-blog

AVC on Revenue Models

I found myself researching revenue models this morning and one great resource has been Fred Wilson’s blog posts on the subject. They are spread out over several MBA Mondays, and I found them hard to track down initially. To save others the time, I’ve linked to them below:

Advertising

Commerce

Subscription

Peer to Peer

Transaction Processing

Licensing

Data

Mobile

Gaming

Final Hackpad

Great reads!

Competition is a good thing courtesy of @gamebiz

brentgrinna

We recently received approval for our first H-1B visa. It was a complex process that is challenging for any company, but particularly burdensome for resource constrained early-stage startups like ours. A quick Quora search shows many questions about the process, including “Can a startup...

Thoughts on the studio/agency model

Been looking at a few ideas in the studio/agency model space, especially since I've had a business idea thrown at me a few days ago.

There's a Betaworks, which I've long admired for it's build, buy, and invest philosophies. But based on this article and other information, it seems the capital for Betaworks largely comes from the investment vehicle, not the building company. So ostensibly, Betaworks = venture fund.

There's the traditional model, which is an agency method where developers/designers build things for clients. But there is a severe bias for client work to take precedence over building good stuff (ie. client work pays the bills), so at the end of the day client work may eventually take over the "build" agency.

And then there's a new model which I'm hearing, which is essentially a services for equity model, most notably by Techstars Associates + Hackstars company Avalanche. It's a compressed op cycle (2 weeks!), but I like it since I'm a fan of the Techstars compressed time schedule. The challenges of this model is deal flow - how to get a good source of leads, and the core team that are essentially working.

What's driving me is re-iterating quickly on the Build -> Succeed/Fail -> Learn loops and in life cycles that are short and time-bound. But from a business side there are only two models that seem to work - client work or venture investment.

By no means my final thoughts on agency models, but here's to a start.

hadilaasi-blog

Techstars is loosely divided into the following phases: mentor meetings, product building and demo-day/post-TS prep. The first month, we focus on mentor sessions where startups meet up-to 40 mentors a week. The premise is simple: expose founders to intense feedback sessions where they hear...

El Bulli utilizing lean startup principles

#HealthHacking - Intermittent Fasting

Just talked to a friend that recommended IF, or intermittent fasting, a technique restricting caloric intake for a certain periods of time in a day. This ranges from eating only within an 8 hour window or none at all, over a 24 hour period.

I've had a history of trying #healthhacks (I hesitate calling them diets because it's not a one-time change in eating, but a continued change) from my days with Cross Fit and the Paleo Diet. The simple premise of the Paleo Diet is the restriction of food consumption to the items available on the outside ring of a supermarket; essentially only fresh meats, fish, and vegetables. Proportions are: 1/3 meats and/or fish, 2/3 vegetables. The scientific explanation behind the Paleo Diet is the reduction of high GI, or glycemic index, foods, which leads to less frequent spikes in blood sugar levels.

I remember clearly how healthy I felt when on Paleo, and I truly thought it was due to the low GI and stabilization of blood sugar spikes.

IF seems to achieve the same thing and more. Reduction in caloric intake has been proven to extend lifespan, and by fasting the body consumes excessive fat storage.

I'll be trying this out for the next month, and perhaps even more. Looking forward to documenting my experience.

Mentor Whiplash - the debate

Counter-points from two great minds about a method utilized by accelerators to crowdsource advice

Brad Feld: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/07/the-positive-benefit-of-mentor-whiplash.html

Fred Wilson

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/07/mentorinvestor-whiplash.html

Don't blow off mentor shadowing

Having just finished mentor month for two Techstars programs, an opportunity that Hackstars/Associates don't necessarily appreciate is mentor shadowing. Essentially, during the first month of Techstars, Hackstars/Associates should FIGHT tooth and nail to shadow mentors. Here's why:

Learning how to think like a mentor

I spent three years learning Spanish in high school, but I could never get the knack of it. And then I spent a summer in Costa Rica on foreign exchange, and everything changed; I learned to think in Spanish. And that's when I realized the value of learning not what to think, but how to think.

Accordingly, shadowing mentors is an opportunity to learn how to think. Want to be an entrepreneur? - then shadow an operator and see what questions are asked. VC? - same thing. If you shadow enough of the same industry types, you'll learn to think like them as well.

Opportunity to demonstrate value

When you're shadowing, you get to spend virtually the entire day with a mentor. And instead of taking notes, you can add value by contributing to the conversation; help the mentor understand the team better if the conversation isn't nearly as polished as it could be. If you do this, the mentor gets more value out of their interactions, and allows you shine even more.

Taking good notes = training to think analytically

When I was a management consultant, everyone learned how to take notes towards the beginning of their career. And very quickly, everyone learned that taking good notes is a key skill; it's the ability to synthesize information quickly, and present it in a format that's easily understood by meeting attendees.

Pretty soon, that ability to take good notes extends to learning how to extrapolate good insights from any live conversation, on the fly. As a result, insights are more easily remembered and one learns how to add more value to any conversation on the spot. Nothing trains you better to do so than starting from the fundamentals of taking notes.

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