Tag Archives: time

Reflections on Startup life: Week 49

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For this weeks blog post there are three things on the top of my mind.

  • Being passionate.

  • The value of time.

  • Reframing

Being Passionate

I received sad news last week. A very close friend (we were best man at each others weddings) who was in his very early forties passed away suddenly in his sleep, leaving behind his wife and three kids.

Aside from all the obvious feelings of shock and sadness, his wife and I had a conversation that really made me think. It turns out that Chris and I spent a lot of time talking ABOUT each other, reminiscing, thinking of the days gone by at University and so forth, and yet we never talked TO each other.

Life happened and kind of got in the way.

You know, that's OK – we were passionately getting on with the things in front of us. Giving our time to our careers, our family, our new friends that live nearby. I know Chris was a much loved person in his community.

But I still get left with the nagging feeling that somewhere in there should have been a little bit of room to pick up the phone and give him a call and say “hi”. I regret now that I didn't – there's room to be passionate on many levels. I'm trying this week to pick up the phone and say hi to a few old friends and let them know I'm still thinking of them, even if life does have a habit of getting in the way.

The Value of Time

You're in a startup, you're your own boss and no one is telling you what to do. So you can take time off right?

It comes down to Time Vs. Money. Naturally we haven't got much on the dollar front (we wouldn't be a startup if we did), so all we have is Time. Time is more precious than ever before in a startup as it's most likely the only commodity you do have.

When you've got money you can make time (fly instead of drive), but when all you've got is time, you can't make any more of it.

As we progress, time gets more and more valuable not less because there is more and more we need to do to succeed, yet we can't “make it happen with money” yet.

Reframing

Alex and I have had an ongoing discussion about features for a new product idea. It turns out that we were asking the wrong question.

By re-framing the question we were able to see that it was actually the concerns about the underlying issue which were the problem, not what we really discussing.

Root cause analysis is really key here – there are a lots of great techniques (5 why's is a good one) that help uncover this type of problem. We should of tried that sooner. Sometimes you need to step back from the discussion and ask yourself if you can ask this question a different way. In my experience it works well, helps break the deadlock and usually lets you move forward.

Reflections on start-up life: Week 11

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It's always great to look back at the goal from last week and realise you achieved it (refine and rework business pitch ready for Sydney).  It's not so great when you realise that's the only thing you've done!

I was reflecting this morning that even now, as a two person, "pre-revenue" company (the fancy way of saying broke), we have enough work to employ at least another two people and keep them productive and busy.  One would be a full-time engineer to help Alex as he's started down the design path for the real engine – between that and a half a dozen other small programming jobs (tweak some features in Twendly to validate the business model, update the BinaryPlex website), they would stay very busy.

The second person while I'm dreaming would be a marketing / sales person.  They'd be busy researching the market, doing competitor analysis (look, progress – we have competitors now and we even know who they are!), helping out with pitch slides, and starting to utilize their extensive knowledge and contacts to find us some early sales.

As you might gather, there is still only the two of us and work for about four.  By Friday I began to feel that even if we hadn't "caught up", we at least had our heads above the water again.

This week is a significant one, we are taking our idea on the road to Sydney.  This has been a bit of an act of faith (but what isn't in start-up land); we picked a week, said we'd be in Sydney and started trying to get slots with different people to hear our idea.  So far the first three days are quite full now, Thursday and Friday we have some time if anyone wants to catch up and say hi.

The most significant lesson I think I'm continuing to learn and have reinforced is it's never too early.  If you're not sure your ready, go for it anyway and the feedback will get you to the next stage quicker than you otherwise would of.

Should be a lot of fun.

Highlights?
  • Our first long term commitment – we WILL still be here in April, we've booked tickets to Chirp the Twitter Developers conference.  Also our single biggest expense (beyond setting up the company) due to the travel and accommodation associated with it as well.
  • Great feedback on our pitches which helped us build a better pitch.
  • Actually spending a week on Business Development, not Product Development.
Lowlights?
  • My Nan passing away and the funeral.
  • Getting bored and fed up with countless revisions to slide decks.
Goal this week?

Make some great contacts in Sydney and really road test our idea with investors.