Reflections on startup life: Week 45

The rest of the holiday cruised by very nicely. I took one day “off” to work (love the iPhone and tethering for keeping me online wherever I go). Aside from that, plenty of theme parks and generally a good time.

Still, I was itching to get home. It’s great to be back in the office and at the PC with something more intellectual to do than psyching myself up for the next thrill ride with a fearless 10 year old.

We got back Saturday and on Sunday morning, I headed off early to Trampoline (http://trampolineday.com). It’s a fantastic un-conference where the content is directed / created by the attendees. I did a session on Internet Privacy called “Stalking Lara” where I demonstrated how much I could find out about Lara from her online presence. I had a lot of fun and it seemed well received.

From a start-up perspective, there were lots of reflections from my time off. Top of mind thought are:

1. Our new project still has a lot of potential, BUT is it a “hole” that Twitter might fill. Or is it a Killer App. I think it’s a Killer App, but then I’m an eternal optimist or I wouldn’t be in a startup at all!
2. Are we “crossing the chasm” with Tribalytic at the moment? If so, what are the activities we need to do differently.

There are new challenges this week — a quote to prepare for an interesting side project which we are keen to do (money in the bank now is a good thing at the moment). It’s ideal because it’s a) aligned to our skills and what we are about b) relatively short (couple of weeks) so we don’t get side tracked too much.

The big decision today is around the repeat of the AFL Grand Final — it’s an ideal chance to trial our new project. IF we decide to go for it, then we have a great opportunity to reach out and get it in front of a really strong local audience. The timing of the Grand Final was just a little tight, but with it being repeated a week later, there’s a great opportunity — thank goodness for the draw.

Finally, a thank you to everyone I caught up with at Trampoline and in particular to those of you who mentioned this blog. It’s always great to hear from people reading it. It prompted me to go back and look at the stats — perhaps strangely to you reading this, I still largely think of this as a relatively private conversation between Alex and I. Last weeks post had over 3,000 reads.

At this rate we might make more money embedding Ad Words into my blog about the startup than the startup itself! (kidding — I hope).

Highlights

• Playing with and thinking about the new project — shiny new ideas are attractive.
• Trampoline — shiny new ideas are attractive.

Lessons Learnt

• A reflection on this blog in a way. Keeping at something gets it out there. The same is true for Tribalytic. One impact of the holiday is a drop off in the sign up rate. We stopped pushing the Tribalytic blog and we’ve stopped getting organic sign ups. Might be back to blogging this week a bit.
• Holidays are good. I read with interest yesterday Dave McClure’s latest on Why NOT to do a startup. I fail already because I DO love my wife more than my startup, hence we had a holiday! That said, I’d challenge Dave (who’s way more experienced than me about start-ups) and say I learnt a long time ago (and Alex agrees with this) that anything worth doing is a marathon, not a sprint. Nothing wrong with recharging the batteries. I doubt there’s many several-years-in-the-making-overnight-successes out there who would begrudge anyone some days off once a year.

Goals this week

• TBA!