Hello friends,
We have a new episode of “Startup or Shut up!” available for viewing. Take a look at this week’s holiday episode and let me know what you think. I welcome all your feedback and comments. Richie.
I was talking to a very good friend of mine a few weeks back about some books that I’ve read that I felt were very helpful to me. Let’s call this friend Steve W.—- wait, that’s too obvious, how about S. Weiss? Perfect. That’ll do. Anyway, so he told me that self help books are a waste of time. They’re written by people that haven’t amounted to much. Instead, he turned me onto the idea of reading autobiographies of people in history that I admire. I think it’s a brilliant idea because I’ve read a few autobiographies and I love the lessons learned from them. So here’s two biographies I recommend:
Lately it seems that many people I know are looking for help in various aspects of their life. Whether it’s a business venture they’re starting, personal advice, or just looking to connect with the right people to get whatever they need done. I’m trying to do the best I can to help these people or at least get them in touch with the right people that CAN help. This has been a very rewarding process as it helps me strengthen existing relationships and foster new ones.
I got to thinking that as an entrepreneur, we really can move forward FASTER if we work together. If someone asks you for a favor, maybe you should do it without any thought of what you’ll get out of it. A stranger looking for some mentoring can turn into a friend that you go whitewater rafting with pretty quickly (that’s a personal shout out to a friend, by the way). Take a chance. Never close the door. If someone asks, you answer.
So let me ask you BootStrappers out there… is there anything that I can do for you?
Hey everyone, a buddy of mine is producing an awesome event that will be keynoted by Al Gore. Yes, THE Al Gore.
Here’s details. I hope to see you there!
The best and brightest innovators and innovations of the education world will soon gather at the Phoenix Convention Center. Hosted by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based EDU Research Group (http://www.edurg.com), EduRG Conference 2010 will be held February 27-28, 2010, providing a venue for students, teachers, businesses and technology to work together for the betterment of higher education. Featuring a keynote address by former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, as well as speakers and workshops covering all aspects of education and hundreds of exhibitors displaying the latest in education-based products and technology, the Conference is guaranteed to have something for anyone seeking to further their education, improve their teaching methods, or showcase their school or business.
Students are encouraged to attend the Conference, free of charge, to meet representatives from participating colleges and universities. In turn, academic institutions will have the opportunity to recruit prospective students, while meeting the top Education product and service providers in the country. Businesses are offered brand exposure, partnership opportunities and access to high-level Education executives from around the globe. For more information on becoming an exhibitor, visit http://www.edurg.com/events/ai/exhibitor.asp. Sponsors for EduRG Conference 2010 include NanoProfessor, the Career Education Corporation, YourDegree.com, Geary Interactive, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Business Marketing Association and the Arizona Technology Council, Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Arizona Department of Commerce. Academic Partners include the University of Phoenix, Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, Colorado Technical University, and Pearson eCollege. For sponsorship and partnership opportunities, email info@edurg.com, or visit www.edurg.com.
On this great winter day, the final day of the year, I would like to invite you, my loyal reader and friend to check out a book by another friend of mine that is coming out today - Pull - About the power of the semantic web and how the world is changing and data is becoming its primary positive driver. I highly recommend the book to you and hope to hear you like it!
Happy New Years!
Richie
I’m still following the health care debate, with a special focus on how it will impact our community’s ability to bootstrap ideas into small businesses.
The New York Times blog offers a great recap of how the pending health care legislation affects small businesses. The legislation provides a mandate for small businesses to provide health insurance, but the fines for not complying end up being far cheaper than providing insurance. It also creates a small business health insurance exchange that may or may not (I bet not) rein in costs.
This makes it cost-effective for small businesses to drop health insurance coverage for their employees. The incentive to provide health care comes not from the government, but from companies who have built a successful business model and are looking to recruit top talent.
But I’m more interested in the bootstrap stage… what happens to the people who want to grow ideas into small businesses. I’ve argued that health care woes, at the margin, limit the field of entrepreneurs who can take the plunge into bootstrapping world. I’d hoped legislation would ease this burden by providing access to affordable insurance. Instead, it raises the hurdle by mandating entrepreneurs purchase coverage, swelling the cost of living for self-starters. In the future, expect the bootstrapping community will skew towards the already-wealthy and away from innovative youngsters the middle class.
At the 9.14 KM view, the bootstrapping community today jump starts the economy of tomorrow. This legislation undeniably burdens American innovation and punishes our enterprising community. The already difficult path to bootstrapping a business just got tougher to traverse. Shame on our leaders.
The plus side is that daredevils will keep playing with fire. No matter how outsized the risk, there’ll always be exceptional risk takers who rise to the challenge. And our community is talented at spinning struggle into opportunity.
Case in point, I’m already exploring starting a health care/venture capital company, one that simply provides discounted health care in exchange for equity in promising ideas. If you have experience in the health care industry, I would love to talk with you about this!
Happy holidays and best wishes to all our readers in the new year.
It’s not embedding for some reason, but check out this hilarious video of HP’s “epic fail” attempt to include facial tracking software.
In terms of business lessons, it should be easy let you draw your own Aesop from this one…
Hat Tip to BusinessPundit
Hello friends, my show “Startup or Shut Up!” was taped today and ready for viewing!
“Startup or Shut Up!” is a half-hour weekly internet TV Show. It consists of tech & startup news, two interviews (one CEO interview and one VC or Legal Industry interview) and a call-in segment. Here is a link to our past episodes: CLICK HERE
Please email me at rich@bootstrapper.com to let me know your feedback or leave a comment below.
This is awesome, Happy Hannukah!
I was going back and forth with a friend of mine over email and I’d like to public acknowledge him because I felt special by this email.
It came from a blackberry and was a personal note saying: “Sorry, I’m a party right now and can’t properly respond to this note as I would like to”
Now, this was uncalled for, he was at a party and could have just responded in the morning, instead he sent me that note and I went ‘wow, that’s really nice’.
So a major shout-out to my buddy Jeff Pulver for being so dam courteous.
So I recently made an introduction between 2 colleagues and one of them sent an email to the other person saying thanks for the connection and moved me to BCC so I don’t get stuck on the email chain. Now, I’ve never seen anyone do this before despite being party to thousands of introductions and you know what, it’s brilliant. BCC the introducer and save the extra email chains!
For any of you who are in NYC, stop whatever you are doing and go directly to time square. There you will find a new American Eagle store with a gigantic video billboard of a young girl in suggestive poses with this amazing very long hypnotic video billboard with swirly patterns on it and nothing else. I was across the street at the time and the giant swirly stuff led me across the street and the video billboard got me stuck there. It’s perhaps the best outdoor ad I ever saw. Simply amazing. Go see it.
I’ve got a friend, let’s call him Bob. Bob is a successful entrepreneur with a recent exit of a company he owned 100% of under his belt. Bob is also an engineer. Bob doesn’t properly value relationships. He values building shit. Now building shit is very valuable but after the product is live, relationships (distribution) is worth many times product. Why? You can always hire a firm to build a product. It’s really friggin hard to line up marketing partners that can put serious firepower behind something without having to spend any money. Really really hard. Ask most startups how many large distribution partners they have. Most will say Zero. Bob calls me all the time asking for advice and what I would do, I tell him, line up distribution and you have users and likely acquirers and you can create excitement as well.
My policy these days is to only build companies where we line up distribution (large biz dev deals) in advance so we know we can get the product out and essentially eliminate marketing risk and expense. Yes, this is very hard but it’s far more productive to spend time in advance lining up partners than raising money. If you have the right distribution raising money will become easy as will recruiting management. Start with distribution and the rest will fall into place.
The media industry is really the communication industry, yet it doesn’t communicate well within itself. In fact, there is no cohesive ecosystem supporting it, you would think there is, but there isn’t.
There seems to be a huge disconnect between entrepreneurs (startups), venture investors and media companies (acquirers). The startups are uncomfortable talking to investors and investors rarely talk to corp dev (except when they hire a banker) yet if all 3 parties were on the same page from day 1, better companies would be built and funded with greater likelihood of exits.
I announce a call for collaboration between the builders, the financiers and the buyers.
So people don’t know how to handle honesty. I should re-state, people can’t handle compliments well. On occasion I meet people I really like and I would say something like “you’re now on my friends list and welcome in my life forever” and I would mean it. Almost every time I’ve said that, I’ve scared the person away. In business, I would say “I really am looking forward to working with you” and it gets dismissed.
I’m not sure the lesson here but its good to keep in mind to control your compliments and avoid making direct compliments, even if you mean them unless you already have an established relationship.
