Sunday, July 29, 2007

Know when to quit...

I found this interesting link to LifeHacker in my inbox:

Is it time to give up that great idea?

The readers' comments were very interesting. There were those who emphasized on the execution, others who focused on timing, and then others who zeroed in on the idea itself. Wonder how many of the comment authors are entrepreneurs themselves, and whether they're successful or not?

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Time flies...

It's been a memorable couple of weeks. My biggest competitor got sued for key patent infringement. Six voice mails later, I'm yet to receive a call in return from Bill Andronico. A major grocery chain is very interested in DidaTech, but the wheels inside big companies turn incredibly slowly. Having worked for one such big company in my past life, it's deja vu. The slow pace of things means two more start-ups germinated inside my head, but one died quickly after doing market research. The second one is cooking and developing, and I'm in the process of doing detailed market research, this idea having survived the initial cursory examination. People I've bounced the idea off of love it and the potential is exciting.. stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Grocery stores with fans

Who would have thought a grocery store would have a fan following, leave alone a dedicated website? I recently stumbled across these sites:

http://www.traderjoesfan.com/
http://www.trackingtraderjoes.com/
http://ihearttjs.blogspot.com/

Wonder if Trader Joe's management tracks these sites? If I were them, I would probably link to them from the home page. What a great way to get free publicity!

As my mentor put it, if you don't give people a place to talk about your product and your company on your site, they will go elsewhere to talk about it. Trader Joe's should take an hint.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Chris Shipley at the SVPMA meeting at Santa Clara on July 11, 2007

I attended a SVPMA meeting yesterday where Chris Shipley was hosting a panel discussion titled "Ready, Set, Launch: Taking the product to market". She is a great speaker, very witty, insightful and thoughtful. A couple of take aways from the meeting:

- If the product launch is a bright shining event analogous to a comet, never make the mistake of ignoring the tail! Have plans in place to deal with the interest that will ensue, and convert interest into customers.

- Better to overestimate the interest and make plans accordingly, unless hardware is involved and building up inventory is a concern.

- Do not make the mistake of lining up launch with funding. Launch has a causal effect in that a product launch at an event such as DEMO might raise VC interest, but funding and launching are independent events basically.

Guy Kawasaki live on Ustream.tv

I watched Guy's interview on Ustream. Interesting concept "Viral interviewing". As the interviewer explained it, the first person who is interviewed (Guy) will be asked to open his black books to suggest who should be interviewed next, thus creating a chain of live interviews.

Guy doesn't own an iPhone because 1. AT&T's network is bad (Gotta agree!) 2. Doesn't know he can get by without a physical keyboard (Laser keyboard docking accessory for the iPhone anyone?) 3. Any phone of his needs to support an Exchange server.. interesting reasons, from an Apple Evangelizer.

The interview moved on to Guy's sandals next. Turns out they're a high tech. pair. It's made of some special material "reef-er"(?) and has a "dram" - you can open it and fill it with any liquid! www.m-w.com has this definition of dram: "a small portion of something to drink".

The funniest Guy Kawasaki story - Guy has a VW Cabriolet and was at a light when a car with 4 teenage girls pulled up next to him. They were laughing and giggling and signed for him to roll down the window. Fully expecting adulation, he rolled down his windows only to be asked if he's Jackie Chan... Guy dreams of the day when Jackie Chan will roll down his windows in Hong Kong only to be asked if he's Guy..

Funny guy Guy...

TieCon 2007

I had originally posted this in another blog of mine earlier. The learnings are so relevant that I couldn't resist cross posting.

I am at the Tiecon 2007 conference, attending the "Entrepreneur's path to success" panel. Panelists are all tremendously accomplished people with a wealth of experience between them. Some gems from the panel:

- Successful companies are born of great people. (Sumant Mandal, MD, Clearstone Venture Partners)

- Surround yourself with people smarter than you (Talat Hasan, ICC, ex-CEO Sensys)

- A successful entrepreneur must have passion, an ability to take risks, and be realistic about it (Jai Rawat)

- Let the idea take over your life,

- Dispassionately look at the results you're achieving,

- The average entrepreneur succeeds after 2.2 ideas (Dean Drako, Co-founder and CEO Barracuda Networks)

- The business, People, Culture, Focus and Execution, iterate on the above.

- Ability to identify a big enough market, have a relentless need to make it happen defines a successful entrepreneur (T.M. Ravi, Mimosa Systems)

- Identify your own skills and assemble a team that balances your skills.

- An entrepreneur is constantly selling - whether to VCs, customers, employees, or partners

- Talat Hasan on work-life balance: Identify the top 3 things that are most important to you, and drop everything else. Focus on priorities and make sure it's covered.

Mistakes the panelists made with their start-ups:

- Obsessing over competition and as a result, making the same mistakes as the competitors

- Not making a plan and holding yourself accountable to it

- Being too cautious and afraid of failure

- Failure to maintain documentation and poor record keeping

One "Do" and one "Don't" for entrepreneurs who just started their business:

- Do follow your instincts
- Don't assemble the wrong teanm

- Do focus, believe in your vision and put everything behind it
- Don't give yourself an alternative strategy or a back-up plan

- Do find a customer before building a product
- Don't be a solution looking for a problem

- Develop the right culture within the company
- Don't spend all your time trying to raise capital

- Do monitor progress
- Don't be afraid of failure

- Once again, do focus, and validate that focus!
- Don't ever losing your integrity.