Let the right motivations drive you

I had a meeting today with another startup founder. We also met last week the day after Wikia launched Evolution; which came very close to what I’ve been working on in these last few months (see this post). I discussed a partnership and how our startups would complement each other. What it came down to is that we would open up our databases to one another and share our technology. I was thinking about doing this with a series of partners. Create a network where if one startup was successful it would lift the others along. The days I thought about it, it seemed like a great idea.

In our conversation he said that it looked like now Wikia Evolution has launched I was going for a defensive strategy. Straight away I thought “Let me listen carefully, because I have the feeling he’s right.” The more I started thinking about it, the more I realized that my “great idea” had the wrong motives.  There was a valuable lesson I needed to learn from this: Looking at a strategy objectively it might be the best one but to truly judge it, you have to look at your underlying motives.

If you’re the one creating your startups strategy it’s important to let the right motivations drive you not the wrong ones. Plus! Never stop asking for feedback.

So what’s next?

A full blown offensive strategy that I will write about soon.

A short startup update:

It looks like the Firefox extension we’re developing gets new bugs with each feature we add. However we’re working hard to get rid of all of them so I can present the whole idea plus a private alpha version within the timespan of a few weeks. Anyone who is interested in participating in the private alpha can email me (the address is in the side column) or send me a message with your email address on Twitter.

August 12, 2008 | Filed Under Mini Essays, Startup Updates | Comments 

Another startup launches our idea

Have you ever found yourself working on a project or creating a business and at the time it’s going full throttle.. a competitor launches your idea. A competitor which has a 90% similar idea and has already established its self in the market. That happened to me today. They say great ideas are born at the same time all over the world. That’s probably true but is it those who are quickest to execute that take the market? We’ll see!

So what’s next?

First of all, there is no way I am going to give up on building this startup. It’s perseverance and flexibility that are factors of success, I am going to utilize them both. With a few small changes and some extra weeks in development I am going to add a new feature that tops the competition. I am going to have to reevaluate my strategy and put even more pressure behind going into private alpha.

Am I upset? Am I frustrated? Neither. In fact, I am loving it! Competition is just another driving force.

p.s. The fact that a relatively big competitor has just launched this technology can only be a verification that I am on the right track. And I’ve got some tricks (features) up my sleeve, they’ve never even thought about - I hope ;-).

Addition: I have received a lot of feedback on Twitter asking to reveal more details. I am waiting with this till we reach private alpha (which is most likely in a few weeks). Thank you for your patience.

Update: I’ve learned a great deal from a discussion based upon this post over at YC Hacker News, I encourage you to read it.

August 6, 2008 | Filed Under Startup Updates | Comments 

Fwd: Email is not dead!

Over the last few years people have been claiming email is dead. I couldn’t disagree more. Conversations we have on Twitter, Facebook, YC HN etc.. happen there but what happens when you really want to communicate with one individual. You don’t use direct/private messages; you exchange email addresses. As long as this occurs email is still the central hub of my communication efforts. Anything worth saying to someone in more then two lines I email and I know you do too.

Yes, receiving hundreds of messages each day makes it difficult to respond to everyone. However that problem isn’t solved when you start dispersing your communication activities across five other networks. I am a big fan of Twitter because it has allowed me to build valuable relationships with several individuals. We update each other through Twitter but we talk in more then a 140 characters over email. There are many complaints that with the hundreds of emails coming in each day, how could you possibly answer each one of them. The solution is definitely not switching to Twitter/Friendfeed and spending half your day through an even larger stream of messages. If you make it your discipline to answer each email you receive, you’ll gain more value out of those conversations than anywhere else online. These are people that take the time to contact you and have filtered you as more valuable then the other 500 friends they have on a micro blogging service.

What about pitches? If you are one of the few who gets bothered with dozens of pitches each day, emails with ulterior motives, then kindly respond to them in a 140 characters “Thank you for emailing me but I am currently not interested… Best regards …”

Using the Gmail (Google Apps) interface has allowed me to respond to most emails within a matter of 24 hours, often if I am behind my laptop within 15 minutes. By the way, the reason I wrote this post is because I’ve set up my blog to now let me email-in my blog posts. I needed to write a post to test this out, I think this topic was applicable.

If you disagree with my post please voice it in the comments also I would love to hear your uses for email.

August 6, 2008 | Filed Under Mini Essays | Comments 

Quick update & some new thoughts

I am back; it’s been a week without blogging. Since I am only in the Netherlands for a few more weeks I have been rounding of as much business as possible. This mostly meant scheduling meeting after meeting with not much time in between to stay online. I realized an advantage in this and on my way home in the train last week (after three consecutive meetings) I wrote down my thoughts.

I am sitting in the train on my way home. I had one of those days where I had scheduled lots of meetings in one day. I prefer this.

The most valuable reason why you would do this is the transferability of knowledge. With every meeting you learn something new, you become more update and most likely if you’re working across a specific industry the people you meet are interconnected.

When you schedule all these meetings after one another you’ll find yourself bringing new found knowledge to the next meeting. It’s hard to illustrate, I say give it a shot, put all your (related) meetings on one day in the week.

Don’t have a one dimensional network but have a multi dimensional network where you can make the links between your connections and their mutual affiliations, it brings a new dimension to your networking efforts.  Be aware of the possible links in your network and start connecting people with one another. In this manner you can interlink your network and increase its value. However do be careful with becoming the guy who makes introductions for everyone. Every introduction is a reflection upon you.

Right now this is a stub and that means I will take down this post when I have the time and turn it into a mini-essay. I would love your input in the comments.

August 5, 2008 | Filed Under For the Moment | Comments