Today's big news
from TechCrunch is is that Google is in the final stages of acquiring digg
for about $200 million. Makes sense to me. Particularly given some of Google's
recent experiments having social voting in their search results pages.
I'd been thinking about startup acquisitions earlier this year (and started
keeping a side list of deals I thought should get done). Just as an
amusing exercise. ![]()
The 5 Tech Deals That Should Happen
Disclaimer: When I say should happen, it's not a prediction, just
something that I think makes sense.
1. Facebook should
acquire Twitter: Let's
face it, back in the early days, some of us wondered how Twitter was different
from an enhanced version of Facebook status updates. I think the two products
would work well together, and Facebook has the resources to help Twitter get
over some of the current platform stability issues.
2. Google should
acquire FriendFeed:
This would be a bit similar to the FeedBurner acquisition (although FriendFeed
is nowhere near as far along). Google gets a good product that can further it's
social networking stuff.
3. Microsoft should
acquire Xobni: This one's
already been talked about before, and almost happened. It should happen.
Xobini's got a great team, Microsoft needs some new energy in the Outlook
group.
4. Intuit should
acquire Freshbooks:
You may not have heard of Freshbooks, but it's a cool company with a cool
product for invoicing. Intuit needs a much better web offering, and the
Freshbook folks have great design and are great entrepreneurs.
5. Ning should acquire
Mixx: Ning is growing, but
needs more "best of breed" style social networking apps. Mixx is brilliantly
executed and more and more people want/need some type of focused social news
product as part of a larger social network or community.
So, what do you think? What's your vote for the acquisitions in the
remainder of 2008 that should happen? Leave 'em and debate 'em in the
comments.
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If you read this blog, there's a pretty good chance you're somehow involved
in the business of software. By that, I mean you are trying to (gasp!)
make money in the software business. If that's the case, I can't think of any
better place to be this September than the Business of Software Conference
being held in Boston on September 3-4. 
Some Reasons Why You Should Be At Business Of Software
2008
1. Joel Spolsky will be there. Well, he's not just going
to be there, he's one of the organizers along with Neil Davidson, the CEO of Red Gate Software.
2. Seth Godin will be there. Seth is a brilliant
marketer. Doesn't get more brilliant. And, if you're in the business of
software, you really, really need to understand marketing. If you're not
reading Seth's blog, you should
be.
3. Jessica Livingston will be there. Jessica is the author
of "Founders
At Work", which was an exceptionally fun and insightful read. Parts of it
gave me goose-bumps (yes, I'm that strange). If you're both a software person
and a startup person, you need to read her book.
4. Jason Fried of 37signals fame will be there. Jason's on
my list of "most pragmatic entrepreneurs ever". He was kind enough to let me
interview him for my graduate paper at MIT back when I was a student. All
around swell guy. Oh, and you haven't already, you should absolutely read "Getting Real". Now it's
even free.
5. Richard Stallman will be there. Yes, that
Richard Stallman. This should be one interesting discussion.
6. Eric Sink will be there. Eric is (in my mind), the
software guy's software guy. Immensely articulate and thoughtful. Eric's aptly
named "Eric Sink On The Business Of Software" is one of the books on my startup
reading list.
7. Mike Milinkovich will be there. He's the executive
director of the Eclipse foundation.
8. Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing will be there.
Steve was a big hit at last year's conference. If you want to understand why,
just watch the
video from last year.
9. Tom Jennings and Paul Kenny will be
there. Tom's a venture capitalist and Paul's all about sales. I'm guessing a
few of you are looking for capital or looking for customers.
10. People like you will be there. People that
are in the business of software.
Note, the above is not a complete list of speakers.
Oh, and by the way, I've been selected so speak at this year's conference as
well -- but please don't hold that against them.
All in all, Business of Software
2008 promises to be a great event. Something I'd travel to come see, if I
didn't live in Boston -- which I do.
By the way, if you're going to go, you can save $300 by registering before
July 22nd.
Hope to see you there.
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For those that are nauseated or otherwise troubled by gushing praise of tech
blogs, please click away now. I will not be offended.
I'm an avid reader of the TechCrunch
blog. In their own words, it's a blog "dedicated to obsessively profiling and
reviewing new Internet products and companies." If you're in the startup world,
and aren't reading it, you probably should if for no other reason than the fact
that your peers are reading it, and it'll get cited often. It's uncomfortable
when I hear someone at the office say "Hey, did you read that article in
TechCrunch about..." and because I've been stuck in meetings for 2 hours and am
too polite to read blogs on my Blackberry during meetings, I have to say,
"no...umm...I've been in meetings for the last 2 hours".
Anyways, you get the message. I heart TechCrunch.
Now, fast forward a bit, and lets talk about CrunchBase. CrunchBase is a
user-editable structured database about companies, people and products
in the tech world. It's a great complement to TechCrunch. The site is well
thought out, gets the job done and actually has a pretty good data set. It's
useful.
On to the news that drove this article. The nice folks at TechCrunch just
released an API for CrunchBase. I'm an API kind of guy. As the developer of
the reasonably popular Website Grader, a free website analysis tool, I am always
on the lookout for new data I can feed into the Website Grader algorithm to make
it even more useful. The CrunchBase API is likely going to fit the bill.
So, here are the reasons I l am bestowing about TechCrunch the
embarrassingly gushing praise:
Reasons I Love The CrunchBase API:
1. Simple Invocation: Invoking the API is simply a matter
of accessing a URL containing the company or product in question.
For example: http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/company/hubspot.js
2. Simple Output: The data comes back in JSON format. This
is great for use within Javascript, but even for other languages (PHP, Java, C#,
etc.), it's relatively trivial to take the JSON output and convert it into some
other format. One tip for the TechCrunch folks would be to add a parameter to
the API URLs to request output in different formats (like XML). But, no
biggie.
3. No Registration, No Limits: In an uncommon show of
cluefulness, the nice folks at TechCrunch have made it supremely easy to get
started. You don't have to register, request access to an API key or developer
account, and there are currently no governors or limits on consumption. That's
pretty cool. Gutsy, but cool.
4. Communication: To top off all of this awesomeness, the
TC folks have really gone out of their way to accept input from the community
regarding the API. The blog article announcing the API has 59 comments right
now. 14 of them are responses from the TC folks -- including Michael Arrington
himself. TC also setup a Twitter account. I "followed" them, send out a tweet
and was immediately tweeted back with a response to an idea I had for improving
the API.
Having said all that, the one critical feature I think they need to add is better search through the API. But, they've already said they're looking into that.
So, with all that I'd like to congratulate Michael and his team at TechCrunch
for an awfully with-it approach to their business. For those of you that I'm gushing like a teenager with a crush -- you were warned.
If you're a web developer and have an idea for building something cool on top of the CrunchBase API, drop me a line. I'd consider funding it and contributing it back to the community.
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I recently came across an article in Entrepreneur magazine that talks about startup
hiring mistakes. I don't know Brad Sugars (the author), but he's a columnist at
Entrepreneur magazine and has written 14 books. Though I'm impressed by the
fact that he's a published author, I disagree with several points from the
article. 
![]()
I also was a bit put-off by the statement "the good thing is that there are
some hard and fast rules startups should follow". I may not know a lot about
startups, but one thing I do know is that there are very few "hard and
fast" rules. And, those rules that are hard and fast are rarely interesting
enough to talk about.
So, here are my tips for startup hiring startups. In some instances, these
conflict directly with the Entrepreneur article -- in others, they're just
different.
1. Don't Hire Based Solely On Intelligence/Brilliance: You
interview the candidate and she has a PhD from MIT and is off-the-charts smart.
That's great. Intelligence is an important factor in recruiting for most
startups. But, hiring just on intelligence is usually a mistake. You
need at least two more things: A passion for getting things done and cohesion
with your culture. (That's a fancy way of saying that they agree with what you
stand for and "fit in").
2. It's Ok To Hire The Inexperienced: If you find
super-smart people that fit the culture and are able to get things done they may
be a great recruit -- even if they lack experience. At my startup HubSpot, we call this hiring people that
"haven't seen the movie before" (this is our way of saying: They don't have
experience in the specific role/function). We've had great success with this.
3. It's ok to hire for an undefined role: In an ideal
world, you have a nice clear job description and a role in mind for the person
you're trying to hire. And, your network is so strong and your luck so good
that precisely the perfect candidates start dropping into your lap just as you
need them. Unfortunately, most startups are not so lucky. Sometimes you get
the wrong people for the right role (the one you're recruiting for).
Other times, you get the absolute "right" people, but just have no current
openings. Sometimes, it's ok to hire these "superstars" even though they may
not fit the job description you are hiring for.
4. It's Ok To Recruit For The Job You Hate: You might be
good at a lot of things (developing code, designing things, selling, accounting,
etc.). But chances are, you may dislike some of these activities even though
you could be good at them. The good news is that there are smart
people out there who love the very stuff you hate. There's nothing
wrong with recruiting people for stuff you're either bad at or just plain don't
like to do.
If you're interested in more tips on startup hiring, I kind of like some of
my points in "5
Quick Pointers On Startup Hiring".
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The popular Boston Web Innovators Group held in Cambridge, MA is coming up
this Tuesday, July 15th 2008. Like the events before it, WebInno18
promises to be another great event. I plan to attend and might even experiment
with Twitter Blogging it on my @OnStartups twitter profile. If
you're going to be there, send me a tweet and let me know. Will look out for
you.
For one of the prior WebInno meetups, I did a quick analysis of those
attending (using the RSS data of registrants as the input) and had come up with
some Web
Innovator Cambridge statistics. I had the PHP script to do the quick
analysis developed by one of the OnStartups readers.
Thought I'd do another one this time around and identify how the make-up of
the group has (or has not) changed).
Here's the top keywords that show up in the profiles of the people signed up
so far. There are about 870 registrants for Web Inno 18 so far (compared to 792
for Web Inno 17). The event definitely seems to be growing.
| Token |
Web Inno 18 |
Web Inno 17 |
| Manager |
54 |
38 |
| CEO |
53 |
43 |
| President |
41 |
35 |
| Founder |
41 |
39 |
| Senior |
40 |
18 |
| LLC |
29 |
10 |
| Marketing |
25 |
17 |
| Director |
24 |
37 |
| VP |
24 |
20 |
| Engineer/Engineering |
23 |
15 |
| Co-Founder |
22 |
14 |
| Director |
22 |
18 |
| Development/Developer |
20 |
11 |
| CTO |
19 |
13 |
| Consultant |
17 |
13 |
| Principal |
15 |
20 |
| Ventures |
12 |
18 |
| Architect |
7 |
9 |
| Harvard |
7 |
9 |
| MIT |
7 |
5 |
| Designer |
7 |
7 |
Hope to see you at WebInno 18. If you have any doubts that the Boston area
has a vibrant Internet startup community, this should dispel those doubts. Hat
tip to David Beisel who has done a fantastic job building this up. I can
remember the early, early days of WebInno when all of us would fit around a bar
in Kendall Square. We've come a long way. Thanks David!
Hope to see you on Tuesday at the Royal Sonesta hotel. I might try to put
together an informal dinner for a few folks before (or after) the event as I've
done every time since I started going to these things. Send me a tweet at @onstartups if you're interested.
I usually limit it to about 6 people and keep it to just tech-entrepreneur types
that I haven't had the chance to chat with in a while.
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The reasons so many people hate (or intensely dislike) Microsoft are
plentiful and for the most part, pretty easy to understand. If you were to ask
around, reasons cited would centralize around too much power, lack of
innovation, stifling creativity, being "closed" and generally products that on
average, fail to delight customers. If you're one of those that hates
Microsoft, I'm sure you have your reasons. Many of us love to hate
Microsoft.
And, of course, lots of us love Apple. We love
Apple in that sheepishly adoring way that causes us to want to run our fingers
lovingly over our favorite Apple product when nobody is looking just because it
makes us happy. Happy in a good way, and not in that weird, twisted kind of
way. It's an innocent love. All sunshine and daffodils. 
But, I'm going to argue that though we will likely continue to love Apple for
a while, there may come a day we hate doing so.
Why might we hate to love Apple someday?
One simple, fundamental reason: Apple cares too much about customers, and
the customer experience -- and not much about the community. Apple has
become a benevolent dictator. They'll invest lots of time, energy and
money making their products great and their customers "happy". But, at their
core, they want it to be them that delivers that happiness -- not
someone else. Third-party developers are a necessary evil.
There's a reason for this: Apple (rightly) thinks that a phenomenal
experience is created by closed, proprietary systems by companies that control
the boundaries and edges of product design.
Great experiences are created when the experience designer can dictate and
control as much as possible. The iPod would not have been great if the hardware
were designed by one company, the device software by another, applications by
another, etc. The iPod was exceptionally great because Apple controlled it
all.
This is why the original Apple computers had such a better
experience than the IBM PC. On the IBM PC platform different companies
built the hardware, OS, apps, devices, etc. Lots of creativity -- but
understandably, lots of crap. And lots of complexity for the user/customer.
So, Apple likes control. But this advantage of control only goes so far.
Eventually, users will come to value something more than the delightful
experience. Might be performance of an individual component (larger storage),
lower price, wider selection of add-ons, etc. (Maybe even replaceable
batteries, less confining DRM, etc.)
Now, thanks to Apple, millions of consumers are enjoying technology like
digital music that would likely not have done so without Apple's fanatical focus
on solving for ease-of-use and experience. But, now that we're there, will our
love of Apple endure?
And, if we do continue to love Apple, will we hate ourselves for doing so
someday? Maybe. Maybe not.
The insight for startups? Some of the biggest innovations and market successes come from companies that are total control-freaks and fanatically focused on solving the problem. Often, the problem is best solved by an uncompromising purity of approach.
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The Seinfeld fans out there will clearly recognize the reference to "the
opposite" episode. Basically, George tries to change his life by going against
his natural instincts and doing the exact opposite. [For the fanatics out
there, I think this is Episode #86, aired May
19, 1994.
Here are a couple of clips from the episode:
George : Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so
much promise. I was personable, I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically
speaking, but ... I was perceptive. I always know when someone's uncomfortable
at a party. It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every
decision I've ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the
opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every of life,
be it something to wear, something to eat ... It's all been wrong.
Jerry : If every instinct you have is wrong, then the
opposite would have to be right.
George : Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and
do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the
opposite, and I will do...something.
---
As it turns out, this "do the opposite" strategy works out for George.
Things start working out for him. By going against his natural instincts, he
ends up doing things "right". He's noticed. He comes off as being
different.
So, what does this all mean for startups? Well, I've found that often "doing
the opposite" (zigging when others are zagging) can actually work. Conversely,
if you take the tried and true path of others (like your competitors), in your
best case scenario, you kind of wind up where most startups wind up -- in an
unhappy place. Why not try to be different?
A few examples to mull over:
A Startup Doing The Opposite
VC funding negotiation: Tell the VC: "We don't know what
the pre-money valuation should be. You have a better sense than we do about
this. We're not looking for the highest "price". We just want a fair deal and
a board member that is not a jerk. You seem like you're smart and not a
jerk.."
Recruiting early employees: If you're just looking to make
a lot of money, this is probably not the place. Sure, we're going to give you
some options but nobody knows what those are going to be worth (including the
founders and the investors). We all work our butts-off and make less money than
we could likely do otherwise. We all must have some sort of genetic flaw that
makes us do this. If you have that genetic flaw too, you'd probably enjoy it
here.
Early customer conversation: Yeah, the software kind of
sucks but we use it ourselves and it does do useful things. Why am I charging
you to be a beta tester? Although your input is priceless, we think it just
distorts the relationship for you to get it for free. If you're a paying
customer, we're going to kill ourselves to make you happy.
The idea is to be honest, direct and surprise people by taking an approach
that they're not used to seeing. A lot of times this may fall flat -- but lots
of things fall flat anyways. Why not try it?
By the way, each of the examples above are based on reality from my own startup adventure.
So, next time you're in a situation go against your instincts to "spin"
things and be super-sophisticated. Just do the opposite!
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The following is a guest post.
I have had the misfortune of personally making every one of these mistakes
during my years as a software entrepreneur. I am currently reviewing a startup
that seems to be trying really, really hard to make all of them in one go. As a
result, I decided to put this list together in the hopes of saving as many
startups as possible from crashing in to the rocks of false hope and misguided
thinking.
![]()
20 Ways To Put A Monkey-Wrench In Your Machinery
1. You think that your product must be awesome because your
buddies are telling you it is the greatest thing since sliced
bread. Unless they are willing to hand over cold cash to use your
product, they are just being nice.
2. You are finding that your product is so versatile it could
solve just about any problem. This is a clear sign you don't have
anything worthwhile.
Dharmesh: This is one of the most insidious problems in software
startups. As developers, we tend to like dealing in higher abstractions.
Writing a simple business application is boring. But, writing a framework that
lets others auto-generate a business application (or any application!) is fun
and challenging. For startups, it is usually unwise to try and build a
framework or platform as your flagship offering. Most people use apps not
platforms.
3. You have found a client, but in your euphoria you have forgotten to
ask yourself if this client is an anomaly. You need to make
sure that the client represents a real market, otherwise you are just building a
custom solution.
Dharmesh: This is what I would call the "you can't build a software
company one custom implementation at a time". It's fine to find big clients
that have big problems they're willing to spend some money for. This is an easy
to way to get started and some cash in the door. However, it's imperative to
look for the patterns in the customer's needs and be thinking about future
customers. If you have multiple sets of code running for multiple customers,
you're going to be in trouble.
4. You keep coming up with ideas for all the many different ways you
can make money with your product. You can sell it to Google, ISV's can include
it in their products, Adobe for sure will be interested. If you are not
focused on something specific, you are dead.
5. You choose to work with verticals that don't have a lot of
money. Sure they like your product, but they can't afford to pay you
enough for it, so why focus on them?
6. You choose to work with a small client first instead of one that
will be able to help you get more clients later on. Just because Joe's Fish
& Chips is using your product doesn't mean Motorola will be impressed enough
to try it.
Dharmesh: Closing on some smaller clients early isn't particularly a bad
thing (in fact, you might be targeting the small business market). As long as
you can find some repeatable pattern so you can build software for many people
(and sell it to many people), you're probably ok.
7. You think you can't work with a "real" client early on because it's
too risky. But you aren't selling them the product - you are selling them the
idea of the product. If you can't sell them the idea, you are
never going to be able to sell them the product.
8. You start building the product before you have a (real) client
identified. Again, if you can't sell the idea, you are definitely not going to
be able to sell the product.
9. You think you can't sell the idea until you have a
product. This is a major killer - you think that as soon as you have
feature X or Y, you can start showing people your idea. One more time - if you
can't sell the idea, you can't sell the product.
Dharmesh: I agree. Reminds me of "Stealth
Mode, Schmealth Mode" posted earlier.
10. You don't want to stop or throttle development when you aren't really
sure you are on the right track. You just want to keep on going, because you
just know that soon the product will be so awesome that it will dazzle everyone
with its brilliance. If people aren't buying the idea, you
better stop wasting money now until you have figured things out.
11. You think that just because your product can solve a generic problem
like "collaboration", you have a sure-fire winner. You have to ask yourself how
your product really stacks up against the competition that is already out there
and why people would buy yours, and if they would, for how much. Often, the
current solution being used is simply good enough, and even if
yours is significantly better, no one is going to buy it.
12. You underestimate the power of a penny over free. If
something is free and barely does what you need, you will stick with it versus
something that's much better but requires you to pull out your credit card.
13. You think that just because someone says they would definitely use
your product that they actually would use it - or that they would pay to use
it. Talk is cheap.
14. You think that just because people say they would pay for your product
(and actually mean it), they would pay enough to keep you off food stamps.
15. You think that just because there is a company making money in your
field, there must be a lucrative market that you too can take advantage of. But
there may not be room for more than one successful product in
this particular area. And the incumbent has a much better chance than you do of
succeeding.
16. You think it's not a big deal for a user to create yet another login to
use your product. But it is. This is like the penny versus free. They have to
have a really good reason.
17. You think because your product integrates nicely with a bigger product,
you're golden. But you forget that there is inside-out and outside-in
integration. If I am in Google and there is a tool (like a gadget) that I can
easily access (i.e. I don't need another login and password), I am much more
willing to try it than if I have to go to another site, sign up, sign in, and
then get to my Google application from there. So if you are going to integrate
with an application your target market is already using, it must be inside-out
integration, not outside-in. Facebook applications are a good example of
inside-out integration.
18. You think you can get users to pay a reasonable monthly subscription
fee, but you forget that you need a LOT of $19/month subscriptions to make real
money. Do you really understand how many subscriptions you
need, and how realistic is it that you are going to get there?
19. You think that you need to offer an onsite solution to go along with
your SaaS solution, but you forget the huge costs involved in supporting on-site
software. Besides, if think your market is both an on-site corporate solution
and also a SaaS-based consumer application, chances are one of those assumptions
is wrong.
20. You think you have come this far, you can't possibly stop
now. It's like you are swimming across the lake, and you are more than
halfway there. So you just keep on going, but the shore keeps receding into the
distance…
---
If you have your own list of "signs
of trouble" in a software startup, please leave a comment. Or, if you've got a
great article that you think will help software entrepreneurs, email me to
discuss making a guest submission to OnStartups.com.
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Here are the six simple steps for building a startup (in this case, a
software startup).
1. Figure out what to build. You can do this by being
brilliantly insightful (which you might be), or by just talking to some people.
Ask them questions. Would you use this? Does this solve a problem? Would you
pay for this? Do you know anyone that would pay for this? Are you going to
roll your eyes and laugh out loud once I leave the room? Are you going to tell
you spouse this idea over dinner this evening to demonstrate that you indeed
do have a sense of humor?
2. Build something. It doesn't have to be the
world-changing thing you devised in step 1, but a close enough approximation.
It should do at least one useful thing from the list of game-changing things
that's on the feature-list from #1. Oh, and it should sort of work (even if
requiring the assistance of some chanting, prayer and promises to recycle
more).
3. (Option A) Release! Get your product out there. Even
if it's buggy (which it will be). It is possible that everyone that sees it
runs screaming in the other direction. Mothers protect their children in its
presence. But, get it out there and work like heck to deal with the aftermath
of the steaming pile of elephant doo-doo you've unleashed upon the world.
3. (Option B) Make Perfect, Wait, Release! This avoids the
problems with Option A because people will no longer run screaming. But, nobody
cares about your product now because everyone is flying around with jet-packs on
their back and 16-core processors are embedded in people's brain as an
outpatient procedure. Your market changed and your doohickey (however
"perfect") is irrelevant.
4. Sell. Sell. Sell. The law of large numbers says that
the larger the number of people exposed to the product (see Step 3a), the more
people you'll encounter with average coordination who will trip and fall when
trying to run away from your product demo. Some of these people will buy while
still in a semi-dazed state. Voila! You have customers.
5. Refine. Armed with a few paying customers, see what you
can learn from them. What are they like? How do they use the product? What do
they say between the screams of frustration? Figure out how to lower the pain
quickly and treat them gently. During these brief spites of happiness that you
customers have, other customers will come into contact with them think "Hey, Joe
seems to be happy -- even though he's got this far-away look in his eyes", maybe
the software isn't too bad. Let me try it out..." Bing! You have another
customer.
And the story goes on.
For the really, really simple minded here's the summary:
Decide what to build, launch an imperfect version, sell unsuspecting
customers, keep improving, sell more unsuspecting customers. Lather, rinse,
repeat. SUCCESS!
---
By the way, if you haven't joined the OnStartups Group on LinkedIn, you're not missing much. There's not much functionality there yet (but the group is big). The hope is that someday soon, we'll have more functionality so you can collaborate more meaningfully with other startup folks. Until then, if you'd like to request access, please do so. That way, you can say you joined the group when it was just 11,692 members. Come on in and join. It's quick, painless and free. Request access to the group.
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Chances are, if you're reading this article, you are either involved in a
startup already, or looking to be involved in one.
This article is for the folks in the latter category, the
"wannabepreneurs". The ones that have always wanted to be entrepreneurs, but haven't quite gotten around to it. The folks still slogging it away in BigCo land waiting for
the "right" entrepreneurial opportunity to come along.
Here's my advice: Stop Waiting!
If you've got a passion for startups, you need to be in a startup. Either
run with the best idea you have and start your own thing (even if the idea sort
of sucks), or join the best people you know that are already doing something.
Just get out of the daily slog that is most big businesses. Scratch
that itch.
Be an entrepreneur, not a wannabepreneur.
Here are a few quick points to help convince you:
1. You're probably overestimating the risk of leaving that BigCo job.
Chances are, that sort of job (or something awfully similar) will be there a
year from now if things go miserably.
2. Though nothing compares to doing your own thing, joining a startup team
is not bad either. It's a great way to dip your toes in the water. Often, half
the battle is just getting out of your comfort zone and being around startup
people.
3. Regardless of what your risk tolerance is, you can likely still find
opportunities that are more entrepreneurial than what you're doing
now. There are startups with really high risk, with nothing but a dream and a
developer (or two) all the way to startups that have raised several rounds of
funding and are on the IPO path. You should be able to find a startup that
meets your risk profile.
4. Unless you have some compelling evidence that things are going to get
easier later to do something more entrepreneurial, chances are, they're not
(going to get easier). So, if the question is when, not if, then ask yourself
"why not sooner, rather than later?"
5. For those that are thinking: "Yeah, this is all easy for you to say,
you're not walking in my shoes", I say this: You're right. If you truly don't
have the situation or circumstances to take the leap, that's ok. I just implore
you to at least think about it and decide for yourself whether your
obstacles are real or perceived.
I'll close with a quote that's been on my list of favorites for a while:
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret
for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." -Sydney Harris
Cheers.
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