No Snivelling

I have an all new appreciation for everything that needs to get done to start a company. Going forward, I make the following public pledge:

1) Far fewer unsolicited opinions for friends with startup companies :-)
2) Far more tolerance for slow email and phone replies from friends at startups
3) Much more understanding for people's inability to stay current on all of the goings-on in the blogosphere/TechCrunch world
4) Strong appreciation for how impossible it is to stay up-to-date on Twitter :-)

With that said, here's some more unsolicited advice for people contemplating starting a company, who are still employed elsewhere:

a) Spend 10% of every week networking (with potential engineers, designers, marketers, fundraising sources, etc. -- basically, anywhere you'd have a skillset need in your startup)
-- I did a B to C level job of this, before jumping in -- if I had to do it over again, I'd have emphasized this much more during my tenure at Amazon, rather than just establishing relationships in work situations, I could have reached out beyond my direct groups/teams

b) Spend 5% of every week learning something new, to a point where you know enough to be dangerous (e.g. which email marketing tool is best for 80% purposes, and how to use it)
-- I did an A job at this -- it's paid off tremendously (SEO, email, blogging, accounting, Wikis, etc.)

c) Sleep... a lot... because you're going to get a lot less of it when you make the plunge :-)

Onward!

Labels: advice, networking, startup

There are a ton of websites trying to solicit user-generated content. I continue to wonder why people are so giving on sites like Wikipedia, and seem to be less willing to offer their expertise at places like CitySearch, Judy's Book and Yelp. It seems like these sites would be much more likely to generate meaningful input if they empowered users to directly ask their friends for recommendations, and then populate the database with the responses. For instance, if a neighbor asked me for a contractor that I recommend, I'd be happy to provide their name, phone number and website (if they have one), along with some description of why I recommend them. However, it would be even more useful if this information was then made available to others in my network. And, if I'm willing, it could be shared with the broader community.

I'm not sure if anyone does this, but I think there's an idea there.

I was reminded of this when reading Seth Godin's recent post on Rapport.

Labels: advice, personal recommendations, rapport, user generated content, web2expo, wikipedia