Are you really an entrepreneur?

Found this cool posting on ReadWriteWeb. Are you really an Entrepreneur?

Are You Really An Entrepreneur?

 

Start with the End in Mind

I had coffee this morning with a very successful entrepreneurial woman to discuss my latest venture StartupChicks (http://www.startupchicks.net).

As most of you know, StartupChicks is a networking organization for female entrepreneurs. StartupChicks seems to have taken on a life of it’s own. Our first meeting had @ 50 women attend, whereas I had hoped for 20. We currently have over 100 “members” registered on the site. And every day a Chick reaches out to me with an idea for a speaker or event.

Don’t get me wrong – this is fabulous. BUT…

I Started With OUT an End in Mind.

Now, this is a networking organization, so it can grow organically as it has, and the direction it takes could be driven by the community itself. But, if that happens….
- Will we find the right chicks?
- Will we have serial entrepreneurs with the experience to mentor young entrepreneurs?
- Will we have young entrepreneurs interested in starting high-growth venture backed businesses?
- Will we be able to find high quality speakers?
- Will we be able to find high quality sponsors?

The answer is probably not. Not unless someone is steering the ship. Not unless someone (me) has an End in Mind.

If you’re in a startup in a similar situation, it’s time to re-group. What is your End in Mind.

 

Perfecting The Pitch

In the last month, I have launched two of my initiatives: the relaunch of http://www.buytough.com and Startup Chicks.

It’s been a crazy busy month! In addition, I’m on what I’m calling “the startup circuit”. At least 2 nights per week, I’m at some event related to technology and/or startups to pitch Startup Chicks.

Here’s the thing. I didn’t realize I needed a Pitch!

You start a business and need to raise money, you know you need a pitch. But, starting a networking group???

Well, it seems I’ve hit a nerve (At least in the Atlanta Tech/Startup Community) . In the last 2 weeks, I’ve been to 2 major events: Startup Riot and Capital Lounge. Both events are intended to connect startups to investors. Both events has @ 300 people in attendance, mostly entrepreneurs. Both events had less than 30 women in attendance (including sponsors)!

The community has been extremely supportive. The organizers of both of the events, the press (and others) have been graciously helping me spread the word, and would like to see Startup Chicks succeed.

But, I also get a lot of questions. The biggest questions being “what is a startup chick?” And, I don’t really have a good answer. I know what I think a startup chick is… but, who am I to say a solo practitioner/freelancer isn’t a startup chick. Who am I to say the woman who sells Avon isn’t a startup chick?

Well, it’s time to get clear. This weekend, I’m going to clearly define who a startup chick is (and what she is not), and clearly identify the organization that I would like Startup Chicks to become. And once I have clarity, I will come up with the pitch….

I may even go to Startup Gauntlet to practice!

Because Monday I go back on the “startup circuit” with more people to pitch!

 

Wow!

One of the “ventures” I alluded to earlier (in this blog) is LIVE. StartupChicks.Net.

For several years now, connecting with (or trying to connect with) like minded people has been a passion of mine. It’s not always easy, and depending on where you live might be impossible.

I am lucky that I have connected with a significant number of like minded individuals through various organizations – mostly with the Startup Community in Atlanta. But, one thing that I have found missing at these events is WOMEN.

So, I decided to reach out and find other women interested in Startups, and voila! StartupChicks.net is born.

It went live a little earlier than I planned/expected. My original intent was to spend this week starting to build a little buzz about StartupChicks on Twitter, building out content to this site and then, slowing getting the word out through our contacts next week.

But, it didn’t quite work that way…. The buzz on Twitter sort of took on a life of itself, and the next thing I know I’m being interview by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk! A website is never really done…

StartupChicks.net is a community site (or social networking site). So, it is all about the members! I will be adding content. The other founders/advisory board members will be adding content. But, I hope that the members will add content, have discussions and start to get to know each other.

For members in Atlanta, we will meet monthly, the 3rd Wednesday of the Month. The first meeting is scheduled for March 18th, location TBD.

My hope is that through the network we all develop friendships and gain the resources necessary to grow our businesses and be hugely successful.

Join at StartupChicks.net!

 

Bold or Boring?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while… but, it really hit home yesterday when I read a post by Seth Godin called You’re Boring.

Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong.” – Seth Godin

Are you bold or boring? Is your business bold or boring?

I’ve always taken risks in business. After all, I’ve been an entrepreneur for 12 years. But, is that the same as being bold? I don’t think so…

Bold is being truly Passionate about your work.
Bold is being truly Passionate about your life.
Bold is baring your soul to perfect strangers, taking a chance and seeing if there is a connection.
Bold is launching a web site with no monetization strategy, just because you’re passionate about the idea.
Bold is asking for investment dollars from Angels or VCs to launch that site.
Bold is….

I could go on, and you surely have your own definitions of BOLD.

I’ve taken risks. But, I haven’t been BOLD in a long time. It’s time to be BOLD.

Are you BOLD or boring? What is BOLD to you?

 

What’s your Outcome?

It’s a New Year. And like most people I’ve spent some time reflecting about the past year and looking forward towards the New Year. Unlike most people, I made ZERO Resolutions. Resolutions don’t work.

Instead, I’ve been focusing on Outcomes.

An outcome is different from a goal. With a goal, you either succeed or you don’t. With an outcome, there is neither success or failure. There is just a result. No judgements.

After you’ve got an outcome, the next step is the action plan to get that outcome.

One of the neat things about working with an Outcome is that I don’t necessarily need to do EVERYTHING in that plan to achieve it. I might be able to skip some steps and still get my desired outcome. Hmmm, I like that idea.

Think about the 80/20 rule. If 80% of your sales, come from 20% of your customers… focus on those 20% of the customers.

Now for a real world example…

BuyTough.com. As you already know, I’m working on a re-design / re-development effort for BuyTough.com. And it’s had more than it’s fair share of setbacks. My to-do list to get this site live is @ 40 tasks. Ughhh.

When I start focusing on the outcome, things become a lot clearer: The outcome is to get the site live (as quickly as possible) with a new look and feel, improved content (easier for the layperson to understand), a handful of critical new features, and allow the visitor to purchase accessory items without the purchase of a laptop.

When I look at where we are in development, with this outcome in mind, my whole plan changes. Gone is the huge to-do list.

I still have a wish list of future features; but, as we all know a web site is NEVER done. So, let’s aim for launching the site quickly, and lots of mini-releases with constant improvement and cool new features. Besides every time I release a cool new feature, I have an excuse to reach out and touch my customer again.

So, my question to you is…. What’s your Outcome?

 

Are you (or your business) pulling a “turtle”?

I spent most of today reviewing web and call stats for our primary breadwinner (http://www.buytough.com).  And what I found ain’t pretty…

Google Stats - 4th Quarter

Visits down over 21%. Page Views down. Everything down.

Now, I knew things were slow due to the “economy”.

But, I (and the rest of management at my company) were pulling a “turtle”.  We pulled our heads into our shells, dug in, and ignored all the signs.  We all fell back to doing what we have traditionally done best.  I am re-designing the site. They have been selling (or trying to…).

BUT, none of us got strategic OR creative.  It’s not too late. It’s only one quarter.  But, you can bet were gonna get strategic NOW!

Are you pulling a “turtle”?

** Need to give credit to Shannon Hubbell for the word “turtle” or “turtling”.  You can find her at http://www.twitter.com/shbbll.

 

Best Laid Plans

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” – Robert Burns

Well, here we are 34 hours from New Year’s.  And neither of my projects are ready to launch.

On the work front (the re-launch of www.buytough.com), we’ve had quite a bit go astray:

First, the designer delivered the finished design about 6 weeks behind schedule. She’s a friend and she most definitely took advantage of me.  Every week there was a new excuse.  My personal favorite was that her mom was bit by a rabid raccoon. (Hmmm….)

Then, after we finally got the design, we had to layoff a programmer due to the economy.  This altered my plan pretty significantly. I had to rethink our goals for the whole project. I had originally planned on a platform change from .asp to asp.net. But, that would change our page names, which could potentially change the way Search Engines rank us (SEO). With the slowing economy and sales down, I decided it was NOT worth the risk of losing our top 10 placement in Google.  So, this project (or should I say phase of the project) became more of a port: port the existing site to the new design with some important new features.

And most recently, my “boss” took a 12 day vacation (I’m coding, he’s supposed to be writing content). The site is coming along nicely, the majority of the coding is complete. But, we have a LOT of content to re-work / develop.  I hesitate to put a new “launch” date on this; because, the content is out of my control.  But, I hope it will be @ Febuary 1st.

On my side project, I have only myself to blame:

I was making great progress until Thanksgiving, and then, I let the holidays get in the way. On top of that, I have been having second thoughts on the platform I chose (Ruby on Rails).  And lastly, I have gotten involved in 2 other side projects.  All three of these side projects are true to my core beliefs and I am committed to getting them going early in the New Year.

(And apparently becoming an EXPERT in time management.)

Finally, I didn’t blog all that often, and for that I apologize. I will do better next year!

No time to post tomorrow, as I have a fabulous NYE party to attend!  Happy New Year!

 

Rekindling the flame: the love of startups.

This weekend I took time off from my “side project” to participate in the Atlanta Startup Weekend.  For those of you unfamiliar with the event.  It was essentially 100+ entrepreneurs with varying skills (technical, marketing, design) getting together to see how many “startups” they could start in a weekend – 54 hours (Friday 6pm – Sunday 9pm).

I signed up for it, at the encouragement of a friend whom I had shared my desire to get more involved with the entrepreneurial community.  I had no real expectations; but, I was pretty sure that trying to build a startup in 54 hours was not necessarily going to be “fun” by normal people’s expectations. (Which may mean I’m not normal?)

The event went like this.  On Friday night, we all gathered, heard pitches on people’s ideas, voted and chose teams.  Late Friday evening, we met with our teams and had to start figuring out how to tackle the project: define the scope, choose the platform, decide roles, etc.  Saturday and Sunday – get to work.  Sunday evening – present your product.

I joined the GivingTi.me team.  The idea guy is/was Sanjay Parekh, a serial entrepreneur, and is being partially funded by the BMW foundation. We developed a website to essentially allow people (entrepreneurs) to barter time, one hour at a time.  We had 16 amazing people on the team, a blend of business (marketing, design, product management folks) and technology folks.  So, after defining the scope of the project, we divided into 2 teams.  I was on the tech team.

We had our fair share of issues.  We had a heated discussion on project scope. We chose Ruby on Rails as our platform, and then, lost one of our Rails programmers.  Leaving one senior guy and a bunch of newbies, until we picked up 2 part-time senior guys.  We chose HAML as our markup language (to create HTML) and only one person knew it. It took HOURS to get our development environment set up.  I was the only one with Sphinx installed, so I was the only one who could test “Search”.  We installed a “fix” 30 minutes for the demo, which broke a pretty critical piece of functionality.

I coded for about 28 hours in a language that I “played” with for about a total of 12 hours prior to this weekend.  I’m, now, almost proficient.  Certainly not an expert, but, past the curve…

I worked with a team of amazing people whom I consider friends.

For me, this past weekend was a reminder of what is possible when you get a bunch of talented and passionate people all focused on the same vision.  I haven’t had that for years, not since eTour.com (1997 – 2001).  Now I really miss it.

 

Building a Blueprint – Development Plan

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” – Alan Lakein

Just because I am not going to write a full business plan, does not mean I am not going to have a plan.  In fact, I’m going to have a plan for both the development of the site and the marketing site.

First, the development plan.

If I was developing a site for a client, I would develop a full requirements document including a site map, a set of wireframes (document describing the features of each page), and design notes.  I would also provide a  project schedule with deliverable dates for both the client deliverables (content) and myself.

Now I am both client and developer!

First, the site map:

Site Map for a Social Networking Site.

I used an application called ConceptDraw: MindMap to develop my site map.

In the site map, I have identified all the web pages that are necessary for launch. This is important.  FOR LAUNCH.  I am scaling down the feature set and capabilities to get to launch quicker.  A website is NEVER done.  So, what is absolutely necessary to be there from the get go, and what can be added later?  In order, to get here, I used my features list from the Competitive Analysis, and I focused on my mission, as defined in my Executive Summary.

Next, the wireframes:

The above wireframe describes what features/content is necessary on the home page. The home page must have the logo, top navigation, a way for users to login to, a marketing message and a short version of the registration form.

I will do a wireframe for each page on the site.

Lastly, I will develop a project schedule.  As this is a side project, I have somewhat limited hours per day/per week.  My plan will be to work on it one weekend day and a minimum of 2 weeknights per week for a total of approximately 14 hours per week.  This will allow me to continue to have some sort of social life.

Simply using an Outlook calendar, and a spreadsheet that I have developed which calculates the amount of development time based upon the sitemap and the complexity of each page, I calculate a tentative launch date: January 1, 2009.