firstnamedotlastname

It’s more complicated than that

Quick. Name something that sounds easier than it actually is…

How about:

1. Raise a Venture Capital fund

2. Do a strategic business development deal

3. Sell free software

These are just a few of the things I’ve either done successfully, or tried like hell and failed.  In each case they were each more complicated than I first thought.

1. Raise a VC fund

Find some wealthy folks, convince them to commit a heap of capital to your fund, find great emerging companies to invest in.  Invest, manage, sell, merge, IPO, etc. Make you and your investors a bucket of money more than they invested.  Repeat.

Reality: this is really hard.  The team, the strategy, the timing, the track records, the history of working together, the toughness of the first LPs, the ongoing management of the fund, the ability to compete and get into the best deals, the nuance of being a helpful board member, the insight to see a bigger strategy and coach your investments, the knack for understanding and helping with exit negotiations.  It all adds up to a unique and talented set of individuals who can pull it off successfully - for 3 successive funds.  One hit wonders don’t count.

2. Do a strategic business development deal

Figure out a win-win for you and another company.  Get an agreement in writing.  Rollout the “strategy” and both of you reap giant rewards. High 5’s all around.

Reality: doing the deal is the easy part.  Its the devil in the details and the ongoing execution that makes this one really hard to pull off so everyone wins.  Most BD deals are done by BD people who’s primary nature is to be elephant hunters and “relationship” managers.  A different set of DNA is required to actually make a deal go and succeed.  It involves day to day attention to details, managing through hiccups, finding common ground and most of all, getting the other side to do the same.

3. Sell free software

Linux is “free” (not like free beer, unfortunately).  People that have UNIX will love that Linux open source shit.  They pay for only support and maintenance which is mouse-nuts compared to AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris.  Everybody wins.

Reality: not so fast sparky.  I had this hit me over the head with a sledgehammer when I first pitched CIOs and IT execs at companies like GE, HSBC, AT&T, Wyeth, Safeway, Humana, First Data, JP Morgan, and the like.  Turns out that running a big company’s IT is really hard and that things like uptime, backward compatibility, staff training, software vendor support, device drivers and all sorts of other things that actually keep big IT departments up at night are way more valuable than the few dollars they save by going to Linux (or name the other OSS of choice).

Its human nature to boil things down to the simple and straightforward.  I think that’s a good thing and the best, albeit imperfect, way to get things moving.  Otherwise we’d all sit around and fret over how freekin’ hard things are.. The trick is that if you want to succeed it actually takes hard work, thoughtful attention to detail, and a general willingness to do whatever it takes to follow through on the execution, no matter what.  Generally speaking, It’s more complicated than that.

Tools for your twitter lifestyle

Check out the latest (beta) version of Tweetdeck.  It has a really cool integration with Facebook that pulls in Facebook updates exactly like a twitter stream.  Looks like Facebook is about an inch away from replacing twitter updates.  I set it up to show: All Friends; Replies; DMs; Searches + Facebook updates!

The second thing I think is really interesting (depending of course on how you set it up) is Twitterfall.  I got that one, courtesy of David Henderson.  Anyone that wants to track a trend, or a real-time view on any topic via Twitter needs to set this up.  You can even hone in on specific geographic locations.  In this case its giving me a real-time stream of people tweeting about Lijit and Lijit-related stuff.  A must for anyone in marketing or needing to pay attention to a market or trend.

Founders make the best salespeople

People that have known me for any length of time have heard me say this more than once.  I still believe it to be the case, although recently I’ve evolved my thinking to include the ‘owners’ of a business.

The simple reason  for my original contention is that a founder of a company has been there since the beginning.  They’ve seen all the gyrations, been intimately involved in building the product or service, sold the first few customers, answered the investors questions, taken on heaps of constructive and critical feedback, and described what they do (or intend to do) at countless social events.  Pile on top of all that: they wouldn’t be founders if they didn’t have a passion that ran far deeper and more animalistic than anyone else around the table.

Like I said, recently, I’ve evolved my thinking a bit on this.  I now include people who truly “own” the business.  By this I mean those people that posses the ownership gene.

This set of people develops a sense of the company’s history regardless of how long they’ve been there, they fearlessly try and try again to describe what it is the company does at each and every family/social/cocktail/sporting event, they roll up their sleeves and get involved in challenges beyond their job scope and description, they think about new ways to expand, increase, grow and generally go faster everyday.  Every business needs a team of people like this if they hope to succeed.  People that have an insatiable need to talk to end users, prospects, skeptics, and basically anyone who will take the time to listen and give constructive feedback.  They use every opportunity to talk passionately about what they’re doing, where they fit amongst the competition, and why their product or service is more awesome than the other guy’s.

Once these people truly understand, are deeply passionate about, and can describe the company’s place and position in a holistic business sense, they then become the best salespeople in the company.

Even more company rules

#73 Work is inextricably intertwined with life.  If you don’t believe me you probably need to get a new one.

#19 Saying you’ll do something and actually doing it is not the same thing.  This is even worse if you’re a repeat offender.  This is somewhat related to #963: we don’t get paid for activity.

#327 Doing more than what’s expected is expected.  This is sort of a derivative of rule #107.

#11 Your job is to add value to a customer.  If you don’t do this directly, then at least make sure you support someone that does.  If neither are you, then you should become a Buddhist monk.

#31 Any large technology purchase will be immediately followed by other large technology purchases.  A management console.  Additional power.  Cabling.  And eventually a desktop support person. Note: this rule provided in cooperation with FalsePrecision.

#4 Marketing’s job is to make sales superfluous.  Marketing people usually fall in one of 2 camps, those that understand this, and those that have short life-spans.