James Siminoff

Reason to Not Not Do a Startup: The Idea

Good post on why ideas are really the commodity.  Execution is all that matters, it is long, hard and not as sexy but that is where the meat of a startups success is.

 viacaterpillarcowboy: via thegongshow:

Sometimes I ask people I know in my life who I believe would be good entrepreneurs, “have you thought about doing a startup?” I common response to this question is, “Yes, but I don’t feel like I have a good idea.”

I typically let the conversation end right there, because I would never push someone to do a startup that is hesitant.  A good entrepreneur has an undeniable drive, a hunger to bust through brick walls and make their startup successful. It’s not possible to try to convince someone with logic to adopt that often-irrational entrepreneurial frame of mind.

But, if I were to continue the conversation, I don’t think a lack of a good idea is a reason to not do a startup. Want a good idea? Here’s 30 great ones that Paul Graham wants to fund. Why would Paul Graham just give away 30 great ideas for free? Because the value of a business is not in the idea. In an early stage company, the value is in the people involved.

It’s the same reason that anytime I have a startup idea, I immediately write a blog post about it here.  I know that ideas are cheap, and additionally, ideas get better as people contribute feedback to them, shape them, and make them their own. I’d love to see a great team make any of the nagging startup ideas banging around in the back of my head a reality.

Entrepreneurs almost never take a startup from idea to full execution in a straight line.  The idea is a just a starting point from which people weave and bob around as they try to figure out where the money is in a new market they are creating, or existing market they are co-opting.

The converse is true here too.  If you’re really passionate about doing a startup because you think you have a great idea, you are actually starting with very little. In fact, the passion you have is very likely far more valuable than the idea itself. So, I would never discourage someone in that position, but my advice at that stage is typically: go get the 2 or 3 smartest people you know and run with the idea. Because people are so important, it’s really difficult to give the idea a fair shot if you do it alone.

JFDI

Swipen with the Swipely

I started using a new social sharing service called Swipely a few weeks ago.  The service takes charges on your credit cards and allows you to expose them to a sort of Facebook like news feed.  Now before you freak out about privacy, they give you enough control on what you want to post and strip out private information so basically people can just see where you were and when you were there.

It is sort of like Foursquare, in essence I feel like I am checking in, but since I am too lazy to do that this is much better for me.  So everywhere I swipe my credit card gets posted to a feed which can then become a discussion.

For example, I bought a satellite tracking device called Spot.  This is what that looked like on Swipely:

As you can see a conversation then came out of that purchase.  This social discussion from specific purchases is really fun and leads to lots of great findings.  In fact I have already found a few restaurants by following other people on Swipely that I am going to try out.

I think that this service has the right mixture of privacy, automagic and information to really become a powerful social place in the future.  The service is currently in private beta, if you want a invite ping me.  It is definitely one of those things that you have to try to get a feel for why it is so cool.

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Just to avoid any comments about the competing service Blippy.  I tried the service and just did not like it as much as Swipely, for many reasons I think that Swipely has figured out the perfect mix in this arena.

A Really Great Movie

Last night I went to the screening of Erin’s newest movie Ramona and Beezus based on a series of books written by Beverly Cleary.  I am definitely not the target audience but it was really fun and the movie had a great flow to it.

Erin worked really hard on this movie, it was a project that was many years in the making.  In Variety (a prominent industry magazine) they said, “Ultimately, helmer Allen credits the Fox 2000 team — particularly Gabler and Siminoff — for championing the little film that could.”

This film was made for peanuts, reportedly $15 million.  In relation to the world that I work in (tech startups) this was a very bootstrapped.  But even with that low budget they were able to pack the movie with big talent and create a A+ product.

If I sound proud, well sorry but I am.  While of course there was a team of people involved to make this movie a success, she definitely was a major driving force and that is awesome.

The movie comes out tomorrow, it is your duty to go see it and donate to what will hopefully be a HUGE opening weekend!

The Lottery of Startups

Last week on a hike with friends I was explaining to someone how my view towards startups is that I am never going to win the lottery.  What I meant by this is that I am never expecting some crazy break away success to happen to me.  So I always build with a rational model that will work with low investment to test the idea and even get to break even before too much investment is incinerated.

Then 2 days ago Mark Suster wrote a post about happiness and said:

“Startups are hard.  When you read the press you only read the glamorous bits.  You read about Mark Zuckerberg or the guys at FourSquare, Twitter or Zynga.  But that’s a bit like reading about your state lottery winner and feeling bummed out because you haven’t won despite years of trying.”

I sort of felt like Mark might have bugged my hike because that is exactly what I said.  In fact I used Facebook as my example.  While I was in college in 1999 people were building social college sites like Facebook.  I am not sure of the exact number of sites like this but I would guess that well over 100 people tried to build a site like Facebook which all ended dead, Zuckerberg’s took off and has since made him one of the richest people in the world.

I think one of the most important points I have learned in the last 10 years of having my teeth kicked in doing startups is to see through the bullshit.  Thinking that you are a lottery winner when doing a startup is delusional and can get you in trouble.

Is .Com Dead?

This weekend while on TechCrunch I saw this ad from GoDaddy about the new domain extension .co:

There is an ever increasing amount of Generic Top Level Domains (GTLD), as of right now there are over 20, these include extensions like .info, .jobs and .biz.  In addition to the generics each country has a domain, for example bit.ly uses Libya’s extension .ly and VC blogger Mark Suster uses Spain’s .es extension for his site, bothsid.es.  The trend towards using alternative extensions continues to gain tractions as fewer and fewer .com’s are available.

ICANN, the group that manages these top level domains is going to be increasing the number of these dramatically, allowing anyone with a nice sized check to have their own top level domain, for example ATT could have .att.

As the number of extensions increase I keep hearing that the value of .com’s should go down.  That would be bad for me as I continue buying in the aftermarket what I consider to be valuable .com addresses.

But there is a method to my madness.  I actually expect the opposite to happen, as the number of options increases the value of .com will go up.  Why?  Because I think that the average consumer is confused as shit by all of these other extensions, which is only going to get worse.

I associate .com with being the Rodeo Drive of the internet in terms of location.  While you can be  successful with an alternative domain, I think you will always be fighting an uphill battle with anything other than a .com.