Most startup failure is self-inflicted theater — business plans, fake teams, premature scale, hubris — so strip away the performance and focus on the real work that moves you forward.
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Jeff Cornwall who I do respect writes in his article Short-cut to Trouble. It is about the importance of revenue forecasting. (Via Ken ) Accurate revenue forecasting is one of the single most important steps an entrepreneur takes in planning for a new venture. And yet, we find that most entrepreneurs do not spend …
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I’ve been writing these anti patterns since I started this blog and in honor of Evhead’s 10 rules for web startups I wanted to create an overview over them mostly for my own sake but also for newer readers of my blog. An Anti Pattern is often talked about in the software development world. WikiPedia says the following: …
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Why do we do it? We keep writing legal language to satisfy non existant lawyers that none of can afford anyway. I am not a lawyer (hmm I smell an evil recursive argument coming along), but I think a court (at least in common law countries) looks more at the intention than the language. This is why Click through …
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Just got hit by another typical Bootstrapping Anti Pattern, I have been writing using “We” and not “I”. It is such a bad habit for me, but I keep catching myself writing “We …” when I am writing text for my businesses. I am but myself so why should I write “We offer a secure service.”. I have just gone through a little …
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Focusing on a large long term abstract revenue goal makes you loose focus and morale. Instead focus on building the first $50K of revenue. Just saw this by Wil Schroter, The First 50 Plan via Ken. The problem with trying to think in terms of “how do we get to $10 billion in revenue in 2050” is that you lose sight of …
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You’ve all heard the common advice that to startups that you need a good team. I’m sure that is right, however some times and at certain stages that team should consist of just you. Granted if you happen to have a really good small founding team of really capable people, by all means you should work together. However, …
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Most of us entrepreneurs have a dream and we are very focused on this. Unfortunately things that are obvious to us can very often be undecipherable for others. Startups with more people can also have this problem, but are less perceptible to it as the other partners or investors will start questioning you early on. Us …
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“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.â€? Jim Stockdale While browsing around Joe Kraus blog after my last story about Great times for …
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We’ve all heard the stories in colourful business magazines about people starting their multimillion dollar companies using nothing more than their credit cards as funding. It sounds like a cool idea and all and it could probably be used as a gamble if you are betting on receiving a large amount of cashflow straight …
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More Bootstrap Anti Patterns: In the last startup where I worked, we halted all my development work to work on various revisions of our business plan a total of 3 times. This worked out to about 4 months of lost time. In my post mortem of the now failed venture, I believe that focusing on business plans, possible …