Category — Entrepreneuring

Sometimes in business you aren’t able to develop the exact tool you need to serve the market the way it wants most. There are many reasons for this and they vary from situation to situation, sometimes it is lack of resources (time, $, skill) sometime it is simply not technology feasible, etc. But regardless of the reason you aren’t able to develop and deliver the right product to market, there is no reason to think about your go to market strategy for a product the market is not demanding. Every available resource should be focused on creating a product that is wanted and needed by the customers you are aiming to serve.

Marketing, advertising, sales are all (very important) deliberate measures taken to serve your customers and make their experience with your product better, or happen at all. But that all comes back to your product, and if your head isn’t focused on execution of that product, what are you doing?

A few months ago I finished Jeff Jarvis’s book “What Would Google Do”. It was a fascinating read with much good insight into modern ways of running a business/organization. Google unquestionably runs a great business, but I think at the heart of Google, is an algorithm that returns better search results than any of its competitors. Yes they run their business efficiently as well, but their products superiority is what lead them to success, and leads them to try new things through iteration and openness.

Bijan Sabet recently posted a thought about building an excellent product as a pre requisite to monetization and it sort of summed up my thoughts from WWGD (What Would Google Do). Transforming every industry the way Google does things is sort of like saying being really good at something will make you better at it. Which is true, but doesn’t really mean anything if you aren’t good at that something to begin with.

Google is a child in the business world, it is only 12 years old and hasn’t even been public for 6 years. Of course its a behemoth with Billions of dollars in cash and revenue, it is no doubt a titan of the Internet Industry. But the internet is so young, we’ve had roughly 17 years with a web-browser, look at the automobile after 17 years of the combustion engine - it didn’t exist. Samuel Brown patented the internal combustion engine in 1823, 50 years in 1879 later Karl Benz patented the 2 cylinder engine used in the first automobile, which wasn’t invented for another 7 years. From 1886 when the first automobile was patented, it took until 1914 for an assembly line to build cars for the common man, and not until the 1940s was there a car that resembled autos as we know them today.  So looking back at the history of our modern cars, it took about 100 years from the invention of the underlying technology until it became a useful mainstream product.

Yes we are advancing at a Moore’s Law pace, and using much more powerful technology than they were, my point is advancement takes time. Google right now is at the Model-T level, it has something great that people want and use, but in another 12 years who knows what we may be doing to find information (I don’t think we’ll be using search to find content). Google will probably be powering what ever technology it is that we use in 2022, but that is IMHO solely because its initial product was so excellent that it advanced upon its competitors so far they’ll never catch up and now any new technology that is developed anywhere on the earth, Google has the power to stick its hands in it.

Building upon that great product, Google built a great company - it wasn’t born as a great company. A great product was born around which a great company was developed, and ignoring that product would be to ignore the cornerstone of any great organization: the product that it creates.

Great companies are built around great products. Build a great product and you have a chance to create a great company.

Kudos to Mr. Jarvis for bringing a lot of great lessons to light from Google’s dominance, but my biggest lesson over the past year has been to build great products and let the rest follow. Google’s success is no exception.

I spend about 3 hours a day reading stuff. Alot of that time is spent reading TechCrunch and Mashable and Business Insider and several other blogs about Technology and Business. But the really interesting stuff is found in the second level - the links and sources that those sites embed in their posts to attribute thoughts, ideas and specific data. Those links have a more focused approach to specific data points and thought patterns that give you a better insight into that line of thinking. A better insight into what is happening in the world.

I read an interesting quote today - “The beauty of the internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people.” ( - Jaron Lanier) Its very true. The value of the internet is in discovering what other smart and experience people have to say, and have to reflect about their world. Because our world is so interconnected, shared experiences are much more common - even if we don’t know each other or are on opposite sides of the globe.

Reading is a great way to focus your mind and absorb new information that inspires you. I feel like as I read, my unconscious mind is absorbing all the data I read and locking it away in my brain only to be accessed randomly at some other opportune (or inopportune) time. It brings the value of other people’s experiences, their thoughts and advice related to those experiences, it brings that all together and helps me better form an idea of what needs to be said or done here. Reading about how Google is positioning its new operating system, and how a brand new start up is unrolling its new location based social game. Those things matter, they are minute case studies on how to run a business in todays world. Real time case studies - this is happening NOW.

Of course the ultimate action is always up to me, but knowing that this company in Santa Cruz did this crazy thing when they were faced with this really bad situation and it worked brilliantly, or it was the last straw. Well thats not in you’re marketing textbook, or your finance book.

Its a little lesson you learn in the school of life, the school where you are the professor and you decide how well you do - but the rest of the world grades you. Do good things and you will do well.

Reading and absorbing is one of my favorite ways to relax, and it helps inspire me and focus on my ideas because I am always asking - “How does that apply to what I’m doing?” Always ask questions, and question the answers you get.

In the past year, I have had the best times, some not so good times, and some really bad times. I’ve hired and let go nearly a dozen people, all of whom I liked, and all of whom left me feeling down and like they had taken advantage of me. I am generally a kind and compassionate person, I almost always try to get the best situation for people on both sides of the table. But as I’ve heard before and was told recently, if you want a friend - get a dog.

I raised a small (by many standards) amount of Angel money in October last year. I took on a partner who invested time and money and committed to working side by side in the business with me.  He’s a smart and great guy, with a long history of managing successful sales teams. I thought it was the perfect partnership. But I learned the hard way that I gave up too much control of the company I had put so much in and our investors had invested in. So we set out to build a killer sales team.

And we took the right steps, we hired 3 new sales people. We purchased a massive license from Salesforce to manage our team, we did all the right things. Or so we thought. We were so psyched to get our feet on the street and bringing in new clients, that we forgot to build the product out to the specs it really needed. Our developer got behind on the new platform and all of a sudden we were 3 months, then 6 months behind schedule with the launch. But we had been training and building this sales team for those 6 months - and paying them. Not paying me, not paying my partner, but building our sales team; a sales team to conquer the world.

Lesson learned the hardway, if you build a killer product, you won’t have to “sell” it. It will sell itself. I knew we needed to focus on the product, from day 1 I knew it. Thats why I raised money, to build out this great product and then build out a great sales team to come and distribute it. We put the cart before the horse and spent all our time, effort and cash on this sales team, which flamed out and probably (in hindsight) wasn’t the right team to be working for us anyway.

So know here I am, a year later, with investors who still somewhat believe in us, a product that is halfway finished (but still great!) and a sales team 1/4 th the size it was 3 months ago. I’m stuck, because I know our idea will work, I know it does work. I have seen it work for 4 years now! But this economy turned a cold shoulder to our mediocre product, and I’m back where I started 14 months ago. Except much, much, dare I say, MUCH wiser for the experience.

I know this idea is going to succeed. Its just a question of when.