PicoBusiness

From the “It’s complimentary, so it must be true.” department – more educated people think like economists. And in fact, intelligence is the best predictor of belief in market mechanisms.

What does that mean?  Well, if the study is correct, in general, if you believe in the free market, are optimistic about future economic growth, don’t believe in “make-work” projects as economically valuable and believe that international free trade is overall a valuable benefit to the economy, you’re likely to have a higher IQ.  And the converse is true as well.
As a side note, apparently a large vocabulary is also a good proxy for intelligence.

mmmzr is already at $28k in gross revenue, approx $7k in net revenue.  (See previous post here). The question I have to ask now is – how high will it go?  What do you all think the biggest fool will pay for a slot?

My guess is that at $16,384, you’re going to hit a limit where there’s not enough “oomph” compared to other ways one could spend that in advertising.  That’s only 8 sales away right now, so I could be completely wrong.

However, I’m still glad I didn’t try to buy in at $512 or $1024, even thought it is clear I would have made a tidy sum.

If I’m wrong, and people bid it up past $16k, I suspect that you’ll start to see copycats, especially on higher traffic blogs, as the free market takes hold.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it.  mmmzr is an example of both Multi-level Marketing and Internet Bubble concepts, all rolled into one.

Here’s how it works – you buy real estate on his home page, create a button, and the click-through for the button leads to your website.     Later on, someone (Person A) else buys your real-estate, and mmmzr pays you, and your button moves down the page.  Then, later on again, someone else (Person B) buys the real estate from Person A, and you get paid your original purchase price again.  So you’ll get 2x your initial purchase price back.
Each time, mmmzr gets 25% of the money from the sale.  He’s already up to about $2200 in “gross” income, of which he is keeping about $450 at this point.   Not bad for a few hours work.

To be fair, the author points out that you shouldn’t assume you’ll get 2x your purchase price.  You should buy an ad because you think it is valuable.  I tried to buy an ad at $128, but someone else snapped it up first, and I don’t feel like risking any more money than that.  As it stands, it looks like I would have gotten my money back x2 already.

However, the fundamental driving force is the “Bigger Fool” – I will foolishly buy this house for $250k, because some bigger fool will come along and buy it for $500k, and I’ll make a ton of money
But that, by definition doesn’t last forever.   It will last a while, but it’s not clear how long.  I’m certainly helping in some small way by linking to the site, and honestly, I wish nothing but the best for the owner, who seems like a smart, creative fellow.  But I can’t, in good conscience, risk more than what I’ve already risked on such a silly and potentially replicable model.  Realistically, is there something that will prevent someone with a better domain name with better traffic from replicating the service, and potentially reaching higher valuations?     MillionDollarHomePage worked because the name and the content were the same.  mmmzr just doesn’t have the same ring, now does it, and the costs are quickly growing prohibitive for all but “real” businesses.

A tongue-in-cheek list of things you can do to help ensure you will not succeed. At different times, I’ve done every single one of these!

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I’m in the process of reading The Single Founder Myth, by Mike Taber.   He is politely disagreeing with Paul Graham about the value of one vs. more than one founder.

For myself, Mike seems to be using anectodal evidence to support his claim that it is possible to succeed with a single founder.  Yes, it is possible, but it isn’t particularly likely

Why?

Strengths of Single Founder

• Single focus, single vision.  Breakout successes will more often come from one person, and be diluted by others who seek compromise.
• Easier dilution – a single founder can give away more of the stock, and still retain a huge chunk or even control.  That’s more difficult with more founders
• Less costs to cover – assuming that the founder(s) represent a drain on cash, the fewer the better.

Weaknesses of Single Founder

• No one to bounce ideas off of
• No one to help improve – this is the antithesis of “undiluted vision” above, but often tweaks and conversations will make a solution better, not worse
• No ability to play to strengths – if one founder is better at sales, and the other is better at, say, operations, there’s a natural benefit to letting them both do what they’re best at.

I’ve founded two companies, both times with friends.  I may start one on my own in the future, but I would much rather start with a partner who can cover some of my weak spots if I can.

(Cross-posted from Indefinite Articles)

That thing they did with the Nietzche meets Family Circus?  This would be great source material too, you know.

There’s just not enough Lovecraft in today’s comics.

Reading this article (hat tip: LNMOP) brings back memories… of people who I used to work with.  Supremely incompetent, yet quite self-assured.  So I’ve had almost 6 years to ponder how one determines if one is incompetent or not.

First and foremost, as the people on American Idol can demonstrate, there’s nothing that proves your incompetence (or not) more than feedback from a panel of experts.  For example, successfully defending a PhD thesis would be a reasonable demonstration that you are not incompetent in your field of study.

But not every career path has panels of experts who will judge you honestly.   So how else can you know?

Well, you might find someone who is demonstrably competent in their field, and seek to work for them.  If a clearly competent person gives you work, and praise, and more work, then you are almost certainly competent.

How do you know if someone is demonstrably competent?  Well, for starters, they will almost certainly be financially well-off, unless they are a blues guitar player.   They are often busy with successful projects that make money.
But most of all, competent people are rarely cynical about what they do, the industry they’re in, the way the market works.  They will have issues – criticisms, commentary, etc.  But they won’t be intensely negative about the state of their day-to-day life.  In my experience, this is the best way to tell the difference – when you experience setbacks and challenges, do you blame the world/industry/others or do you also reflect on your own actions, and what you might do differently next time?  Incompetent people don’t self-reflect, or if they do, they do it half-heartedly, as a checkmark in the “things to do before you blame the world.” list. Incompetent people grow more and more cynical as they grow older, because they feel that the world is set against them – how could it not be, given how competent they are?  I’m good at what I do - it must be the world that isn’t right.

Do not work for cynical, bitter people.   Do not work with them, if you can help it.  Don’t even associate with them, unless you have to because their spouse is a friend of your spouse.

Echoing my earlier thoughts, Joanne Black, the guest poster at 800 CEO Read Blog says:

Fire the Pain-in-the-ass Customer

Have you ever had a PITA customer? You know, Pain In The Ass. What happens? They drain you, waste your time, the time of your staff, and you don’t make any money. They are never good referrals, because PITAs hang out with other PITAs. So, fire them before you start.

She has more, so you probably want to read the whole thing.

I never realized that commenting was set up to be registered users only.  My apologies.  It is now fixed so you can comment as you wish.  Just be aware that I have to approve comments the first time the email address is used.

I’m reading an interesting thread over at the ScrumDevelopment Yahoo group, about dealing with poor performers. One theme I’ve seen is (paraphrased)

We keep coaching them and working with them and training them and managing them until they either get it, or get fed up and leave.

This is a noble goal, in general, except that all the time you spend with that one person is short-changing the other members of your team!  It’s not “free”.  I’ve only fired a few people for cause – one because he was unacceptably rude to his internal customers, one for stealing, and one for not bothering to show up for work on time, or some days, at all.

In the non-stealing case, I worked with them, and coached them (or had others coach them) to fix the problem.  When that didn’t happen, they were out, once I had a replacement prepared.

Hard on those people – sure.  But what about the other 12 – 30 people in the organization.  Don’t they deserve time and effort from me?  Doesn’t my family deserve time and effort from me?

Ian Landsman’s 10 tips for moving from programmer to entrepreneur 

As always, I comment  (note – you should read the original too – there’s a lot more there)

• Code is 5% – agree
• Design is everything – disagree.  Design is important, but for many types of customers, it isn’t critical.
• Think Long Term – agree - it’s easy to let yourself avoid uncomfortable non-technical tasks.  Don’t let them slide!
• Understand the end user – agree
• Love your customers – generally agree -  don’t forget, you can always fire them if they are , or become unloveable.   Better to fire them and suffer for a while than keep them and suffer forever
• Design for ease of use – agree.  100%
• Bounce ideas off of uninvolved friends – generally agree – it can be very easy to “drink the koolaid” and think you’re smarter than you are.  HOWEVER – “game changing” ideas are usually thought of as quite stupid or bizarre and unserious, until you make millions with them.
• Pull code out – agree
• Patience is a virtue - agree - although I might have said – be realistic with what you can accomplish.
• Learn how to be an Entrepreneur – agree - it’s a much different kind of work, and it’s easy to fall into old habits.  Read blogs about entrepreneurship and books and such – very valuable!

Other tips:

• You have to put time into networking, and all those icky, seemingly wasteful direct human interactions.   Like debugging, you just have to do it, even though it is frustrating.
• Save money on infrastructure – as a technical person, you often have a tremendous store of knowledge about how to do more with less.   Open source software, low cost hosting, demos and betas and so forth – you can easily get 80% of a full “commercial” environment for $0
• Save money in general – programming is often lucrative.  Entrepreneurship is not always such.  Try very, very hard to manage your expenses.
• Refer your competitors – in the process of going out on your own, you’ll meet a lot of other consultant/entrepreneurs.  If you find an opportunity that’s not a good fit for you, but a good fit for them, pass it along.  They will return the favor.
• Don’t be ashamed to subcontract – when you’re in-between gigs, or you’re having trouble meeting cash-flow – do anything you can to keep money coming in.

On the subject of “Libertarian Democrats” Trent McBride offers this challenge:

So I issue a challenge … Persuade me that corporate (coercive) power, to the extent that it exists, does not rest on governmental power at its foundation.

As usual, there’s probably a perception shift involved when people disagree about these kinds of things.  While I don’t believe this answer, this is what I think is going on in Kos’s head:

• Yes, it is true that corporations get their power from government.
• But:

• The public gets to vote on the constinuency of their government, but not corporate boards
• There is only one government, but there are many powerful corporations, so government acts are easier to monitor and report on than corporate acts

• If we set up an infrastructure that can prevent corporate access to government power, then the government will be the only place we have to look for “shenanigans”.  And indeed, if we only vote in people of sound ethical mind, of true progressive spirit, of decent, tolerant leftist stripe, we’ll have a wonderful government that is focused solely on the benefit of the citizens.
• We’ll establish watchdog groups to ensure that the government adheres to the ethical leftist position, and does not let itself be seduced by the dark side of greed and bribery and favoritism.
• And we’ll establish other watchdog groups to watch the other watchdog groups, so that the watchdog groups don’t get “turned to the dark side”

• And this approach will not be possible as long as corporations have access to the halls of government, because you can’t effectively watch all those different corporations for “shenanigans” at one time.