PicoBusiness

I’ll be working from home and on vacation this week, so I don’t expect to put a lot of new stuff up.  Have a great week!

Contradictory articles:

• How to bullet-proof your startup
• How not to bullet-proof your startup

From MSN: Six Steps to being your own Boss

Get some experience

• Yup, totally agree here.

Build a winning team

• Probably the hardest part, all things considered.

Fight inexperience with advice

• Looking at successful young entrepreneurs, they almost always have a fairly close relative with a strong entrepreneurial background. I think it’s far more critical than most people realize, and yet probably not that hard if you just look around and ask for help.

Write a bulletproof business plan

• Bah. There’s no such thing, and trying to come up with one is a waste of time.

Raise money

• Duh.

Follow the money

• No doubt you should be careful how you live, expect some ups and downs, etc. Essentially, be prudent.

After watching this on Comedy Central, I read a blog post that pointed to the real origin of the term “Dismal Science.” I never realized that Economics is considered the dismal science because it argued that all races were equal. If arguing for equality is dismal, I don’t want to be happy!

Greg Mankiw discusses whether Economics is a science or not, in response to this post from Don Luskin.

Don has two points. The first is that Economics is not a science because there is no ability to repeat experiments (which is common to many disciplines: astronomy, geology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, meteorology and paleontology (and all the branches therein)).

However, Don’s second issue:

Where is the utterly essential ingredient of repeatable experimental verification of falsifiable hypotheses?

Is quite simply wrong. Indeed, all of the discplines I mention above have a rich history of making predictive hypotheses based on observations, and determining if the predictions came true. That is why we expect tornadoes in the midwest, hurricanes in the summer and fall. That is why we expect prices to increase if supply diminishes, given fixed demand, and why we do not expect prices to increase with increased supply and fixed demand. That is why we can predict that there was a common fossil ancestor to both ants and wasps, and then, lo and behold! discover that this fossil ant exists.

The key metric of what is science and what isn’t is the ability to predict what is likely to happen given past results - which is the core of a falsifiable hypothesis. Relicable experiments are just one of the ways that these predictions can be analyzed. Certainly a falsifiable experiment that can be replicated many times is easier to prove or disprove than a prediction about the origin of the Universe. But Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein made all sorts of predictions about the makeup of Universe, without the ability to create a replicable experiment. (At least, I’ve never heard of them creating any black holes in their laboratories). Those predictions have led to significant benefits for humanity, using rigorous analysis and producing testable hypotheses.

Dave Pollard writes a great overview of “Your Genius At Work”, with some pragmatic comments of his own. If you’re not familiar with “Your Genius At Work”, it is a book that helps you identify what you are good at, and what you love, and try to help you find a combination of the two that will work for you. I haven’t read it yet, but I will.

Anyways, take a look - he’s got a great diagram and some thoughts to help get you started. I think he also identifies the trickiest problem in all of this - how to find the job/opportunity that actually helps your passion and your skills come together.

He also asks about people who have found fulfilling work, and if so, to tell people what you discovered. I’ve been thinking about it for the last few minutes, and I think I do feel pretty fulfilled overall, even if the job can be frustrating. So here’s my experience:

• I’ve worked in startups for the last 9 years, and I find startups to be much more fulfilling than large company jobs, because the value I bring to the organization is clear, significant and generally recognized.
• Over the last 4 years, inspired by a number of sources, I’ve started writing novels in my spare time (I’m putting my first online here, I just finished my second on May 14th). The discipline and excitement involved in creating something that large has been wonderfully fulfilling, as well as the ongoing sense of improvement in my writing skills.
• I have an experimental side business - Bellygraph, which is a great learning experience for me, as well as fodder for a number of posts here on PicoBusiness
• I have another experimental side business with some friends, which is also a great learning experience, and even more fulfilling than Bellygraph, since it is a shared excitement.
• I believe that I am setting a great example for my kids, that they do not have to live as cogs in a big machine - that they can strike out and find their own way. What could be more fulfilling than that?

In short, I have found fulfillment by taking a meaningful job, and spicing it up with a bunch of personal initiatives that give me paths to self improvement, and potential opportunities for new forms of income, all the while giving me the sense that I am doing right by my children by taking this path.

in What Would Google Do, Derek Powazek makes some interesting claims:

• Google succeeded despite the sparseness of their interface, not because of it.
• It worked because Google’s service was easy to understand, and sparseness was different, and cool
• Being sparse now is, in general, no longer chic because everyone does it
• If your service is harder to understand than search, you are not well served by sparseness

I disagree with the first point - I think that people were overwhelmed with the barrage of information on Yahoo and MSN, and Google’s clean, simple interface was simply less intimidating. It may have been sparse, but at least you didn’t have to try to comprehend 7500 screen objects.

However, I generally agree with the other points - sparseness is no longer cool, because it’s played out. And, Derek is right - if your service is hard to understand, sparseness is not your friend.

http://www.motivation-tools.com/elements/seven_rules.htm

Very short, so I won’t bother summarizing, since I’d essentially be copying the entire thing. Worth a thought or two.

I just stumbled across a great new business blog: Escape from Cubicle Nation. Some of the recent best entries include:

• Open Letter to employees across the corporate world
• Open letter to CEOs across the corporate world.
• Too much to do, and not enough time.

If anything, Pamela Slim reinforces my belief that corporate america is a fraud. You believe that you will be safe, that you will be taken care of, that your job is something you will be able to count on. But the same is true (more or less) of living in a prison. Is that how you want to live?

Probably out of scope for Pico Businesses, but still an interesting list of ideas around how to sell enterprise software. All of these ideas seem quite solid. In my experience, however, if you can make your enterprise software “trial friendly” (that is to say, easy to setup and install), you should give away as many trials as you can, because nothing sells like an existing base of users who love the product.

You cannot reason a man out of something he did not reason himself into

If you’re into Socialism vs. Capitalism, this is a great read.

J Timothy King - Why small is better than big.

I know exactly how he feels. I haven’t had to work for a large company in 9 years, save for a brief consulting contract. I started working at a big company - Nortel, a surprisingly uncomplicated place, but which makes up in ineptitude what it lacks in political infighting. Since then, I’ve never worked for a company with more than about 60 people. And unless I’m one of the top dogs, I never want to either.

• Ten ways to improve your (small) business - This is a decent list, with some solid suggestions. It is well-targeted towards PicoBusinesses. I liked the “Write with a twist” especially.
• Successful sales tips for the technically gifted. C’est Moi. I am definitely going to have to memorize this list.
• 5 ways to start a company without quitting your day job. Also very useful, especially when you want to keep that income stream going.