Preparing for launch

This is a very quick post aimed at dispelling some of the silence and shedding some light on what I’ve been up to recently.

The last 2 months have been spent refining an idea, creating a pitch and securing funds and team members. I’ll post more about what this idea is and what we’re aiming to create in a later post. For now I just wanted to set the scene and say that I will be discussing the various steps we, as a startup, are going through. We’re fortunate enough to have been through these steps before, but I’m quite sure we’ll make some new mistakes (which we’ll share) and learn some new things (which we’ll also share).

Watch this space.

When you’re looking to get someone to invest in you and your ideas, you need to recognise that you need to provide reasons to believe. The “investment” might be time, money, credibility, whatever; but it requires you to convince the other party that success will be the result of that investment.

If you want to convince a great programmer to help you build your idea, you should be prepared to explain to them not only the idea, but why it is likely to be a success. If your answer to that is “because it will be really cool and everyone will want one”, you’re not answering the question properly. And if the guy you’re trying to partner with buys that line, then maybe they’re not smart enough to be worth hooking up with in the first place.

The same thing applies right through the process of “selling” your vision. You need to provide evidence for why “buying” what you have is a good idea. It may be that you have a personal track-record or relationship with that individual, which allows them to believe that the past is a guide to the future and you’re likely to be able to make it happen. Second time (or third time) entrepreneurs have this advantage, despite it actually being a little unclear how good that evidence really is.

So whether it’s a flint-eyed Venture Capitalist, a doe-eyed code monkey or a bloodshot-eyed journalist, you need to create real, compelling evidence for what you believe. This is why there’s such an emphasis on prototypes, “social proof”, “product/market fit”  and early stage paying customers. These things all help to convince the next person in the chain that what you have is real, and that you’re likely to be successful.

In the end, the truth is that only your Mom will take what you say at face value (not my Mom, strangely though), and you’ll need to be persuasive if you want to get people on board. Start gathering your evidence as soon as you can. It’s good for you and your business.

Well I guess that there’s a chance that anyone reading this blog is actually of “geek” persuasion. My own background is very much centred on the web, and it would probably come as no surprise that I’d advocate that if you’re thinking of starting up on your own (or even better, with others).

It isn’t just that this is “what I know” though. I’ve thought long and hard about this. From the first time I saw the web almost two decades ago, the “entrepreneur gene” in me kicked in. I’d like to define a bit more about what kind of business I think has the best opportunity for success and why.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a stereotype view of an entrepreneur as the guy that mortgaged his house to get his dream off the ground, loaded up the credit cards and spent to within his last pound note before rising from the edge of failure, having embraced every imaginable risk and riding off into the sunset with millions in the bank. These people exist. They’re idiots (for the most part). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just returned from a trip to Silicon Valley; a reconnaissance mission for SessionCam, our rather remarkable (if I say so myself) piece of technology that allows you to observe precisely what a user is doing on a page and act accordingly. I won’t talk too much about that though – this isn’t intended to shout about the product. Read the rest of this entry »