The Art of Serious Fun (15 keys to Entrepreneurial Success)
Speaker: Jeff Parker May 31, 2006
Summarized from his talk at ihmc (Institute for Human & Machine Cognition), Pensacola FL
Started his first business at the age of 39
- Focus on what you know
- What do you know about this potential venture?
- Better to start with what you know to reduce risk/reward experience
- Get some experience before you jump!
- Gain enough experience to shift risk/reward experience
- You don’t know what you don’t know
- Bill Gates, Dell are exceptions!
- Operate with a sense of urgency and with laser focus
- Entrepreneurship is 24/7!
- Not something to be taken lightly
- You are living it in 24/7
- Life changing event
- Success primarily depends on excellent execution
- Most people have a great concept but few execute
- Lot of businesses with mediocre ideas have been very successful – key is execution
- Don’t Run Out of CASH!
- It’s all about “burn rate” and “fume date”
- Burn rate – what are you spending per unit of time. Net cash outflow per unit of time.
- Fume date – when do I run out of cash
- Cash/Burn = Fume Date
- Most businesses fail from a lack of revenues not from poor expense controls
- It’s all about sales and marketing
- This is a point that resonated with me. We need to teach sales and marketing in schools. Why don’t we do that?
- Very important to learn how to sell
- Do everything you possibly can to stay on plan
- Very important to stay on plan and not keep revising the plan to fit your schedule
- Don’t overvalue your company
- If you overvalue the company and you need to raise more money now you will be in for trouble
- Be conservative and increase value of company as you go along
- You never know when something is going to go wrong
- Raise extra money when given the opportunity
- Trade off between fear and greed
- Be sure you understand how you get your product/service to market
- Think about buying cycle
- Think about how to get it to market before running out of cash
- Understand who you are going to sell and how they buy
- Better to be in a business where you can identify who the buyer is at any time e.g. VP of banks in lending departments
- Products/services for “everybody” will need serious amounts of cash and huge investments
- How do you get the dogs to eat the dog food
- Provide Clear goals and responsibilities for your employees
- Define boundaries and let them operate, you will get a better company and employee
- Let people know how things are going – make them feel part of the team
- Tell people they are important – company and family
- Tell them how well they are doing not just how badly they are performing
- As the CEO you are the captain of the ship
- You have to make tough decisions
- That comes with the territory
- “Leadership is about setting expectations and providing hope” – Ken Chennault, CEO American Express, Cornell University, May 2002
- Marry the right spouse
- You need a partner who thinks this is worth it and can support you
Simplicity Survival Handbook
Book Author: Bill Jensen
Communication – Think in terms of
- Know
- Feel
- Do
Email – To communicate effectively using email, email should fit 3×5 card. It should have the following elements to achieve the desired result.
- C – Connected to your workload/project
- L – List next steps
- E – Expectations – success criteria
- A – Ability – tools/support
- R – Return (What’s in it for me?)
What are some of the technologies in Web 2.0?
As per a recent McKinsey survey, the following are considered Web 2.0 technology components:
- Web Services
- Collective Intelligence (collaborative publishing and common databases for shared knowledge)
- Peer to Peer networking
- Social Networking
- RSS
- Podcasts
- Wikis
- Blogs
- Mash-ups