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Small list of blogs that entrepreneurs should read (and no more!)

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firehose of startup information and blogs
If you’re like me, you’ve had moments in your life where you’ve added tons of blogs to your feed reader, and then you got farther and farther behind in your reading.  Over the years, I kept trimming back, and present to you my list of must-read blogs for entrepreneurs (plus some bonus tools I use to keep the inbound information flow manageable):

  • Both Sides of the Table, by Mark Suster — it’s awesome, because he has repeat success as an entrepreneur, and is now an active and accessible investor.  As an added bonus, he isn’t based in Silicon Valley, so he knows that talent can be found anywhere.  Reading his blog is very much like a daily peek into the questions in my head, and fears in my soul 🙂
  • Ben’s blog, by Ben Horowitz – like Mark, Ben writes with the perspective of a seasoned (and massively successful) entrepreneur.  He’s also a fantastic writer.  He doesn’t write often, so he’s gentle on your feed reader, but when he does, it’s worth grabbing a drink and settling in.
  • Essays, by Paul Graham – he’s just a genius, and similar to Ben in terms of writing quality & depth.  Also, like Ben, everything he writes is worthy of a sitdown and repeat-read.
  • GapingVoid, by Hugh MacLeod – Art and Life – his back-of-business-card drawings (and larger artwork), along with minimally expanded explanations, do a great job of visually displaying the noise in my (our) heads
  • AVC, by Fred Wilson – he’s the best. Great mix of broad-internet goings-on, personal stories, musical passion, entrepreneur education, and more.  For me (and many other entrepreneurs), Fred was/is the original VC blogger, and he continues to rock it.

That’s it — unsubscribe from the rest of your blogs, unless they’re close friends or something very specific for your market space.

Now, for some bonus tips, to manage the rest of your news overflow:

  1. Don’t try to read your Twitter feed!  Just keep track of your @replies (and respond if relevant) and DMreplies.  Then, dive in to the feed when you want a light distraction.  But, it’s not your responsibility to read all the tweets in your stream.  That’s one of the many things that’s wonderful about Twitter, once you figure it out.
  2. Twitter is an awesome way to casually spot hot stories, because if it’s relevant to you, you’ll probably see it sweep by you several times during the day.  Read it, or don’t — your life won’t end if you miss a story or two.
  3. Subscribe to Summify – it monitors your social feeds, and you can set how often you’d like to have it email you a summary of the popular stuff.  I have it send me an email one time each day, with 6 stories.  It’s amazingly good at picking out the articles that got lots of tweets/retweets/likes/shares and more, from the people I care about. You can control all of the settings.  It’s awesome (and, as an extra bonus, was created in Vancouver, BC!)
  4. In Seattle, I like GeekWire for my daily news summary (I prefer the daily email — I scan it quickly, click thru to those that interest me, comment, and then dive back out)

Paying It Forward

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to Pay It Forward.  What’s funny, though, is that I’ve never seen the movie itself, so I went and added it to my Netflix queue — I expect that it’ll be a sappy two hours, but sometimes that’s just what I need.  But I digress…

Anyway, for the last several years, I’ve been trying to spend a little bit of time each week helping younger (or less experienced) entrepreneurs avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, or at least be aware of the avalanche heading their way, as they start their own business.  Last week, I gave a talk at Seattle’s TechStars For a Day that became pretty emotional for me — the topic was “What a Business Person Does in a Startup“, but it turned into a bit of a heartfelt talk about why it’s so fantastic working in a startup, or in your own business. Yes, tears were involved.  I’m not sure why, really — yes, the emotions got cranked up, but it could also have been impacted by several days of non-stop cross-country travel!

In the end, it’s about giving it your all to create something new and wonderful.  And surrounding yourself with a great team, and participating in their growth as well.  And making mistakes.  And, hopefully, being able to participate in the success of the next wave of explorers.  I’ve found it very meaningful and enjoyable to give back, where I can, and I can’t wait to have more time, someday, to do even more.

For now, I’m just trying to encourage experienced entrepreneurs to take a little bit of time each week to try to help somebody out — it could be a quick conversation over coffee, an on-campus speech, or just attending an extra event every few weeks, to make yourself available to someone who has an eager question. And, reminding those I’m helping now (when they say thank you, and make me feel so great), that in a few months, or years, that I expect them to do the same.

Of course, I’m just Paying It Forward from folks who helped me along the way when my ideas were in nascent stages (and took my coffee, lunch and other brain-picking requests); folks like Andy Sack, Bill Bryant, David Geller, Daryn Nakhuda, Todd Sawicki, Dave McClure, and many, many more (not to mention all the crazy angels who ponied up cash… those people are the TRUE psychos of the Pay It Forward Universe 🙂 )

Paying it Forward — it really does feel good to help your friends and community.

What does the Business Person in a Startup DO?!?

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As part of the TechStars For a Day speaker series, I gave this talk about an oft-asked topic. We all (think we) know what the CTO or technical co-founder does, in the world of startups and internet wunderkinds. But, many wonder, “What does the non-value-add CEO/Product person DO?!?”

This master’s thesis, years in the making, helps to illuminate all that is wonderful about the non-technical-member of the startup wonder twin pairing.

Speaker Notes / Details of slides (they roughly match)

Dave Schappell – Founder/CEO – TeachStreet.com
@DaveSchappell

1) Product Backlog / Definition (prioritization, shiny-object-mgmt, specs, mockups, copywriting, emails, …)

2) Product Research / Customer Service (meetings, surveys, customer feedback, issue mgmt, …)

3) Operations-HR/Legal (office, legal/incorporation, accounting/check-writing, payroll, patents/TMs, TOS/Privacy)

4) Endless Networking and Sales, for everything (recruiting, fundraising, bus dev, sales, publicity)

5) Operations-Finance (Fundraising, Debt-procurement)

6) Interviewing, on-boarding paperwork, perf rvws (PIPs/firing), weekly team mtgs, offsites, entertainment/morale

7) Contracts/Negotiator, for everything

8) Program Manager

9) Q&A / Bug-filing/testing/resolving

10) Marketing (SEO education, SEM, BD ptrship setup & mgmt, emails/ESP, twitter, facebook, blog, PR mgmt (press releases, outreach, contests, …),

11) Metrics (GA / internal / operational), Chartbeat-Monitoring/Weblabbing/Testing

12) Investor Mgmt/Board meetings (monthly financials/projections, updates, presentations, cap tables, 409A)

13) Success is just Failure repeated often enough

14) Hard Word… get ready for it (from Mark Suster blog):
– The Harder I Work, The Luckier I get
– The problem with success, is that it’s often disguised as hard work
– It’s always what I think now when somebody who doesn’t go the extra mile thinks everything comes easy to you. If ur a tech startupper I know u know what I mean. Just closed your $5M round & everybody around you’s thinking they could have done it. But they weren’t there in 2009 when you were up late nights shitting yourself whether you really were smart for pursuing this idea. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails.
– Nothing comes easy. There are few overnight successes in life. The best companies struggle – just not publicly. And the harder we work, the luckier we get. Good hard work to you all.

Get some practice fights before fighting Tyson

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Just a quick thought. Because I’ve recently had more than the normal share of young entrepreneurs pestering me for introductions to various angel investors and VCs.

If I don’t know you, I’m not going to be making any introductions. Even if I DO know you, if I don’t like your idea or implementation, I’m not going to make any introductions either. And even if I think your idea’s OK (but not great), I’m probably not going to send the mails on your behalf.

See, you may not be ready yet. And, of course, it’s my reputation being put on the line (maybe even more than yours) when I make the call on your behalf. And that goes for all of the other favors that you try to cash in. Make the best of it (and only make intros when they’re warranted), or else you can start to expect a whole lot of silence when you make your next request (or introduction).

Just because you have someone who can make the intro to someone else, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Your product may not be there yet. You may not have pitched enough minor-leaguers first (and gotten feedback, iterated on your idea, and honed your delivery). Or, you just may be indicating that you don’t want to do all of the hard work to get your legs under you. You may think that all you need is (a little bit of money, an introduction, someone to buy you, etc. etc.).

No, what you need to do is to sit down, shut up, and build something that large numbers of people are clamoring for (and for which you know specifically what you want from investors). THEN it might be time to call in some of those favors.

As for now, Shut Up and Row.

Learning about Venture Capital Investing and Terms

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A friend, new to the startup investment space, asked me today how to learn about all of the different terms, players/investors and approaches in startup investing.  I started to rattle off some of my favorites, and then thought about sending a follow up e-mail with links, etc.  Of course, a blog post is probably a better way to share these, so others can access them. Read these blogs (start 12+ months back, and read all of their posts) and follow their tweets:

Understand these startup incubators:

Because Quora is frequented by so many VCs, entrepreneurs and the like, it’s also a great place to get almost any question answered about term sheets and colluding VCs 🙂 Great News outlets for startups:

Events to attend (not too often):