damonpace

A VC fundable startup is one in which you KNOW you can turn $1 into $20. Once you figure out how to do this, you will want as much money as possible to make that happen as many times as you can. That's when VC's are needed. You take VC money for growth, not for ideation or market validation. Before you find your business model you should stick to bootstrapping, angel investing and just keep iterating until you figure it all out.

I grew up in the back of a junkyard and watched my father collect "stuff" my entire life. It's a minor mental disorder, irrationally rooted in a fear of having nothing. To my father it was his security blanket. He would look out across the junkyard and see money. Everyone else would just see junk. As long as my father had something in the yard, he felt financially safe. Junk can't fire you and no one was going to steal it. (Only tweekers steal junk) Try stealing a broken down steam roller or a 1 ton gold smelting machine or a 10mb hard drive so big it had wheels. It's pointless. To my father, everything had value, but to everyone else it was just junk. The only people who ever purchased anything were other junk collectors.

Watching this as a child and eventually as an adult, I've put the collection of "stuff" on a 10 point scale. 1 being a pure minimalist and 10 being an extreme horder. We all fit somewhere on that scale. I'm probably a 3 or 4. My father is a 10. Understanding where you are on this scale is important to de-cluttering your life.

Sometimes value gets set by factors other than price. Value & price are not equally correlated. Value can be translated as functionality, prestige, vanity, security, companionship, etc. People get value of things beyond price and each person sees a different value for each product based on their psychological needs.

All PG seems to be saying is to question an objects value before you purchase it. Otherwise, you could end up with a house full of junk that you and no one else will ever use again. In other words...Question everything, including value.

Subscribe and curate is a great model for e-commerce...but don't cram the products down my throat. ShoeDazzle learned their lesson and switched to a choose from curated products model instead. Keep your eye on this space, as it's evolving rapidly as the churn gets bigger and bigger.

Repeat after me...You do not have to suffer to build a business. So many stories like this are sensationalized in the media and it convinces so many young entrepreneurs that it's a right of passage to struggle while building a business. It's not true. Yes, other entrepreneurs had determination and some sacrifice...but they most likely didn't suffer so dramatically, nor make their loved ones suffer along with them. Don't fall for the trap. Be smart enough to build a business without the struggle.

Capitalism says that in order to improve your life you must first improve the lives of others. The more lives you improve, the better your life will become. If you eliminate your own self interest of a good life, you have forgotten the biggest reason you are building a product in the first place. You aren't respecting your life, your wife, your business or your customers by doing this.

Stop struggling and build something valuable that people will pay you for. Living out of a van down by the river may get you a few news articles and motivational speaking gigs, but your struggle is not related to your success. I've been there...I've done it. It is irrelevant and unnecessary.

General rule of thumb. If your company has solid revenue or is close to profitability...you will be fine when the bubble bursts. If your company is not even close to profitable...you will need to polish that resume some more. The better option is not to let other people's opinions, abilities and spending habits control your life.

I wouldn't say they use a sledgehammer approach. I used to own and operate an anonymous email service until the FBI called me one day for the user data. I never ended up giving it to them, but I immediately shut it down after that. They were nice, cordial and understood that I was not the one using the service maliciously.

Exactly. Business people are what make a business go around. It's not always about product, but also about being able to sell the product. Programming is becoming ubiquitous and available around every corner of the world. If I want to build a real business...not just a lifestyle business, I need people who can sell the crap out the product. People who negotiate killer deals and high profit margins. Those are the people who make the difference in a startup. Yes, the product matters...but if you have a business person who can sell icicles to eskimos, your business will be far better off in the long run. Not to mention, they will be able to find the capital so your business isn't underfunded while you watch your competition crush you.

I'm guessing in the $750k plus range...unless they've owned it for years.

Great iteration of the slide deck. If I were an investor I would prefer this over powerpoint any day. So much smoother.

Good luck guys...don't let all the negative comments get you down. Power through and stay on task.

The only problem I see with patents is the legal process (legal bullying). It should not take 2 years and $1 million to prove your innovation does not conflict with another patent. That's ridiculous! Ideas & companies are killed by the threat & cost of going through a lawsuit, not by the threat of actually losing a law suit. That's why so many companies would rather pay a fee to use a patent than actually go through a lengthly lawsuit to fight the patent owner. (See Microsoft & many phone manufacturers.) It's called legal bullying, not patent failure. It doesn't just happen in the school yard anymore. PG is simply trying to get the 6th graders to stop picking on the kindergartners, so the kindergartners can play safely in their own playground.

I see this as a talent/technology grab instead of a revenue play. Obviously, Skype will be able to integrate the technology and find a way to monetize it with their user base. There have been multiple companies purchased before they even launch a product. What's the difference?

I thought of the exact same thing when I read this. I still like it though.

Airbnb has done a great job so far, but I think there needs to be some more effort put into validating the renters information. There are several ways to do this via online identities, credit cards, etc. The other option I would definitely add is a specialized rental insurance of some kind. An additional $10/night across all rentals should help pay for situations like this along with the basic broken item situations that I know you deal with. Let the homeowners decide if they want to charge/pay that fee. Then it is in their hands if they choose not to.

You are not talking about just an "Idea Guy" you are talking about a "Visionary". Vision is what separates an "Idea" from a "Business". All non-techies should bring the vision/strategy and all techies should look for people with a vision.

It seems everything is based off the grouping "Circles" aspect. Which if they get it right it will be a home run for the rest of the projects they build off of it. I personally find the Huddle feature the most valuable. This is something I've wanted for a long time, but no one has built...except for GroupMe. Which I'm not a huge fan of.

Love this! But I really only see a mobile use for this, rather than a desktop use.

Although, I don't agree with everything I find some truth in the article. The only time I need a phone number is the first time I enter someone in my phone. Otherwise, it's just a username after that point. Skype recognized this and I see no reason we can't get rid of phone numbers all together in the next 10 years. My only fear is that the legacy systems of the past will carry on because of the "sacred cow"...sort of like how racism keeps hanging on with older generations while the new generation moves on silently thinking how crazy the older generation is.

If you're an entrepreneur and you haven't felt this already, you're lucky. The first quarter of this year was horrible and the bad news is just getting started. There hasn't been a single policy on either side of the aisle that is going to change the current situation. Here's to 2012...13...14...

I agree. W3 should get you started on the right track. Learning code in books has never worked for me. Learning online is the way to go because you can test everything on your own and go through their tutorials along the way.

Ask yourself this question? Would you hire a lawyer that charges $9.99/hr or one that charges $299/hour? The higher the price the more "Perceived" value it holds. Pricing strategy is an important part of bringing a product to market. Then there is pricing optimization that needs to take place to find the perfect mix of profits and revenue. Luckily for us techies we can iterate as much as possible to find the right mix.

Interesting, I'm going to try to make it to the one in Silicon Valley in November.

It seems as though he's trying to see himself rather than wine. I like GV, but I care more about the results and how to's than personality and motivational speaking.

Since we're talking about Twitter being a "protocol"...Is it likely they will be the only 140 character microblogging platform? What opinions do you have on Status.net and what they are doing with www.identi.ca? I think twitter has created a new protocol, but not a monopoly on that protocol. In 5 years people will be microblogging everywhere. That's what worries me about building something off twitter.