“No, I don’t think I’m going. I have an idea but it isn’t very good…”

I was speaking to one the attendees of my talk on building supportive technology communities for Peeks in Ramallah. I’d asked if she was coming to the Startup Weekend in Tel Aviv the following days. Her response is one I’ve learned to expect; people who’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about a problem and possible solutions are often the most afraid to be a part of making it real. “Well you can go and help someone else with their project; with teams of four or five most people don’t end up working on their idea. You’ll have fun. You’ve already got a pass.”

“No I don’t think so, it’s not a very good idea”

She’d made it to the event after all and as the pitchers lined up I’d asked about pitching the idea. “It’s worth doing just for the practice of presenting an idea to this many people” as I gestured to the auditorium of around 200 “even if no one likes it you’re no worse off than not doing it at all right?” “I don’t know…” “Ok” As the line of pitchers wandered along I rapidly tweeted potential team names, catch phrases and funny comment the presenters made. As each person pitched the line grew as others saw; it wasn’t that bad, the crowd was supportive, and they had better ideas anyway. When she came on stage to pitch she did a hell of a good sight better than I did my first time, and not in her native language to boot.

“No one wants to work on my idea…

it’s not very good and they don’t want to work with me because I’m Palestinian” She’d been selected as one of the top ten ideas, but as happens, hadn’t been aggressive in hustling people to work on her team. She’d assumed they’d approach her but in my experience it’s all about the hustle. We set out in search of a team. One of the potential team members tried to recruit her to work on an unselected idea and several didn’t quite get the idea and wanted to change directions but after some work and a good deal of membership shuffling she had a team. By mid-day the second day they had a solid concept and were making good progress. Even cooler she’d enlisted the help of some Palestinians who weren’t able to get permits. They worked remotely and coordinated over Skype to a degree that topped some of the teams working face to face in the room. In the end she presented a solid product with a complete design including animations, full graphics, and basic layout. Her team also managed to integrate real data from multiple sources to feed the design. It wasn’t ready to ship but it was a sight further along than most of the teams. In the end it was a success.

“I used to think I’d fail and doubt myself. Now I know I can do anything.”

We all see failure, and say no to ourselves, and claim that others can do what we can’t. It isn’t true. Stop saying no, and make something real. The worst you can do is fail, and that isn’t nearly as bad as telling yourself no.

I’d checked out of the hotel a few hours earlier and still had all of my luggage hanging on my shoulders. Standing in a foot of rapidly moving water in the dark with only my quickly dying iPhone for a flashlight I began to think this was perhaps not the best idea in world. I’d travelled through a series of caves, past an active archeological dig to an underground river that is believed by some to justify the placement of the city of Jerusalem.  In my typical fashion I’d arrived here purely by wandering from one interesting spot to another and was by no means expecting any spelunking when I’d left the hotel.

It was here several hundred feet underground that it occurred to me that my previous post on acting without thinking needed a partner; when to reconsider.

“Are you prepared?” not “Do you have a plan?”

There is a great difference between being prepared to handle something and having planned for it. I didn’t plan to be wadding in an underground river but had I had a light and less baggage I’d have been fine. During visits to Ramallah I was repeatedly put on the spot for impromptu talks on Visual Studio, Windows Phone and Microsoft generally. Thankfully I spend a good portion of my time thinking and talking about these things so was able to put together several hours of impromptu material.  My planned talks were more structured and I was able to build a richer story but that didn’t mean that impromptu talks weren’t valuable.

You’re in over your head

Or in my case up to your calves. I’m a firm believer of faking it until you make it. However it’s important to realize that this is more about countering my superego’s tendency to ignore my actual expertise rather than making things up. Sometimes it’s important to realize you don’t know what you are doing and seek some help. In preparing a talk on building startups and the startup community in Seattle for developers and startups in Ramallah most of the material was shaped by conversations I’d had with people living and working with the local community. By realizing context was far more important than some overarching plan of mine I was able to pull some fantastic material together and by encouraging the community to join the talk I was able to help build the same community engagement I was talking about.

Is this a good use of time?

Managing to crawl through this tunnel was definitely going to leave me with a story, but with only an hour left in Jerusalem and slew of tombs, temples and historic sites, was this really rather ill conceived endeavor the best use of time?  Making these kinds of opportunity cost decisions is almost impossible in the moment, but taking a moment to think about what else you might spend your time on is often a worthwhile exercise. In giving one of the opening talks for Startup Weekend in Tel Aviv I tried to cover all the lessons I’d learned that would benefit attendees new to the event. As the minutes ticked by I became concerned that in the past as attendee talks predominantly got in the way of working rather than adding a lot of value. At around minute five I cut things short and offered to give more tips to anyone that sought me out directly. While I had a lot of advice to give and much of it would make teams products and experience of the event better there is nothing more important to a successful Startup Weekend experience than getting started.

In the end, I took the bypass route. It was well lit, dry, and the only adventure was fitting my bags through the tight tunnels, which I’ll admit lead to a few moments of laughing at myself for bringing my luggage on an underground adventure in the first place.

For those wanting a full debrief on meeting with Israeli and Palestinian startups and helping everyone work to build some of the best Startup Weekend pitches I’ve seen you’ll have to tune in next week.

I’m sitting just off the Mediterranean Sea listening to the waves crash into the lovely beaches a stone’s throw away as I write this. How did I end up here you ask? A little over two weeks ago I got an IM from Marc at Startup Weekend saying;

Can you go?

Attached below this somewhat cryptic missive was a thread about Mercy Corps looking to pay to bring a technical person to Israel for an upcoming Startup Weekend in Tel Aviv. For those who don’t know Startup Weekend is an event where folks get together on Friday afternoon to pitch ideas, form groups an build prototypes over the weekend, and present to a panel of VC’s and startup veterans Sunday afternoon.  It’s an absolute blast. My response was immediately: “Certainly”. While I’ve attended several events, helped out at a few others and hosted one at Microsoft in Redmond I’ve never travelled half way across the planet to help out with one. In fact I’ve never been to this part of the world at all.

How and why was I able to agree so quickly?

I trust Marc and the Startup Weekend team. I know that they have great people organizing their events so I was going to be joining a great local team. I also knew that I wouldn’t have been asked if I couldn’t help the event in meaningful ways.

But what about time away from the office?

Between the Startup Weekend running Wednesday through Friday for cultural/religious reasons and being asked to give a talk on Visual Studio a few days before Startup Weekend I ended up needing to be out over a week. Worse yet it’s a busy point in my work cycle and closing down on a few last things is key to our success in the next few months. None of that matters though. Work will always have important and pressing things that must be done; this is more important than going to work. Even further; this is more important to my success at work than going to work. Yes, it’s been hard to close down the few things I didn’t get to before I left and keep on top of some others while struggling with jet lag and time differences, but getting another week of meetings in will not change things significantly for me, or anyone else. Working hard when I return or trusting those around me to make the right decisions will easily swallow up the bumps there. If you asked me what I had done this week had I chosen not to go a year from now I wouldn’t be able to tell you.  Ask me what I did a year from now, what I learned, and how it changed my thinking about my customers, my products, my team, and my life. I bet I’ll have something more to say.

Weren’t you… scared?

Yes. Definitely. I think admitting this is one of the most important things I can do to succeed at anything that scares me. Part of why I agreed immediately is because it was a daunting prospect. Quite often I’ve found taking the time to think about something allows me to spend a bit too much time finding problems and schedule conflicts that are fundamentally excuses to cover one’s fear. By deciding first that my answer was yes those problems no longer had the option of being insurmountable. On spending more time reflecting on the part of this trip that actually seems the scariest in situ, it’s really silly. The thing that makes me the most uncomfortable is not knowing the language, or the little cultural rules. So I fail to clearly communicate something and appear rude and ignorant, or get cheated because I don’t know the rules. Was I scared to arrive without a hotel reservation or really even a clear idea what city I needed to be in the first few days? No, although the border guard thought I was nuts. Scared to hop on a train get off on a random stop in Tel Aviv and wander around randomly until I found the hotels? Nope, that was actually a lot of fun. Was I nervous about renting a bicycle? Yes. Buying a meal? Yep. Or even a Coke? Sigh…

Post Script

Upon realizing this madness I promptly stopped writing this post, left the hotel on a quest to buy some random items without a really good plan and get rid of half the cash I had on me as a matter of principle. I found some delicious ice cream (chocolate and orange always gets me), and ran into one of the Startup Weekend Tel Aviv alums. Everyone was very nice and smiled politely and switched to English at my “sorry” and baffled look to complex phrases like “if you buy two candy bars you get one free”, and no I did not buy two candy bars.

Recently I wrote about getting started in a new habit. For the most part the strategy I’ve outlined has worked quite well for me. That said, starting things is only half the battle. While blogging, eating healthier, and exercising more are great ongoing habits, many of the things I do on a regular basis involve the completion of things. As I look at my to do list I see a rather long list of open projects and a shorter list of closed ones. What the heck am I going to do about it.

Put together a list

It isn’t likely news to anyone that to really get things sorted, finished and out of the queue you really need to get a clear list together. I’ve struggle with various techniques and tools for putting together a complete to do list for years. Only recently did I realize that a list that has 80% of my items on it really is good enough and is significantly easier to put together than one that captures that last amorphous 20%.

Get rid of the noise

One of the best things to do when overwhelmed with an extremely long list of items is to clear the noise out. By this I mean finish all the short items that you have laying around. Even if they are less pressing then some of the longer work items, clearing them out will help you focus. It also doesn’t hurt that knocking a few little things out tends to help get the ball rolling.

Aggressively cut things

Get rid of any projects that you don’t feel compelled to complete. Sure, they can go on a “Someday” list, but if you’ve not touched them in a while get rid of them. It’s easy to bring things back if you need to but you’ll often find you have more interesting things to pursue once they are gone.

Say No

It’s really hard to get in the habit of telling yourself and others that you don’t have the time to tackle a project but it will serve you better in the long run. It’s very easy to imagine the benefits of successfully completing a project and jump at every opportunity. It is often quite a bit harder to actually complete every project you may benefit from in the time you happen to have. It’s unfair to yourself and others to sign up for work you can’t do. By being honest about the time you can commit to thing you will often find there is a lower investment alternative you can make the time for.

Focus on a few things at a time

Limit the number of open projects of a particular type. I’ve got several coding projects near completion. The problem I tend to have though is that nailing down the last 5% is much more of a pain in the rear than working on the beginnings of something new and interesting. I’m setting a rule that I will have no more than two coding projects at a given time.

Reward completion

I have a very hard time taking any satisfaction in the completion of anything; instead of celebrating reaching the summit I start the climb up the next mountain. Taking a moment to celebrate success and when possible share the fruits of your labour makes it all that much more worthwhile. Just don’t go buying a new laptop every time you clean the bathroom.

Use Forcing Dates

A big time favorite at work of course, organize events so that a particular project must be completed. If you need to get some housework done, schedule a dinner party in a month. If your trying to get your application finished announce a launch event. You can easily tie this with celebrating success to party when you get to done. If you’re lucky your friends might get tired of celebrating all your successes. If they’re anything like mine though they’ll just keep having fun. Thanks, Kav

Scott Berkun has been asking for a list of annoying platitudes for the last few days and this got me thinking. In the startup world there are a lot of platitudes and myths, some helpful, some that just get in the way. Invariably however, like all platitudes they fall apart upon closer inspection. Let’s take a look at a few:

Ideas matter and must be protected

This one is near and dear to my own heart and is often trotted out for folks obsessed with NDAs and keeping their good ideas secret. Truth be told as a startup you are lucky if you can get people to care about your idea at all. If it is such a simple concept that someone else can beat you to market after hearing you talk about it once, don’t expect to hold them at bay long once you do launch (e.g. Groupon et al). That said the idea does matter; more specifically it matters that the idea has a path to revenue. Very few startups make it far without revenue and having a strong revenue stream allows you to negotiate with investors and potential employees from a position of strength. Just remember; a good idea and a poor team is a worthless combo.

Rockstar developers are 10 times more productive

First and foremost the 10x productivity claim is BS. See this great article for a fantastic breakdown of how this myth became as pervasive as it did. This platitude is often trotted out to make sure business folks in entering the startup world understand just how important it is to get fantastic developers. It’s also used to make sure everyone knows that the developers that they see crushing it in the startup world are the best. The problem here is that it isn’t that simple. The best startup developers I know have impressed me not with their coding productivity but with their ability to distill requirements, extend ideas, and take napkin sketches to working applications. Would these folks be considered rockstars on coding productivity, or depth of understanding in their favorite languages? Likely not. Would I hire them over a rockstar with an ego problem? Absolutely.

Working on your startup will take over and ruin your life

This one is often told to those looking to make the jump from the corporate world. The truth of it is quite simply; anything you are passionate about doing will take over your life, if you let it. It’s telling that people don’t realize that this can happen with anything. I work with one of the most impressive developers in the world and I’ll tell you he loves building the best software in the world. He often spends nights, weekends, and vacations coding up projects for work. He also happens to work for… Microsoft. Passion is important for startups but passionate people can be found everywhere. Even more importantly passion does not equal hours worked. Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, Handspring and a few others as well, gave a great talk on founding companies without working like an insane person here.

Startups are for the young

Quite often you see folks in the startup community rally around the idea that startups are for the young. With the long hours (see passion) and risky prospects, it’s unlikely older folks will have be able to compete. Combine that with a few myths on decline in learning and adaptivity and we have a powerful myth on our hands. Data from the Founder’s Institute however shows that, in their experience at least, older entrepreneurs are more likely to be successful. It turns out; experience is good for something. I know there are more startup myths out there, some helpful, some dangerous, and all at least partly untrue. What are your favorites?

Thanks,
Kav

I’ve been thinking recently about motivation. Blogging is of course not an easy thing to do every day or even once a week. Being a bit of a planner I of course kept creating lists of topics and possible subjects so I’d be ready at the drop of a hat to blog about this or that. Today, I’m throwing all that out the window. In reading about motivation and habits I’ve found a few rules I’m going to try and follow. For those that are interested here they are:

Stop getting distracted by tools and environment

Like many folks new to a field I obsess a bit more about the tools and setting everything up then about producing content. I’ve had two blogs on two different platforms with one post each. This means including post prep time I’ve spent easily 100x time configuring WordPress and installing plugins than blogging, and WordPress isn’t that hard! This wasn’t originally my first rule but while writing this post inside wordpress I realized I didn’t like the formatting options and needed to install something a bit better to improve the editing experience. If you find yourself doing this STOP. Go get an account on wordpress.com, posterous or whatever and get started today.

Starting writing now

One of the biggest problems one faces when starting a blog is producing high quality content. You look across the internet at all the high quality content out there and think your first post needs to measure up. The truth; unless you’ve sent a large chunk of your life writing content you aren’t going to be any good. Stop comparing, stop trying to match your favorites and start writing. If you are afraid of letting the few friends that are going to read your blog read your early work you might consider a site like 750 words. It’s a great way to get writing every day. That said I think you’re better off showing the world and learning from the experience if possible.

Set modest goals

I’ve got a post in my drafts folder on setting up a Linux based virtual server as a heroku like ruby environment. To finish I’ll need to write about 4 hours worth of tutorial material. This will be awesome, when I finish it. However I’m not yet in the habit of writing regularly here, much less writing a massive tome of a blog post. When you are getting started it’s totally OK to have modest goals. Even if you commit to writing only one sentence into a draft each day you’ll improve; both in the habit of writing and in the frequency of posting. Given the positive feedback the aforementioned 750 words receives I’ve set a goal of writing 750 word posts once a week.

If you plan to blog once a week, don’t blog on Sunday

Scott Berkun over at WordPress started a program for folks who want to blog once a day or once a week. Looked like a great program and I signed up immediately. Looking at my schedule Sunday seemed the best time to post so I penciled it in and went about my business. Well it turns out with the deadline looming that very day it was impossible to get anything done. I fell into the standard procrastinators dilemma. Finish everything in one shot or fail. This sucks. It’s far better to start early in the week and write a bit every day. In the event you are low energy or don’t feel the post is “done” you can let it sit for a bit without feeling like a failure.

Problem

Today I was struck with one of those routine decision points that leave many of us paralyzed. What should I have for lunch? Thankfully I’d already made it to the restaurant and I’d done some narrowing so I was only faced with two viable options. Two choices: the healthier; a large salad, and the unhealthy one, a delicious looking steak sandwich, stared me down from the menu board. Should I choose the healthy option and crave the cheesesteak or pig out and regret it all day?

The solution

Rather than choosing either I applied a bit of randomness and flipped a coin. You might say; “What the heck does randomness have to do with anything? You’ll just pick one of the options and be in one or the other sucky states mentioned previously”. Wrong, I wasn’t in either state because I didn’t make the choice at all. Passing the decision to a random factor also passes the responsibility for the decision to the random factor. By not having a choice in the matter I didn’t need to fret about having made the wrong choice. For those wondering the coin picked the salad. Damn coin.

Thanks,
Kav