Saturday, December 31, 2011

Entrepreneur: Survive Your First Year | TechCrunch

How to Survive Your First Year As An Entrepreneur | TechCrunch:

How to Survive Your First Year As An Entrepreneur

Thursday, December 29th, 2011
HBO1

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him@jaltucher.

I loved talking to the skankiest prostitutes at three in the morning with a camera crew around me, fires burning in the street, sad, abused people clinging to scraps of life for their pleasures, bailed out prisoners and the drug dealers waiting for them to be released, homeless addicts with nowhere to go and they only weren’t freaks if you saw them at three in the morning .

In short, I loved my job.

Entrepreneurship ruined it. I’m not like how Mark Zuckerberg describes himself: “a builder”. My guess is, I’m not like most of the smart people who read this blog who go out there and build things to improve the lives of others. And yet, I kept doing it to myself over and over again. Once you enter the world of “eat what you kill” you can’t go back to being spoon-fed by the pencil factory anymore. Sadly. I write about my first job here (and the prostitutes).

I had a regular job at HBO. My title: Junior Programmer Analyst in the IT department. I told HBO, “you do original TV programming so why not do original web programming.” And magically, from 1996-98, they let me do whatever I wanted to do at three in the morning and then put it on their website. My original job was to do some Unix/ Oracle thing that I was totally unqualified for and didn’t know how to do. So I figured out a more fun idea for myself and persuaded them to let me do it.

(Rockefeller. The opposite of me)

Someone in the marketing department at HBO told me, “You CAN’T DO THAT.” But, as the readers of this blog already know, that’s the call to action to anyone who is going to do anything. For John D. Rockefeller it was to roll up all the oil companies in America. Nobody thought he could do it. For Andrew Carnegie, it was to buy all of the steel companies in America. For Larry Page, it was to build the 100th search engine without any ideas about a business model. They became billionaires. For James Altucher, it was to interview all of the prostitutes at three in the morning in NYC for almost no money. We each have the built-in predilections given to us by genes, upbringing, and whatever black magic you call god.

Then other entertainment companies started asking me to do the same thing for them. “Can you make our web presence entertaining and fun?” We want fun, they all said. So I jumped ship. Entered the world of the wild. Suddenly I was an “entrepreneur”. I didn’t even know what that meant. I got to the office. I had nobody to call. And nobody would return my calls anymore. I was no longer at HBO. I would cry every day. I wasn’t a natural businessman. But I tried to learn from the 5,000 or so mistakes I made that first year.

All I’m saying is, thank god you first-timers have me to now tell you exactly what you should do in yourfirst year of being an entrepreneur. Do everything I say below or you’ll probably fail. I’m dead serious.

- Don’t hire anyone. Only hire people when you are absolutely desperate for more hands. And then start with freelancers. So you can fire them right away. When people raise money from VCs I notice the first thing they do is hire people. After my first company, which was profitable from day one and never raised a dollar, I started a second company where I raised $30 million from VCs and then hired $30 million worth of people, was fired as CEO and from the board, they then raised another $50 million or so and sold a year or so ago for about $1.

- Keep the cash. If VCs put money in your business then no matter what they say, keep cash in the bank. Don’t act like a big company all of a sudden. Do you really need your lawyer at $400 an hour to take notes at a board meeting? Do you really need a board meeting? You don’t need a secretary until you have at least five, paying, profitable customers, if ever. You don’t need a head of sales or marketing your first year. You are the head of sales and marketing. You don’t need any VPs. You’re all VPs. You just started!

- Get a customer. In order, here is the easiest cash you can get for your business: Customers, borrow against receivables, borrow against your house, friends and family, angels, venture capitalists, the public. Note that the VCs are near the end. Maybe you never need them. Why does everyone chase big-time VCs all the time? Do you really need $10 million in the bank. You just started! I shoud’ve made this point number one. Don’t even start your business unless you have a customer.

- Get a customer, part II. Give equity if you have to. Sell your first baby (or take mine). Do whatever it takes to get one paying customer. If you are a content site: get a sponsor. If you are a product or a service, get a customer. If you can’t get a customer then that means you have a shitty product or you’re not passionate enough about it. Go back to the drawing board. Take an extra $5,000 and make some new features. Note: I said “$5,000”. Not “$10 million”.

- Get a customer, part III – I mentioned this last week. Say “yes” to everything. EVERYTHING. If they need surgery performed on them, you’ll do it. If they need a database updated and your company makes tennis balls then say, “no problem, I have a guy for that. He was the database expert of Bangalore. And now he makes tennis balls for us. I’ll send him over Saturday morning to fix your database. And he’ll bring some pastries.”

- Corollary to the above: get the potential customer to say “yes”. Even if you have to do stuff for free. Just get them to yes. They can’t say no, for instance, if you say, “we can blow up your enemy for free.”

- Over-promise and over deliver for every customer. But only the first time. Don’t kill yourself for everyone all the time. You need sleep!

- If a client says, “I’d rather have this conversation in our offices,” then listen to me: DO NOT EVER go to their office. Don’t go there ever again.

- Most important: Stay Lucky. If you don’t stay healthy: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in your first year, its a guaranteed failure. I’m an expert on failure. Not having the four legs mentioned above means the chair you are sitting on is going to break and you are going to fall.

- If someone says, “I’m taking a big chance by hiring you”, get paid as quickly as possible. Get paid up front. You’re never going to do business with that person again. If his version of “chance” was hiring you then that’s it. He’s back to the pencil factory for his next vendor (no insult to pencil factory workers.)

- Every Friday, pay for a masseuse to come in for all of your employees. This assumes you have an office. Ideally, you have no office. But if you do, and employees are there, then get a masseuse. Make: “thank god it’s Friday” mean to your employees: “I’m so glad I’m going into the office today.” I had 50 or so employees at my first business when we got sold. Massages for everyone except me on Fridays (I don’t like anyone to touch me).

- I’m horrible at followup. But you have to do it. If you have a potential client, move it from the phone to the meeting, to dinner as quickly as possible. Dinner seals the deal. Pick up the tab. Ask about their love lives. If they are lonely, hook them up with your best single friend of the appropriate gender and sexual preference.

- Once they are a client, make them a partner. There’s three ways to do that:

  • Always hold out the bait that they can eventually make the jump from their crappy job at the pencil factory to the cool VP of Marketing position eventually opening up at your company (no offense to pencil factories).
  • Ask for advice. Ask them what else do they need that you can help them with, for free if you have to (over promise and over deliver the first time).
  • Ask them if they know anyone else who might need your services.

The best new customers are your old customers. The second best new customers are your old customers’ friends.

- In all of your spare time, do favors for your clients. Hire their mentally-challenged nephews. Contribute to their charities. Volunteer where they volunteer. Give double everyone else when they run in one of those stupid marathons for cancer. I say “stupid” because why can’t the cancer thing just ask for the money without forcing people to run for 26 miles. Your entire free moments of the first year of being an entrepreneur should be spent thinking of favors to do for your clients. Use the techniques of “Super connecting” to build up your clients’ networks. The bigger their networks, the more valuable yours becomes. Don’t horde your network or your favors.

- Fire immediately any employee with a negative attitude. Employees start to smoke in the stairwell and talk about you. So negative attitudes spread like a cancer. The only way to get rid of advanced cancer is radical chemotherapy to burn off the bad cells. Fire all negative employees immediately. No second chances. You won’t regret it. This doesn’t mean keep only yes-men. But the no-people have to work with you, not against you. If they start grumbling in anger, then they are fired.

- If someone wants to be your head of sales, only hire them if they are immediately bringing in enough revenues and profits to cover their salary. Everyone else is a waste of time.

  • Corollary: if someone makes an intro for you and it doesn’t work out (i.e. no customer results out of it) then never listen to them again. They gave their best shot and it didn’t work. So their second best shot won’t work either. And once you are on their third best shot then you’re probably an idiot.

- Reseller agreements are for suckers. Companies have a hard enough time selling their own products. Nobody really gives a shit about your products or services. Maybe in year two. But in year one, if someone wants to resell you then say, “sure, give me some phone numbers to call right now.” Then refer to the corollary above.

- Steal your competitors’ customers from them. Remember, they over-promised and over-delivered the first time. Then they began to disappoint (or perform like everyone else). Call up the decision maker and offer to do a little project for a little bit of money and totally over-deliver. You’ll be first on the speed dial when your competitor eventually disappoints. Which they will. Nobody can make the best purple tennis ball forever. Remember the easiest new customer is…err… your old customers! And then their friends. And then…your competitors’ customers.

- Finally, don’t make any of these nine mistakes. By the way, I plagiarized the post that link goes to. But you’ll never find where I plagiarized it from. Just don’t make those nine mistakes in your first year or you will fail. Free PDF of my latest book if you can guess where I take the 9 mistakes from.

Then, on the first day of your second year, if you follow the above, you’ll have customers, cash flows, a network of contacts, new friends who will kill for you, and your entire personality will be different. For the worse. So go back, try to repeat all of the above, and stay healthy. In order to stay sane while you get rich. By the way, you still might fail on that first business. But now it’s too late for you. You’re never going back to the pencil factory. You’re an animal, you hunt in the wild, you dig your sharp teeth into flesh and enjoy it, and at the top of the mountain you roar like a lion and everyone cowers in fear.


'via Blog this'

Friday, December 30, 2011

Three Mice...

Three mice are sitting at a table in a pretty rough
neighborhood late at night trying to impress each other
about how tough they are.

The first mouse turns to the second mouse and says, "When I
see a mousetrap, I lie on my back and set it off with my
foot. When the bar comes down, I catch it in my teeth, bench
press it twenty times to work up an appetite, and then make
off with the cheese."

The second mouse replies, "Yeah, well, when I see rat
poison, I collect as much as I can, take it home, grind it
up to a powder, and add it to my coffee each morning so I
can get going for the rest of the day."

The first mouse and the second mouse then turn to the third
mouse.

The third mouse lets out a long sigh and says to the first
two, "I don't have time for this. I've got a date with the
cat."

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

1/15 Green Technologies Call for Papers deadline, IEEE Region 5's 4th Annual Green Technologies Conf Tulsa OK

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <conference-services@ieee.org>
Date: Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 8:50 AM
Subject: IEEE Final Call for Papers Region 5's 4th Annual Green Technologies Conf Tulsa OK

FINAL DEADLINE, CALL for PAPERS IEEE 4th Annual Green Technologies
Conference http://www.ieeegreentech.org 19-20 April, 2012, Tulsa,
Oklahoma, USA

To accommodate requests of Academics the deadline for submissions is
extended to January 15, 2012.

Call for Papers – Submission Extended
Deadline: January 15, 2011
Acceptance/Declination Notification: January 30, 2012

Submission Process: Authors are invited to submit an abstract or full
paper by electronic submission. Abstract-only submissions will be
considered for the poster session only, while full papers will be
considered for presentation. A final version of a full paper must not
exceed 6 pages, including all text, references, appendices and figures.
Accepted papers MUST be presented at the conference by one of the
authors, or, if none of the authors are able to attend, by a qualified
surrogate. Failure to register for the conference will result in
automatic withdrawal of your paper from the program.

For abstract and paper submission/review, use our Conference EDAS
computer system to create a login at http://edas.info/N11261, then
upload the file.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Energy Generation & Storage Technologies including nuclear, wind, solar,
water, geothermal, biomass, energy harvesting, and storage.

Energy Usage Reduction and Conservation including energy management,
planning and forecasting, home and commercial automation, and innovative
HVAC and lighting.

Architectural and Engineering Sustainable Designs including strategies
for sustainability, performance evaluation, use of green building
components, and green systems management.

Environmental, Legal, Social, Economic, and Political Impacts including
emerging standards for renewable and reduced carbon emission energy
sources, safety, technologies for developed and underdeveloped countries.

Smart Grid Communication and Control, Evolution and Integration of
renewable and reduced emission energy sources.

Protection of the Environment, including oil spill prevention and
control.

Green IT and Sustainable Computing including IT de-manufacturing and
legitimate recycling, energy efficient IT solutions, network concepts
and architectures for lowering energy consumption, energy efficient
algorithms, sensor networks for climate and disaster monitoring and
power aware software design and development.

Biofuels and Emerging Fuels Technology

Generating combustion fuels from renewable sources such as algae, non
food plants, and vegetable oils.

If you have any question contact,

Sophie Liu, Ph.D. 2012 Green Technologies Conference Chair Professor,
School of Science and Engineering of Oral Roberts University sliu@oru.edu

Pierre F. Tiako, Ph.D. Technical Program Chair 2012 IEEE Green
Technologies Conference pftiako@lunet.edu

The IEEE Green Technologies Committee appreciates your interest and
desire to help. This year, we are offering flexibility in how you can
contribute to the conference via Exhibits and Seminars. Additionally,
one can sponsor luncheons, evening receptions, and giveaways. Please
contact Colonel Mason colonel@prfirm1.com. or call 214-239-4949 to
secure your sponsorship.

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You have received this mailing because you are a member of IEEE Region 5 <http://ewh.ieee.org/reg/5/>

If you need assistance with your E-Notice subscription, please visit https://supportcenter.ieee.org/ .
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<http://www.ieee.org/>


Monday, December 26, 2011

Find Big (G)Mail - Have you run out of space for your Gmail account?

Find Big Mail - Have you run out of space for your Gmail account?:

Find big emails in your Gmail to get your space back!

Security is important to us. We only see the size of your emails, not their contents, and we never see your password.

Who else is using Find Big Mail?

Huffington Post uses FindBigMail.com to reclaim Gmail storage and stay within their quota.
Gawker.com uses FindBigMail.com to find the emails using up their Gmail space.
Long Tail Video uses FindBigMail.com to avoid Gmail out of space issues.
Southern Web Group @southernweb
We just saved $450 in Google Apps fees using @findbigmail.
Anthony de Rosa @antderosa
A rare endorsement from me, totally unpaid and totally appreciated: FindBigMail.com helped me reduce my Gmail storage by over 50%. THANK YOU
Jon Kubis @jonkubis
Yay!! @FindBigMail fixed my recurring Gmail out of space problems. Wow. Just wow. Thanks guys!
Digital Inspiration @labnol_blog
If you find the workarounds complicated, there's an even simpler method now that won't even require you download or install anything - it's called findbigmail.com
'via Blog this'

Monday, December 19, 2011

Scribbles for Gmail for mobile - a creative way to email, courtest of Gmail Blog

Didn't know this was in the works, I can think of many good uses for easily sending rough diagrams - pretty cool!

Cheers,
Connie L. O'Dell
Sr. Verification Specialist
c.odell@co-consulting.net
303-641-5191
_____________________________________________
CO Consulting - Boulder, CO - http://co-consulting.net


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: The Gmail Team <gmailteam@google.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 10:12 AM
Subject: [Official Gmail Blog] Scribbles for Gmail for mobile - a creative way to email
To: gmail-blog-posts@googlegroups.com


Posted by Donna Dupuis, Software Engineer

From prehistoric humans etching in caves to the modern-day thinker sketching a stroke of genius on a napkin, scribbling is a natural form of human expression. Not constrained by formatting or font styles, scribbling is a versatile outlet for expressing individuality and creativity. Not to mention it's a lot of fun.

Now you can quickly convey that eureka moment to a colleague, or simply brighten a loved one's day with a personal scribble in Gmail for the mobile web browser and the Gmail app for iOS. In the compose view, click on the scribble button to open up the drawing window. A lightweight interface makes it easy to get your idea down.

Need a bit of inspiration to get started? With the holidays just around the corner, it's a great time to send a handmade, festive greeting:


Or, perhaps your wit is better-expressed pictorially than textually. Use scribbles to send original comics to your friends, or generate a new meme:



Simple requests are that much more appealing from someone who puts in a bit of effort:


It's also great for simply emoting beyond the limitations of plain text:


At the end of the day, it's a blank canvas. What do you want to share? To get started, head to mail.google.com on your iOS 4+, Android 3.1+ or Playbook device, or download the Gmail app for iOS from the App Store today.

We want to see what you can do! Send your scribbles to gmailscribbles@google.com and then share them with the world using #GmailScribbles.*

Brought to you by the Gmail team. Happy Holidays!


*By emailing your scribble to gmailscribbles@google.com, you give us your permission to upload, share or reproduce your scribble both digitally and physically. Unfortunately, we will not be able to showcase all submitted scribbles, and will have to pick and choose amongst the ones that we receive. Remember: have fun and be cool about it - nothing offensive and nothing that violates the law. Thanks!

--
Posted By The Gmail Team to Official Gmail Blog at 12/19/2011 09:12:00 AM

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