Maybe I'm crazy – Page 5 – Journey of a entrepreneur, one step at a time

What is traction?

I’ve been doing a lot of information gathering lately. Talking to entrepreneurs who have sold their companies, talking to investors from angels to venture capitalists and talking to advisers. From every conversation, I have come away with 1 consistent word: traction. When I dug further that term seemed to fall apart into a million different pieces. Some said traction was having a million dollars in recurring revenue each month, others said traction was having letters of intent and contracts signed and others said traction was having 1000 of your first products in the hands of customers.

Hardware is Not Hard, Healthcare Is

Lessons, Startup

For the longest time, I thought that building hardware was hard. Coming from a software background with little exposure to engineering or hardware, I thought the odds were stacked against me to build a hardware startup. The age-old advice in entrepreneurship always struck a core with me that said, “stick to what you are good at.” I was clearly not set up to succeed from the beginning.

In college at Indiana University (IU), I studied informatics with a focus in business. For those of you who don’t know what informatics is, it’s the application of technology to different disciplines; basically, the idea that there are all of these computer science folks out there and business people and they don’t know how to talk to each other. Coming out of informatics I was given the toolset to be able to program as well as translate requirements from one side to another. The other thing to consider from my time at IU was that at the time they didn’t have any engineering programs beyond computer science. If you wanted to do engineering you went to Purdue up north, and for everything else, you went to IU. This also meant that there wasn’t a community of people familiar with hardware projects in Bloomington, IN which added to my misfortune. More

Battling Gut Versus Faith

People

What do we do when the path forward is unclear. Do we trust our gut or believe in faith that it will all work out?

Tonight, the climax of a long relationship has come to this point and I am at odds with myself. There is evidence to show that the path leads to a dead end. Over months and months of observation, this appears to be the outcome destined for the future. Yet, you have to consider the options and believe in the positive optimistic perspective that this will all work out.

Great Leaders should be Judged by What Comes After Them

Lessons, People

I was talking to a friend of mine, let’s call him Dan, the other day who works at an incubator. We were talking about this program that he became in charge of through a transition for the organization and now no longer runs it. The discussion was interesting as I was very impressed with the program as it had been around for 9 years and had incredible results with each cohort. In the startup

In the startup world, you see a lot of hype for the next best accelerators or incubators that can “truly help startups accelerate their ventures”, but many of them disappear after a few cohorts or years. When I heard about this program that Dan had run and its track record for 9 years and over 100 companies that have gone through it, I was thoroughly impressed. Programs just aren’t built for sustainability these days. I was intrigued and proceeded to ask Dan how he was able run the program so well and ensure its lively hood after he finished running it. He replied that “it does no good to just have a great program while I am running it.” He said, that his goal with taking over the program was not to be the end all be all but to build out the processes and standards to make the success repeatable in order to train the next leaders. I was clearly very impressed.

Startup = Start + Up

Startup

Fridays are supposed to be good days, right? Well this morning was a great day, but this afternoon not so much. I was talking with a customer about our project and telling them that we have to wait till next week because we are having problems still. Similar to others, I hate giving bad news. Its the part of my personality that hates the conflict of it, I’d much rather deliver on what I set out to do and do a 110% job. But not today.

For the past few months, I have been waiting to finish up our software platform. We have missed our deadline and significantly gone over budget. It has been a tough road as if I did it all, I would have been able to complete it (back in the day) in a much shorter time period. The worse part about it is that I outsourced the work after being convinced that this contractor was excellent in the field. The excellence hasn’t come out how I expected so far, and has just given me stress and anxiety…getting me to the point where I am now…a not so fun end to my Friday.

Listening to Everyone, while Listening to No One

Lessons, Startup

Just finished the first meeting with a new group of advisors with the Chicago Innovation Mentors group. I was accepted into this group as a startup company to work with 5 incredibly experienced startup advisors over a 6-month period as a Board of Advisors.

The first meeting was tonight. I prepared as much as I could for the meeting. I spoke to each advisor before the meeting and organized an agenda to cover topics I needed help with. The meeting started without a hitch, it went very well according to the agenda. We introduced ourselves and got to know each other better than delve into the deep dive about the company. Understanding where we came from and where we are today. As you may have expected, we were bombarded with questions during this deep dive to help get the advisors up to speed on the company and what value we provide to the industry. It was very interesting to hear their thoughts on where we are today and their insights.

Catching up with a Creative Mastermind

People

Just hit up an old friend that I met in 2013 at Startup Weekend, Benedict. I was attracted to his creativity and passion for changing the world for people like him. You see he lives in a wheelchair while the world around him lives without one.

When I met him I was inspired, because he had this vision and drive to change the way travel accommodations were for people like him. He started this company called Trekable, which was a rating system for hotels based on their level of accommodation for people in wheelchairs. The company not only would travel around the world to rate hotels, but provided employee training on helping people in wheelchairs. It was simply a great idea! Unfortunately, after working on it for a few years he didn’t get the traction he was hoping for and left it in the dust of startups.

10 Principles for Design in the Age of AI

Internet of Things, Startup

Good design solves an important human problem
Design is context specific (it doesn’t follow history)
Design that enhances human ability (not that replaces human ability)
Good design is discreet (frictionless)
Good design works for everyone every day
Good design is a platform that grows with people’s needs
Good design learns and predicts human behavior
Good design brings about products and services that build long-term relationships
Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas
Good design removes complexity from life.

80% of Deals Happen After 5 Follow-Ups

Lessons

This is a short entry today, but a powerful lesson. Over the past few months, I have been getting very nervous when having conversations around raising capital. I am not sure why, but it has been occurring and throwing me off in discussion. Last night, I brought this up to my business partner and he was able to share his perspective and give me some new insight on the matter.

The Laser Tag Manifesto

Startup

Growing up I loved playing laser tag for friends birthday parties and school functions. It was full of physical activity, strategy (spies and traders), and tactics. Every game began the same way, you pick a code name, register it with the front desk then go to briefing to learn about the rules, at the end of the rules session you were required to raise your token high up in the air with your right hand and repeat what the marshal (rules leader) said. Then you were able to enter into the room get your gun and start playing. More