Of the five trunks, three of them used to be alive with leaves sprouting. Now,  only one trunk is left sprouting leaves and it’s flourishing, all the others have died. This tree reminds me of a lesson about starting a business. A lesson about focusing resources and not being pulled in all directions. About how some ideas and ventures will eventually fail, and how by staying in there, eventually one idea will flourish and grow.

Growing a startup isn’t about taking on many goliath’s in parallel. It’s about nurturing the most promising ventures and then building from that success. Create leaves, not trunks.

It’s not from worry. It’s from excitement and analysis. Business scenarios, investment pitches, financing instruments, customer relationships, marketing, branding, legal work and banking.

It’s constant iterations of scenarios, ideas, and plans. Where are the holes? What are the risks? What can be mitigated? What are the priorities?

This isn’t the first night of entrepreneurial insomnia I’ve suffered. Sometimes I can cure it through reading a good mystery book. Some nights, like tonight, I blog. Sometimes I work.

I know it’s something that other entrepreneurs go through. What kind of strategies do you use to silence your mind at night? 

• Capitalization- the number one reason companies fail is that they run out of money. Make sure you have enough personal assets, debt financing, or outside investment to keep running. Calculate your startup costs and add 50% for a buffer.
• Networking- get involved in local entrepreneurial groups. Having relationships with a wide range of people in different industries and skillsets, and generally being plugged in is critical to success. Having a network of informal advisors opens up new doors, sheds lights on problems, provides insight, and is generally good moral support. This is all in addition to meeting potential customers, partners, and acquirers.
• Leverage- When buliding a startup think of leverage. You’re recruiting people, you’re signing deals, you’re partnering, you’re working with investors. Do what you can to build up your company portfolio of assets. Do what you can to build up your companies options. Assets increase value and options provide room to negotiate. You want some leverage when you talk to people so you aren’t speaking from desperation.

Team 

The team, in my opinion, is of the utmost importance. It doesn’t stand alone, a great team with a poor product and market is going to fail. But I put a lot of weight on team. Team is what generates the market and identifies and exploits the market opportunity. Team is the brains, the processor that makes the whole thing work.

Team is also relatively static. The founders in a startup will spend years and years together building product and addressing market. Markets landscapes change, customers change, and therefore products change. But it’s one team that gains the wisdom of living through this change.

Another concept in the startup world, that I agree with, is that it’s never your first idea that succeeds, it’s always the eighth idea. What does that mean? You start a business with a great idea, but through experience and gained insight you iterate and discover more and the business you succeed with sometimes never looks like the business you started with. But, the team is often the same.

I frequently have said that “the team is the same.” I say this because the core team needs to be cohesive. Needs to work well together. Needs to mesh. The core team must execute flawlessly together to succeed. You must have complimentary skillsets so that there is enough talent in the pool to address all the aspects of running a business. If you are missing skills, acquire them or find another team member.

Market

If team is first, market is second. Finding a great market opportunity is a hard thing to do. I’d argue it’s the hardest thing to do. Searching for a market with a gap or a problem or a need can be tricky. Trying to establish a new market is difficult to do, though not impossible. If you can find that gap in the marketplace and have a market strategy to exploit it you’re way ahead of the game.

In searching for a market I suggest to sticking with what you know and have experience with. You’ve spent time in a career, in an industry, in a market learning the ins and outs and getting paid to get an education in that market. Leverage that knowledge in your own business venture. If you seek out a market you are unfamiliar with be sure to solicit as much advice and input as possible. You need to learn some things as well as learn what you don’t know.

A usually overlooked aspect of the new entrepreneur is a strategy to reach a market. A need is identified, but how do you bridge the gap between your product and the customer. A strategy to get your product to market is just as important as identifying the market itself.

Getting your market strategy in place is tough. First you need to take your market and break it down. Then break it down again and again. Keep narrowing your market down until you have a sliver of the market that you can talk to directly. You want to know so much about who your customer is that you could describe their gender, age, income level, and other personal characteristics.

You have limited resources and by focusing in a very narrow sliver of the market you will have a clear message and focused efforts. By addressing a market segment as a whole your message gets watered down. By speaking to everyone you are speaking to no one. Once you have captured that sliver of the market, start knocking down the next ones like domino’s.

A good market is hard to find, it’s the intersection of what you have personal experience with, where there is an unmet need, and a method of reaching that market.

Product

In this case, think of product as actual product or a service. Product is a critical part of a successful company. Managing a product and especially a product roadmap needs to take several aspects into consideration. When you offer something is just as important as what you offer.

First, the obvious points with the product is that it has to meet your audiences need. You’ve identified a market gap and your product, at a minimum, must fill it. If you can do that then you’re ahead of the game. But, there are other considerations to make as well: can we make the product more pleasurable to use, can we reduce our costs in producing the product, how will we support the product, what are our measures of success.

Having a product roadmap is a critical aspect to the product. Some customers will demand it. But, more than that, you need to make sure to balance your time, resources, money, and opportunity. Forgoing features to gain speed to market. Leaving money on the table to capture a customer base. Delaying release to include a critical feature. Taking time to develop specific barriers. Make sure your first version meets your markets need, then, balance everything else with speed to market, lost opportunity, and barriers to entry.

In general, optimized business means greater operating profit. But, there are some times when you should consider putting your short term operating profit less than front and center.

• When you’re launching a product.When launching a product there are a lot of concerns. First, is even getting the thing off the ground. Then there are considerations of adoption rate, market success, customer feedback, supporting operations, and quality testing are also important. At this time if you are engineering down product and operational costs you could be sacrificing a few things of value: time and money. It takes time to optimize your offering, and in the mean time you’re not in business. It takes money to streamline your business, but you may never see adoption of your product and that investment was of naught. Or, maybe worse, a competitor makes it out before you.
• When you have a market but are entering new territory.If you have a product that is successful in a market and you are looking to expand, this could be another time to consider de-prioritizing profit. Business is fast and if you’re racing to grab market share you sometimes need to put product optimization behind you so you can control a market. This can mean entering contracts with less margin. It can also mean that those plans to engineer down costs are backburnered so you can capture a new customer base.
• When the cost/benefit doesn’t work out. Often times we see the carot. We see that we can increase our operating profit by a certain percent. Or we see that we can decrease our costs by so much per unit. We get tricked into investing time and money into chasing these margins. We don’t really do a cost/benefit analysis. Look at the man-hours and money it will take to reduce costs. Try to quanitfy for yourself the lost opportunity cost of time passed. Look at your increased margin per unit. Look at your sales projections. Look at the opportunity cost. Then, decide what the best course of action is.

So, with all that said. Optimizing your offerings and operations is a great thing. It can be easy money to capture. Just be cautious of the situation you are in before pursuing optimization.

It’s tempting for startups to look for increased margins, especially if they are thin to begin with. Sometimes you have to make the investment so your business can survive. Just remember, sometimes the search for optimization can kill you. I’ve seen it a lot.

If you’ve read a lot of books and articles on business and “how to win,” or “the top ten attributes of successful businesses,” or “how to execute” you’ll notice that you get somewhere between a couple morsels of applicable information and zero. Maybe you’ll pick up the latest buzz words.

So why do we read all these books and articles if what we get seems to be very little? Well, it’s to fill gaps, to build confidence, and to reflect. There is a lot of good information out there, it’s just sometimes the context of the writer doesn’t match the context of your business.

There is a lot of context missing from business advice. What is a priority for a company, group, or individual not only changes by individual but is also a function of change over time. Funding is most important, now it’s people, now it’s a sales strategy, now it’s protecting IP, now its [fill in the blank], etc., etc.

Take time to regularly evaluate where you stand. It’s easy to get caught up in the flow of things. Every week or two take some time to slow down, sit back, and think critically about where you’ve come from, where you’re at, and where you want to be. Give yourself some context, try to recollect all the advice you’ve gotten, and then modify your plans.

And, if you find yourself needing some advice, just remember to translate all that you hear and read into the context of your business.

The ideal state of a business is sustained growth, a nice gentle line that trends upwards.

A bad state, obviously, is a sharp downward slope. The only positive behind a sharp downward slope is that it’s obvious, you have to react to stop the bleeding or you have to cut your losses.

A not as obvious state of danger is a slow decline. Having a metric slowly go downhill is dangerous. The trend takes longer to see. People can still remain apathetic. It’s the kind of thing where people say “how did we get here?” If your performance metrics are trending down, even just by a small amount, be on your toes.

Probably the most dangerous times are high growth. If your metrics are off the chart it’s a time to celebrate… cautiously. Growth is good, sustained growth is what we want. If you have a peak, be critical. Is it a fluke? Is it sustainable? Be conservative, put money in the bank, don’t overspend. High growth leads to high emotion and that can lead to poor decisions. Get to a sustained growth and you’re golden.

If someone’s hair is on fire they’ll want a hose, they’ll pay you anything you want for it and it the details about the hose doesn’t matter. If you can put the fire out, the person will not care about the color, size, shape or other details about the hose. When starting a business, developing a product, or brainstorming an offering look for a problem that people have and solve it for them. Fix a critical problem and the consumer will not care about the details of the solution.

Great advice, right? I think so. But I think there are a couple elements missing from the picture. I think the hair on fire analogy needs expanding on. Here are a few things to consider:

1. As stated, find a critical problem and provide a solution for it.
2. As illustrated in the image, but not usually considered; the customer has to know about the problem. This fits the hair on fire analogy. If the user’s hair is on fire, they’ll know. Solving problems that nobody perceives as a problem means you have to spend time and money to educate the consumer. And, if the consumer doesn’t know they have a problem, they will not seek you out. You have to find them.
3. This one is not illustrated in the picture. There have to be enough people with hair on fire. Or, the small number of customers with their hair on fire must pay big. Make sure your market is large enough to sustain.

So, I think the new analogy should be to find lots of people with their hair on fire and sell hoses to them. That would cover the three points above.

There are other considerations, but I think those three weed out a lot of non-starter business ideas. Cost structures, risk, competition, etc are considerations. But, if you find an idea that meets the three requirements that I’ve outlined, I think you’ve got a great idea to start with… and if you need help with any of the execution, give me a call or send mean email.

There are two things I want to cover in this article. One, a list of specific types of sentences that can help you be more concise and powerful in your delivery. Two, is a list of more general tips and suggestions that can help your writing in general.

Powerful Sentence Structures for Business Communications

There are five types of sentence structures I recommend in writing business copy.

1. Definition
   • This is a pretty straight forward sentence. It’s a simple definition of a term. Defining terms, concepts, or ideas concisely in a single sentence demands less of your reader. You should not expect your reader to remember an entire page in order to define a concept that supports a greater message.
   • Example: The HelpAide program provides affordable healthcare to lower income, uninsured families by offsetting costs through charitable contributions.
2. Relationship
   • This sentence is used to define how two separate items or concepts are related. It provides context so your reader does not have to draw assumptions themselves. Relationships also assist in furthering definitions.
   • Example: HelpAide is similar to existing HMO and PPO coverage plans but are targeted towards emergency medical care.
3. Cause + Effect + Reason
   • The structure of this sentence is defined in it’s name. Western culture follows the philosophy of cause and effect. Use it in your writings. In a sentence you should give a cause, effect, and reason for that effect. This provides a complete understanding very quickly and very concisely. By stating the entire relationship in a single sentence readers don’t have to have long term memory or figure out that your reason was in support of an effect five sentences previous.
   • Example: Healthcare costs are at an all time high and therefore unreachable to a growing number of citizens due to increased demands on the healthcare system and a discrepancy between low income families and cost of living in general.
4.  Claim
   • The claim is a direct statement of what you’re trying to convey. Don’t let your reader have to try and tie everything together and draw a conclusion, no matter how logical you think it is. Make your claim. Make it clear and without vagueness.
   • Example: HelpAide is the best solution for fixing the current healthcare accessibility problem for the poor.
5. Direct Request
   • The direct request is similar to the claim but is usually only necessary if you’re asking for something or attempting to persuade. Just as the claim should be very clear, so should your request. If you are looking for an action, ask for it. Don’t make your reader guess what you want.
   • Example: I’m asking you to make a donation to the HelpAide organization so we can reach more families in need. 

These sentence types are a general guide for how to structure clear and concise ideas in your business writing. Of course there are others. Of course you will not always need all of them. But if you are looking for a way to state something, one of these sentence structures or a combination thereof can probably do it.

Some General Business Writing Tips

Here are a few general tips to improve your business communications:

1. Know Your Audience
   • When writing your business communications you better know your audience. The terms, tone, and details you give will vary from audience to audience even if the ultimate message and goal you wish to achieve are the same. If your audience is not technical, leave out the jargon. If your audience is uninitiated, give more information and don’t assume knowledge. If your audience is in the know, don’t repeat information they already know. This is a general tip, one everyone says. It’s important, just reflect back when you’re proof reading and put yourself in the shoes of your reader.
2. Be Conversational
   • Don’t try so hard! You don’t have to try and sound business-like or professional. Other people are just like you. You can be more conversational in your tone, you don’t have to try and be formal. Formality isn’t necessarily what business communications is about. You want to be short, clear, and to the point. Time is money and writing conversationally can make it easier for your reader to understand what you’re saying. Just know your context, sometimes formality is warranted.
3. Anticipate Questions
   • Anticipate what your reader will ask you… then give the answer! If you’ve communicated the idea before and have received questions, go ahead and answer them. If you can see that your writing leaves some natural questions open, address them. Don’t leave the reader hanging, you’re supposed to be giving information and this isn’t a marketing piece.
4. Draw The Whole Picture
   • This tip is similar to “Anticipate Questions” but it is more about what comes before you write than the questions that come after. As much as possible, it’s best if your documents can stand alone without the need to reference other information. Don’t assume too much knowledge, always err on the side of caution and give extra information. You never know who the document will be passed to next. Make sure your concepts are complete with details.
5. Short and Concise is Better
   • Keep it short. As I’ve mentioned, time is money, and the faster a reader can read your document the more appreciative the person will be. Short and concise improves understanding. Don’t make your reader have to remember too much. Don’t make your reader have to understand long-winded explanations for concepts.
6. Use Fewer Words
   • Similar to “Short and Concise is Better” but more specific. This is about removing those filler words that are unnecessary. Synonyms, fluff, pronouns, and anything else that can be removed yet still maintain grammar and readability. Here’s an example: “Jack and Jill went over to well for some water.” can be written as “Jack and Jill went to the well for water.”
7. Use Lists
   • I like lists, lists in numbers or bullets like this article are good. Lists in paragraphs are good, they add to conciseness. Lists provide a great organization of concepts and make documents easier to scan and digest for readers. Why is your product good? Oh, because it’s big, fast, and inexpensive. That’s for putting that in a list instead of three separate sentences. 

I hope some of this information is helpful. If you have any tips or suggestions, please add them to the comments below or shoot me an email.

• Don’t give your employees opportunities but at the same time set them up to fail.
  • This usually happens when you have an employee you can count on, that is doing a great job, and who you want to delegate more responsibility to. When you delegate, in any situation, make sure your employee has expectations set, tools to do the job, and appropriate compensation for going above and beyond. If you give more responsibility you have to give more resources and power.
• Don’t’ reward bad behavior or poor performance, even by inaction.
  • Be careful not to reward bad employees and poor performance. It demotivates good employees. Even worse is awarding poor performance by inaction. When you treat good and poor employees the same it is rewarding your poor employees and punishing your good ones. It’s not fair, demotivating, and setups up a poor work culture.
• Don’t punish good performance, even by inaction.
  • Do not punish good employees. This can be done by inaction, by lack of appreciation and compensation, or by piling on the work because “you know she’ll pull through.” Even worse is punishing a good employee. Be careful with good employees, they all should not be treated the same; they’re not your kids.
• Don’t show too little appreciation.
  • The most demotivating thing for your good employees is a lack of appreciation. Be sure to say thank you, to give them extra privileges, extra gifts, and extra compensation. Even kind words and a “good job” go a long way.
• Don’t forget things you’ve said or promised.
  • You’re the boss, you’re the entire world to your employees. If you’ve said something or have promised something don’t forget it. Write things down, take notes, send yourself emails, write on your hand. Do whatever it takes to not forget things you’ve said; your word is the law and it sets up the work environment. If you don’t remember what you’ve said you’re creating an ambiguous work environment that your employees cannot navigate and will get frustrated and demotivated by.
• Don’t give your employees impossible tasks.
  • Don’t ask your employees to do things that are impossible. This includes tasks that they do not have resources for, tasks that there are not enough time for, or by over-burdening them with labor. Setting up your employees to fail creates a very negative work environment.
• Don’t be a stranger.
  • Don’t be a stranger to your employees. Don’t be an absentee manager, you have to know what’s going on in your domain. If you’re not there it’s impossible for you to know what’s going on. If you’re not there, employees can’t turn to you to help remove barriers.

• Do expect your employees to do their jobs.
  • You made an agreement when your employees were hired. Expect them to fulfill their duties, they are getting compensated for it. If your employees are not fulfilling their obligations they need to step up or you need to have them step out.
• Do create a culture of success.
  • All the time you need to tell your employees what the goal is and strive for it. Let them know the big goal; to sell a million units, to make a million dollars, to be number one in the market. But set small goals too; how many good ideas can they come up with today, how many happy customers can they support, can they get the next component done by the end of the week, can group A get their project done with less bugs than group B.
• Do measure successes and failures. 
  • Performance is important, knowing who is performing and who is not, knowing which areas of the business to focus on, knowing if you’re meeting goals. Make sure to put in some measures of performance, it gives you an objective view of the situation and makes it easier to talk to your employees, especially if you have to reprimand them.
• Do treat your good employees better than your bad employees.
  • Your good employees are an invaluable asset that you have to take care of and keep. Your poor employees are a menace to your group or organization and need to be mitigated or removed. You should treat your good employees well, they are setting an example for your organization. Don’t play arbitrary favorites though, reward good behavior based on measurements and results and make it obvious why the rewards are being given.
• Do learn about your employees goals and desires.
  • You should genuinely value your employees. Learn about their goals and desires and try to help them come to fruition. It’s a reward that breeds loyalty and trust. It shows you see them as more than just cogs in a wheel. Motivate your employees by helping them reach their personal goals.
• Do things as a group to promote team bonding.
  • Your group is likely made up of many people that work together in a continuous process or system. It’s important that the group meshes. Find ways to bond your group, it creates team loyalty and efficiency. It’s a motivator working with people you enjoy being around. Do lunches, group projects, and non-work interaction.
• Do be open to your employees.
  • Your employees need to know whats going on in the company and in the group. Don’t sugar coat or hide too much. Inevitably bad news comes out and by hiding or being afraid to share bad information you will build a culture of mistrust. Make sure your employees know what’s going on in the organization. You must respect their ability to make decisions and deal with situations. Hiding information is mistrustful and manipulative.
• Do remove bad apples as soon as possible.
  • The worst thing for a team is a bad employee. You’ve heard a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Make sure to root out bad employees before they are able to disrupt your organizations processes, culture, and people. It’s hard to build a great team, but very easy to tear it down.
• Do implement some level of structured reporting, even if it’s minimal.
  • You need to know what’s going on. Your employees also want the opportunity to tell you what they’ve accomplished, even if it’s small. While structured reporting can go overboard, make sure you have some level of regular reporting implemented from the beginning and you stay on top of it. Daily or weekly emails are just fine. It also gives your employees an opportunity to contact you in a non-threatening way and allows you to keep up to date on the details of what’s happening. But don’t micro-manage.

Good luck out there… the work environment is a tough one to manage.

I recieved a Microsoft partner email about a contest going on for parners by Microsoft Financing. I wanted to share the link to Microsoft Financing in case you have never heard of the program.

Antecdotally, I have a friend who made some very large server purchases recently. He was approved very quickly, had very good terms, and the entire transaction was smooth and seamless. If you require debt financing for purchases for your small business, definately give Microsoft Financing a look.

You’ll need to find a Microsoft Financing Partner to take advantage.

Here’s some examples of recent horizontal players:

1. Facebook, MySpace for horizontal social networking
2. Twitter, Pownce for horizontal micro-blogging
3. YouTube, Revver for horizontal video sharing
4. Google, Yahoo for horizontal search
5. Flickr for horizontal photo sharing
6. Scribd for horizontal document sharing
7. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon for horizontal bookmarking and site discovery
8. Digg, Reddit for horizontal blog discovery
9. Wikipedia for horizontal information archiving

And I’m sure you can name many others.

With players applying this Web 2.0 community based concept to so many horizontals, it begs two questions for the entrepreneur. One, are there any horizontals left without established players? And two, are there any vertical that are under served by these general, horizontal solutions?

Interesting, I think that there are still large opportunities in the vertical segments. Most of the services listed above do not have broad appeal outside of the technophiles who are in the know. There are millions of consumer and business Internet users who have never heard of some of these companies and services but who can get value.

My suggestion, find an under served vertical, maybe something you already know intimately and see if any of these new technologies can fit. Ask, can I use this for that?

I was inspired by a comment I got on my post about Microsoft, Linux, and being professionally pidgeon-holed. The commenter brought up the point of “lock-in” when using Microsoft.

I agreed, and responded that people, like myself, are willing to be “locked-in” if the product or service provides some value, real or imagined. For example, look at the recent iPhone distaste about the AT&T contract. Look at the iPod and DRM. Look at your car and any modifications you purchase. Look at your gym membership. Though they create artificial ways of locking you in, all those products and services continue to flourish!
Corporations look to lock you in and create switching barriers to keep you loyal. They do it with termination fees (such as gym memberships), with investments in proprietary equipment (such as digital gadgets), by holding your data hostage (such as iPod/iTunes).

As entrepreneurs and developers we need to make these decisions all the time, do we use proprietary protocols or open standards? Do we use a third party proprietary software because it’s cheaper and faster? Do we follow our philosophical views and stay away from closed software and standards? Do we make it difficult for customers to switch?

Switching barriers are an important part of the competitive landscape. Look for barriers that you can create and figure out how to break down the barriers of your competition. Think hard when developing your business or your software, what barriers are you willing to create? What barriers will your customers tolerate?

Ideas are difficult to evaluate and predict. Sometimes we have an idea that sounds great, but doesn’t pass muster when put to the test after the initial emotional response has passed. Some ideas we pass on because they sound uninteresting, but it turns out someone else executed them successfully.

In this post I’ll try and give some ideas about ideas. How can we evaluate an idea with a level of objectivity? A level of consistency?

I’ve met with many technology and business people in the Sacramento and Silicon Valley regions who are looking to develop an industry changing technology or even just create a few million dollar company for the recurring personal income. Both hi-tech and non.

I’ve heard great ideas, mediocre ideas, and just terrible ideas. I’ve heard ideas that sound extremely great on face value, but don’t seem to pan out as businesses. And that’s the hardest part, the idea that seems perfect on inception but for various reasons doesn’t fly during execution.

People sometimes fall in love with an idea on an emotional basis and there can be a disconnect from reality. For example, the entrepreneur that wanted to build a craigslist competitor… but cloning the site and offering no value add.

It’s easy to get caught in a trap and fall in love with a very bad idea. That seemingly great idea that you dedicate time and resources to but turns out to be bumpkin. It happens to the best of us.

To combat this, I’ve come up with a set of questions that you need to answer about your idea. They’re questions I’ll ask to myself and to the entrepreneur before I get involved in a project or business. And definately questions I’ll ask before bringing in other contacts and resources.

The questions fall into a matrix. We need to know about the Environment and the Culture surrounding various categories. The primary categories being Product Offering, Target Market, and Capital Requirements.

What does that mean? Environment and Culture?

The Environment is more or less the tangible, real facts, statistics, information, and details about the category. The Culture is more or less the intangible perceptions, behaviors, viewpoits, or meta information about the category.

What follows is a matrix of questions that are important to answer when thinking through an idea. There are no correct answers. This is a general guide, a starting point. The questions aren’t set in stone, come up with more of your own for each cell. After thinking, answering, and analyzing ask yourself if the idea is a good one.

My final word of advice is that ideas are fluid. The idea you start with is never usually your successful one. Let the idea adapt to new information, keep evaluating your ideas as information becomes available, and don’t be afraid of change.

Good luck with the idea hunt! And if you’d like any feedback on your ideas or business I’m always available by email.

Here’s the lovingly way to approach your startup venture, whether it’s been started-up or not.

1. Love yourself. So I say the most important thing is to love yourself. You have to go in positively, confidently, with personal conviction and drive, and with an outlook that you’re doing this for you and not for any external reasons like fame and wealth (not that you shouldn’t expect and want those things, but they can’t be the only things). When you love yourself it saves your mental health, it draws in other people, employees, customers, investors, and it keeps you focused while getting bombarded with everybody’s 2 cents… figure out how to take those 2 cents times a few million people a month and that’s not a bad revenue stream. :) Love yourself, it’s contagious.
2. Love people. “People are your greatest asset.” I think I’ve read that in a few dozen business books. Well, at the end of the day it’s people who are going to keep you growing strong. Your partners, employees, investors, bankers, attorneys, and customers. People like to be loved. Love people and you set yourself up to be loved. Do it through positive interactions, through compliments and gestures, through bonuses and team bonding. Every small way you can find to love people the more you will get in return. And the most important part to loving people… be sincere.
3. Love technology. We’re talking tech ventures here. Find a technology, application, or problem you love. Use the technology, create the application, or solve the problem. Create a product or service that you adore. If you love what you do, if you love what you’re offering is, and if you love the technology you will stave off burn out and increase your longevity. If you build a product you love, it gives your customers a chance to love it to. Why would I use your product or service if you, the creator, don’t love it yourself? Keep loving technology, it’s what got us started in the first place.
4. Love life. So while this is at the end, this is definitely not the least important aspect. Why do we start startups? Why do we embark on these venture adventures? Hopefully it’s because we love it and want to find a fulfillment out of it. Hopefully it’s because we want a better quality of life. Hopefully it’s because we want to make some positive mark. During it all, remember to love life. Remember that life isn’t just work and work is not your only adventure. Keep perspective on yourself, on your family and friends, and on the world at large. There are lots of things to love about life, and creating an imbalance of work is all to easy. Love what you work on, but be sure to not deprive the rest of your life… it needs love to.

And, maybe these lovely rules apply to any professional life: employee, volunteer, intern, or other. Maybe they work in other industries. It’s just more pronounced in the high stress hi-tech startup world.

My advice, look at this list often for some perspective. Maybe write down the things that are important to you, work related or not. Look at this list and your list at least once a month. It’s so easy to get sucked into the startup world that it can be hard to see that you’ve sacraficed too much… too much because you forgot about the things you do love and the things you should love.

Good luck with the adventure!

If you’re part of Facebook please join the group and post a little something. Thanks everyone and I hope we can get a community going!