A great letter template for acquired startups
Dear soon-to-be-former user,
We’ve got some fantastic news! Well, it’s great news for us anyway. You, on the the other hand, are fucked. We’ve just been acquired by:
[ ] Facebook
[ ] Google
[ ] Twitter
[ ] Other: _________________
As you are aware, we’ve always provided a free service, and have never even tried offering a for-pay option. This means we’ve never had any income and have been operating at a loss for our entire existence.
Since any schoolchild can see this is unsustainable, it should have been more-or-less obvious to you from the get-go that we were either going to crap up the site with ads at a few cents per-click, or that we’ve always intended to be an acquisition target. You can do the math on that one.
Your personal data which, until just now, was critical to our core business, will be deleted:
[ ] Immediately
[ ] Within a week
[ ] Within 30 days
We are excited to continue our core mission of connecting people with solutions at our new home. Please realize that this is so vague a statement as to be completely meaningless. But we just made so much money that at the moment we genuinely believe this horseshit.
In reality, you will never hear about us or anything we create ever again. We are probably going to end up, like, implementing a new scrollbar for Google Reader or something. Thanks so much for making our business so valuable and enticing to a much larger company with more money than sense.
Now grab your data while you still can and get out of here,
Shiny happy Shit.ly management ninjas
— Connecting people with solutions
“Shit.ly loves you!”
(This treasure was found on Git!)
via kfriedson
“Next year I’m going to start up!”
This week I roughly complete three years since resigning from my job at Oracle, a decision that took me quite some time execute. I’m sure lots of wannapreneurs deal with this situation every day, maybe more so around the new years’ eve.
“That’s it, next year I’m starting off on my own!” This is carried forward from the list of resolutions from the past year, placed ambitiously between “lose weight till I look like Brad Pitt” and “learn to play the guitar like Satriani”. Various tools are employed to come to this decision. Spreadsheets are made to calculate how long savings will last. Mind maps and decision trees are drawn on the walls to weigh the pros and cons. Friends are consulted, booze parties are held for ideation. LinkedIn account is brought up to date, with the network expanded to even include the newspaper delivery man (who knows, he might be useful when I start my thing).
Sounds familiar? I hear you. Been there, done (some of) that. There are people who start projects on the side, and use that as the motivation to quit one day and go full time into pursuing that project as a startup. I envy them. I simply “wanted to do my own thing”. No side projects (my job was pretty demanding), no business plan, no prototype, not even an idea - except the idea of building something that could impact a lot of people. The idea of being my own boss.
I quit my comfortable job, relocated to my home town and moved in with my parents, who had a tough job convincing friends and family that I wasn’t really laid off in the economic recession. I dreaded the “what’s up?” routine more than anything else. My social circle was left behind in Hyderabad, and I’d no easy way to rebuild it in New Delhi. As crappy as it gets.
Fast forward to today. I’m still living with my parents and my bank balance is the stuff of legends (i.e., the initial chapters where our protagonist is pretty much broke). Friends are buying cars, getting married and even contributing to our nation’s massive human capital. Meanwhile I’ve started and folded one startup, with proceeds going to a second startup which is still a work-in-progress. On the finance, health and relationship front things have never been worse. Fatigue is setting in. Frankly, a lot of shit has happened in these years that only few friends know completely about.
But the glass is not half empty. I’ve met some amazing people, made great new friends and shipped kick-ass products. I’ve got more love letters than a high school hottie. I’ve succumbed to the joy of creation so badly that nothing else matters.
In these very intense three years of my life, I’ve second-guessed thousands of decisions. On days I’ve been more excited than a kid on Christmas eve, and on others, grumpier than Scrooge on, um, Christmas eve. But the one thing that never happened was regretting the decision to quit my job.
I’m sure this post qualifies for “I’ve-heard-this-sh*t-hundreds-of-times-before Award of the Year”, but if I can read your crap, you should read mine too! Anyway, at this point I’m supposed to insert a preachy “follow your dreams” punch line and end the post with an inspirational quote from Steve Jobs, but for now all I offer is some matter for that new brainstorming session you’re planning tonight before you finally put in your papers tomorrow. Or maybe not. I don’t care.
2011 was the year where the worst-case scenario played out for me multiple times, so I’m very optimistic about 2012. Who knows, it might be the year when I finally fit into my old corduroys.
The treasure hunt analogy
Imagine you’re staring at a huge field of barren land and there’s treasure buried somewhere. There are two crews with shovels, both of them are looking for the same treasure.
Now one crew decides on a strategy where they look under a rock, dig a little, and if they don’t think they’re going to find anything move on to the next rock. After all there’s a lot of ground to be covered, and very limited time and resources. Lara Croft is on her way and they’d rather get adopted by than compete with her. The other crew tries a different strategy. They look for clues on the surface, pick a spot, and decide to keep digging and digging till there’s absolutely no doubt that there’s something (or nothing) there.
The emotional ride of both these crews is different. Digging a fresh spot every time is a new dose of excitement, and not digging too deep makes it easier to move on. For the other crew, the deeper they go, the more anxious they get because they’re nearing the end, and they still haven’t found something. Sure, it doesn’t have to be all work no play for these guys. They all have a few drinks, share tales of their adventures at night, maybe have a Mexican stand-off or two to make things interesting. Regardless, the second crew will have a harder time giving up and moving on to a new spot. “We’ve dug so deep, might as well go a little more before starting over.”
Ok, I think you see where I’m headed, but I’ll finish this analogy anyway. To you, looking at this field from a distance, the first crew definitely looks like it has more ground covered. You can’t even see the other crew, buried deep in one of their holes, maybe their first one. No prizes for guessing which crew has a higher likelihood of getting featured on TreasureCrunch.
However, there’s no way to tell if one crew is going to win. Maybe the treasure wasn’t very deep, maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t all at one place. Maybe there is no treasure, the clues were wrong, and both crews have to go home empty handed. Who knows. One thing is clear though, if one crew finds it, their strategy will be hailed in the leading Treasure Hunt media as THE strategy to follow. Books will be written, workshops will be held. It is always simple to explain why someone succeeded or failed in hindsight.
As a crew leader, picking one strategy over the other is really hard. But what is even harder is to avoid second-guessing the strategy after you’ve dug for a while. It is important to enjoy the adventure, make merry when you can, and believe that nobody knows how it is going to play out, until after it happens. It doesn’t matter what the books, blogs and past treasure winners say; if they agree with your strategy you will feel good about the validation, if they don’t then denial is your best friend.
At least that’s what I’ve come to believe.
P.S. “If you’re looking for treasure, you can either look under every rock or find a spot and dig deep”. That’s what one of my best friends said a year ago during a night of heavy drinking and philosophizing. This is a sober expansion of that.
CC Photo from nitraglicerina on Flickr
IITians can play with start-ups & get jobs too
The article says (emphasis mine):
The Indian Institute of Technology at Powai has hit upon an idea to boost the spirit of entrepreneurship among its students. Its placement cell is weighing the option of helping students, whose start-ups have not taken off, to be placed in jobs after two years of experimenting with their ideas.
As part of the scheme, students keen on their own start-ups will be assigned mentors after graduating. These experts-either people who have successfully floated their own companies or those with enough exposure to new businesses-will evaluate their ideas to see if there’s any potential.
Once the ideas are approved, students can float their own companies. After two years, if a start-up fails to take off, the student-entrepreneur can participate in the regular placement process and get a job.
Now normally I don’t believe anything reported in TOI, but for the sake of discussion let’s assume this one draws from interviews with officials in IIT Mumbai.
This is the sort of material that basically drives me to a rant, but in this case I’ll mellow down and just list all the assumptions they seem to make:
- IIT graduates need the help of placement cells to find jobs even two years after graduating (corollary: if you’re a student entrepreneur you have zero learning and zero network at the end of two years of trying to build a company).
- The assurance of access to the campus placement process would boost the spirit of entrepreneurship among these students (corollary: promising students jobs on a platter with zero effort would give them the necessary risk taking ability to launch startups).
- Companies don’t want to hire students if they’ve spent a couple of years working on their own ideas.
- Student startups are hardly serious (notice the use of “play”, “experiment”, “float” and such terms in the article, though it could be more a TOI thing than IIT).
- Startup ideas need evaluation by and approval of college-assigned mentors before a student can start a company.
Finally, a professor in-charge of placement says:
“Very few start-up ideas on the campus turn out to be successful ventures.Often, many good ideas are not commercially viable. So, students are apprehensive about floating their ideas.”
The reason why college incubators don’t churn out winners is not because the ideas are bad. Some actual reasons are explored in this old Business World article, which include academia-industry disconnect and excessive hand-holding among others.
To students who find this relevant - please talk to people outside your campus to get a real perspective.
P.S. From the comments it seems this model is being copied from IIMs. Really? I had no idea.
P.P.S: Discuss on HSI.
The Startup Curve (courtesy of PG)
via tawheed
Now Playing: early stage startups
“Sir we’re hosting a startup fair in our college to bring together startups and VCs. As part of our annual college tech fest we host a startup showcase where startups can network with other startups, angel investors and VCs. You can set up a stall to demo your product…”
Hold that befuddled look on your face, there’s more.
“As part of this TV show we feature a startup, and then later match it with an investor who evaluates and comments on the pitch”.
Raise your hands if you’re an early stage startup that’s heard these before. Now those who’ve happily participated in these events stay, rest of you can go out and play.
By now you’ve figured that I’m not a fan of academic institutions and/or television news networks “supporting the startup ecosystem by facilitating interaction with investors and mentors, enhancing the visibility…”. Let me start by making a few confessions relevant to the discussion:
- I’ve participated in college level B-Plan competition and cleared a few levels during my undergraduate studies (with totally cooked up executive summary and financial plans).
- I’ve organized a B-Plan competition in the same college for an annual event (where I selected the qualifying entries while still in my first year).
- I’ve appeared on a national television startup pitch programme.
Startup fairs in academic setups are driven by a bunch of enthusiastic but ignorant students. They don’t know a thing about the startup grind or how investors work, just like they don’t know a thing about anything else (remember your student days?). They want glamour, material for their resume’s “Extra Curricular Activities” section and a chance at a sexy internship. On a scale of “Destructive” to “Life changing”, the amount of influence college startup fairs have to an early stage startup’s traction or funding would fall in the middle, around “Useless”.
Let’s talk about TV. A question for GMAT aspirants:
Business news : ? :: Music channels : Hookups and breakups
Answer: Startup reality shows.
There are hosts of shows which ask startups to pitch to investors, and walk away with “visibility and mentorship”. A few lucky startups might walk away with tangibles like cash or return air tickets (taxes extra).
I’m no fan of these shows, but hey, startups can always use some PR, right? Here’s a little scenario you might want to consider:
The girl doing your startup story understands your pitch as well as you understand girls. Worse, she might decide your valuation as part of her script. “50 lakhs sounds uncool, make it 4 crores.” True story. Your early stage startup’s bogus valuation is going to be aired on national television. Your pitch is going to be edited behind your back. The mentors, investors and celebrities in the show, generous with their time as they are, may or may not know the complete story behind you and your startup. Yet that doesn’t stop them from offering their invaluable advice and tell you why your valuation is too steep or product lacking in depth. It might go the other way too — they heap so much praise that you go home to a dozen wedding proposals (NOT a true story).
Truth is TV folks are no more qualified to project and evaluate startups than hackers are to create TV shows. Their goal is entertainment. They like sexy, sensational, glamourous stuff. Between pre- and post-production they’ll find a way to maximize that.
If you do decide to participate in these fairs or shows, do so with the right expectations. When everything is over, they’ll ask you for references. If you refer me, remember this, I will find out, and one day you’ll wish you hadn’t.
CC photo on Flickr by 1llustr4t0r.com
WTF! It’s Friday already??
Strong Opinions @marksbirch: Top Ten Annoying Memes in Startup Land
Go Code It Yourself – While some people have the talent and time to learn to code, for most people it is probably a major waste of time. It takes a really long time to gain proficiency, particularly if you plan on building something stable, secure and useful. Even experienced programmers have limits to their expertise. Instead, figure out what the best path is for yourself to give your idea a kickstart, whether you find a tech co-founder or outsource your development.
I feel awkward when non-tech single founders bring up the subject. I don’t wish to discourage anyone, but I’m really happy I never had to make this really hard decision.
Spoilt no more
![[day 39] what's happening to me?](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3201/2888326665_44e7bbebf8.jpg)
College: hack, eat, drink, hack, sleep…
Work: mail, coffee, meeting, eat, launch IDE, coffee, make something compile, coffee, mail
Startup: hack, eat, hack, ship
You get the drift. However, this post is not about how much fun a startup is compared to a big process-driven bureaucratic organization. It’s about how the sequence continues to evolve. iOS development has forced me to change my ways.
As long as I was working with (Pythonic) web apps, life was easier. I could go in any time and fix issues in a web app. CSS made interface changes easy. The only tool I needed was a terminal with good old vim editor.
Developing for iOS/Objective C meant learning a new tool, a new programming language, a new process altogether. I missed deadlines because it took much longer to get productive with the new tools. Being an honorary member of the ‘hack first think later’ club cost me a lot in rework - including scrapping a lot of old code more than once. Code older than two weeks started to remind me of my first coloring book. It may be kinda cute, but it’s not going to do. The bar is high.
Which brings me to my current stage in life:
Native mobile app startup - Spec, design, hack, review, test, ship
I’m still in transition, but I’m excited about the change. Change is good.
P.S. I can’t help but think of the broader implications of the shift from web to native mobile apps. When everyone says it is becoming cheaper than ever for a startup to launch a product, that ship has already sailed. Native mobile apps need expertise that is harder to find, processes that are longer, investment in devices to test applications.
CC Photo on Flickr via cavale
