I make an effort to never say “I don’t have time” because I do have time for whatever I make time for. Being sick is one thing I do NOT like to make time for and for the past week I have been recovering from the flu and an upper respiratory infection.
For the first few days I was in my bed all day, with occasional trips downstairs to make tea, eat soup, refill my humidifier, or replenish my cups of juice and water. Laying in bed resting is not something I do well. By day three I was at least feeling a bit better, enough to add a work station to my rest station. I had my laptop on the table next to my bed to respond to some email here and there. I also watched some videos online and a documentary that were enlightening, and I took notes to share:
Advice for starting a company
- Find the right cofounder. Someone with intelligence, energy, and integrity.
- Tackle a big market problem.
- Create a minimum viable product and then iterate the product to fit the market needs.
- Raise money from people you trust.
Founder facts & tips
- Someone who works before money is available.
- Will do any job. No VP titles.
- Won’t give up.
- Doesn’t need to be managed.
- Intelligence, drive, integrity.
- Vests!
- Someone you already know
- Split equity 50/50
- 2 founders with complementary skill sets (e.g. one product/tech, one marketing)
- Domain expertise is overrated!
Market tips
- Pick the biggest possible addressable market
- Learn everything about it
- No niches
Need passionate users. Some people will love your product and some will hate.
Investors
- Trust people they’ve backed in the past (confirmation bias)
- Know within 10 minutes (usually) if they are going to invest. Look for traction (social proof from customers), team, social proof (other investors in), and product (prototype, mockups).
Beware of:
- Teams with all executives, no founders.
- Teams with all thinkers, no doers.
- No focus or a niche idea.
- No demonstrable product.
- Heavy focus on legal or accounting.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.” – Antoine De Saint-exupery
Facts about gaming:
- 3 bilion hours per week are spent playing online games
- To solve problems like obesity and climate change that needs to increase to 21 billion hours
- An epic win is an extraordinary outcome
- In the game world we are the best versions or ourselves
- By age 21, average gamer spends 10,000 hours playing online games. By age 21, with perfect attendance, a person spends 10,080 hours in school.
- There are over 500 million global gamers (spend more than one hour per day gaming)
- Gamers are super empowered hopeful individuals. They think they are capable of changing virtual worlds. They have urgent optimism (desire to act immediately), social fabric (like people better after playing game with them), blissful productivity (happier working hard at the game), epic meaning (love to be attached to missions)
- World of Warcraft is the second biggest wiki
Facts about credit card debt…
- The average U.S. household carriers $9,205 in credit card debt and spends more than $1,300 per year in interest payments
- Between ’94 and ’04 10 million Americans declared bankruptcy. In ’06 more will declare bankruptcy than graduate from college or get cancer.
Resources:
Before you raise money on Venture Hacks
Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk “Gaming for Good”
