The Power of Positive Thinking and Action
Nov 27 2007

A few of the blogs I read have been posting recently about the power of positive thinking & action as well as how we can be entrepreneurs and still have work/life balance.  I hope to be part of that group who can prove this is the case.

Shane & Peter did a post called 2008 goals: scare yourself where they state “In 2008, we are going to gross a million dollars and still have a life.”  They make a compelling argument and I believe they have a really great shot at getting $1 million in revenue in 2008 given their attitude.  In the comment thread, I asked them what they mean by ‘have a life?’ and Shane said they will be doing a post on that soon as they figure that out as well.  Personally, I think I’m still a bit too nervous to scare myself by stating my 2008 business goals out loud and on this blog just yet!

The next post on their blog was written by a guest author, Jarkko Laine, called bring people with you – a recipe for small business revolution.  He says: “I challenge you to count the successful entrepreneurs who have been able to maintain a healthy work-life balance.” Jarkko proclaims that in order to stay balanced you must bring your family, your friends, your world, and yourself with you.

Naomi at IttyBiz wrote Top Secret Advice On Making The Digg Front Page where she set a goal, took action, and achieved her wish.  Her post Entrepreneurship: What To Do When You’re Scared Sh*tless made it to the font page of Digg and apparently didn’t crash her server like it has others.  Way to go Naomi!  I haven’t had a post make it to the front page of Digg, but I already know the one that I hope will make it to the front page which will be part of my plan to achieve some of my 2008 scary business goals!

Pearl at Interesting Observations also set a goal to make it to the front page of Digg with her Best 101 Lists post.  She made it (yay!), her server crashed for a bit, but now she’s back up and running!  I am working on making many more friends like those mentioned here in the blogosphere to achieve my front page of Digg goal one day next year.

To sum this post up, Liz Strauss has started a series of posts about thinking and how we can and should change our thinking and free ourselves of the limits of old thoughts.  I joined the conversation at Change Our World: Think Our Way Out of the Box, came back for Personal Identity: Who Are You Really?, and followed on at Positively Me.  Since she said it so well, I will leave you with an excerpt  from her last post:

“I’ve been thinking about those sentences in our heads.

They were useful once I’m sure – those sentences in our heads that tell us how to act and who we are. But some of them are woefully past their “sell by” date and still they play over and over. It’s time to stop paying attention.
…

I see folks who let one sentence, one event, define their entire life while they sit with the power to set it aside and chose a new path.
…

It’s my life. They’re my thoughts. I’m tossing out the ones I don’t want. I don’t need negatives anymore. It’s the positives that move me forward.

How else will I become positively me?”

On her post, I said I would make a list of positive thoughts and negative ones and burn the negative ones…to delight the pyromaniac in me! 🙂

I can’t wait to read what Liz writes next!  What are we (am I) afraid of will happen if we let go of those negative thoughts?  Is it failure or could it quite possibly be as Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home suggests, of…shudder…Success!

Why I Finally Joined Facebook
Nov 20 2007

So I’ve been putting off joining Facebook mostly because I haven’t had time to set it up (lame I know) but partly because I wanted to be one of the last people on the planet (just kidding) to join.  I sometimes refer to myself as the late adopter high-tech CEO.  Kind of strange to think about really.  I broke down and joined Facebook today.

So why did I join now?  Here are some reasons:

• I had some friends invite me to join
• I saw Robert Scoble post about Facebook ad noseum.  I think he has to get a commission or something from Facebook or maybe he got a finder’s fee for Microsoft’s recent investment, which probably made him very happy.  I tried to add him as a friend but I got a notice saying he has too many friends
• I started to feel like I was missing out on something (peer pressure, curiosity)
• I wanted to learn more about the advertising options on Facebook (Facebook Ads) that Fred Wilson has been mentioning in some of his recent posts.
• I’m hoping someone at Facebook will discover me and my company and give me lots of moola. 🙂

There are quite a few parenting and baby groups on Facebook so I’ll sit back and observe and see if that might be a good avenue to advertise Babble Soft. 

If anyone has long term experience with Facebook (or has any news on what they are planning to do with the Microsoft money) I’d love to hear about your experiences.  Do you click on the ads and if you do, do you purchase anything?

Ah the Joys of Software Testing
Nov 16 2007

In case you haven’t heard, I am not fond of software testing.  If you want proof, just check out the following posts I wrote the last time when I had to test software.

Software Testing – DOH!!

Speaking of Software Testing

So now I’m at it again because we are about to release a new feature for Baby Insights…which is very exciting because I’ve wanted to release one of these features pretty much since we began Babble Soft.  In fact the pain we experienced from this particular issue when our son was born 5 years ago was the single driving force for creating Baby Insights.  Hint: the lack of this much needed activity (or inactivity) in our lives was often used as a means of torture back in the day.

Erin (my husband who works full time elsewhere and couldn’t help me with this particular issue) strongly suggested we do this feature with an expert in the field.  I slowly realized that given that I’m wearing a gazillion different hats, finding an expert (who is super busy but would still somehow want to partner with an unknown company) was not going to happen.  So I figured I’d do it backasswards and build something and then let an expert discover us and tweak the feature later.  Doing this violates pretty much most of what I’ve studied, been told, and read about when starting a business which is “This ain’t the Field of Dreams honey…you can’t build things and they will come.”  To them I say “Um…well…we’ll see about that!“

Now for a couple of great comics from Blaugh which I discovered from a post written by Pelf on Pearl’s Interesting Observations blog.  The first is funny and it’s even funnier because I can’t fire myself for being honest about my distaste for software testing and my ‘build it they will come’ frowned upon strategy. 🙂 The second is funny (to me) because when you test software you are pretty much glued to your computer and dream about anything endorphin related!  But oddly enough, I don’t drink coffee.

Speaking of Venture Capital…
Nov 13 2007

First off, if you haven’t heard Al Gore is now a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm, Kleiner, Perkins.  Kleiner is the most prestigious venture firm in Silicon Valley.  He joined to help guide their investments in companies that are combating global warming.  I have to really hand it to Al Gore for totally reinventing himself from VP of the United States to candidate for President of the US to champion for the planet!  His parents must be mighty proud!

After writing my post on Fred Wilson on Venture Capital Fund Performance, I have happened upon a few more interesting posts on the subject of fundraising.

Wendy Piersall made me aware of 7 Things No One Tells You About Raising Venture Capital Financing by Ben Yoskovitz.

From Ben’s blog I found 7 Steps to Land and Leverage an Angel Investor by Carleen Hawn.

Here’s a chart listing their lucky number 7 items:

Ben and Carleen make great points and from my experience back in the late 90’s I agree with all of them.  I’d like to add, ‘trust your gut!’  Your gut feelings are based on years of experience that you may not be able to articulate quickly in words but you know…you know you do.

Fred Wilson on Venture Capital Fund Performance
Nov 10 2007

For those of you interested in venture capital, you should definitely check out Fred Wilson’s blog called A VC – Musings of a VC in NYC.  He’s been doing a series of articles on Venture Fund performance that is very interesting.  Although I’m not currently looking to raise venture capital, it’s good for entrepreneurs to understand the history of venture financing because these venture funds might be investing in future partners or competitors.

I am currently evaluating the opportunity to raise angel and strategic financing to take Babble Soft to the next level.  I am reaching near the end of my pocket book (or purse strings) and I have so many ideas that I want to implement that will mostly likely require outside capital.  The interesting challenge I have with Babble Soft is that we are not only a Web 2.0 (ACK!$%#) play but also a web portal, thingamajig, mobile application, [invent new word here] play.  Most of these plays are in my mind, scratched out on paper, or mocked up in PowerPoint and the only things lacking are the money and the people to bring them to fruition.

Anyway, check out:

VC Fund Performance – Some History

VC Fund Performance – Selection Bias

The Rise and Fall of the Venture Business

VC Fund Performance – Sample Size

VC Fund Performance – The Ugly Years

A VC – for future posts that I’m sure Fred will be putting up on the subject.

I’m excited about the prospect of raising angel funds because I had a good experience with the two angel rounds I raised for my first tech start-up.  However, having raised funds before I know how long it can take and how many doors will be slammed in my face before getting to the right investment partners and I’m not looking forward to that.  For my first company, we raised money in 1998, 1999, and 2000 (just a few months before the bubble burst) so I know that things went faster than they normally do in ‘fundraising land.’  Isochron survived because it has a solid product/service that companies like Coca-Cola were willing to pay for but let’s just say we as Founders were washed out when it was sold in 2002.

I’m a little bit wiser now on how to play this game, however, now I’m leading a company that has a Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business model compared to my last which was purely B2B.  Plus even though the Internet has been around for a while, things are evolving at a lightening pace making last years, last quarters, or last months strategies in some cases no longer repeatable.

Interesting times ahead!  All I know is that of all the deals out there, Babble Soft will one day be in the top 10% of ‘why didn’t I think of that’ ideas!  Ah yes, spoken like a true high-tech entrepreneur who might one day wish she had invented those little, cute Croc shoe accessories called Jibbitz instead of trying to do a high-tech startup!  Yeesh…I don’t even own a pair of Crocs, but I know that mom who invented Jibbitz is sitting back laughing all the way to the bank!

Mom’s Best Friend and Babble Soft
Nov 7 2007

How are the two related?  Well my company, Babble Soft, recently partnered with Mom’s Best Friend (MBF Agency), an Austin, Texas based nanny agency with offices in 5 markets in Texas, to offer their clients and nannies Babble Soft web accounts of their very own!  Yay! 

I have personally met and had great conversations with Kathy Dupuy, the founder/Owner of MBF Agency, and Jessica Sjolseth, their Marketing Director.  They are fabulous people!  They are amazing to work with and in true partner style, they are helping open doors to new opportunities for Babble Soft.

It is so nice to work with people who understand what you are trying to do and that the goal of your company is to help new parents with childcare.  As an entrepreneur with a new technology product in the brave new, online, connected world of parenting, sometimes it can take a lot of education and question answering to explain to people why someone would want to use your products/services.  This is especially true when the experienced business community tends to be comprised of older people with grown children or grandchildren who survived parenthood without the Internet. 😀

I’m sure many tech entrepreneurs before me fielded questions/comments like ‘Why would anyone need a computer at home? Why would anyone go to the Internet to get information?  Even if they went to the Internet why would they search it to find stuff?  No one will use the information on the Internet to make decisions, let alone share their pictures.  People won’t spend time on their computer at home when they have a TV just around the corner!‘  In hindsight, it kinda makes you chuckle a little, doesn’t it? 😉

What I really enjoy about working in this industry is the genuineness of the people who are a part of it.  It’s clear from meeting with Kathy (who has 4 children) and Jessica (who has 2 children) that their goal is to provide the best childcare they can for their clients!  If you are looking for childcare and/or household help in Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas or Fort Worth, check out their site.  And remember, their infant care nannies and baby nurses now have access to Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese to help you communicate about childcare!

To view the full press release click here.  To see our growing list of fabulous partners, check out our Partner page.

About Mom’s Best Friend

Mom’s Best Friend is Austin’s most established household staffing agency. Since it was founded in 1994, Mom’s Best Friend has been referring the highest quality nannies and sitters, with only 10% of applicants making it through a detailed application, an extensive in-person interview, reference checks, CPR training, a criminal background check, and more. This commitment to quality has resulted in a “Best Nanny Service” award by the Austin Family Magazine reader’s poll on six separate occasions, including most recently in 2007. Placements range from temporary to permanent, with offices in five major Texas cities. Mom’s Best Friend is a member of the Alliance of Premier Nanny Agencies (APNA) and the International Nanny Association (INA). For more information, visit http://www.momsbestfriend.com/ or call 512.346.2229.

Guest Post: Robb on the Writer’s Strike
Nov 5 2007

Here is a spur-of-the-moment guest post by a friend of mine, Robb Lanum, who blogs at The Robblog.  The writing industry is his scene, so his opinion and thoughts are much more relevant on this topic than mine are.  Plus, he brings up the term ‘entrepreneur’ a few times in his reply!

I forwarded him Marc Andreessen’s post on Suicide by strike today on the writer’s strike going on in Hollywood.  Robb did not know that this post was written by Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Opsware, and now Ning, when he sent his response via our friendly email group (which started as a ‘reply all’ list, then a listserv, a yahoo group, and now is a google group) that has interestingly been going on since 1995…well before all the major social networking sites existed.  Here is what Robb had to say:

 Marc’s comments:

>If you’re a mogul, the key question has to be, what would the founders
>of my industry have done in this situation? Really, what would they have done?
>Thomas Edison, Darryl Zanuck, Jack Warner, Irving Thalberg, Adolph
>Zukor, David Selznick, Louis Mayer, David Sarnoff, Bill Paley, Walt Disney…

>In a nutshell, would they have crawled into a hole of protecting the
>status quo or would they be forging a new, exciting, optimistic future
>through force of will and creativity?

>Why aren’t you doing what they would be doing?

Robb’s reply:

A very good article.  This writer is correct but the connection that he doesn’t make is that those guys who built the industry were entrepreneurs who ran private companies who could risk it all. The moguls that the article is addressed to are not individuals anymore – they are multinational public corporations.

The truth is that the guys who made Hollywood WERE faced with earth-shattering revolutionary change MANY TIMES and rolled with the changes – and lightning-fast. Silent black and white movies were killed by sound black and white movies were killed by sound color movies were killed by TV. TV was very analogous to the creation of the internet – it was just as devastating to the model as the changes are today. What did they do? The old-school moguls adapted by the seat of their pants and moved quickly.

What has changed since then? These guys were all bought out by multinational public corporations in the 1970s, or sold out to IPOs to become multinational public corporations themselves. There are so many layers of bureaucracy now it is unbelievable, and nobody can move anymore, and certainly not fast. When TV threatened to kill movies and literally kill his business, Walt Disney got a crazy idea and responded by simultaneously (1) jumping into TV – which nodoby else dared to do – and (2) inventing the theme park to invent his own new model of content which also created its own new form of distribution (people would come to the park) – an entirely new model of content and distribution which he would own 100%. TV trumped movies so he trumped TV! How many layers of management did he have to convince of his idea? Zero. Stockholders? Nope. He made the call and took the risk. Impossible today. Did this impact his writers/actors/directors? No. They kept on producing content. The American entrepreneur figured out how to sell it.

What is happening now is that middle manangement/corporate bureaucracy is getting squeezed as the guy nailed in the article. They don’t like it and they are trying to push that off to the creatives. The creatives don’t care how their work is distributed – they don’t care at all, they just want a very small percentage of the eventual profit. The residuals we are talking about are a lot of money but a very small rate of royalties. The creatives don’t care how their work is distributed, that is not their headache. That is the job of management. Management says “distribution is so much harder now with these technologies.” The writers/directors/actors say “be bold – figure out how to sell it.” Mega-corporations don’t know how to do this, and the creative people who DO know how to do this (Steve Jobs) wouldn’t be caught dead working for somebody else’s corporation – they’re going to make their own. The publicly-traded corporations are creatively bankrupt, virtually by design. It could not evolve any other way really. Do you want to work for a corporation or do you want to control your own destiny? Creative types will answer the same way 100% of the time.

This is not a crisis of the writers – this is a crisis of the entire model and a crisis of adaptation.

The best idea I have heard about how to continue to make money in the changing technology economy is to do what TV did. TV content is not free to the consumer, it just FEELS like it. This is the key. People watch TV “for free” but forget they are paying $$$ for products whose cost is marked up to pay for ads. On the internet, people exchange pirated music and videos “for free” but forget they are paying $$$ for internet connections and hardware – but it FEELS free. With iTunes TV and movie downloads studios make it easy to download high-quality content without exotic equipment or connections – but then they screw it up and make the money exchange part of the experience. That is convenient but it doesn’t “feel” free. What if they made it “feel” free by having an internet plan that was priced higher but included all the free music and TV and movie downloads you wanted? Every kid in the U.S. would have this – every iPod would be full of music, every hard drive would be full of movies and TV shows. Everybody kid in the U.S. would pay for these extra iPods and extra hard drives and this internet plan – and all that little bit of extra money on each would go to the studios and management and the creatives.

What if a movie studio created its own satellite TV service like DirecTV. You pay $49.99 a month and everything is included – movies on demand free, like pay-per-view without the pay. All the movies and TV shows you can record, all included in the $49.99 per month. Where does the money go? Back to the middle management. The creatives get their small percentage of royalties like they have for decades. And it all feels free to the consumer. Everybody is happy.

Idea to Product (I2P) Competition
Nov 3 2007

Yesterday I served as a feedback judge for the international I2P competition.  I have served as a judge before and every time they ask me I usually say ‘yes’ and every time the date approaches I wonder to myself why I said ‘yes’ because of all the other things I have going on.  And every time I do it I am so glad I said ‘yes!’

In 2001, I was one of the original committee members involved in early discussions on how to set up the program and now through the hard work and dedication of the Engineering and Business schools faculty and staff, it is the premier tech commercialization competition in major universities around the world!

The Idea to Product® Competitions, founded at The University of Texas at Austin, are early-stage technology commercialization plan competitions that aim for unique product ideas with clear market demand that use innovative technologies.  The goal is educating and developing the next generation of technology entrepreneurs. The program is particularly interested in matching technologies resulting from a university’s fundamental research programs with potential markets.

It is a wonderful experience.  The students are brilliant.  They travel to Austin, Texas from all over the world.  The technology is amazing (even ground breaking).  The different approaches to the markets are fascinating.  It’s a great break from the day to day of my own start-up and so energizing to see the entrepreneurial spirit and drive so alive.  The set of student teams I gave feedback to included ideas ranging from technology to increase the life of wireless sensor batteries, tests to help pathologists decrease the time to identify and diagnose certain types of cancer, and tests to decrease the time it takes to get a cancer drug to market.

One of the most rewarding things for me is the fact that I might be able to help a couple of these teams (assuming they are serious about obtaining the full rights to the technology and starting a business) with some introductions to other people who could quite possibly help them out.

Who wouldn’t get excited about the potential of these types of technology and more importantly these students who want to change the world!

Go Teams!

Is The Name of Your Product (or Blog) Working For You?
Oct 21 2007

Some of you may have noticed that we have changed the name of one of our web applications from Baby Manager to Baby Insights.  Well at least one of you noticed because she (Carole) emailed me asking me when that happened and wondering if she missed a blog post about it and I’m just now getting around to telling the name change story…

So here’s how it all went down.  For the last year or so Erin and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out a better name for Baby Manager.  My intent when coming up with that name was to imply that the Baby IS the Manager and not that someone could actually Manage a Baby.  However, looking back, it was probably not a good idea to pick a product name when you have been operating on little to no sleep for quite some time!

The topic of changing the name came up every few weeks in our house and then whammy!  The Austin American Statesman ran an article called Gadgets for new parents can ease baby’s first month on September 22, and the reporter wrote “Austin-based Babble Soft LLC’s Web-based program Baby Manager (babies can be managed!?)…”  Ouch!

We were out that same evening on one of our not-frequent-enough date nights and of course the topic of the name came up again.  We now had proof in print for thousands to read that we needed to come up with a new name and do it asap!   I’m sure the waiter at McCormick and Schmick’s wondered if we were crazy.  Erin threw out the name Baby Insights and in that instant I knew that was it because it encompasses what our application does: helps caregivers gain insight into their baby’s patterns so they can make informed decisions about baby care!  Since we spent practically the entire dinner talking about business, I wrote off the meal as a business expense.  It’s good to be married to an entrepreneur!

After we got home, I did a quick search on the Internet and here’s what I discovered:

• http://www.babyinsight.com/ was taken by a Dutch company
• http://www.baby-insight.com/ was taken by a US company doing 3D and 4D fetal ultrasounds

I wasn’t too worried because we wanted to change the name to Baby Insights with an ‘s’ at the end.  I spoke to the owner of http://www.baby-insight.com/, and he was in the process of deciding what to do next with his company.  He told me that he would let me know if he planned to sell the name.  I didn’t bother contacting the Dutch company because I don’t know how to speak or type in Dutch.  The guy who owned http://www.baby-insight.com/ said he had tried to contact the Dutch company before and they really weren’t interested in selling.

I then discovered that http://www.babyinsights.com/ was taken, but it was parked.  I dug through the domain records and found some contact information for the owner.  I sent an email and left a voice message asking them if they were planning to sell the domain.  A guy replied saying he wasn’t sure what their plans were but that he would get back to me.  After a few days had gone by, he told me they would be willing to sell for what seemed to me a very large sum of moola.  Since I have only bought domain names directly from Go Daddy or Network Solutions, my jaw dropped at the price.  I told him I was too embarrassed to even give him a counter-offer because it would be so far away from what he was asking that he’d probably laugh (or cry) right then and there if I tried.  We could build an entire web application or maybe even two small ones for that price!  I told him I would get back in touch if things changed and we got overrun by millions of paying customers at once or happened upon a ton of money, knowing full well if either of those things happened, he would probably increase the price. 🙂

Fortunately, I had speculatively purchased http://www.baby-insights.com/, http://www.baby-insights.net/, and http://www.babyinsights.net/ from GoDaddy.

Add a little time pressure because we had just issued a press release on Baby Say Cheese to the intensity of the whole process and voila a new product name was born:  Baby Insights.

Now if we were AT&T, we would have spent millions of dollars coming up with the brand name Cingular only to change it back to AT&T Wireless soon thereafter.  Since we are currently bootstrapping, we don’t have the luxury of billions of dollars behind us.  Sometimes I think that’s a good thing and sometimes I think it’s a ‘how can I take this company to the next level on my piggy bank’ thing.  That’s a topic for another post.

So what do you all think of the new name?  I hope you like it!

How did you come up with your product or blog name?

Portuguese Fortune Cookies?
Oct 17 2007

So the fortune cookie saga continues and it continues in Portuguese!  A reporter for BBC – Brazil saw my following posts on fortune cookies:

Those Darn Fortune Cookies (I was almost mentioned on the front page of the NY Times business section!)

Comments Now Working and Fortune Cookies

and emailed me to see if I would be willing to be interviewd for an article she was writing on fortune cookies.  She promised me fortune and fame that I would be mentioned because she was writing for BBCBrasil.com.  So, I said sure I’ll talk with you.  So the article called ‘Biscoitos da sorte’ ganham versão pessimista nos EUA was posted yesterday, October 16, 2007, and pretty much the only thing I recognize is my name. 🙂  I’m sure it is a great story.  If any of my readers or visitors happen to know how to read and translate Portuguese, please let me know what it says.

I happened to be eating at FireBowl Cafe again earlier this week and we grabbed some more fortune cookies that said:

• Right now there’s an energy pushing you in a new direction.
• It’s one of those low-key days that you’d rather spend just chilling.
• Today is the day you let it go.  Your chance will come. 
• When the moment comes, take the last one.  (I’m kind of wishing I didn’t take the last one of something I ate last night because my tummy hurts right now!)

Right now I’m thinking (in addition to the fact that my tummy hurts) that FireBowl Cafe should be paying me good money (or at least send me a bag of fortune cookies) because I’ve mentioned their name on all of these fortune cookie posts!

In case anyone is wondering, I do actually eat lunch at other places. Today I met with some of my Advisors at a local Austin fave, Chez Zee.

Parenting a Start-Up and Niños (Kids) – My 2nd Guest Post
Oct 15 2007

Check out my guest post at Austin Startup called Parenting a Start-Up and Niños (Kids).  I had fun pulling it together! Let me know what you think.  Just for grins, here is a copy of the grid I created comparing a High Tech Startup with Kids:

So, being the good little high-tech entrepreneur that I am, I made a grid to outline the differences.

If you cracked a smile or dared to chuckle, you might also be interested in:

To NDA or Not to NDA?  That is the question.

Those Darn Fortune Cookies (I was almost mentioned on the FRONT page of the New York Times business section.  Yeesh!)

Are We There Yet? When Will We Get There?!

I hope you are all having as much fun as I am with my start-up!

In case you are wondering what my first guest post was about, look no further than Entreprenuership: A Blessing or a Curse? on Wendy Piersall’s eMoms at Home blog.  Yes that’s my old curly-haired avatar not my NEW one. 😀

The Free Line is a Moving Target
Oct 12 2007

Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur’s Journey recently did a post called Moving The Free Line that I found fascinating.   He states: The idea is that there is a line, a point on your sales funnel where you distribute free value, and below the line comes all the paid-for products, moving from front to back-end.

Now I’ve always struggled with the “give things away for free” concept because of the ‘you get what you pay for’ mantra.  So if I’m going to get something for free I initially wonder if I’m about to get a lot of headaches trying to make things work.  But amazingly some of the best online services I use are free and they have wonderful customer service and wonderful products.  However, I do wonder how they make money and how they can sustain their businesses over time.  What is it about the web that makes giving away things for free so necessary and easy? 

Yaro gives us ideas about when and how to move The Free Line and even gives us a picture for those of us who need pictures to help us visualize the concept.

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, it’s always a challenge to figure out what to give away for free.  We do have free applications and are exploring how to give away more for free but at the same time attract more in return.  It has been an interesting mental exercise and doing business online takes the whole ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum a step further in my opinion.

So the big question is:  “How do we make more money by giving more stuff away for free?”  Is the answer simply selling advertisements?  I don’t think so but I have yet to figure out what a different or better model might be.

Those Darn Fortune Cookies!
Oct 9 2007

Those fortune cookies I wrote about back on August 29, 2007 are still haunting me today.  Not only is that post consistently in the top 5 viewed posts because tons of people are doing searches on the term ‘fortune cookies’ for some reason, but also during the weekend of September 22, a reporter from the NY Times contacted me after reading that post about a story she was doing on the appearance of these not-so-great fortunes in Chinese restaurants around the country.

I was more than willing to help her out with the story.  It sounded like fun.  Coincidentally, I was planning to have lunch with a good friend at the same restaurant (Fire Bowl Café) where I got those bad fortunes that following Monday.  When I told my friend about the story she told me that her friend, Karyn Turnbull, had a weird fortune cookie experience at that same restaurant a while back during the time of her engagement.  After grabbing a bunch of fortune cookies which seemed ‘normal’ because apparently they switched suppliers, I spoke to the reporter and subsequently put her in touch with Karyn.   

So the story — Don’t Open This Cookie (Disastrous Day Inside) – ran on the FRONT page of the New York Times Business section on October 8, 2007 (Columbus Day so the kids were off from school) and my quote got cut during the editing process because of space issues.  The reporter was nice enough to give me a heads up the day before so I wasn’t surprised, but I have to say the wind was taken out of my sails temporarily because who knows when I will get the chance to have my name, my company’s name, or my blog name on the FRONT page of the New York Times Business section (an entrepreneur’s dream) again! 

So I write this post to illustrate that the life of an entrepreneur can be an emotional roller coaster.  On Saturday, October 6 I found out I was named an SOB (Yay!) by Liz Strauss and on Sunday, October 7 I found out I would NOT be mentioned on the FRONT page of the New York Times Business section.  Sigh.

But after some blah time and telling my 5 year old son in a humorous tone while tickling him that I was NOT going to be mentioned on the FRONT page of the business section of the New York Times and him asking me ‘what does that mean mommy?’ while laughing, I thought to myself maybe the reason the reporter found me was, in fact, to be connected to Karyn so that Karyn would get the opportunity to tell her fortune cookie story.  So that Karyn and her soon-to-be husband would have a story they could tell for the rest of their lives…to their kids, their grandkids, and their friends.  Who am I to feel bad about that! 🙂

Since this is my blog, I’m the editor, and I don’t have space constraints here is the rest of Karyn’s story:

The other half of our story… After Eric got the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” fortune, he opened his second cookie, looked over at me, and said “sweetie, I think I got yours.” It said “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.” Both of those will be going into our wedding album! 🙂   We thought it was pretty funny. All of the fortunes I got that day were pretty boring and standard though. I don’t even remember what they said.

So Congratulations Karyn…may your wedded life be blessed with good fortune!

Now for a plea to my readers:  If you like this post, I’d be pleased as punch if you Stumbled Upon it and/or Digg (or is it Dugg) it.  I know I won’t get as many readers as I would have IF I had in fact been on the FRONT page of the New York Times business section (yeesh) but maybe I can come close with a Stumble or Digg or two. 😀

To NDA or Not to NDA? That is the question.
Oct 3 2007

When I taught entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin business school many students asked about the importance of Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) which are also known as Confidentiality Agreements.

I have observed a shift in their importance since the late 90’s (when I was starting my first high-tech company) to now.  In my experience, they don’t seem to be waved around as much as they were in the past.  I think this is because more tech businesses are Internet based and really don’t have that much proprietary information to protect.

Also, there seem to be fewer patentable Internet ideas and it’s much harder to claim exclusive ownership of a piece of technology with so many open source software applications available like WordPress, Linux, Bugzilla, etc.   [UPDATE: I just saw on Scobelizer — Scoble is a big .NET idiot — that Microsoft’s .NET development environment is being shared sourced, which is one step closer to open sourced.  Wow!]  Only a few Internet giants like Google and Amazon have patent protected algorithms for search and product optimization that are actually protectable if someone tried to violate them.

I have now begun to see business related discussions occurring prior to signing an NDA.  Maybe this means we are trending back to our “word” being as important as a written agreement stating we won’t divulge the other party’s trade secrets or other information?  I certainly hope so because I know those NDAs can sometimes be pretty worthless depending on what you are discussing.  Especially in medium to large sized business whose employees often have no idea what confidentially agreements have been signed with whom and about what!

If you are a high-tech entrepreneur here are some occasions where you will most likely have to sign their NDA:

• When discussing a partnership relationship with a large corporation such as Microsoft®.
• If a customer wants to buy a gazillion of your widgets, licenses, products, etc. A good problem to have!

Here are some occasions where you will want to have someone sign your NDA or a mutual (a.k.a. two-way) NDA of your approving:

• Hiring employees or consultants
• Execution of a large business deal that will require a lot of interaction between your company and another
• If you’ve actually invented the time/space transporter in Star Trek then you should get everyone to sign one! 😀 Beam me up Scotty!

Finally, here are some occasions where you should not ask to have someone sign your NDA (unless you’ve invented the transporter mentioned above):

• When seeking money and/or advice.  Most reputable Angel or Venture Capital investors will not sign an NDA because they see so many deals.  It would not make sense for them to put themselves at risk for any potential lawsuits.  If you are pitching some great XYZ Internet deal and you are in Texas you can bet someone else is pitching them a variation of XYZ Internet deal in California. If you want their money badly enough and the investor has a good reputation, then you will just have to play by their rules.
• When you are negotiating with a large company such as Microsoft. You will most likely have to sign theirs or just choose not do business with them.

There are many great ideas out there so don’t make the mistake of thinking that your idea has not been thought up by someone somewhere in the world.  In my opinion, the difference between an idea and a company is execution (blood, sweat, tears, right decisions, wrong decisions, hiring, firing, bringing the right people together, etc.)!  If someone can steal your idea and create a profitable, successful company in 6 months then see if you can get a cut up front and let them do it.  It’s always better to have a small piece of a huge pie than 100% of a non-existent pie!   If you can’t get a cut, then just come to terms with the fact that they deserved the success because they orchestrated the variables to make it happen and just don’t tell them your next big idea!

Since it’s important that my student’s learned this concept, I often brought in Gary Hoover, founder of Hoovers, BookStop, and TravelFest as well as author of Hoover’s Vision as a guest speaker.  He says he talks to so many businesses and students that when someone asks him to sign an NDA he proceeds to ask them ‘Why?’ and immediately wonders about the viability of the concept.  Talk about a serial entrepreneur!

IMPORTANT:  Just because you sign an NDA you do NOT HAVE TO disclose your confidential information.  You can choose not to share certain pieces of information.  Often people think that if they’ve signed an NDA they have to put all of their confidential information on the table.  If you sign something with Microsoft, they are not all of a sudden going to give you the software designs of their operating systems so in the same vein you as a small business owner do not have to tell them about your secreat weapons.  Believe me…sometimes I wish I had just kept my mouth shut….

However, the above is just my opinion so despite what I’ve written it’s always best to consult with an attorney.  Just a forewarning, they will most likely tell you to have everyone and their dog sign an NDA.  They are after all lawyers.  🙂

If any of you are lawyers, pretend to be one in your spare time, and/or have anything interesting/funny to share on this topic, I’d love to read your comments.

UPDATE on Oct 8, 2007: After reading my post, Gary Hoover had the following to share:

On my reference to NDA’s, my points are these:

1) If you have an idea that is easy to grasp and easy to copy, one that everyone says “I wish I had thought of that,” you may not have a very good idea; the best ideas usually are not so easy to grasp

2) Anyone who would steal an idea and copy it likely does not have what it takes to carry it out; real entrepreneurs have more than enough ideas to last a lifetime and don’t need anyone else’s ideas to the pile!

Of course if you really have invented a cure for a disease or some other magical thing, or if you are talking to giant corporations about your idea, you should protect it. but that is rarely the case with the entrepreneurial ideas I usually hear about.

I pretty much refuse to sign NDA’s these days. They are a mark that bureaucrats and lawyers are making the decisions, not entrepreneurs, and that scares me. Too often I have bothered with NDA’s in the past only to find “is this all you were hiding?” no one would steal this!” Of course since I am not the entrepreneur with that particular vision, I could be wrong. But having people sign an NDA is so often just a distraction to the entrepreneur and the signer.

The outbreak of NDA’s over the last 10-15 years often reflects a paranoia, a sense that “I have this great idea and someone might steal it so I better keep it under a lid.” Venture Capitalists often think this way, entrepreneurs rarely do. When I develop a new idea, particularly one that is well outside “the box,” I find it useful to talk to many many different people about it, to strangers on planes, to people I meet socially, and so on. The more people who react and comment on it, the better my research. That does not mean they are all correct – I usually learn something whether they love the idea or hate it. You have to ask “why do you love it” and “why do you hate it?” And you have to take their lifestage, background, and preferences into account. I don’t know that my mother thought any of my ideas were particularly good, and Hoover’s probably seemed particularly silly to her.

Gary E. Hoover
Chief Storyteller, RoadStoryUSA
CEO, Story Stores, LLC

Do Not Plan Your Career!
Oct 1 2007

According to Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Opsware, and now Ning (a social networking site) you should NOT plan your career.  I wholeheartedly agree.  We are living in different times where there are too many variables to plan for a life-long career at say IBM, GM, Dupont, etc.  He then says focus on developing your skills and pursuing opportunities.  I agree with this too because you may just stumble upon your, shall we say, happiest LIFE.  This doesn’t mean don’t have goals.  If you want to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, then pick opportunities to help you develop those skills so that when the opportunity presents itself, you are ready.

Check out his lengthy but interesting blog post where he describes in depth his following rules of career planning:

The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.

The second rule of career planning: Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.

His thoughts reminded me of the thoughts shared by one of my interviewees (available on the Succes Means… tab of this blog).  His name is Jimmy Treybig, and he happens to be the founder of Tandem Computers, which is now part of Hewlett-Packard.  Oh and Jimmy also happens to be one of my Babble Soft business Advisors.

One of the things I notice most prominently about Marc’s blog posts is that he often uses the feminine gender (i.e., she, her) in his writing when he gives illustrations.  I think that’s great and it’s a small step to help adjust all of our minds and remind us that women comprise at least 50% of the world population!