secrets

Startup Secret 43: It's not you, it's me

"Fire your worst customers."

-- Name withheld

A PR friend of mine (the flack-writer relationship isn't always adversarial) who also started her own agency and thus has startup chops, told me how liberating it was to "resign" clients and partners with whom neither she, nor anyone else in her company, enjoyed working.

"It's not beneficial to either party, if you can't work together harmoniously," she said.

A bad working relationship doesn't build value for either side. It doesn't lead to reference relationships you can use in the future. It … Read more

Twenty thousand reasons to go to SXSW

More than 20,000 people will roll into Austin, Texas, this week for the annual South by Southwest Interactive festival. The question is, besides copious amounts of free beer and barbecue, why are all those people--a broad mix of marketers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and social media junkies--showing up?

Over the years, SXSW has gotten bigger and has morphed from being an insular technology conference with a tight community of regular attendees to a mainstream event that appeals to everyone from those SXSW veterans to thousands of first-timers who want to get in on the action.

With that many people on hand … Read more

Startup Secret 42: No time like the present. I mean, future. No, past.

"We were too early."

-- numerous founders

It's a common self-criticism of the founders of flopped startups that they launched a product into a market that wasn't ready for their brilliance. Few regret it, though.

As Ole Lutjens of MX (Reporters' Roundtable: The Second Screen) says of his previous and mostly fizzled venture, Beta Lounge, "Maybe I should have waited. But the upside was experience, and defending the idea, and making connections to people who otherwise wouldn't be interested in talking." He says that people remember enthusiasm and conviction, which, if you've … Read more

Startup Secret 41: Young at heart

"Being a startup is a state of mind, not a company size."

-- Christian Springub, co-founder, Jimdo

Every time I hear some big-company exec say they run their company "like a startup," I am convinced I am listening to delusion. I have worked on startup teams and at several big companies. The difference is huge.

Maybe I'm not working at the right company. Christian Springub, co-founder of the Web site creation and hosting platform Jimdo, which I reviewed in 2007, reached out to tell me that his company just turned 5. It's got 5 … Read more

Startup Secret 40: The trinity of startup disciplines

"It's easy to develop something innovative that is still useless."

-- Mark Drummond, CEO, Jildy

Mark Drummond is one of those technology-focused CEOs. He creates products that tend to have their science a bit closer to the surface than many startups I see. Check out his latest product, Jildy (story), which does network analysis of your Facebook friends. He previously worked on the social search startup Wowd before social search was a thing.

Mark sent me an interesting confession:

When I first got into startups, I thought something was worth doing if it was fundamentally innovative. It … Read more

Startup Secret 39: Go where your users take you

"There's more than one road to the destination."

-- Dan Kurani, CEO, Thumb

You have a road map? Prepare to rip it up. You can still get to where you're going, but the route might be the scenic one.

When Dan Kurani started Opinionaided (now Thumb), the original plan was to get people to ask others for advice on products they were thinking of buying. He saw a nice built-in revenue stream attached to consumer opinions on products (category sponsorships, product ads, etc.), and Dan and his team wanted to focus users on those products so … Read more

Startup Secret 38: Learn to do without

"You never know when you've raised your last dollar."

-- Craig Walker, CEO, Firespotter Labs

Stop right there. Before you start commenting on how this is one of those painfully obvious Secrets--I know you want to, because this one really is--I will point out that there's been nothing new or revolutionary in this series so far. The tips people like the best are the ones they already know. But that's why I do this. It cannot hurt to be reminded of the things that well tell ourselves and each other when we are looking for … Read more

Startup Secret 37: To fail is to succeed

"Success gives you the credibility to talk about your failures."

--Osman Kent, CEO, Numecent

We celebrate success in entrepreneurship. Obviously. But Osman Kent, who's started several companies, says we really should keep it at arm's length. "Success is a bad teacher," he says. We're better off learning from successful people who have failed.

Osman says that, statistically, even the most successful people regress toward the norm. The chances are that if you are a big success at one job, you'll be less so at the next. The success comes from realizing why. … Read more

Photo blog 'Torn Lives' fills in the blanks

Fans of blogs like PostSecret, magazines like Found, and of the strange allure of snapshots might want to take a look at a Tumblr blog called Torn Lives.

The site asks viewers to submit photos that have bits torn or cut away, and to include a short text that will somehow lend the incomplete photograph a sense of poetic wholeness (or at least poetic mystery).… Read more