“Thanks for your comments. Please spread the word! We came up with the idea for it and then hired a very good animator, composer and writer to make it happen. We are very happy with the results. Our composer was Carly Commando, who created the latest NBA finals ads and the copy and art direction was done by a company called, The Cultivated Word.”

@Bob, thanks for the kind words. I’m excited about what you’re doing with innovateHealth. How was the conference?

@Josh: thanks for the thoughtful comment. The example I gave of a rinky-dink idea was only one Kirill, Joe and I had considered in lieu of Plumtree, “Quicken for Food.” I was glad we latched onto something that had more open space, but you’re right that I didn’t take the time in the speech to call out other people’s startups that could be considered rinky-dink.

Competing with your successor can be taken as political or corporatist advice — it makes me cringe to sound that way — but it’s just for me a useful way to think about correcting dumb mistakes I’ve made. When I worked at a startup without thinking of myself as accountable to anyone, I became a bit of a small-scale tyrant. I’ve seen it happen at other startups too. I think there’s a way to work with a board that isn’t just butt-kissing, where you are forced to evaluate other points of view in a healthy way. I was trying to find a positive way to say something humble and, to me, important — which is for me to stop being such an ass about something dumb I’ve done — if it came as trying to please my corporate overlords, I apologize.

As for the straw-man, I didn’t mean to get you wrong. I genuinely thought you were saying the main difference between Adam’s essay and my speech was in Adam’s emphasis on profits at a small scale vs. my emphasis on spending venture capital at a larger scale, and I was trying to explain that I agree with Adam on that point. It sounds like you do, too.

As for whether my speech is directly comparable to Adam’s essay, I agree that it isn’t except insofar as Adam’s essay is so much better. My effort at practical advice is here, but it has some of the flaws you’ve already highlighted:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/30/the-first-time-ceos-recession-survival-guide/

Respectfully, I must disagree. Startups that hope to get bought out in 18 months are just as valuable as any other. Often entrepreneurs have really good ideas that in and of themselves are not complete products and will never sell in a marketplace. As I am sure you know, this is not always easy to see at the beginning of a project, or even near the end in some cases. However, there is definitely a value in being able to sell one’s technology so that it can become a component in another marketable product. A smart business person will be able to know when that is the case.

Having an effective exit strategy is a very important aspect of business. It is a bigger problem for all entrepreneurs if this “industry” were to continue to back losing products that are better off as technology for someone else. It is a sure fire way to make sure that investors will not put money into anyone’s product if they feel there is no chance for return.

You have my deepest respect for what you have done so far, but your view discounts a lot of other people’s successes and a completely viable and valuable business plan.

Best, Robert Williams

I found your performance at the Seattle 2.0 Awards to be entertaining, inspiring and sage.
I took the spirit of your comments RE what has been interpreted as “go big or go home” a bit differently than I’ve head expressed elsewhere; I also make no pretense of suggesting that I properly inferred the true intent of your words. But, after all, advice is always subject to the interpretations of the receive so I also make not apologies for taking away something that may not have been there in the first place. In any case….

When you talked about taking on big problems I took you to mean that your chances of making mistakes and still surviving are commensurate with the size of the problem/market you’re addressing… not that you just shouldn’t waste your time with small stuff. Rather, I took you to be saying, “look, do yourself a favor and limit your risk of failure and improve your potential upside by working on stuff that would be so valuable to consumers and investors that you can get away with some bone-head decisions and missed opportunities.” The point is that the margin for error in a small thing is equally small — especially relative to the potential return on the inevitable commitment and sacrafice that you personally will have to make. If you have a filter you apply to the various opportunities that you could choose to get involved in then it makes good sense to consider the scope and scale of the problem you’re gonna take on before you commit to it. The way I see it, it just cannot be the case the every idea is both a good one AND worth committing your life to for several years at a time. The second part of that conjunction is the oft overlook piece of the formula that I think many would-be entrepreneurs either don’t or can’t think about in the right way… or at all. The reality is that there are lots of “good” ideas that should never be built except perhaps as a hobby/passion (and, yes, I think those efforts can be rewarding and worthwhile in their own way). The challenge is finding a good idea that is also a great business opportunity… and that means, in part, that it solves a problem big enough to warrant allowing investors to put money in — whether the investor is you, your mother or a VC.

Sometimes when I hear entrepreneurs describe their admittedly good (i.e., cleaver, novel, useful) idea it sounds as if they have never even asked themselves the question whether it could also be a great business as well, let alone run the numbers on what success would look like or even identify what risks there could be. I think we all have blind spots and part of becoming a successful entrepreneur is to become aware of more and more of your blind spots and, where possible, expanding your field of view. Glenn, your remarks about big ideas/businesses having more error forgiveness built-in is a valuable insight that many would-be entrepreneurs would do well to heed.

One lesson at a time,

Bob Crimmins

If you read my comments on John Cook’s blog, I start an argument about whose advice entrepreneurs should listen to. I have nothing to say about how a company is funded, be it VC dollars or an entrepreneur’s savings. But, in reply to my comparison of Glen’s advice to Adam’s, Glen responds and switches in the straw man:

@29: ” I certainly don’t have any beef with boot-strapping”;
@36 “There’s a difference between a small company trying to do something big and a big company. A big idea is better than a small idea. Doing it with less money is better than doing it with more.”
@ On this blog, ” I have nothing but the highest respect for boot-strapped startups. . . . So why do folks think I feel otherwise?”
@ anin the comments, “My mistake Brad. I just thought you were +1 on Josh’s comment, which attributed that PoV to me.”

But who attributed this view to Glen? Since I haven’t said a word about bootstrapping in this debate, I certainly didn’t say he doesn’t respect bootstrapped companies. I just said he give inferior advice than Adam. And how is it we now have a bootstrapping vs. VC funded debate instead of the Adam is much wiser than Glen debate? That’s Glen’s straw man – he’s transformed the debate about who entrepreneurs should listen to, into a debate about bootstrapping vs. VCs.

Now I do get Glen’s point that the speech he gave was meant to be reflective and entertaining, and it was. But it was also full of advice for entrepreneurs such as: “why not do something big” rather than some “rinky dink” little thing (which is an interesting discussion, if we have examples of who is big and who is small, and entrepreneurs who mistakenly did the rinky dink thing) . He also gives us that novel advice that you should imagine the person your corporate board will replace you with and compete against that fictive doppelgänger every day. Isn’t that why you decided to take the leap to start your own venture? To have the chance to be sweated through the day by an imaginary lackey of your corporate overlords.

My set-up between Adam’s article and Glen’s talk is just that – a set-up. It isn’t a fair comparison (and not just because Adam’s advice blows Glen’s away). Glen was trying to be reflective and entertaining. His goal wasn’t to give practical advice, and no one should mistake it for that. That’s why it might need a warning label!

You’ve addressed the matter at hand eloquently. I would only add that some ideas – big or small – necessarily require deep pockets if they are to be attempted at all. An infrastructure play like the Picken’s clean energy plan is a classic example, but fundamentally transforming the broadly entrenched industry norms that we find in real estate also qualifies.

From a personal perspective, I’ve seen both sides. We started CareSystems during the last downturn. Although that climate was less severe than current conditions, financing terms were very dear and we were essentially forced to bootstrap – no mean feat for an enterprise SaaS solution targeting healthcare. To this day I’m thankful that we didn’t receive early funding. The process forced both a fiscal discipline and a laser-like focus on delivering real customer value on fair terms. The result was a product that absolutely rocked customer expectations.

We had the VC trifecta of traction, team/execution history, and product (h/t Mark Maunder). In addition, the competition were generally still nascent web offerings or flat-footed incumbents. Scaling in that category requires feet on the street, and we should have sought outside investment at that point in order to capitalize on the asset and a window of opportunity. Instead the founder elected to maintain it as a lifestyle business, and at that point if you’re able to shift focus from market leadership to quality, small can be beautiful too!

My key take-away is that even if stars of preparation, market opportunity and luck align, the ability to pivot into a VC-backed growth stage requires a team with a clear understanding of why they are and what they want from the company.

Keep up the good work.

Ron Diver

I’ve never read the full story of 43 Things anywhere, but Josh and Daniel are both really nice peeps (as is the entire Robot Co-Op team) and I’m sure they’d gladly sit down with you over a cup of coffee and trade war stories.

-Brad

I’ve never read Josh’s story of 43 Things, but would like to. Where is it?