Thoughts in my mind went as follow:

1. I wish I was the target audience ;)
2. What a great focus!
3. Wait a minute…
4. lol, @mick would love that!
5. This is a great location for such ads. This gate is pretty much solely used for Nice > Dubai flights. Meaning that when rich Dubai business men and other royal holiday makers are travelling back from Monaco, Cannes and the French Riviera in general this is where they have to sit and wait for Emirates to start boarding :)

So I think the learning here is that focus shouldn’t be faked. But if you do fake it, try to be subtle about it :p

I had a flashback to this video that my brother and I danced to when I was about 4.

(It’s a great video, watch the whole thing – some great cameos including Paul Simon and Danny Devito)

You can’t do two wonderful things at once. I love my ducky.

“You don’t have to lose the duck, you can put it down and pick it up when you finish.”

Yes, yes, yes, it’s all about sequence. You can love lots of things, you just can’t do them all at once.

Maybe my startup experience started earlier than I thought.

“Yeah, but won’t we be burning people? Won’t they not come back ever again? Won’t it hurt our brand?”

A brand, as I understand it, is the sum total of your reputation. Brutally, to begin with, you don’t have one. Yes, if you try something with an early potential customer and it sucks, then they may think that startuperer.com is no good, but before they got there, they had no idea who you were, so you really haven’t gone backwards.

Though that’s only mildly important.

The most important thing is that if you are already trying to protect your brand, you’ll will find it impossible to get to a point where it’s all working. You’ll be so busy worrying about disappointing people that you will only play in safe areas, and safe ain’t going to get you ‘there’. You need to have the guts to try, fail, annoy a bunch of people on the road to success. I promise that they will forgive you later.

The other bad part of this is middle-of-the-roading. If you’re trying not to annoy people, then you are absolutely aiming too broadly. You should not just be annoying people, you should be flatly rejecting them. Change your domain name to;

www.i-only-want-these-types-of-people-and-everyone-else-can-get-lost.com

To reiterate – you will disappoint and frustrate a bunch of customers on your way to success.

Face it, get over it and get on with it.

“Previously, access to Unvarnished has been limited to invite-only or professionals from a list of roughly 200 pre-approved tech/tech-related companies.” From Techcrunch.

By intentionally limiting their initial base, not just through a private beta, but by actually specifically only allowing a certain segment of people in, they get a stronger response.

For them it’s obvious why this is the case. If I’m going to be able and motivated to give feedback on a colleague, chances are they work at the same company.

Facebook did this as well by only allowing Harvard Students, then college students, then highschool, then the world. If they did the world day one, they wouldn’t have made it.

Lesson: Forcefully limit your initial base to a focused, small group and you’ll get stronger results.

I hated listening to your talk at SydStart

Here is what it said;

Hi Mick,

My name is Kevin Lippy and I founded a company called Brokepacker.com, a booking engine for backpackers offering discounts and value adding deals on accommodation, experiences and travel. I pitched yesterday but unfortunately it was after you had had to leave. If you want you can read about Brokepacker here http://www.tnooz.com/2010/07/23/tlabs/tlabs-showcase-brokepacker/.

I really loved your talk yesterday and I agreed with pretty much all of what you said… but I found it absolutely grating to listen to because it seemed like i’m doing the exact opposite in a lot of ways at the moment. For example;

1. Don’t start by protecting an idea because you won’t get it right the first time anyway. – I did, and it cost a fair bit of time and money.

2. Manual testing –  I actually did do this by moving into various backpacking hostels for a while, which gave me an awesome insight into the viability of the concept and it also got me some great sales. Every backpacker sold, absolutely loved it (and why wouldn’t they… it’s cheaper for their needs and wants). However I’m not sure if that really proves the concept as an ‘online booking engine.’ Is this the correct manual test?

3. Need to just go out sell –  I  may be wrong but I honestly think with the model we are using there is a definite risk in doing this. The model requires operators to continually list products each month, so we have to ensure that we provide them value. (This is different to group buying models like Spreets, Scoopon etc). If it we don’t deliver we may lose the operators in the long run.

If you have some time i would more than appreciate catching up to discuss these points and the project in general and perhaps getting feedback as to whether you think the model will work. I want to focus, but I also want to make sure that I am focusing on the right strategy.

Much appreciated,

Kevin Lippy

Brokepacker.com

T:

F: http://facebook.com/brokepacker

Ha! I love it. I’m glad I impacted someone. Yes, focus! If I got one guy to move one centimetre to being more focused, then I’m glad I went.

Here is my reply to him;

LOL.

One of the best email subjects I’ve seen for years Kevin – thank you!

Honestly, I hated hearing my talk too. The reason is that I know it now, but I didn’t know it until I worked on 5 businesses over 8 years. Ouch! It was always something else.

Here is a list of my bad excuses;

“We didn’t raise enough money.” – WRONG – more money, means more features, less urgency and less focus.

“We were ahead of our time.” – WRONG – it means you couldn’t actually solve someones problem.

“Our marketing wasn’t strong enough.” – WRONG – more potential customers into a shop that doesn’t sell anything anyone wants to buy doesn’t bring more sales.

“If only we were all in Silicon Valley.” – WRONG – having the wrong core utility and going slow doesn’t work anywhere in the world.

Yep, tough lessons.

Congrats on getting started at all. I like where you guys are going.

We’d like to chat to you. First step is always a pitch. http://www.pollenizer.com/services/pitch-sessions/

Are you after a potential partnership or advice?

Are you OK with me blogging your email and part of my response? I’ll take out personal info of course.

Thanks,

Mick Liubinskas

The Sydney Startup community is so exciting right now. It’s just great to be a part of it.

This post is inspired by the KaChing case study on Startup Lessons Learned on Pivoting on Eric Ries blog, and this quote;

Which is a nice story. But when kaChing actually shut down each game, hundreds of angry players spewed venom. “We had to ignore them, because they weren’t our target audience – and were never likely to become customers.” says Rachleff.

We see the look on the face of our co-founders all the time when they are trying to be nice. They’ve put their product out there, and they’ve seen a few buds of interest grow and some bloom into an interested segment. But then they realise that another segment is the one they should commit to – it’s stronger, deeper, bigger, more likely to be profitable.

That’s good to work out, but now you need to have the guts to stop supporting the other customer segments. If you have to spend a lot of money and time to maintain them, it’s an easier question – ditch them and save time and money.

But, even if you don’t have to maintain them, it can be far too expensive to keep supporting them. Why?

1. Your brand. What are you? As a startup, you might know what you are and your vision, but the rest of the world doesn’t. If you’re trying to be two things, then it will be about 10% as effective (complexity costs!).
2. Your attention. Focus makes you stronger. It makes life simple and easier, and life is tough enough in a startup.

No one likes to break up with anyone. And these customers are early and fresh and full of love for you. It’s hard. But you need to be firm and get it done. It’s hurting both of you. You’re not really looking after them. Maybe you’ll be ready for them one day, but not today.

Do it nicely. Don’t burn bridges. But do it.

It’s not you, it’s them. (Unless you two time, then it’s you!).

In the first half of the 4 hour workshop we worked on customer discovery (micro-segments, customer values, creating 10 X value). We iterated on this process to create a focused customer development plan. See below. We then pitched the concept to a group of colleagues who liked the idea. That evening we ran a fun market validation exercise around the original business concept – Dares for Dollars. Mick copped a few cream pies in the face.

Customer Development Model

On Monday Chris and the team arrived ready to refine the model above and get cracking on an implementation plan. Within the first hour, the workshop ended. Chris had the weekend to think about his business and changed his mind. He decided he didn’t want to pursue the Pledgespace idea any further.

He failed. This is a good thing. For the modest cost of a Pollenizer focus workshop, Chris has saved himself time and money  building out an idea ‘to spec’ as he originally envisaged and one that he wasn’t passionate about.

Chris has gone through a valuable experience and it highlights that starting a web business and learning to be an entrepreneur requires an enormous head shift, discarding old mental models to learn new principals. It can feel a bit like you are in kindergarten all over again.

What did Chris learn about this experience? You can read below.

From Chris Gray, June 2010:

Hi Guys

I have had some time to think about stuff and reflect on the process and what I have learnt from meeting you guys in Sydney.

To be honest I found the entire process overwhelming.  This would be quite personal as I think it has allot to do with my background, environment  and support network as opposed to the process itself.

I understand the process (as much as I can after 1 weekend) and immediately saw the mistakes I had made along the way. I can still see the value in the concept but can also see the risks and challenges that would need to be mounted along the way and am not prepared to take them.

It comes down to what I said on the day, I don’t know or feel confident enough that I have a strong enough platform on which to build. If I had a history of activism, daring and change facilitation then it would be a different story.

The positive things (things I did like)

1. The feeling that there is MORE to life and the ability to actually make stuff happen
2. The importance and value of having a network and utilising that network
3. The awesome people (Mick, Luke, Jo, Lesley-Ann, Rob Antulov, Wayne Bosley) who I got to meet and talk to
4. The excitement and energy that the process gives you (you guys will never get bored J)
5. The idea that a business is about being dynamic, learning, pivoting and iterating.

The negative things (things I didn’t like)

1. The willingness to “Burn people” in order to learn.  I do understand this but am not entirely comfortable with the “smoke and mirrors” approach.  I like to be 100% transparent as a rule
2. The idea that you put yourself out there to be judged knowing you are wrong just to learn.  Again I understand now why it is necessary and love the fact that this is dynamic and exciting. But at the same time I don’t like to do stuff that I know is wrong, even if I can get something out of it.  It comes back again to the fact that I am transparent, genuine and honest. (Or at least I try to be J)
3. The feeling of being on the outside looking in.

Next steps for me …

1. Find some other people, build a new network that contains more successful, dynamic people such as yourselves
2. Find a concept that I know (not just love) and make it happen
3. Follow through on my ideas… too many times I have gotten almost to the “tipping point” and then bailed out

I would like to thank all of you guys for your time, input, honesty and feedback.

As far as my venture into the web startup world, I can honestly say that I enjoyed it immensely and definitely feel I chose the right people to talk to in Pollenizer.  I can see what you do, understand your approach and how you will continue to be successful.

Given an opportunity I would love to work with any or all of you in the future.

I hope to encounter and meet all of you in some capacity again

Regards

Chris

Mick Liubinskas’ reply to Chris:

Thanks Chris. Fantastic email. Greatly appreciated.

A quick note on ‘burning people’. It sounds worse than it’s supposed to. I guess the key principle here is that we know we’re not going to be perfect day one, so we might have to disappoint or not satisfy some people. There is a tendency to hold it back until it’s right, but the dilemma is that we won’t work out if it’s right until we get it out there in front of real customers.

This relates heavily to points 2 and 3 below.

Looking forward to your next venture and I hope we can work together in the future.

Thanks,
Mick Liubinskas

This week Pollenizer launched Startup Bootcamp to help people like Chris learn the principals of web business startups.”Focus or Fail, it’s that simple”…

Failure if part of life and business. As a community of new and experienced entrepreneurs, why don’t we start sharing more of these stories with our own community and see what happens.

Big thanks to Chris for being willing to share his experience with our community. If you are involved in the startup scene in Perth, get in touch with Chris, he’d love to hear from new and experienced web entrepreneurs.

You can contact Chris Gray on chris@madicus.com.

Dean’s response;

“One day, but right now, I’m not wasting a single second or cent chasing anything else.”

Great answer.

It doesn’t cost much or take too much time to think about an idea, listen to a proposal, do a bit of research, run some numbers, make a few calls…

But it all adds up. Especially in a highly competitive we business like Spreets, but in all cases, time spent on other things is time not spent moving you forward. So it actually costs you triple.

It can be difficult to remain focused when you’re constantly online running a web business. The lure of the internet is very tempting and just a minute checking an auction on eBay can turn into an hour of researching Wedgewood tableware you saw in an auction earlier and thought your Mum might like for her birthday…. to be fair it is fast approaching….I wonder what payment methods rosesonly.com take…I should go to their website…

See how easy it can be to get distracted?

Darren’s top tips are:

1. Know and identify your goals, and know them on a big picture scale. Periodically write down your new goals and assess the previous goals.

2. Boundaries and boundaries around the core talks that are going to take you closer to your goals. You need to put boundaries around core tasks and set aside time to achieve these.

3. The other type of boundary and this is involves creating boundaries around the distractions. If it’s not a core task, create a small space in your day to do those things which are good but which also can be distractions.

But he warns of the dangers of stretching yourself too far. The above chart shows a tipping point where busyness can lead to less productivity. Be careful not to burn yourself out!

Ok, now back to the task at hand!

Focus is important to not only new businesses and entrepreneurs but those who are ‘old-hands’, who may lose sight and become complacent due to a lack of motivation or simply laziness.

So if you feel you are slipping into a routine or becoming too comfortable, remember why you started your business or what you initially wanted to achieve and always keep that thought to bring you back to focus. That focus will keep you motivated, innovative and your business growing.