Satya Murthy

By Mark A.R. Mitchell
Small businesses face enough challenges in the pursuit of success, and those that operate a mobile office have it even tougher. Why make avoidable missteps? Here are 10 mistakes to avoid in the virtual and mobile worlds:

Failing to back up your data: This is a sure-fire way to destroy your business. It doesn’t seem to matter how often people like me say to back up your files–most people just don’t do it. But when you’re working in a mobile office setting or by yourself from home, you risk losing everything you’ve built if you lose your data.

Solution: Back up your data daily, using an external drive or an online service such as one of those discussed here.

Skimping on connectivity: Connectivity with your team and with your customers is your lifeblood. If you cut costs here, you’ll cut into your success.

Solution: Get the fastest broadband connection you can get–up and down.

Developing sloppy work habits: The virtual office is an office, even if you’re dressed in your bathrobe.

Solution: Keep focused and remember that you are doing real work. If you forget that, so will others.

Isolating yourself: Not having a brick-and-mortar office doesn’t mean you don’t need to interact with your clients and teammates in a traditional manner–at least occasionally.

Solution: Face time with others is important, not just to stay current with your clients but to keep yourself from going stir crazy. If you’re on the road for your company, you need to dock with the mother ship on occasion. It will help you remember why you’re doing this together. If you’re working from home, you need to get out and go to a professional conference or client meeting. You need to find ways to keep ideas coming in–and interacting with other people remains a powerful way to do that.

Working without an IT plan: In a virtual office, many people may come to the table with their own ideas about what information technologies they want to use. Some folks are Mac champions; others are PC lovers. Some love the BlackBerry; others the Palm Pre or iPhone. All this love, though, can lead to IT chaos.

Solution: If you’re the boss, you need an IT plan. Trying to run a virtual office with technologies that don’t work well together consumes time you could be devoting to doing real business. So set standards and expectations and be clear about why you’ve set them.

Micromanaging your virtual employees: One of the reasons people are drawn to a virtual office is flexibility. If you try to micromanage your employees’ time, you’ll run into difficulties.

Solution: In the mobile or virtual environment, you simply can’t keep an eye on what everyone is doing at every moment–so don’t even try. Mature mobile office workers–in contrast to immature slackers–will focus on getting the work done. They may do the work at 10 p.m., after a long day on a mountain bike, but they’ll get it done. If you expect their attendance at a meeting or on a call, make sure they know that, but don’t expect them to be at their desks working just because the clock says it’s 10 a.m.

Failing to manage your virtual employees: While micromanagement is a problem, the absence of active management is equally bad. If you set unclear expectations, or none at all, you (and everyone who works for you) are bound to be disappointed.

Solution: Focus your mobile and virtual employees on goals, deliverables and milestones. Encourage them to ask for help if and when they need it, but otherwise leave them alone to do the work you expect them to do. They’ll do it in the way that works best for them within the timeframe you’ve identified.

Insufficiently vetting your employees: You need to know that your virtual employees can get the job done in an environment that may have few, if any, of the traditional reminders that they’re at the office. How can you know this when you hire them?

Solution: A track record of working virtually helps, but in the absence of that you’ll have to go with your gut when you assess answers to questions like, "Why do you want to work in a nontraditional setting like this?" and "How do you structure your work life?" and "How do you deal with the competing demands of home while you’re in the office?" If you don’t vet your potential employees with due diligence, it’s going to be harder on you and your business in the long run.

Forgetting your boundaries: Traditional offices–even really hip ones with video games and foosball tables–are still bounded spaces. You leave home to go to them. But if you’re working from home, that boundary, like everything else, can be virtual.

Solution: You need to find a way to keep a healthy boundary between your work and home life. If you don’t, both will suffer. A door you can close at the end of the day is a wonderful thing.

Failing to enjoy the virtual office: Ultimately, a virtual or mobile office can be the office you’ve always dreamed of, so don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy it.

Solution: You have a unique opportunity to choose the tools and technologies you use to get your work done, and to shape and control the environment in which you work. If you don’t take advantage of that opportunity and build the world that works best for you, your employees, and your customers, you’ll miss out on one of the best aspects of working in the virtual office.

Mark A.R. Mitchell is an avid technology buff and reporter covering small-business products and the Consumer Electronics Show. He holds a master’s degree in English literature from Harvard and has worked with leading technology companies and research universities.

from: http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/09/how-to-find-sta.html

I have this conversation at least once a week.  Some visitor to my site on financing startups spends a couple of hours reading all, or most of it, and decides to call me up. The conversation then, almost invariably, goes like this.

Caller: Hi, I read your site. It’s fantastic, by the way. Look, we’ve been trying to raise X dollars for over 6 months now, without any luck, and we’re starting to get desperate.

Can you help us raise X dollars?

Me: Well, it doesn’t really work that way in real life. Raising money is actually all about relationships and personal trust. Let me put it this way. You have three basic financing options out there.

The first and best bet consists of your former investors. These are people who gave you money in a previous deal and made off like bandits as a result. They know you, trust you, and believe in you.

Caller: Hey! That makes perfect sense.

Me: Your next best bet consists of the "3Fs", otherwise known as "family, friends, and fools".  This group includes dad, mom, uncle Ziggy, your Yale "frat bro" Chipper Drysdale III, and anyone else foolish enough to fall for your pitch (e.g., your dentist).

Caller: Got it!

Me: The final option is to get creative and do what most of the great entrepreneurs did at the beginning when they were in your shoes and couldn’t raise a dollar either. This third option is what my Smart Startup Guide teaches you how to do. It teaches you how the greats started with minimal or no capital. It goes into great detail about their strategy and tactics.

Caller: Well, I’ll be danged! Wish I had known all this 6 months ago.

Me: So, Mister Caller, let me ask you if you have any previous investors whom you made rich and who trust you?

Caller: Ahh, no I don’t. I have never made money for anyone. This will be my first business.

Me: Hmm, okay, let’s work our way down the list. What about the 3Fs? Do you have any family, friends, or dentists who would be willing to gamble their savings on you simply because they like you?

Caller: Ahh, no I don’t. My family is not rich and I didn’t graduate from an Ivy League school.

Me: Hmm, well then you need to forget about raising any outside money for the time being. Instead look at devising an alternate strategy for launching your business. You need to show potential investors that you have what it takes to create some cashflow first. Then they might take you seriously enough to invest.

Caller: Wow, I never knew any of this stuff. This explains why we haven’t been able to raise any money with our business plan despite 6 months of pounding on doors and doing "dog and pony shows" for angels and venture capitalists.

Me:  Yes, it does explain it. Investors only invest in entrepreneurs they know and trust–or those who have proven the viability of their idea with actual cashflow.

Caller: Sure looks that way.

[There's usually a short pause here before the final question.]

So, can you help us raise X dollars then?

~

At this point I usually feel like banging my head down on the desk. So if you are tempted to call me about helping you to raise capital, please don’t. I wrote the Smart Startup Guide for people who have wasted 6 to 18 months of their lives in a futile capital pursuit. After this much time they have either become realists or quit. But both finally understand that a business plan alone means little to investors. So feel free to invest or not invest in the Guide, but please don’t call me about helping you to raise money.

I decided to post this because the number of entrepreneurial wannabes who waste 6 to 18 months chasing capital with nothing more than a business plan is absolutely staggering. They might as well just stay at home for the same period buying lottery tickets. The odds of success are about the same.

So what’s the take home here? First-time entrepreneurs should focus on proving that they can generate some cashflow first. The investors will follow. Don’t fall for the hype from the business plan industry which tries to fool you into thinking that all you need is a well-written plan.

Samajwadi Party MLA-elect Abu Asim Azmi on Wednesday said he was determined to take oath in the assembly in Hindi and threatened to lodge an FIR against Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president Raj Thackeray if the latter prevented him from doing so.
Azmi won the recent assembly elections from Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar in Mumbai and Bhiwandi East in Thane district and has decided to vacate Bhiwandi seat. Raj had recently demanded that all the 288 new legislators take oath only in Marathi or face his party’s wrath.
"I will also file a privilege motion against his 13 MLAs if any of them dare to touch me," Azmi thundered at a press conference organised at Marathi Patrakar Sangh. Calling Raj Thackeray a "kuve ka mendak (frog in a well)", Azmi said, "He can only croak in his own well. But I am not scared of him." He stated that it was his constitutional right to take the oath in Hindi.
Azmi said he was not fluent in Marathi, but had begun taking lessons at home. "I am not learning Marathi because I am afraid of Bal Thackeray or Raj Thackeray. It will help me follow the discussions in the House," he said. He appealed to all Marathi-speaking people not to fall prey to the divide-and-rule policy of the Thackerays.
"If you divide Mumbai into Marathi and non-Marathi, it will destroy its essence of being a cosmopolitan city," he said, adding he condemned the proposal by some MLAs to bring in a "permit system" for those residing in Mumbai. "I could have read the oath in Marathi as the script is Devnagri, but if I do so Raj will get a wrong impression that I am scared of him," Azmi added.

I just got this mail today morning – yooho! more space now…

from: Abinash Tripathy

Since my move to India in 2004,  I have worked with several of the Telecom and Media giants in India at a very strategic level and spent a year at Yahoo! India after the Zimbra acquisition.   Over time my belief that the Online Media industry in India is in big trouble has been reinforced time and again.    Every single meeting I have had with stalwarts in the Media space continue to reinforce my beliefs as I can see the “cluelessness” in their minds about the online space.   The big three tend to believe that their brand will carry them through the digital era and they refuse to believe that powerhouses in the worldwide Print industry have fallen prey to the smaller, nimble highly technology savvy digital companies which is what will happen in India if they fail to wake up from their slumber.   While these large media companies continue to invest in their digital businesses heavily the results are shoddy.      Even the true Internet players from the early days of the Internet era in India like Rediff and Sify continue to underwhelm the market with poor product offerings and declining ad sales.   Let us take a closer look at the digital industry in India:

1. Rediff.com  – considered to be the grand daddy of the Indian Internet industry is really starting to show its age.   They are really old in the way they think and execute thanks mostly due to their aging leader Ajit Balakrishnan who is considered to be the father of the Indian Internet industry.  I think we should honor him with the title of grand father of the Indian digital media industry now.    I have had the honor of meeting him personally in 2006 when we were starting Zimbra in India and after the meeting I could only walk away saying ” what an arrogant man full of himself”.    Confidence is a great virtue in a leader but arrogance just shows that the person is afraid…..very afraid of young companies just disrupting what Rediff does and he is just trying to intimidate them so that they don’t take up the challenge of competing against Rediff.    I compared notes with several valley startup founders to be told the same story that I had experienced with Ajith.  All of these companies rose quickly in the last 2 years and built incredible valuations while Rediff continues to decline and Age.  Even Zimbra sold to Yahoo for US$350M may be 11 months after we met Ajith.  For a  company founded in 1996, to achieve enterprise value of US$42 million in 2009 is a joke.  Their profit margin is off by 61% YOY and operating margin is down 44% YOY.  Their quarterly revenue growth declined by 40% year over year and they are running at a loss.   Hmmmm… if this is the state of the best in the industry we need to wonder how the rest of the digital media companies are doing.    Rediff truly believes they are the Google of India.    Ajith has boasted openly about how Larry Page and Sergey Brin come to his office to meet him.    My meeting with Ajith actually taught me an important lesson,   Indian media companies don’t have the slightest clue about the Internet.   They believe that they can fast copy what great startups in the US do and try and launch it in India and start getting traffic.   They do not believe that having great technology and technologists is an asset.    They continue to hire people that are under qualified and operate like the services industry (fill the ranks with 100s or 1000s of below average people) an then wonder why they can never produce anything cool that consumers love even after fast copying and why it costs them so much to build something.

2.  Indiatimes.com –  Indiatimes was a customer of ours and I have great respect for Vineet Jain.   Vineet is a visionary and lives and breathes the Internet.   However, he lacks a decent team to support his vision.   We supplied Zimbra to Indiatimes in 2006 and they did a huge launch around email in 2007. I was very impressed with their ability to market and create a buzz.   Where Indiatimes is lacking is people at the leadership level.  In the 3 years that I worked with them, they have hired and fired 3 CEOs and not to mention the rank below the CXO level.   In one of my articles I wrote about how I had worked with a large media house that had hired a conman as their CTO.     Well! that company was Indiatimes.   The digital media industry in India is filled with people who started their careers in print and TV and then moved to the Internet and then grew along with the industry.   They do not have a background in Technology and the Internet.    They take technology and innovation for granted.    They think brand and content is king.     I just did some analysis on one of the most trafficked financial sites in India and found that only 1% came there to read news.   So, there goes your content investment down the drain.   Content has become commodity.   I would argue that 2 years from now most Indians will get their news update from Twitter and not from any of the news sites.   For example, I read the TOI yesterday and did not gather that George W Bush was in India for the HT Leadership Summit.   When I logged into twitter, I was surprised to see a tweet that Bush was in India.

3.  Web18 – I have a lot of respect for this group.    They have done amazing things in India in a short period of time.   However, I believe that they also lack the leadership to create a huge Internet giant in India.   My assessment is based on what they deliver to the end users (the user experience sucks) and the technology investments and competence of their teams.

4. The Rest –  I think we can safely throw the rest into a bucket called “the rest” which don’t really matter as they are purely noise and don’t have a shot like Sify.com etc…  If the top 3 companies don’t have what it takes to achieve Internet greatness, then it is not worthwhile talking about the rest.

So, why are the Indian Media Giants failing on the Internet???

1. Top Down Management  -   In every media company I have worked with, I have seen a cultural difference between how a valley startup is run and how these top heavy Indian companies are run.    I think by now we should all acknowledge that the biggest baddest companies of the Internet were built by 20/30 somethings and not by 40/50 somethings.  In all the traditional media companies I see the whole company rallying around a 40/50’s something person (“the leader”) or in the case of Rediff (“60 something”).   The whole company does something just to satisfy this one person.   I experienced this when I was working with Indiatimes and launching their mail platform.  It was always about – hey we need to do this because MD wants it this way even if it was something that did not make sense.    The younger Internet savvy individual contributors literally have no say.   They are just there to satisfy their masters whims and fancy.     Zimbra deployed a 80+ server system distributed in 2 data centers, wrote migration scripts, migrated 800K mailboxes and architected and deployed a system to scale for 3.5M users for Indiatimes.com in 4 months with 3 employees who worked for me all in their early to mid 20s.     In comparison there was an army from Indiatimes which was assigned to our project who could not even configure a load balancer correctly.    I saw the same pattern at Rediff where it was all about satisfying Ajith.   Let us all understand that if Top Management always intimidates their ranks and the ranks cannot freely share ideas with them, they are not going to be able to bring the best of everyone out.  The greatest ideas often come from the ranks and not from the leadership.  Intimidation only gets you a bunch of  ”Yes Men”  and not a bunch of young innovators.  As long as Indian media companies try to function in the top down manner we cannot see them scale the walls of greatness.

2.   Taking Technology for Granted – None of the Indian Media companies I have worked with in the Indian Media space have demonstrated any technical competence.   The Rediff management seems to be too caught up in the NIH (not Invented Here) syndrome.   If it is not invented in the Rediff labs then it must be no good. Unfortunately Rediff Labs is filled with below average people.  When I was hiring for Zimbra we received numerous resumes from Rediff and not one made the cut.    The CTO at Indiatimes was an industry joke.  He claimed to be Scott McNealy’s right hand at Sun etc etc but could not spell Java and turned out to be a conman.   If the CTO was that bright, one can imagine how the rest of the tech team would be.   That should explain why I have not been able to sign up to Indiatimes for the last 3 weeks.   Their Integra registration/SSO engine fails every time I try and register.   If they lose users at registration due to technology imagine what rest of their site is like.    I think I have made my point.    None of the Indian Digital Media companies attempt to try and build a young, vibrant high tech culture which is so very vital to creating great companies.

Here is some interesting data per Alexa:

-  57% of the sites on the Internet are faster than Rediff.com

- 84% of the sites on the Internet are faster than Indiatimes

- 88% of the sites on the Internet are faster than in.com

So, why is it that we don’t have a single online media company in India that can optimize a site to be fast and deliver that amazing performance to users?

3. Lack of Innovation –   It really amazes me to see the Indian media companies launch product after product that are a poor copy of the core US idea.   Can someone please point to anything they thought was new and innovative in the media products that are peddled to us.   Almost all the media houses saw the social media trend emerge  and made investments – Digital Martini of HT, iTimes of Indiatimes, BigAdda of the Big ADAG group.   If you go look at the usage numbers it is appalling.   Most Indians continue to throng to Facebook and Orkut.

3.   Belief that Brand is everything –   Brand is hugely important when reaching out to consumers and the Media companies do enjoy huge brand affinity.   However as proven in the western world, young nimble and dynamic tech companies can easily and quickly disrupt this.   I would argue Google is probably the most important brand on the planet today and it is a matter of time until facebook achieves huge brand recognition.  Both companies were started by 20 somethings and have built a brand faster than any traditional media company.  New York Times is arguably a very popular media brand with a legacy of 150 years.      But, my 3 year old nephew in the US recognizes Google and uses it and has no clue about NYT.    Inspired by the movie “Wake up Sid”   I would like to say “Wake up Indian Media Industry”.

4.  Belief that Content is everything – Several media companies I have met argue that content is king. I agree….. but what type of content is king today in the era of blogging where every human on the Internet has the ability to become a journalist with an audience.  Editorial Judgement is valuable but a lot of individuals better qualified than Journalists in their areas of interest/expertise are starting to express their opinions and people are starting to follow them.  So, it is arguable if there will be rockstar journalists to look up to in the coming era of blogging and micro-blogging.   For example, I have just started writing about the technology startup industry recently and there is an audience that is slowly attaching itself to my blog around a very narrow area “high tech startups”.    This audience should have been getting this information from the online tech channels but they cannot.    So, I am slowly starting to build up an audience around a very narrow niche.     This is the long tail.   This is something the Media Industry has to learn to leverage or lose eyeball time.   Citizen Journalism, aggregation of good personal blogs and creating a revenue sharing model around these will ensure that Media companies stay competitive.   Let us all face it, most media companies are consuming news from wires for a fee and then repurposing this content with their own editorial judgement and then peddling it to us under their brand.  How long before the human race evolves and starts to consume these wires directly.   I can argue that with the advances in the Internet man has evolved to be able to process information at a faster pace than the pre-Internet era.   We can all now seek information in an instant, get millions of points of view, digest it and form our own opinion from the Internet.    We automatically are being trained to look at many points of view.   The Media industry’s premise is that their point of view is the most important.  This is no longer the case in the digital era. Don’t fight this trend.   Blend with it and you win!

5.  Big budgets – big plans – lack-lustre execution –  Most of the Indian Media companies identify leading trends, create big plans, big budget but flounder when it comes to execution.   They lack the design and product finesse required to deliver something compelling to the end user and technology execution is just very underwhelming.   I really pity the VCs who have put money into these media houses.   I am afraid that all of them will have to write it off or try to offload their investment at a throwaway price and book a loss.

6. Too much focus on Eyeball time and Ads as opposed to creating valuable transact-able events for the user and growing networks –  If you go to some of the most trafficked media sites in India they suck primarily due to the generous smothering of Ads which hugely annoy the audience.   The Media companies know how much this sucks but suck it up to the advertiser just so they can keep their measly handouts from these companies alive.    If you analyze this a little it is obvious that the Media houses know that they have nothing compelling to offer to the end user as they were a “me too”  site to begin with and their product and technology is not good enough to attract huge audience.  In the absence of compelling services, the best one can do is to spread oneself really thin and try and do it all where each service lacks in quality and fails to draw the right audience. So they try and plaster advertisements on literally every page they generate to capture some of the crumbs left behind by Google and Yahoo.  If you really look carefully at the Industry all the Major Indian Internet players are crumb eaters.

7. Lack of Audience Intelligence- The Indian digital Media industry universally (except rediff I think) uses Google Analytics to get insights of their audience.   Guess who has the advantage in learning about their customer base – Google – not the media houses!  They see it immediately as a part of their global numbers and can use it to their advantage.   If  the media industry had the technology muscle to build their own analytics and profile their own users they could be so much more valuable to advertisers.

I still believe the Indian Digital Media industry holds great promise and I came back to India with the hope that we can create quality companies in India that apply technology and innovation to cool services that consumers love.

My message to the young, innovative type graduating from colleges is to seek out small startups that are doing quality work instead of working for the big name media houses just to be resume worthy.   Resumes really don’t matter…. what you  learn and achieve matters a lot.

My message to startup founders is that if you have a great idea please don’t short sell yourselves to any of the larger Media houses.   Most of the business/ corporate development teams in these Media houses don’t have the people or the ability to identify big opportunities, teams or technology and end up signing really crappy deals with a bunch of small startups mostly opportunistically.   How many times have you been in meetings to be told that you (startup founder) need to guarantee revenue if you want to partner with these media houses and that they cannot provide you anything else in return other than their brand.   Challenge them. What brand?  What are you numbers?  Ask for revenue guarantees.  Don’t sign bad deals with them as it could kill your company.   Ask them to separate their numbers for Digital from Print or TV and then watch the fun.  Every single Internet Media company in India is losing money.     They just don’t want to talk about their digital businesses standalone.   They always try hard to mix it into their overall group numbers so they don’t look ugly.     Think about this…. If Rediff is the most trafficked Internet site in India and has a enterprise value of US$48M with cyclical revenue decline of  40% YOY then where do you think the rest of the Industry is at.  Don’t be intimidated by them.   They are just hiding behind their past glory days.   Time has come for small startups to kick butt.

by Don Dodge

Entrepreneurs face some pretty tough questions at a very early stage. Should I take Angel or VC money? How much money should I raise? How much equity should I give up? How much equity should I grant to early employees? There are some guidelines, but every situation is different.

Paul Graham wrote a blog "The Equity Equation" 1/(1-n), which basically says "You should give up n% of your company if what you trade it for improves your average outcome enough that what you have left is worth more than the whole company was before."  For example, if you take $1 Million from a VC in exchange for 33% of your company, it is a good deal if the company is worth 50% more as a result. Theoretically you owned 100% of a $2M company before the investment, and now you own 66% of a company worth $3M.

Both the entrepreneur and the investor have much higher expectations than just "even money" on their bet. The entrepreneur expects the company to be worth many times this valuation and so does the investor. VCs and Angels can add tremendous value to a growing company, and it is in their best interest to work hard for you.

Shouldn’t the entrepreneur negotiate to only give up 20% of the company for $1M? The short answer is that the company is only worth whatever a competitive group of investors is willing to pay at that point in time. The key is to have several VCs or investors competing for the deal to arrive at a "fair" valuation. It isn’t always possible to have a competitive bidding situation at each financing round so here are some guidelines for funding sources and percentages.

Friends & Family can usually raise between $30K and $300K and usually take an interest bearing note that is convertible into stock at the next financing.

Angels will usually invest between $300K and $2M. They often take a convertible note too, but with warrants for additional shares or a discount on Series A shares. No loss of equity, at least until they convert at Series A.

VCs want to put in $2M to $8M and usually want 30% to 50% of the company. So they will give you a pre-money valuation somewhere around the amount you raise. Sounds strange, but it usually works out that if you are raising $2M the VCs will value your company at $2M pre-money, and $4M post money so they end up with 50% of the stock. If you are raising $5M they will typically value your company at $5M pre-money. The theory is that if they trust you and your business plan enough to give you $5M, then you have probably created something that is already worth $5M.

The second and third rounds of funding take additional shares of equity and dilute existing investors and founders. Founders usually end up with 10% to 20%, all the other employees end up with about 15%, and the VCs end up with about 60% to 75%.

How much money should I take? Marc Andreessen says take all you can get. My simple answer is a little more than you need to reach the next milestone. Don’t cut it too close. Things will take longer than you project, some things will go wrong, and it always take longer to raise money than you think it will. So, figure out how much you need to fund you for a year, or to your next milestone, then add 50% as a safety cushion. That is how much you should raise.

Shouldn’t I raise as little as possible now and raise more later at a higher valuation? Great in theory, that is what you hope to do. But, don’t cut it too close. Give yourself some extra cash and runway to get to the next level. Companies fail because they run out of cash. This sounds simple but think long and hard about this. Companies fail because they run out of cash…they usually don’t fail when they have too much cash in the bank.

Don’t worry about giving up too much equity at an early stage. If the company is successful you will be very rich. If it isn’t successful then holding 60% versus 30% won’t matter anyway.

How much equity should be given to employees? This is another tough question but there are some broad guidelines. To use Paul Graham’s theory, you should give that superstar employee enough stock to keep them, and in return they should add double the value you gave up. If you give up 1% equity for an employee, they should add 2% of value to the company. That is much harder than you might imagine.

A basic rule is that each level of the organization should get about one half the options as the level above. If a VP level person gets 100,000 shares, then a director level person might get 50,000, and a manager/supervisor might get 25,000 shares. Here are some "average" guidelines for equity percentages at a liquidity event. They start out higher and get diluted down to these levels after multiple rounds of financing;

• CEO – 4%
• VPs – 1% each
• Director level – .5%
• Managers – .25%
• Individuals – .05

Now, lets do the math for a company that has 100 employees. The VCs will end up with about 60% to 75% of the company depending on how much was raised and how many rounds. Founders and VPs usually have about 10% and employees have about 15%.

The CEO will have 2% to 4% depending on when they joined or if they are a founder. Lets say you have a non-founder CEO and two founders who are VPs; they will account for 6% of the stock. There will probably be 4 other VP level people with 1% each. That is a total of 10% for founders and execs.

You might have five directors with .5% each and ten manager/supervisors with .25% each for a total of 5% equity. Then you have about 75 individual contributors at a variety of levels, but on average they hold .05% each for a total of about 4%. So, founders and execs end up with about 10%, directors and managers get 5%, and individual contributors account for another 5% collectively, for a total of 20% of the company.

Should I sell the company now for $5M or hold out for a $100M exit 5 to 7 years down the line? This sounds like a "no brainer" but it really depends on what stage you are at and how much equity you have given up. If you are one of three founders holding 33% of the company a $5M exit gets you $1,667,000. If you build the company to 100 employees and sell it for $100M you will probably end up with about $2M. See the equity percentages above to understand how I got to $2M.

Talk to other entrepreneurs – These are tough questions. Every situation is different. The investment market conditions change all the time. What worked three years ago may not work today. Experienced entrepreneurs who have "been there – done that" are your best source of advice. They have lived it and most often are happy to help a fellow entrepreneur. Good luck!

My next post will be about the importance of cash flow, keeping burn rates low, and how to avoid excessive equity dilution

My take on the Iraqi elections!

from: Times of India

If you are worried about the effect of violent computer games on your child, here’s a shocker: sex games with graphic visuals, including those which test the player’s ‘raping skills’, are making their way here, mostly from Japan.
Rapelay, a 3D game created by a Japanese firm, Illusion, with a storyline’ prodding the player to rape a woman and her two teenaged daughters in a moving train, a park and a restroom, is among the hot picks’ in the grey market. A source involved in direct marketing of foreign goods with suppliers in Chennai’s Parrys and Burma Bazaar markets told TOI that he sold 20 copies of Rapelay last week to customers who had placed orders in advance and that 50 more copies are expected in a fortnight. The game is available in grey markets in other metros too including Palika Bazaar in Delhi, he added.
These are mostly pirated copies made from an original smuggled in from Japan or ordered through online shopping websites earlier. Several websites like Amazon.com had removed Rapelay from its virtual shelves after protests in July.
Gamers say several such hentai (Japanese porn) games are also available on the net and can be downloaded on to mobile phones as well. “Young people addicted to these games may start seeing violence as an integral part of sex. While films make children emulate characters, such games where the player is the character can make them act it out,” warns sexologist D Narayana Reddy.

This puts the onus on families to install parental control software to block access to such sites from computers and playstations, say counsellors.
It all started with a pop-up. Gautham Rao, a Class XI student in Hyderabad was surfing the net last October when the window showed a beautiful woman and prompted him to ‘dress her up’ using a variety of attires displayed on the screen. Rao spent hours dressing her, and later, undressing her. A list of similar sites took him down a dark virtual tunnel lined with bizarre games, where the player takes scores of avatars to undress and grope women of all ages, profiles and ethnicities. It took a few months before Rao’s parents discovered the boy’s horrible pastime and got him counselled by an expert.
A year later, the internet is today littered with games that allow players not just to undress and grope women characters, but to tie them up, torture and rape them. While violent sex games are getting more real with 3D animation and special effects, the authorities seem to be either ignorant or helpless. “We have not come across any such game CDs during our raids,” says C Sridhar, superintendent of police, central crime branch. What he does not say is that the police, while seizing CDs of pirated movies and porn films, seldom look for game CDs.
Cyber Society of India, which works in the area of internet security, is also yet to study the matter in detail. “We are an NGO with no criminal jurisdiction. We mostly deal with online credit card frauds and cyber crime, but now we think we need to look at online safety from the angle of such offensive games too. In fact, this was in the agenda of a meeting of the society on October 23,” says society secretary V Rajendran, who adds that the new IT Act which came into effect on October 27 has empowered the Computer Emergency Reaction Team- India (Cert-In) under the IT ministry to monitor and block offensive content.
However, Cert-In says it does not have the resources to monitor and block the scores of websites that offer rape and other violent games. “Only if there is a specific complaint about, say child pornography, can we step in,” says a senior official. “We are aware of websites with violent sex as content accessible from India, but it is technically unfeasible to block all these sites. When the servers of these websites are situated outside the country, we cannot do much. Pursuing cases against offenders is also a long-winding process.”
That puts the onus on parents. Says Bhavani K Raman, founder of Chennaimoms.com, an online community of mothers that discusses internet safety: “Parents must be aware that many phones and gaming consoles like PSP and playstations have built-in wireless access. So it is wise to install parental control software to restrict access.” The control software allows you to block certain sites or make only some sites accessible for children and tells you the sites visited and the duration.
Another concern is about browsing centres making all kinds of websites accessible to children. Despite guidelines issued by the police, net cafes do not run an age check on visitors nor do they have firewalls. “The most important thing,” Raman says, “is to create awareness in the child. Talk to your child about the danger and downside of using these games and sites. An informed child is a safe child.”
Advisory for parents
* Use Parental control software that helps you select the sites your child can visit and set duration
* Use kid safe browsers like Kidzui and Kidrocket
* Search engines have settings which exclude adult material from search results.
* Upgrade your browser as the latest versions have better security settings
* Keep the computer in a place where everyone could see the monitor
* In the computer, create one account for each child without administrative privileges
* Check browser history after your kid used the computer
* Monitor their computer usage in browsing centres which are becoming hot spots for gaming and adult material
* Talk to your child about the danger of using adult sites.

by Michael Arrington

Yesterday Offerpal Media changed CEOs. Cofounder Anu Shukla, who just last week denied that her company engaged in any questionable advertising on social gaming applications, was replaced by veteran startup executive George Garrick. For all the background, see our Scamville post and the related updates at the end.

Garrick, who has been the CEO of Offerpal for less than 48 hours, is already taking a polar opposite approach to his predecessor. He left a lengthy comment, reprinted below, on a post earlier today about Facebook’s policy and enforcement changes around application offers.

The full comment is below. But he doesn’t beat around the bush.

Garrick admits that Offerpal made mistakes – “I have quickly concluded that regrettably, Offerpal has been guilty of distributing offers of questionable integrity from some of our many advertisers.” And he says that recent communications with partners stating that Offerpal was in compliance with Facebook rules were innacurate – “…we’ve also made some erroneous communications to partners and developers about the state of our compliance. In particular, we recently sent a letter to our Facebook developers which assured them that we were completely in compliance with Facebook standards, when in fact we were not.”

Garrick also makes a series of promises in the comment, including “any offers we distribute meet stringent standards of integrity and quality, as specified by our partners, credible industry experts, and good old common sense” and “we will do everything we can within reason to lead the industry and set the example in these efforts.”

Garrick is very much taking the Mark Pincus approach to dealing with this situation. He’s admitting mistakes and he’s promising his company will do better. Compare his words to Shukla’s a week ago. It’s night and day.

Offerpal Today:

I am the new CEO of Offerpal (as of yesterday) and although I’ve only got 48 hours under my belt, and have entered this industry in the midst of a recent firestorm of controversy, I thought it was time to share some of my thoughts and plans.

Direct marketing, in particular lead-gen, has always been full of questionable, misleading, and outright fraudulent marketers and offers. We all get these daily via snail mail, email, phone, and late-night TV. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the Direct Marketing beast.

Although a distribution channel which carries or distributes such offers does not actually create the offers, I do believe that a channel that wishes to be perceived as credible and of high integrity does indeed have a responsibility to make sure that the offers it distributes are not deceptive or “scammy”.

Over the last year, the use of offer-based payment systems such as Offerpal has skyrocketed, and it’s pretty clear today that the industry has not kept up with its explosive growth in terms of properly policing the offers that are being distributed.

I am not going to comment on events leading up to this situation, nor on other players in the industry, but I have quickly concluded that regrettably, Offerpal has been guilty of distributing offers of questionable integrity from some of our many advertisers.

The policies we’ve had up until now have not been thorough enough to prevent such offers from airing, nor has our organization had the proper focus and accountability to ensure quality assurance over the offers we distribute.

As a result, we’ve had a number of offers which were recently taken down by either ourselves or our partners. Although we believe that the majority of our offers were valid and not misleading in any way, we have acted conservatively by taking down the majority of our offers and we are now in the process of letting them back into the system after inspection.

However, we’ve also made some erroneous communications to partners and developers about the state of our compliance. In particular, we recently sent a letter to our Facebook developers which assured them that we were completely in compliance with Facebook standards, when in fact we were not. This was not a deliberate tactic of any kind, it was a mistake that reflected our ineffective checks and controls. But nevertheless, it was an inaccurate claim and for that we take full responsibility, and I apologize to Facebook and to their user community.

The good news in all this is that it has brought to light some very important issues for our collective industry which need to be addressed immediately. For our part, we will be doing the following:

1. It will be a fundamental part of the Offerpal culture that any offers we distribute meet stringent standards of integrity and quality, as specified by our partners, credible industry experts, and good old common sense.

2. We will individually inspect and approve every single individual offer before it is allowed to go into distribution on our system.

3. We will customize our offer profiles to meet the needs and standards of each partner and will not attempt to have a “one size fits all” approach.

4. We will do everything we can within reason to lead the industry and set the example in these efforts.

Over the coming weeks you will hear much more from us on this issue, but more importantly you will see action and results. I will remain personally involved in this initiative and consider it one of my highest priorities in assuming my new role here.

By Eric Ries

I can’t play poker, but I do enjoy watching it on TV. We’re in the middle of the 2009 World Series of Poker, an event that draws thousands of professional and amateur players to Las Vegas every year. The grand finale is the Main Event, a massive Texas Hold ’Em tournament with thousands of players and millions of dollars for the winner.

Tournament poker used to be the province of professionals. But starting a few years ago, a huge wave of amateurs has invaded the game. As a result, of the thousands of entrants into the Main Event, only a few hundred are real pros.

To my surprise, I’ve actually learned a lot about entrepreneurship from watching the World Series of Poker. But it shouldn’t be too surprising. Both rely on acting strategically under conditions of extreme uncertainty. And, in both, small changes in your odds of winning can have a big impact on the final outcome. In fact, I now routinely use the Main Event to help entrepreneurs cope with a frustrating paradox.

Why are some terrible entrepreneurs so successful?

Because the structural barriers to creating a high-tech startup have been lowered dramatically in the past few years, we’re experiencing a huge influx of entrepreneurs. This is a great thing. But it’s meant that there are an awful lot of startup stories floating around. When those stories take on the status of myths, they create tremendous confusion. Naturally, we want to emulate those that have been successful. But that’s not always a good idea.

In the World Series of Poker, no professional has won the Main Event in seven years. When you think about it, this is very surprising. Professional players are so much better than amateurs that they can make a living – in many cases, becoming very very rich – by exploiting the difference between their level of skill and the level of the people they play with. The best of the best win many tournaments each year. By any objective measure, they are much better players than the amateurs. Yet the Main Event has been won year in and year out by a complete unknown player. Some of those amateurs go on to become semi-pro players. But most have never won another tournament after their big win. Why?

The reason is that being a professional player shifts the odds of winning a given poker hand in the professional’s favor, just a little bit. Over the course of a year, a given pro will play thousands of poker hands, and so this shift in probabilities adds up to dramatic winnings. But on any given hand, they still have a significant probability of losing — even if their play is perfect.

Similarly, given enough amateurs in the field, the law of large numbers means that at least some of them will get lucky enough times to outperform even the best pros. That’s why I can say with some certainty that an amateur will win the Main Event this year, even though I have absolutely no idea which of the six thousand entrants it will be.

Entrepreneurship is similar. So much of what makes a startup successful is totally out of our control: the timing of the market, the behavior of competitors, the IPO or M&A window, underlying technology trends and, of course, the human factors of investors, co-founders and employees. Truly successful startup methodologies like customer development or the lean startup can only hope to increase our odds of success — they can’t guarantee it. The converse is also true: even entrepreneurs who do everything wrong sometimes get lucky and make a lot of money anyway. Some even do it repeatedly.

That’s why, for any tactic or strategy — no matter how hare-brained — you can find some “proof” that it works in some company somewhere. That’s what makes processing startup advice so hard. Just because someone has had a success doesn’t necessarily mean they understand why they were successful at all.

Which brings me to the second thing I’ve learned from the WSOP. It’s called a disciplined laydown. In poker, winning requires that your hand beats your opponents hand. The problem is that you don’t know what your opponent has. Amateur players often believe that their success depends on the quality of the cards they are dealt. Consequently, they fold their bad cards and wait for that one big hand to get their chips in with. Unfortunately, having a big hand doesn’t mean you’ll win — your opponent could have an even bigger hand. That’s why the most important skill in poker is not bluffing, counting cards, or computing the odds. It’s figuring out when you need to fold a big, big hand. Watching the pros do this on TV is amazing. Over time, they develop an uncanny instinct for knowing when they are beat, and not throwing more money after bad.

In fact, once you realize that this is the most important skill in poker, it becomes clear that when professional players bet, they are really probing for information. Everything is calculated to help them figure out if their opponent has one of those big hands that might beat them. Folding in those situations saves chips that can be used more profitably later in the tournament.

I think there’s some wisdom here for entrepreneurs, too. We get attached to our big ideas, but it’s those big visions that get us into trouble. Just because we’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into an idea doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good one. In fact, the main reason we need to get out of the building and validate our ideas is so that we can realize we’re beat before it’s too late and pivot. Once you have that insight, you realize that all of the work we’re doing in building an initial idea — from minimum viable product to split-testing to customer validation — is all designed, like the bets of a poker pro, to promote learning about where we stand.

And that provides another possibility for dealing with startup advice. Instead of making an exhaustive search for all the smartest, most successful people and copying them — learn to place small bets. Take any advice (including mine), and think it through for yourself. Do you understand the underlying principles? Can you see how it applies to your specific context? Can you tease apart the impact of luck? And, once you think you have some advice you might like to follow, try it out. Find a way to pilot it without betting your whole company. And then be prepared to fold if it’s not working. Each time, make sure you do a root cause analysis, and figure out what you learned.

And, if you find advice that seems to work, be ready to go all-in.

Eric Ries is a serial entrepreneur and author of the blog Startup Lessons Learned.

from: gamercareerguide.com

Planning your time at school should be like designing a game. That’s the advice of Jenova Chen, co-founder of That Game Company, best known for creating the PlayStation Network title Flow. No matter what sort of school you’ve decided to attend, you need to set goals and determine how you can make the most of your experience.

Landing (and keeping) a job in the game industry requires dedication and drive. Your time in school is no different. Chen, who attended the University of Southern California’s (USC) Interactive Media division for graduate school, took a markedly different path from Kim Swift, who studied at the game-centric DigiPen Institute of Technology.

But they both wound up with successful jobs in the industry that they love. Another young developer, John Edwards, made games in his spare time while studying at a more traditional university, and he found work in the game industry, too.

These three developers illustrate how different academic paths can lead to the same place, and the route that’s right for one personality type can be entirely wrong for another.

Where to Go?

Jenova Chen attended the USC when its Interactive Media division was still in its first year. As a major university, USC offers solid all-around education, should a student decide to major in something unrelated to video games. In fact, Chen didn’t necessarily intend to study games when he was accepted into the program, though he had made independent titles during his undergraduate education.

"When I was applying to USC, I was in China," he says. "I knew nothing about what interactive media would be in the future, but I did care that [the Interactive Media division] was in the cinema school, where I could learn film and animation. In fact, originally I applied to have animation as my major, but they said, ‘You have an indie game background, why don’t you go to this new division? You can still take the animation classes within the same school.’ So I decided to do that."

Portal co-creator Kim Swift got her start with a game called Narbacular Drop, which she and her team made while she was in school at DigiPen in Redmond, Wash. DigiPen has entire programs devoted to learning how to make games, and Swift knew what she was signing up for.

"When I was in high school," she says, "I decided that I wanted to work in the game industry. So I decided to go to DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond. I wasn’t sure what role I wanted to play in game development, so I enrolled in the Real- Time Interactive Simulation program, which is DigiPen’s fancy name for a computer science degree, to get a good idea of the technical side of creating a game."

Single-Handed

Can someone still get a job making video games if she or he attends a school that doesn’t offer any game courses at all? That was the case for John Edwards, founder of Pistachio Productions, which created the Independent Games Festival (IGF) award-winning title Ocular Ink. He made that game, as well as earlier works, while attending college, but not using any of the school’s resources. It was a true independent project.

Edwards now works with Chen at That Game Company, but previously, he attended a liberal arts school in Iowa called Grinnell College. It wasn’t exactly the perfect place to make video games.

"I didn’t go specifically intending to study games," Edwards admits, "and it certainly wasn’t even an option there. I went there basically by default. I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to go to college, but when I was deciding really late in the game that it was probably better than just sitting around at home, that’s when I was able to go to Grinnell and just do something. I wasn’t sure [that I even wanted to make games], and I realized Grinnell wasn’t going to support that directly. I figured that I probably didn’t need a degree in game making if I did it just in my own time."

The fact that the school wasn’t supportive was not a deterrent to finishing his game, says Edwards. "When I was working on Ocular Ink, I was actually working on it so much that I was failing my computer science class," he says through a hint of nervous laughter. "The professor called me into his office and said, ‘John, do you want to pass my class?’ and I said, ‘Well I’ve been working really hard on this game, and I’m the lead programmer on this game team.’ He asked if I had been making any money on it. I said no, and he said, ‘Well, you’d better start turning in your homework.’ I did get a C+ in that class, but it was just a totally separate thing. They’re a traditional liberal arts school. Games are a bit out of their scope."

A Leg Up

Would-be game developers and game students often find that once they start their higher education, they find many other students who are in the same boat: They want to get into the industry, but don’t know exactly how to go about it.

In Jenova Chen’s case, a fellow student and team member by the name of Eric Nelson became an advocate for his group. Nelson pitched the idea of a school-funded indie game to the higher-ups in the program before it was even game-focused, and got some funding. In part, it was a case of finding the right people at the right time, and sticking with them.

"They gave us a little money so we could work through the summer without dying of hunger," Chen says. "That [project] wound up being Dyadin."

Everyone on Chen’s team was in the graduate department, meaning they had a little bit more experience than undergraduates. "We had made things like games before … so we teamed up. Then, because of the success of Dyadin, the school started to see a lot of value in projects like this. So the second year, they actually used the money from EA [which gave a multi-million dollar grant to the school for game studies] and the Game Innovation Grant, and asked the students to pitch ideas and projects. Because of the success of Dyadin, our team was established and we won the grant." The grant-funded project became Cloud, which has since won an IGF award.

Valve’s Swift took a more direct businesslike approach. She set out to create a game that would get her and her team noticed by the big guys.

"The main goal we had in mind when we sat down to design Narbacular Drop was to use this game as a showcase of our abilities to get us jobs," she says. "We knew the game had to be something new and different so we could get attention, and we knew that the game needed to be fairly simple and short so we would have time to polish our game mechanics. In the end, we settled on a design that was fun and original, and we accomplished exactly what we wanted: It got us jobs."

For Edwards, since he created his earlier games without any school support, he and his team had to push forward without assistance. Edwards says he had been reading the industry forum www.gamedev.net, which inspired him to write a project proposal and send it to four of his friends back home.

"It was just for the sake of making games; there was no intention of publicizing it or anything," he says. "That informed a lot of the design decisions, since we weren’t looking for accessibility or anything. It was only after we had created the first game, Mutton Mayhem, while I was in college that we heard there was this [IGF] student showcase thing — and we just submitted it on a whim. We didn’t expect it to get accepted or anything, but it did. It sort of snowballed from there. At that point we thought, ‘Hmm, we could get some recognition for this!’ One of the people on our team, Stuart Young, it was his job to look around for opportunities like that."

For those keeping score, that’s a second tick on the chart for having a dedicated advocate for your game and team’s projects.

The More You Know…

The relationships you form and experiences you have at school can be just as important as the skills and knowledge you learn in class. That was the case for Swift, who says that even at an early stage, it’s all about who you know. "It’s really important to make strong lasting friendships and be supportive of others," she offers. "The people you are going to school with are going to be the next generation of game developers who one day might help get you an interview, or get you a great publishing deal, or in my case be fellow teammates working on a game together. The game industry is a tightly knit community, so build bridges — don’t burn them."

Since Edwards had difficulty enjoying his actual classes, he turned to extra-curricular learning. Many famous game developers are self-taught with no official training. While a formal game education is great, structured in a way to build specific skills, it’s not the only way. As Edwards demonstrates, it’s possible to go to college and major in physics, as he did, and still learn how to become a developer.

"A lot of it is just practice makes perfect," Edwards says. "I was big-time into Gamedev.net, and I read Gamasutra.com a lot, back when it published mainly technical articles. I’d also buy books from Amazon or get them from the library. It was a combination of all that. There certainly was a focus (for me) on the academic side of it, and I think that helped, but primarily it was from just saying, ‘How do I think games should work? How do I think games should be made?’"

Without formal structure, Edwards was left to his own devices. "No one was preventing me from making games any certain way, so I decided to just do it and see what worked. I tend to write down my theories, and I’ve looked back at a lot of them and they’re largely ridiculous, but it’s still on the path to improvement."

Headlong Plunge

There are multiple ways to get into the video game industry, and it helps to keep an open mind. Jenova Chen, for example, found that his educational experience started to shape his ideas for the future, prompting one hand to fall into game creation and the other into business. "I went to EALA to do internships twice," he says. "There are also a lot of industry people coming to the school to teach. In fact, a business class that was taught by Bing Gordon [of EA] had a big influence on me. That’s actually how I believed that we could form our own game company and make our own games. If I didn’t take that class, I wouldn’t have even known that."

Edwards wound up joining Chen’s team after college, through the magical power of networking and the indie game community. "It’s basically all thanks to the IGF and Slamdance and those competitions," he says, "where we were actually able to go in-person to those competitions and meet other people. The intent wasn’t networking, but it just happens because you’re with all these likeminded people who love to make games."

Kim Swift, like Chen, was able to use her school’s resources for her benefit, but in a much different way. "One thing that sets DigiPen apart is that they are really actively trying to get students involved in the industry and are very helpful in finding jobs for graduates. Every year DigiPen holds a job fair for seniors, where they invite representatives from many game studios to come in and take a look at the students’ work and game projects," she says.

"Because of the job fair, my team and I were invited to Valve’s offices to show our senior project Narbacular Drop to Gabe Newell and several other notable Valve developers. After watching our demo, Gabe hired us on the spot to create Portal, which still completely blows me away even though I’ve been working here for nearly two years."

Size Matters

Ultimately, if you want to build yourself into a developer, you’re going to have to knuckle down and start creating games. Edwards believes this is of utmost importance. "Make a game," he advises. "If you can’t program, make a board game. When I was younger, that’s what my friends and I did. But if you can program, or can convince someone to program for you, do that."

Another crucial element for beginners is scope. "Keep it small," says Edwards, "so you can actually finish something. For Mutton Mayhem I had all these guidelines for how we should finish the project and I think 95 percent of them were completely misguided and probably hurt our productivity in the end. But the underlying thing that I said was most important was that we keep the game small. And by doing that, we were able to get it out."

Swift agrees that making games is the only way to break in. Learn by doing, she says.

"If your school doesn’t have a game class like DigiPen’s, make a mod or a small game project with fellow students or friends in your spare time. Practice makes perfect, and chances are you’ll fail a few times before you can make a game you’re proud of. I know that we did! [Making games] will help you become familiar with working in teams of people. Game companies want to know that you can see a project through from start to finish, and the more finished products you have on your resume, the better."

Passion Begets Talent

Given his success story, aspiring developers sometimes turn to Chen for advice, and he mentions two major points he likes to share with them: "The first is that there’s no natural born talent — but there’s passion, and if somebody cares about what they’re doing, they’ll spend more time thinking about it and more effort practicing it. As you think about these things and try to do them, the passionate person gets better and learns more than the person who spends less time. When that gap becomes bigger and bigger, that’s when you start calling this person a talent. If you love what you do, you will be great."

His second piece of advice takes us back to where we began: design a plan for school as you would design a game. Chen is a believer in mapping out his aims and progress, laying out classes and short-term goals as though he were building stats in an RPG.

He admits that setting goals is difficult, especially for people who aren’t sure of their direction, but "it’s really important to start," he says. "You probably can’t have a huge goal, but when you do, you need to be aware of the intermediate goals, where you are and where you want to go in the future. You should establish something you can accomplish today, or tomorrow, or next month, or next semester. That way you can feel progress and the rewards it brings. Also like a video game, you want to adjust the challenges before you with your current abilities … That way it won’t become too boring or too hard. Make sure you’re having fun!"