When you make the decision to go out on your own, you are faced with many choices. Should you work from home or rent a space? Bill hourly or by the job? What kind of hours should you assign as ‘work time’?
Amidst all those decisions that have to be made, you also have to choose what tools you’re going to use to actually do your job. And the web is both a blessing and a curse in this regard. It’s a blessing in that it gives you a plethora of choices for the different categories of applications. But it can be a curse because there are so many good options to choose from.
What’s a poor, green-behind-the-ears freelancer to do? Well, you can start by letting us whittle down the list a little for you. Separate some of the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. You’ll still have find which of the tools below best fit your needs and style, but this is the right place to start.
We’ve broken down the apps into larger categories, highlighted the best or most interesting in each category, and included the best of the rest. Click away — each image will take you to the app listed. Enjoy!
Invoicing and Time Tracking
First things first — you need to get paid. And so you need to bill your customers. And if you bill by the hour, you need to track your time. Whether it’s sending professional looking invoices or easily tracking your hours, these apps are the best available and a pleasure to use.
A beautifully designed application that focuses on simplicity, the Invoice Machine is one of the nicer invoicing tools available. A professional looking invoice says a lot to your client — Invoice Machine can help complete a great impression.
Once you start getting paid, you have to do something with the money. Taking care of the finances — bookkeeping, accounting, taxes included — is probably one of the least enjoyed aspects of working for yourself. But it has to be done, so you’re best off finding a tool that makes these tasks easy and efficient.
One of the more refreshing apps to come along recently, Mint was changing the way people were able to manage their finances. With their recent sale to Intuit — makers of Quicken — there has been a bit of a backlash and a lot of people deleting their accounts.
Regardless, Mint is still one of the nicest tools to keep on top of your finances.
Once you’ve gotten the business side of things out of the way, you need to manage the actual work. Projects, recurring tasks, and sharing tasks are all part of the life of a freelancer. Whether you’re looking for a full fledged project management tool or a simple way to track your own work, there are many tools available.
Use any of these top applications to stay on top of what you do.
Despite a lot of other sites copying their style, 37signals still lead the way in the project management space. Basecamp is simply the best application to manage your work. With a focus on simplicity and communication, it’s an enjoyable tool to use.
Ad with so many other web based applications integrating with Basecamp, it doesn’t appear that it’ll be knocked off its perch anytime soon.
After you spend the time figuring out what needs to get done — and start doing — the result will in many cases involve files to manage or share. Some of the project management tools above include file management and online storage. But many do not.
Not to worry though. There are lots of options for storing, sharing and backing up your data. Here’s some tools focused on this essential aspect of your business.
I’ve talked here recently about Dropbox and I have to confess — this is one of my favourite tools. It has been a great boon to my business and makes collaboration a cinch. Add the peace of mind with its file revisions and tight integration with the operating system and it simply fades into the background.
Actually, for a web tool, it feels like a part of your operating system. This still amazes me.
One other vital aspect to your business is keeping track of customers. Tracking interactions, leads, tasks, meetings and follow-up’s is needed to make sure that your revenue streams are always flowing.
Still in beta, Gist is still working out the kinks. But for those who like to get the big picture, this is a tool with a lot of promise. How does it work? It takes your interactions with others from Twitter, Facebook, your email and others and analyzes who you talk to. It then tracks the online activity of those people and ranks the updates based on their importance to you.
This is a simplified overview — sign up to check it out for yourself. It’s probably not for everyone, but it is an interesting way for busy freelancers to stay on top of the people they depend on.
Anyone who has spent some time as a remote web worker knows that paying attention to your social life is important. When you don’t go to an office and interact face to face with other adults every day, you are exposed to the dangers of isolation.
Now, the tools below are not going to replace the physical interaction we all require, but they can help fill in for the banter that you’d participate in at a more traditional workspace. Whether keeping in touch with coworkers and partners or general internet friends, the apps listed here can help you feel in touch with the outside world.
When Twitter first came on the scene, there sure seemed to be a lot of people saying they ‘didn’t get it’ or that it was a waste of time. A couple of years later and it seems that those people aren’t around anymore. Or they’re keeping quiet. Or they’re busy tweeting.
Twitter is the de facto standard for communicating online now.
Many web workers dislike using the phone, but there are going to be those times when email or IM just don’t cut it. Make sure you give your customers and/or teammates another avenue of getting your time and attention.
The following tools are aimed at mobility with flexibility.
People all over the world use Skype as their primary means of communicating. With instant messaging and voice services, including voicemail, huge long distance charges seem like a thing of the past century.
If the controversy and ownership of Skype’s technology ends well, this service will continue to be a mainstay in online business.
From many freelancers, in order to keep the work coming in, you need to be able to show potential customers who you are and what you’ve done. There are many web applications that now focus on this genre.
A newer entrant in this category, Raveal shows a lot of promise. It’s intended to mix both your portfolio and resume into one entity. It’s an interesting approach.
If you are going to interact with your clients via Twitter, than cotweet is a service that may be of interest. It makes managing a business account a little easier with support for dual accounts, assignment of tweets, and robust notifications.
Dave Troy here with Kris Appel, our guest blogger for today. Kris is the founder of Encore Path, a medical technology start-up in Baltimore.
As a first-time entrepreneur, raising the money to launch launch a medical device was a significant undertaking.
I am not only a first-time entrepreneur, but I chose to start a company in an unfamiliar field. I have a background in linguistics, but my company develops medical technology for stroke rehabilitation.
So I started this endeavor with two strikes against me. This month, I will close my Series A round, and my first product was launched this summer, a rehabilitation device that improves arm function in survivors of stroke and other brain injury. Here is how I was able to attract investment:
• Humility — Everyone knows something I don’t. Why wouldn’t I want to learn from them? I am thankful that people care enough about me to offer their advice and give me their time. I’m sure they have other things to do, but they’ve chosen to spend this part of their day with me, and I’m going to listen to what they have to say.
• Be nice to everyone, all the time — I’ve met people everywhere who might turn out to be investors or important advisors. You never know when someone is going to help you, it could be weeks or even YEARS away, but you want them to remember you fondly, and to want to help you succeed.
• Meet with everyone who asks — Especially early on, I met with everyone who requested a meeting with me. And I didn’t mind asking each person for something — a referral, a market report, scientific data I couldn’t afford to buy, business advice. Some of those casual meetings turned into major investments later.
• Enter business plan competitions — I entered, and won, a few business plan competitions. In addition to winning cash for my business, I made a lot of contacts, got some very positive press, and got a TON of free advice about my business plan.
• Let people get to know you — All of my investors were strangers to me when I started this company. But I sought them out in the beginning as advisors, and spent time with them over months and years, talking about progress I’ve made and where I’m headed. It helped to build trust and credibility, and they eventually invested.
• Be patient — Every single aspect of this business has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. But so far everything has happened exactly as expected, just at a different time.
• Surround yourself with supportive people — This is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. I needed all the courage I could muster, and support from friends and family. I dropped friends who couldn’t support me, and found new ones who understood. It made a difference.
• Keep your business plan current — This seems obvious but it’s harder than you think. Almost every month STILL I take time to update my business plan. You never know when you’ll need to email it to someone, or enter it into a business plan competition, or use parts of it for a grant or loan application.
(Editor’s note: Jeff Bussgang is a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. This column originally appeared on his blog Seeing Both Sides.)
One of the things I continue to struggle with as a VC is the unfortunate fact that I am in the business of saying “no” all the time.
Saying “no” in the context of how you invest your time is one thing – fellow VC blogger Brad Feld did agood blog poston this topic in the context of time management a while ago as did Y-Combinator’sPaul Graham. But I really struggle with saying “no” to entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs pour their hearts, souls and dreams into their start-up ventures – and to summarily dismiss them remains the hardest thing about the job. One of my entrepreneur buddies asks me whenever I see him: “So, did you crush any entrepreneurs’ dreams today?” Very funny. Ha ha.
One of the reasons for this dynamic is that VCs are in the business of trying to see everything (i.e., learn about and meet with all the best deals out there) but do nearly nothing (i.e., invest in only one or two companies a year).
My dilemma becomes more acute when I try to explain why I am saying “no”. In particular, how do you say no when the reason for turning down the investment opportunity is the team?
It’s easier to say no when you have concerns about the market, the business model or the price. The entrepreneurial team is great, you would enjoy working with them, you think they are money-makers, but there’s something in the general model that prevents you from pulling the trigger. Those are the easy ones.
The hard ones are when you are saying no because of the team. Successful start-ups typically follow Thomas Edison’s genius formula: 10 percent inspiration (the vision or idea), 90 percent perspiration (the execution). Whether you like the idea or not is irrelevant if you don’t believe the team has the wherewithal to execute it successfully.
Sure, a team can evolve over time and new leaders can be brought in, but very few VCs invest behind teams they don’t believe in.
One curmudgeonly VC I know used to say to entrepreneurs: ”I don’t think is an opportunity that suits you.” At Flybridge Capital, we try our best to be direct and honest in providing feedback to entrepreneurs to help them with their ventures and perhaps we should have the courage to give it to people between the eyes.
I’m just not sure this blunt feedback would pass the decency and respectfulness test. After all, who am I to project such an unfair judgment based on a 45-60 minute meeting?VCs need to “Blink”and make snap judgments after those 45-60 minutes in order to filter and prioritize how they spend their time, but why be mean about it?
In the end, I often settle for a polite “it’s just not a fit for us” – but I often wonder if that’s the right approach.
Let me know what you think. IF a VC turns you down because of you or your team, would you rather be told bluntly – or have the news couched in more polite t What’s the meanest turn down you’ve ever received from a VC?
I waited for this app for over 10yrs! In their own words – “Get more donedoing what you’vealways done. Track responsibilities. Manage relationships. Generate results.All without changing the way you work right now.We call it Business Interaction Management.You’ll call it amazing.”
Art Of The Start What To Expect From A Venture Capitalist Guy Kawasaki, 01.27.04, 3:56 PM ET
Guy Kawasaki, the latest addition to our columnist lineup, is an entrepreneur, an author and the chief executive of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital investment bank for tech firms. Guy will provide expert answers to all your questions about starting a business.
I’ve got a venture capitalist who wants to invest $5 million in my company. What should I expect in terms of how he will want to interact with the company? As long as things are going well, a venture capitalist will leave you alone. Understand a venture capitalist’s life: He’s on as many as ten boards that meet at least quarterly and sometimes once a month; he has to raise money to invest and keep about 25 investors informed and happy; he’s looking at several deals a day; he’s dealing with five other partners. He doesn’t have the time to micromanage you–and if he thought he’d have to, he probably wouldn’t have invested in you. The more important question is, "What can I expect out of a good venture capitalist?" The answer to this is: five hours per month of mindshare during which he opens doors for you with prospective customers and partners and interviews candidates for high-level positions at your company.
How can I identify the venture capital firms that have new funds with a maturity sufficiently far out so they align with my liquidity time frame? You’re thinking too much. The timing of a fund is hardly ever a factor. Besides, the firm is going to pick you and not vice versa, and there is no way to predict a liquidity time frame.
Do entrepreneurs have to accept the valuation proposed by the venture capitalist who wants to invest into our business? Whatever the first offer, ask for a 25% higher valuation because you’re expected to push back. In fact, if you don’t push back, you may scare the venture capitalist if he thinks you’re not a good negotiator. It would be nice to have some arguments to show why you believe your valuation should be higher–saying that this book told you to push back isn’t sufficient. At the end of the day, though, if the valuation is reasonable, take the money and get going. You’ll see that you either make more money than you ever thought possible or your organization will die. In either case, valuation and owning a few more percentage points seldom makes a difference. For a rough approximation of your valuation, circa 2004, you can also use Kawasaki’s Law of Pre-Money Valuation: for every full-time engineer, add $500,000; for every full-time M.B.A., subtract $250,000. If this is too unscientific for you, then use services like VentureOne or VentureWire for information about current financings.
How can one protect an idea since few investors will sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)? You’re right: Few investors will sign one, and even if they did, simply hearing your idea better not make it copyable. I’ve never seen a case where an entrepreneur told an investor about an idea, and the investor ripped it off. Investors are looking for people who can implement ideas, not simply come up with them. Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard–and where the money is. Quite frankly, few investors are capable of implementing an idea–that’s why they’re now investors–but I digress. Here are the fine points of using an NDA:
Never ask an investor to sign one to have a first meeting or in the first meeting. No one who would sign one this early is an investor you’d want.
If you’re asking for an NDA to merely discuss your idea, keep your day job because you’re clueless. I’ve been asked to sign an NDA to hear about selling books online!
Freely circulate your executive summary and PowerPoint pitch. These documents should entice investors to go to the next step. They should not reveal your magic sauce.
Ask for an NDA if an investor is interested in your deal and wants to learn more at the bits and bytes or molecular level. It is reasonable for an interested investor to ask for this in the due diligence stage. This is most relevant for life sciences and material sciences companies.
You should feel pretty safe once patents are filed to discuss your magic sauce under an NDA–not that you’ll have the time or resources to sue for patent infringement.
The bottom line is still that the best protection of an idea is great implementation of the idea.
What is the order of approaching the tiers of venture capitalists: tier one, then two and three or the other way around? You’re thinking way too much too. Pitch almost any firm you can get into. After trying to raise money for nine months, you’ll realize that all money is green. Plus, it’s also not at all obvious who is a tier one, two or three firm.
When do I stop trying to find/negotiate a better deal and take what’s offered? It’s a good idea to stop looking and negotiating if you can’t meet payroll. If the deal that you’re offered is within 20% of what you wanted, take it. Focus on building your business, not finding the best deal. In the long run, the quality of your business determines how much money you’ll make, not the deal you cut years before with an investor.
Should I worry more about dilution, the real needs of my business or the amount the investor wants to put in? Here’s the priority: the real needs of your business, the amount the investor wants to put in, and last and least important, dilution.
What is the internal rate of return expected from tier one, two or three venture capitalists? How firm do they stand by that projection? First of all, it is unlikely that a venture investor will admit that his firm is not a tier one firm. Even if he did, he isn’t saying to his partners and investors, "Since we’re not a tier one firm, let’s just try to get 10%." All venture investors are looking for a very high return on your specific investment, not a return that matches their target average. (Remember, they know there is a high likelihood that your company will flame out.) But your question misses on another point. Although venture firms are ranked against each other by their internal rate of return performance, venture investors do not evaluate individual deals by calculating prospective IRRs. Not even VCs are so arrogant to believe they are that visionary. Practically speaking, investors look at cash-on-cash returns–that is, if I put in $1 million today, what can I reasonably expect to get back in four or five years? ($5 million would be a five times return.) Expectations for cash-on-cash returns vary by the type of investor and the sector of investment, not by the prestige of the firm. For an early-stage, high-tech investment, you had better be able to convince the investor that there is a realistic plan for returning five times to ten times his money in three to five years. Click here to submit questions for the next column More Art Of The Start Articles
About Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki is the CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital investment bank for high technology companies. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer. Guy is also the author of seven books. He has a BA from Stanford University and and MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. He is currently on the board of BitPass, a micropayments systems company for online content.
Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia David Georgeson, Producer ZOMG
Gaia been around for 5 years
10M unique/month
#1 time spent in social media – avg 51 mins/visit
Gaia feels like a mix of a socnet and an MMO like WoW
Dig into user experience or talk to ppl using it and they describe it differently – feels like 21st century version of the mall or downtown or summer camp
Place you go to hang out with friends and do a dozen different activities
At this point, Craig is talking and flipping through slides SO fast that I’m not sure he wants anyone to really take this stuff in (later confirmed as he says slides won’t be avail online – it’s a management slide deck). So I stopped taking notes for this segment.
ZOMG producer comes up
Be Both Accessible and Engaging
Need to be accessible and engaging
Gaia started out engaging, but lost accessibility for a while – fixed it with better UI and user analysis
But we do "engaged" with authority – largely due to our 20 ring circus, retention is very high
Another positive example: Facebook – You lose hours without realizing, there’s always one more thing to do, lots of flavours for lots of different user types
Three Key Lesssons
Make it fun
Get users to buy
Make it easy to buy
MAKING IT FUN
Identify your Audience, then own it
You can’t satisfy everyone, so design features to satisfy a niche
Understand your niche – identify key features by talking to fans; get the core right before taking on more tasks
Good things happen when you nail the niche – great reputation, word of mouth increases, once you have more users you can get diverse
Gaia example: started as anime lovers forum catering to artists, forums to talk about it all, bragged to others and it grew
Gaia focus has expanded over 5 years, adding features slowly – went to housing (ppl who do housing aren’t necessarily the ppl who do the dress up doll stuff – diversifying), rally cars
Also provide custom mini-games, attract the most casual of gamers, they have social aspects within them allowing chat, etc
Eventually expanded to a full-fledged MMO, ZOMG (video doesn’t play – Craig working on bringing it up)
Keep your Audience Involved
Internal marketing for both present and future features
Players want to be excited, so make it happen
Schedule of events to keep players looking forward, so they never want to quit
If players ever get bored, there are a million other net destinations to go look at – never let them get bored
Talk to your Users
Your ideas may not be what players want
Find out
Implement after you figure out how it makes business sense – either soft or hard returns
Don’t come up with a money making scheme then foist it on your players
Bite Sized Content
Frequent rewards
Smaller time commitments
Early accomplishments
WoW reward schedule is way too long for web world
Random events system in ZOMG has world constantly changing around you so it’s never the same – lots of different experiences so every time you go in there is something new and different
Keep New Features Coming
Keep evolving, refining, adding
Stay flexible
Never stop
ZOMG rolls out stuff every two weeks or less
Always make sure players are fully aware of what’s coming up
Build a 20 Ring Circus
No single idea appeals to everyone
Satisfy more of your core audience by creating new ways to interface with your site – dress up vs marketplace vs games vs hangouts etc
MMOs multiple kinds of gameplay within the game
Create a variety of experiences Cater to many different player types with features such as:
Forums, guilds
Collectibles
Gathering, crafting
Social community
Social gaming
Combat, PVE, PVP
Mini-games
Gaia invited fans to meet employees after a company softball game in San Jose. Fans travelled from Florida, Washington state, etc to meet them. Very passionate.
ZOMG is Engaging Users
Extremely high retention over 10 months since open beta launch
Avg play time 2.5 hours
ZOMG players 4x more likely to purchase than main site players
Incredibly easy to try, free, no download, four click entry
Achieves its goal as fly paper for the main site
Get them to stick, then you win
The more entertained, the longer they stay
Longer they stay, more likely they are to buy something
More likely they are to make a friend
Once they’ve made a friend and bought something, very unlikely they will go away
Cultivate, nurture and entertain your users
Get Users to Want to Buy
Accept it! Most users won’t buy from you – but those that won’t buy are still critical to your business, they will keep the community alive and exciting for those that will buy
Build things that entertain everyone – then enable ways for buyers to participate or get ahead via purchases
What do they buy?
Anything that promotes self expression
Anything that promotes sense of belonging to the community or friends
Anything that lets users get to an end goal faster or easier
Anything that looks like it can be turned for profit
How Does Community Affect Revenue?
Community provides the venue where users can brag by displaying their earned/purchased items and abilities – forums, profiles, guilds, marketplace, games, UGC, town area, post artwork, get ratings – hot or not, etc
If they can’t brag, they don’t want it and the items and features are worthless
Are items entertaining? You bet they are?
Gaia makes all their money off sponsorship or microtrans items
Item types are a form of entertainment – decorative, functional, and/or collectible – but they don’t satisfy 100% of your audience
Have to keep coming up with new stuff
Items that evolve – i.e. the egg that hatches into a Phoenix are very cool… people speculate on how it will evolve, gains value over time
Non-Item Revenue Examples
Shout outs (Maple Story)
Time shortcuts (powerup in ZOMG, points in Zynga games)
Name changes/server changes (Everquest, WoW and traditional MMOs)
Premium features (features or areas avail only to members – Club Penguin, Runescape, etc)
Make Buying Easy
Utilize every payment option
Mobile payments
Game cards
Credit cards
Cash
If you can use ALL the available payment systems, use them all. They don’t cannibalize each other
Habbo Hotel has over 170 payment methods
Recap
Make it fun for everyone, but focus on your niche first
Get users to want to buy, make it exciting, let them know what’s coming up, features oriented toward core
Make buying easy – if you can make it 1-click, make it 1-click
Customers win, you win, everyone wins
Q&A
Any mobile plans? Craig: great evidence you can be successful in this area. GREE and DNA (Mobile Game Town) in Asia are both doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue
Average age of Gaian? Craig: Median age is 18 years old, 60/40 girls; doesn’t work for a 10 year old – sweet spot is 19-20 girls.
Sponsorships – can you talk about it? Craig: Sponsorships work well for us. We had no ads 3 years ago, now we’ve done a ton of deals with big brands. Skittles is on our site – they funded the creation of a variety of virtual spaces that had some game mechanics in them or custom mini-games or cooperative experiences in site where if you did these experiences you would earn Skittles and the community’s goal was to collect as many skittles as possile and build a rainbow. When it was done, there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that rained gold (Currency) down on all users. We partner with a brand to build something that adds value to the user experience. They fund it, but we build it. As a result, turns out you get better response rates for advertisers.
Have you found a sweet spot for price? We are still experimenting with that. We don’t have a lot of items over $7.5. Many other companies say there is no price insensitivity between pennies and $7.5. The real issue is the penny gap – charging anything more than $0. Anytime we raise a price, revenue goes up. The sales of the item do not go down.
How do you value sponsorships? We have to tie it to CPMs as there is no other way an agency can value a deal. Otherwise they can’t show metrics the way they are used to. We get over 2B page views a month, so it’s easy to offer impressions.
How do you QA new content without breaking old stuff? It gets harder and harder. Make thorough checklists and resist tendency to just get it out because "you know it’s good" – gets to be a certain size of an MMO where you try to compartmentalize your code so things are less likely to break, but ultimately good QA processes will make or break you.
Along the QA lines, how much do you use automated QA or is it all manual? It’s all manual in our case. We have some process checks (scripts compile, etc) but in general most of our stuff is manual and we rely on checklists. All our QA is in-house. We only did a hardware compatibility test externally.
How big is the development side of the organization? 105 people in whole company. 40+ of whom are developers. Include QA and backend operations, then maybe 50 dev. ZOMG team is impressive… 15 people (5 artists, 10 devs) on ZOMG MMO (draws laughter from crowd).
Is Membership Suitable for Gaia? Craig: I think you have to choose Runescape or Maple Story model. Pogo has pulled off both though… you can buy sub that gives you a collection of virtual goods. I think you have to decide up front what you want to be. One gives you more users, but less revenue per user. Sub models give you more predictable revenue stream, but microtrans have potential to blow that out of the water due to uncapped ceiling on ARPU.
Do you have a mix of time-based vs consumables vs permanent items? Most of our stuff is permanent. Then there is time-based stuff (fish only live for 90 days in an acquarium) and then we have consumables. Just did deal with Vivix – you can modify your voice, but it only lasts for a few weeks.
Is 60/40 split for Gaia the same within ZOMG? Yes it is. 90% of our users have never played an MMO before. Game has a lot of combat – worried that we would only attract guys. But that hasn’t been the case at all. 60/40 girls, just like main site.
Demographic among national boundaries? North America is 85% of the player base.
What were your advertising efforts to get your name out when you launched? No money was spent. Even still, we spend almost no money on marketing. Almost all word of mouth. Tools within Facebook and their invite loop systems are probably the easiest and cheapest way to acquire users. That said, we haven’t used that yet – most of our growth is word of mouth at school. We have started to test online ads and we’ve got it so we pay less for the ad than we get from that user lifetime.
Most of what I have learned over the years came primary due to my failures. Looking back at the decisions I have made in both selecting ideas to work on and deciding how much to invest in them it is painful to see how many times I have repeated the same mistakes.
It all comes down to decision making and the ability to predict the future and the timing of when things will take off. It is also critical to either do it yourself or only entrust a person who is more passionate than you about the subject.
While most of the projects I failed in where good ideas I usually dramatically underestimated how long it will take for adoption to take place or how much money will be needed. I also have discounted the level of commitment and ability management have presented thinking I could solve things later.
The hardest part I had to deal with was learning to cut my losses and admit my mistakes quickly. Again and again I tried to save these ventures and paid the price of being distracted and drained of resources to only prolong the inevitable.
A focused mind is one of the most powerful forces in the universe my fortune cookie read in a recent trip to a local eatery in Manhattan and I could not agree more.
It is amazing how some lessons take 20 years to learn.
Here is a list of my most spectacular failures and misses. I review them again and again to see what else I can learn and each time as I visit them in a new context a new side of this learning process reveals itself.
May 2008
Novacure 2004 � had the opportunity to invest in this revolutionery cancer treatment process but decided it was too revolutionary.
Skype 2002 � I got a call from a VC asking about my opinion on a small startup doing a VOIP product, since I know the space too well I did not think they prospects were good.
ICG 1999 - ICG was the seed investor in Arbinet and I got pre IPO equity but wired the money too late to participate. Stock went from $7 to $212 in 6 months.
Google 1998 � I was introduced to Sergey by Ester Dyson and after listening to his presentation of how a link based algorithm would provide better search results I said “who needs another search engine, we have AltaVista”
Tradeum 1998 � I contracted to buy software and negotiated equity upside and co-investment but I switched at the last minute to another firm. Tradeum got sold for $1.2b just one year later.
ICQ 1996 – Yosi Vardi offered me equity in his company as barter for bandwidth from Arbinet. I said no and ICQ was sold to AOL for $450m a mere 8 months later.
Vocaltech 1996 � I had the opportunity to invest in the company twice before their IPO.
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) made another foray into the videogame business Tuesday, hiring game creator Alexander Seropian and agreeing to buy his Chicago-based firm, Wideload Games.
The move comes as media conglomerates contend with a slowdown in advertising revenue and DVD sales; they see videogames as a business with more growth potential where they can exploit some of their popular entertainment franchises.
Disney didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but it came on the heels of last week’s announcement the entertainment giant had agreed to pay $4 billion for Marvel Entertainment Inc. (MVL), creator of videogame-friendly comic book characters and such box office draws as Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men.
Shares of Disney were recently trading up 1.2% to $26.20.
Disney’s dealmaking is a sign of confidence in an industry that has been rattled by the rise of digital media and a breakdown in the economics of many of its traditional business models.
Seropian’s hiring demonstrates that video gaming continues to be a business where the company sees opportunity in an economic recovery.
“In the long term, we’re still bullish about where this industry is going to be,” said Graham Hopper, general manager of Disney Interactive Studios. “Alex is valuable to us with or without Marvel.”
A rare bright spot in the media and entertainment landscape, videogame sales have dropped off as the recession has worsened. However, analysts view it as a business that can continue its growth spurt as the economy rebounds because studies show young consumers spending more time playing videogames than they do with other media.
“Clearly, the amount of time spent with videogames is significant relative to other forms of media and it fits with Disney’s assets,” said UBS analyst Michael Morris.
That said, Morris said Disney’s Marvel acquisition likely signaled the company wasn’t planning a major acquisition of a videogame publisher like Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO) or Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS), two struggling game companies that are widely viewed as potential acquisition targets.
The Wideload acquisition “fits its strategy of investing in small, creative firms that can build out Disney’s gaming business organically,” said Morris.
Wideload, which is based in Chicago and has 25 full-time workers, was founded in 2003 by Seropian, who will become vice president of creative at Disney Interactive Studios, the company’s game division located in Glendale, Calif.
Seropian was a co-founder of Bungie, a game company that was acquired in 2000 by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), where Seropian oversaw the development, production and delivery of Halo, the flagship title for the 2001 launch of Microsoft’s Xbox game system.
Currently, the firm is developing a family console game scheduled for release in 2010 from Disney. The studio will focus on creating new intellectual properties that target a broad audience.
Seropian will join game designer Warren Spector, who sold his firm, Junction Point Studios, to Disney in 2007 and joined its creative ranks.
Disney Interactive Studios has produced games based on the company’s popular franchises, like Hannah Montana and High School Musical, but it has yet to break into the world of hard-core gaming with a big hit. Hopper aims to change that, saying that with the hiring of Seropian the company is “trying to be a magnet in this industry for talent.”
I have worked with small and big companies alike in my career in the creative Industry. Although, bigger established companies give you a sense of security, I firmly believe that they never utilize full and most often hidden (which the person himself does not know) potential of their employees, thereby seriously affecting their growth. Also, in a big company, you feel like a cog in a large machine — easily replaceable.
In contrast, working for a start-up is a roller coaster ride that if given a chance, one should never miss! I bet you will remember the days working with a start-up as most thrilling and fulfilling days of your professional career.
Here are 7 reasons why one should work with a start-up.
Everything matters:
Start-ups often start on a shoestring budget. Everyone has to do everything, from founders to developers to office boy and most importantly, everything matters !
Scope for creativity:
Start-ups give you complete freedom to think creatively. They are always receptive to new ideas that will help improve the product / service. This, over a period of time becomes an habit, and often allow you to think out of the box.
Sense of Belonging:
In start-ups, employees are often more like a family than merely a group of co-workers. When you’re as friendly with the founders as you are with the person sitting next to you, you feel a strong sense of togetherness and purpose that larger companies often lack.
Exciting Challenges:
One of the biggest thrills of working in a start-up is overcoming frequent challenges that are thrown at you and accompanying sense of accomplishment once you overcome those challenges.
Skill building Opportunities:
Like I mentioned earlier, in a start-up, everyone has to do everything, even the task that are outside your comfort zone. One day you play a role of a UI designer, the next day of a developer and following day you may be closing a deal. This allows you to develop host of new skills that help you through-out your professional career.
Big risks, bigger rewards:
Working is a start-up is risky. There are chances that start-up may not take-off. However, if the start-up is successful and is acquired or goes public you surely stand to make good moolah in form of equity or incentives. Even if the start-up fails, you still walk away with wealth of professional experience and varied skills.
Sense of Pride:
Once the start-up is launched, you can take pride in it’s success and the role that you played. If the start-up fails, you can still take pride in having had the guts to take the chance and walk on less travelled path !
From: Mashinsky’s website – 